Snapshots: All School, All the Time

Since I worked all the days of our four-day school week this week, I spent more time than usual at school. Also, yesterday was homecoming. More school time! I had one cheerleader, one basketball player, and one member of the homecoming court there, all of whom needed special clothing. And all of that required me to be there until the bitter end, after the coronation. Which was after all three basketball games. 

I did not stay for the dance afterwards. It was a community dance, so I could have, but it went from 9 p.m.-midnight, which is way past my bedtime even on days I haven't spent six hours sitting on a hard bleacher with excited children. 

The older two boys wanted to go to the dance. A. had said he would pick them up around 11 p.m., but then he was home sick and already asleep when I got home at 8 p.m. I am still thanking God quite sincerely that my friend with similarly-aged children was going to the dance, drives right past our house on her way home, and offered to bring the boys home after the dance.

Anyway! All this to say that all my photos this week are in and of the school.

Our school is currently under construction, and that means all kinds of inconveniences. So far we have lost Internet, water, and power at various times. One power outage occurred on Monday. We have a generator, but our superintendent asked us to conserve power while it was running, so I turned off the lights in the hallway leading to my kitchen-office.

It actually looked way darker in real life. And somewhat alarming, with the red exit sign glowing at the end.

On Tuesday, I was substituting for our special ed. teacher, who is also the cheer coach. She asked me if I could organize the new cheer uniforms, unwrapping them, sorting them, and putting together bags for each girl using the size chart she gave me.

There are five pieces to each uniform--undershirt, undershorts, overshirt, skirt, and giant hair bow--and thirteen cheerleaders. 

A table full of cheer. (Ha.)

It was surprisingly difficult, but I managed in the end. And I only forgot one girl's undershirt.

On Thursday, I substituted in the phrase-cube classroom. This was my mandate for the day.

Can't make me.

I was definitely not smiling when I saw the instructions for the day's third-grade math lesson on fractions. It involved various sizes of paper, modeling clay, and cups of water, all to be laid out in stations.

Thankfully, the teacher had already cut the paper to size for me, so I just had to organize it all, label it, and lay it out. This took me the entire fifteen minutes of the first recess.

Also thankfully, the other teachers' aide comes in at math time and actually did the lesson with them. It seemed to be just as complicated in the execution as it was in the set-up, but the kids thought it was really fun.

Oh, I do have one non-school photo! Sort of. This is what I was staring at for an hour and a half on my way to the basketball game last Friday.

I did not see a single other vehicle for 62 miles. I did see one coyote and a whole lot of antelope, though.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.