o-c-t-o-b-e-r

O - Opportunity to serve. I was asked to help out in junior church, mostly with leading the music, but with some of the other things that go on in there too. Since there is no junior church in the summer, we just got started back up at the beginning of September. Our first theme was four weeks long and was called CSI - Christ Seen Investigators. It was all about people who had seen Christ when He was on earth. It had videos of these kids acting all CSI-ish, rushing off to investigate Jesus scenes, and had a lot of media stuff that came with the program. It was really fun. My favorite part was the rap it up video with this rapper Skittles. At the end of his rap he always said, "I have a rainbow of fruit flavors and I'm livin' for my Savior. Skittles Out!" It's hysterical!!! Tomorrow we start our next series called Victory and it's on Bible battles. Later this morning I'll be heading over to the church to help put up the new camoflauge decor. I've been working on picking out songs and figuring out some motions. I think Victory Chant will be perfect as our theme song! (And I've heard Skittles is back, BA-BY!!!! Yo! Word up!!!)

C - Convention. Thursday and Friday was the ACSI teacher convention held at the convention center in Portland. I liked the main speaker a lot. He had three sessions and his topics were Creation vs. Evolution, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and Christian Worldview. He was easy to follow, unlike some speakers they've had in the past, and he kept our attention with great illustrations and a pretty good power point presentation. I also went to four workshops. The ones on the first day weren't all that great, but yesterday I chose I've Dibel'd, Now What Do I Do? and Interventions for the Struggling Child. At my school, we use Dibels for reading to test oral reading fluency, phonemic awareness, letter recognition, that sort of thing. I first heard about them two years ago, then last year was my first year to use them. Now this year I know what to do with the information. It was very helpful. And, of course, every year there's at least one kid who struggles with something, so that information was very good too. I also ran into quite a few of the teachers I taught with for three years at Eastside Christian, and it's always fun to find out what's going on with all of them.

T - True Love Always. Came home Thursday night to these pink beauties. Just because. He couldn't find the vase, but as you can see, the orange juice pitcher works just fine! (Oh, and did I mention he was also fixing dinner?) My man scored himself some bonus points :)

O - Ornery. My niece Hannah got off the bus the other day and said, "Mommy, guess what Kylie brought to school today in her backpack?" (kindergarten) And my sister said, "What?" She goes, "Two little baby puppies." So my sister proceeded to ask her what happened. "They called her Mommy to come get them and take them home. But we all got to hold them first!" And no, the girl's mother did not know about the puppies being taken to school in a backpack on the bus! That reminds me of a student I taught one year in fifth grade. She wasn't in my homeroom, but she sure was a strange one. She brought her cat to school. Zipped up in her backpack. Yah, you can imagine. Full grown temperamental cats have a much more difficult time being zipped up in a backpack than two little puppies. We had to call that girl's mom to come to school that day too. Ahhh. . .kids.

B - Books I'm currently reading include Beth Moore's Jesus the One and Only, which is a companion book to her 40 Days with Jesus study. Good stuff!!! It's covering the life of Christ from His birth to His death - I'm in the miracles part. I'm getting ready to start her study on the fruit of the Spirit tomorrow in Sunday School class. (And I just found out Thursday night that she's coming to Portland and I'm getting myself a ticket!) I'm waiting on a book called The Shack. I've heard so many people talking about it, I finally asked to borrow it from someone yesterday. I don't know too much about it - so don't quote me. . . a man from Oregon writes about his daughter's abduction, she was kept in a shack, killed I think, and he goes back to the shack after her death. I'm also reading Charlotte's Web to my class. I love that book! They are so getting into it. I hope I don't cry when Charlotte dies :(

E - Escargo. I'll never ever eat it. Not in a million years. But maybe if you paid me a million dollars. (I'm having trouble coming up with something to tell you for E. Can't you tell? Now I understand how my students feel when I have them write acrostic poems and they can't come up with a word for a particular letter either.)

R - It's raining, raining, raining. It's arrived. Fall is here and so is the rain. We're currently receiving the tail end of a typhoon that's come all the way over the Pacific from Asia. They were calling for strong winds, but all I've heard is the rain. The only good thing about the rain is that it makes Sunday afternoon naps so much more appealing.