Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Well the month of March has just flown by!! I can't believe April starts next week. With April comes testing, Natural Helper retreat, and the process of moving. That's right, folks, the new school we were supposed to move into at the beginning of this present school year is just about ready to be moved into. It isn't official or anything. We still haven't been told that we will move, but there are whispers through the ranks that the day is coming when they tell us to pack it all up and be ready for a longer walk to work.

Tattoos and bracelets for St. Patrick's Day

I don't have much to report on the school front, except that we had a fun celebration of St. Patrick's Day. I normally don't get that excited about holidays, but for some reason this year, it sounded like a blast! We got tattoos, heard a story about a leprechaun, learned the history of St. Patrick's day, and made Shamrock bracelets. The kids seemed to really enjoy it, and I know I did!

Playing some Wahoo with friends.

Even though not much happened on the school front this past month, but I did accomplish quite a few things in my spare time like game nights with coworkers, learning to make coffee cozies, and making myself a quspaq to wear for the Natural Helpers' Retreat at the end of this coming month.

Some of the other teachers and I have started having a few game nights. It's a lot of fun. We've been doing a sort of tournament style Wahoo series. Each week we get a different partner and keep track of how many wins we have each week. I have the lowest count of wins, but it isn't really about who wins or loses to me, it's about the quality time spent with friends. Most people don't build strong relationships with their coworkers, but out here it is kind of necessary to survive and these game nights help a lot. Wahoo is sort of a mix of Sorry and Farkle in my opinion. It's a fun game, I would recommend anyone to play.

The first three coffee cozies I made

I also began making coffee cozies. My first one was the hardest, not only because I was learning something different, but because it had buttons and I had to sew them on plus knit button holes for it, but it turned out alright. I also made some with no buttons. The ones with buttons are good for your own mugs that you have at home, the others I thought would be good for say if you go to Starbucks and want to use your own cozy. I know that I don't really need that many of them, but honestly, I need something to help past the time every now and then, and I think being able to knit is a good skill to have. I wonder how many I can make by the end of the school year... we shall see :)

Learning the correct process of cutting material for making a quspaq

The very first quspaq I made :) Turned out swell!

Lastly, I made a quspaq this weekend. In case I haven't said this before, a quspaq is a fancy shirt type deal that people wear on fancy occasions. Since I am the Natural Helper sponsor, part of my responsibility was to make sure all the students had a matching quspaq. We ordered material (WAY more than we actually needed seeing as how I had no idea how much we needed!) Then, one of the school secretaries showed us the proper way to set up the material to cut it for our quspaq. It was really nice of her, because she has been very busy as of late. Anyway, I took the material home and asked my roommate for help. She made me a quspaq for Christmas, so I knew she would know how to make it. We spent all day yesterday cutting and sewing and hemming and I finally finished about six hours later. Although the hood isn't quite right and I had to redo a few parts, it turned out really well for one of the biggest projects I've done. I'm very excited to show it off at the retreat. 

I didn't have much to write about work at the school. But I think I did a lot of work in my personal time this month. Now I know that even when things may seem slow, I have some good friends to play games with and a few projects that can make the time pass a lot faster than they would otherwise. 

The Longest and Shortest Months

For my loyal readers I would just like to apologize for the long absence. The title of this blog should give you some indication as to what the last two months have been like. January always feels so long out here. I'm not quite sure why, especially when it is followed by such a short month. There has been a lot going on out here, whether it is severe weather changes or constant activities going on in the school gym, there hasn't been a lot of time to take pictures and write about it. But I have taken this opportunity to go through a few of the things that have happened this year. 

One of the Science Fair projects
had to do with finger prints

Playing in the snow

The month of January consisted of ball games every weekend and when I did go, it always seemed that for some reason I had left my camera at home or something of the sort. I did however remember my camera on the 100th day of school. My students and I did a few fun activities. First, we wrote 100 words that we learned over the course of the first 100 days of school. We also made necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops. The kids loved this and enjoyed the process of eating their necklaces even more than making them. 

100th Day of School Fruit Loop Necklace

100 Words we've learned to read and write

February did genuinely fly by. There were so many things going on. We had Spirit Week. The days were as follows:

Monday- Nerd Day

My Nerd Outfit

Tuesday- Crazy Hair Day

My Crazy Hair with a cup to make it stand up

Wednesday- Pajama Day

Tweety bird pajamas

Thursday- Superhero Day 

(no picture available)

Friday- Brave Day (Wear purple and white)

Pumped up for Brave Day

I always loved Spirit Week, but unfortunately it didn't seem like the kids got into it as much as I would have liked, so I only have the pictures of me dressed up to share. February also brought the Science Fair, but I was detained from going and seeing the experiments. I do know that one of my previous students got first place and another student got second place. We also had a fun filled day playing in the snow although there is much more ice and it did rain on us while we were doing that. Finally, February ended with Potlatch. It wasn't as crowded and packed as it had been last year I believe because our high school boys basketball team was playing in the championship game during that time. But it was a lot of fun to see everyone together and I got a few good pictures of the event.

A teacher's son "looking for treasure" in the snow

In my opinion, January is always the longest month of the school year and February is always the shortest month, so now that they are both out of the way, the rest of the school year should have some very interesting things happening that I will be glad to share. Here's to another eventful month, this time with my camera close at hand!

Walking to Potlatch, beautiful sunset

Some people found a cozy place to
sleep during the festivities

During one of the dances