Almost there...

EOGs are over. Praise the Lord! I had a little motivational song for my kids inspired by a little train from our childhood we all know and love. "I know I can, I know I can..." was what I kept telling my kids about the test and now I'm telling myself the same thing about school. "I know I can, I know I can" get through the rest of this year and mountains of paperwork. For those of you not in the education world, teachers have a lot of paper work to fill out at the end of the year. Due to Bush's No Child Left Behind we as teachers have to document and redocument everything we do. Therefore as the year rounds out, I have approximately 5 documents to fill out for each kid. Multiply that by 23 kids and I have approximately 115 pieces of a paper to fill out. I have to say that I like Bush and his idea was good in theory but in reality there are a lot of things about it I don't agree with. This being one of them!

Other than that, things are trucking along. Jeff and Lauren moved yesterday and it was a lot harder than I thought it was. I had become attached to them very quickly and will miss seeing them across the parking lot everyday. We'll have to go through the same thing 2 weekends from now when Josh and Brooke leave. That's what hard about seminary...you become involved in the lives of these people and they are only here for short time. I know the Lord has amazing plans for each of them, but in some ways I just wished they were the same for us all. (I know I'm selfish)

By the way, I read a great book this weekend and if you haven't read it you really should. It's called The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers and it's about a girl who gets raped her freshman year in college and becomes pregant. It goes through her internal struggles with the ordeal as well the struggles those around her go through. It's crazy to see it through the eyes of the person who it happened to. I am definitely pro-life but it really made you stop and think what would I have done if I had been in that situation. Any way, its a must read! This book also proved to me why I don't read books for pleasure during the school year. I became so involved in the book that I couldn't put it down therefore getting less sleep and introverted the whole weekend. It's funny how I get so involved in the plot and the character's life that I feel like I'm in the story and cannot separate myself from what is written to my real life. It affects my emotions and the way I treat others around me. I'm also so attached that when I'm finished I feel a sense of lost as my time with those characters are over. I want to know how their story continues, what became of them. I know I'm weird...it's ok...I admit it. :)

Ok enough for now...have a terrific Memorial day!

Four Square rules the night

Tonight had to be one of the most fun nights I've had in a while. It started very innocent plan of going to eat Mexican food with the Mingees. This has become quite a tradition with them and we always seem to joke about eating the Mexicans. Well after our last trip we realized that our beloved restaurant had a B sanitation grade! So tonight we attempted to try Fiesta Mexicana Restaurante Mexicano (yes that is the real name, hence the reason we thought it would be fun to try it). Once we get there (with our coupon) we realized they were not open and after many attempts to pick a new place to eat we settled for our B grade restaurant where we meet 2 of our other friend couples. (FYI: they have since been upgraded to an A, which we were relieve to find out!)

Dinner was normal and very fulfilling. We then go through the painful process of deciding what to do next. Gary Snuffin (yes that is his real name) played his normal teacher role in telling everybody to sit quiet and think for 30 secs. on something we could do. I'm laughing so hard at this point that I'm crying. The boys then get the bright idea to travel to Wal-mart to see what kind of games we can find to play outdoors. After mauch persuading and compromises, we decide on a kickball. We travel back to our house where the boys pull out the duct tape and make a four square court. At first it was all pretty normal, until they decided to make up stupid rules. We played several rounds where we had to make animal sounds or name state capitals. The boys (ages 22-25) have now become obsessed and play for 3 hours straight, making up dumb new rules. The girls got tired of playing and ran to Starbucks and they were still playing. They then made us play couple four square; I'm telling you they were obsessed. I have to admit it was all pretty hilarious and we all worked off our dinner calories from laughing so hard.

I needed a night like this...so many times I get bogged down with being an adult that I forget what it is like to be a kid. It's nice to cut up and enjoy myself and not be in charge of someone. Let's all go back to being kids, uh?

The Curse

My sorority sister Kathryn wrote this on her blog and I felt it was so true that I had to post it here too.

To the woman He said,
'I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to your children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
-Genesis 3:16-

And as almost an afterthought (but nothing really is an afterthought with the Lord), the Lord spoke again...

"And you shall carry your extra weight in your hips, butt, and thighs. We shall call you thunder thighs and ghetto-booty. And you shall have to do cardio every day to manage your inner thigh chafing and junk in the trunk...

And when you slack off, you shall jiggle."

Do you think it was the curse we just didn't get to read about?

Counting them down...

Only 17 more days of school! They can't come fast enough. The children are so disrespectful to one another and cannot stay focused. The sad thing is that we have EOGs next week and they need to stay with me mentally. I'm really praying for the Lord to give me wisdom and strength. I want to glorify Him and I want to show them Christ by my attitude but I fail so many times. Praise the Lord that He is faithful and strong and we are more than conquerors!

Support raising is coming along nicely. I'm about a 1/4 of the way so far but am getting nervous as the majority of the money is due on June 4th. I really feel as though the Lord has called me to the trip so I confident in knowing that He will provide.

The sad part about going/living in seminary is that people come and go out of your life so quickly. One of my closest friends' husband is graduating next week and they are moving the next week back to their hometown. My other good friend Lauren's husband is about to get offered a youth pastor's job and they will be moving next weekend. I'm sad because I've become attached and its going to be hard to let them go. It's so hard!

Sweet Revenge

This is so good that I'm taking my lunch time to type it....

For once I was backed up by one of my parents (in my class) and a child finally got what they deserved. This one girl in my class is a big pain in the butt; she is very mouthy and all attitude. Well this morning she decided to pout because she didnt get the job she wanted in group work so she sat not doing anything. I, in return, gave her a choice of doing it with her group or individually in another room while I went over the answers. She got all bent out of shape when I tried to send her to a new room and she made me physically pull her into the room. Another teacher ran to my rescue to help me and we got her situated. I came back into my class now all flustered. Well lo and behold, 5 minutes later I get a knock on the door and its her mom! I hadn't called her (though I thought about it) but she randomly shows up to volunteer. I have a short conference with her and she is like "Oh no she didn't" and walks to go get her child. Next thing I know I'm hearing yelling in the bathroom and some smacks. The mother had gone and spanked her child in the bathroom across from my room!!! The mom came back and was like "You shouldn't have any problems with her today; her behind should remind her!" I was in shock and inside jumping for joy! For once, this child got put in her place, something she very much needed. If more parents would show up like this unannounced and take care of their children, we might have better behavior in schools. It feels like justice was served!

Music City, USA

This week I traveled a short little plane ride across NC and TN to the capital of honky tonks and country music. To celebrate our mothers, my mom, grandmother, aunt, and I traveled to Nashville, TN for a girlie weekend of sightseeing. A fun time was had by all as we traveled through the history of country, past the capital building, and the Parthenon (yes they have a full scale replica...why..who knows?). We did all of this on a lovely tour bus where I was the youngest by 20 years. The best part was our trip to the Wildhorse Saloon where I learned to line dance and heard a band sing about a corn dog. Quite honestly, it was hilarious. The Grand Ole Opry was quite a treat but I have to say that new country is much better than old school country. Overall, we had a great time but I made two conclusions..... 1) I realized that I could never sleep in the same room with my mom again as her snores vibrated the whole bed and 2) the older you get, the slower you walk. :)

Sorry this post is not very exciting but I felt the need to update the blog. I would post pictures but really they are probably not of much excitement to the rest of you. If you want to see them you can go here: http://photos.yahoo.com/shannonpcox