Round Two

Hello?

                           Anybody out there?  (crickets chirping)

                                                                                            

                                                                                                   Anybody left?

Look, I know I am totally lame-O.  What can I say?  I lost my mojo.  In my defense, several things happened at once.  My assistant and dear dear friend retired at the end of last year and in order to make her feel especially loved, I decided to contract some sort of viral/bacterial plague during the last week and a half of school.  Good times, let me tell you.  Nothing like thinking about doing report cards and cumulative folders when your body is covered in angry red hives, your stomach feels like you just drank some battery acid and your throat keeps closing up, making trying to breathe LOTS of fun....Needless to say, blogging didn't top my priority list and I was under doctor's orders to GET AWAY FROM SCHOOL all summer.  At this point I would just like to tell you several things....

1. Don't get hives.
2. On the 8th day, God created the oatmeal bath.  God bless you, Aveeno!  I could weep with tears of gratitude, but then I might get all stirred up and get the hives again.....
3. I was just kidding about that stirred up stuff....I haven't had hives in months!
4. However, I will admit to carrying two gallon-size Ziploc bags full of drugs with me where ever I went for awhile, lest the angry hives appear again.  I wanted to go all Eagle Scout on 'em....
5. Anyway, I'm in first grade now, with a new assistant, and I love it!  God, in His sweet mercy has given me another wonderful assistant!  And I talk to/see my former (notice I didn't say OLD) assistant at least once a week! 
6. I have many of the same bright, funny, wacky, amazing kids.  As a matter of fact, I have some of their art work on this here blog!  I'll let you take a look at it!  But before I do that, I must tell you the assignment they were given.  It was the second or third day of school  and I was trying to figure out how much ground we lost (learning) and we were trying to settle into a routine, and besides that, I just really love kids' art!  And I get to boss them around and have them draw pictures!  Anyway, I gave them paper and said, draw a picture of yourself.  That's it.  That was the assignment.  Here's some of what I got:

This is one of my A girls. She's jumping rope on the playground. If you'd seen the playground, you would know how simply and beautifully she placed the two new pieces of equipment in the background of the picture. I love how she drew herself. She's happy and cute in real life! Great picture!

                                                           

Here's another one of my A girls. She sees herself as a beautiful princess. She's seen lots of things that are very far from beautiful, yet she still knows who she is....a princess....someone who's worth something! Oh, keep it, Precious Girl! You have so much to teach us!

 Here's my J boy!  Again, let the record show, I said draw a picture of yourself.  I even think I drew a picture of myself, getting the clothes right, trying to make it look like my hair, emphasizing showing how you really look..  And this is what he did. 

The only thing funnier/scarier was hearing his actual explanation... and yeah, I'm pretty sure those are cat whiskers....