The GACE/Laundry connection

I made the big push and took the GACE Special Ed. Academic Content Test yesterday. Four hours -- 120 multiple choice questions and four essays. One of the four essays I had absolutely no clue about and will suffer for it. I took a stab at it, but looked up the information afterward and wasn't even close. I wouldn't be as upset about it if I hadn't studied everything ELSE on that particular topic -- GRRRRRR! Other than the essay, everything else was pretty much typical GACE test. I've become somewhat of an expert by now, having taken the two other tests. As for how I did? Who knows! I didn't expect to pass the other two and I feel the same way about this round, especially Part 1 where I had essay diarrhea of the pen.

A gigantic casualty of GACE has been my laundry room. I'm pretty sure it's dead. Smothered to death by dirty laundry. I turn on the lights in that room, and all I hear are crickets. So today, in an effort to raise a laundry room from the dead, I've begun excavating dirty clothes from the floor and adjacent hallway. A pathway has at last been cleared and I've done about five loads of laundry so far. Kids now have pants and shirts to wear to school tomorrow. Still no underwear, but the day is not done. I had to stay home from church to accomplish this. I couldn't bring myself to do several loads of emergency laundry last night, so I played Ms. Pathetic, and let Keith take the kids who could find clean clothes off to church today. I slept in a little, made breakfast, started the first load, cleaned up in the kitchen and have been filling the ravenous washing machine and dryer ever since.

The Kings made a stop-over on Friday night on one of their grand driving expeditions. It's their spring break. They will travel thousands of miles in the next week visiting friends and family. We were their first stop on the way north from Florida. They've come often enough that their kids all know the drill. They bring their sleeping bags and pillows and set up their stuff, then all of the boys go and play video games for as long as we'll let them, and the girls go into their room and play music real loud and do a lot of laughing and giggling. This time, Keith and Kerry went off to see a movie and Ginny and I hung out and talked while I made dinner. We had Make Your Own Tacos -- a Johnson tradition. Yum!

On Thursday (I realize I'm going backwards on my reports!), Keith went on a whirlwind trip to California. He left our house at about 5:00 in the morning, got on the plane, met his Dad at LAX. Together they headed off to Norwalk to fix the three birth certificates that are not actually official birth certificates. They are abstract birth certificates, even though it says "Official Government Document" on them. Keith then had Yoshinoya with his Dad and then hopped a plane once again to come on home, making it through the door here at about 11:00 the same evening. Pretty efficient! Hopefully, now that we've got the birth certificates fixed, we'll be able to get the passports back in time for the upcoming Mexico/Japan trips.

Butterscotch Brownies cooked just a little too long

Teacher, teacher

I was surprised to see how long it had been since I'd posted. I guess I've been busy. Where do I start?

It appears that I won't be able to do the One Year Practicum program to get my teacher certification. The school budget won't allow it. My other option at this point, should I wish to become a teacher, is to take one more GACE test and enroll in a teacher certification program. I will then be qualified to begin teaching as long as I can get my teacher certification done in five years.

So I am now seriously considering the possibility of getting a Masters in Education. It means only a few more classes after getting certification. I am looking into the many programs that are available to me and trying to talk to as many people as possible. Those of you who pray, would you please pray that I talk to the right people and ask the right questions. It's a very interesting, exciting and overwhelming time in my life.

On the home front, Kathleen got on the track team at her school. She is the first of the kids to participate in any school sport. I'm enjoying it immensely. She has two hours of practice pretty much every school day, unless she competes in a track meet. The weekly track meet runs all the way until 7:00 pm after school, and I can get in free with my substitute teacher badge. She is certainly not the fastest kid out there, but she runs hard and tries hard. I'm very proud of her.

Keri Lynn and I have been filling out the endless forms and jumping through the endless hoops for college. She wants to go to either Shorter College, which is one of three Southern Baptist colleges in Georgia, or Georgia State and College University, a liberal arts college with a strong Christian contingency. It's an interesting, exciting and overwhelming time in her life, too!

I continue to sub at the same middle school, where I've been since December. For those of you who might not remember from previous posts, I work in a self-contained special ed. class as a teacher's assistant. ("Self-contained" means that the kids stay in their own classroom rather than assimilate into general ed.) Half of the kids are in wheelchairs and all of them are at the lower end of the IQ range. Keva is at another middle school and would fit right in with these kids. I have had the privilege of teaching each one, to a certain extent, and watching them react to the learning process. I especially enjoy giving the readers their reading lessons. The brain is an amazing creation!

In fact, I've been enjoying it so much that I am seriously considering going into special education as a teacher at the severe/profound level. I was asked several times last year by several people if I would like to teach a self-contained class. My answer was, "No, thank you." Inside I was saying, "Are you CRAZY?!? Don't you know I already take care of a daughter at that level? And you want me to do it 24 hours a day!?!" And the person asking would nod and agree in complete understanding. However, now I have a different perspective, and the opportunities are still there even in our current tough economy.

Keith is going to be going to California sometime in the next few days to try to get the long versions of Keri Lynn and Kristofer's birth certificates. Apparently, when we got their birth certificates, three of our seven kids got the abstract version of the birth certificate. It says right on their "official government document", but it does not have the city in which they were born. It has worked fine for us all these years and would be fine if we were applying for passports in California, but doesn't work in Georgia. Argh! So we have about 30 more days to get this issue taken care of. Thank God for Keith's flight privileges. It would take way too long to get it fixed by mail. I shudder to think!

Chick-fil-A

A sick one -- pathetic, isn't he?

Lovely daffodils

Last Monday, our county closed all of the schools because of snow. Snowmen stayed up for several days. Snow stayed on the ground clear into Wednesday and Thursday in the shady areas.

Today, we turned on our AC when we got home. Temps were up into the late 70's. Hello, Spring! Glad your coming! Trees have started to bloom. White ones. A few pink ones. And, of course, the daffodils have been around for several weeks. I love daffodils.

Keith had his day off today, but he spent most of it taking his friend, Carol, his friend who he used to work with who has cancer, around to her doctor appointments. He had to run back quickly, though, to pick up Keva who had started throwing up at school.

Bummer.

And, sadly, I'm not upset that Keva is sick, per se. She actually seems to be doing pretty good. She ate a good dinner tonight. She's sleeping comfortably.

I'm just thinking of the possibilities that follow when one child starts vomiting. Soon it becomes a plethora of vomiting. Vomiting fountains of throw-up. Which means laundry. Possible time away from work. Doctors. Steam cleaners. And fun stuff like that.

We've already doing the coughing/fever/chills thing. In fact, I figured that we were doing pretty good with our sick selves. Missing church a few weeks. A couple of kids home from school at a time. And no vomiting!

So we'll just have to wait and see if Keva is a special case. Maybe it was something she ate, like the wood chips next to the fireplace, or the dog food.

Fun times.

Doggie posture

Here's Kody eating out of his new doggie bowl, designed to aid with posture AND digestion!  Note the snow outside!  Whoo-hoo!  What fun!

One Word

It's harder than you think!! Here is what you are supposed to do...and please don't spoil the fun...copy and paste into your own note, type in your answers and tag a bunch of people - including me.

Your hair....................................................brown
Where is your cell phone .........................gone
Your father.................................................heaven
Your favorite thing....................................laundry
Your dream last night...............................memory
Your favorite drink....................................Coke
Your dream/goal.......................................teacher
The room you are in..................................bedroom
Your fear......................................................pain
Where do you want to be in 6 years........teacher
Muffins.........................................................chocolate
One of your wish list items........................camera
Where you grew up....................................California
The last thing you did.................................snow
What are you wearing.................................jeans
Your TV........................................................basketball
Your pets......................................................Labrador
Your computer.............................................laptop
Your life........................................................blessed
Your mood....................................................content
Missing someone..........................................Keith
Your car.........................................................Van
Favorite store................................................Michaels
Your summer.................................................fun
Your favorite color........................................blue
When is the last time you laughed..............today
Last time you cried.......................................yesterday
Three people who email me.........................Mom, Grandma, Aunt Marcia
Three of my favorite foods...........................Hamburger, Mexican, Fried
Three places I would rather be right now..Kauia, New Zealand, England
Three people I think will respond...............Mom, Danny, Connie
Three things you despise..............................cruelty, lies, littering

What an arm!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

It's snowing! So pretty! I wish I could capture the snow flakes coming down with my camera, but I've already taken plenty of pictures out the front door and the deck. It's still coming down steadily as I type.

Yesterday, I finally had a normal healthy day, pretty much. Which was a good thing, because my friend Ginny came through and spent the night last night. She was supposed to be coming back from visiting with her family, having gone there to bury her father and spend time with her mother. Her husband and kids had already driven back to Florida, so she used a buddy pass to get back from Oklahoma. Except last night, expectantly of course, 500 flights were canceled coming in through Atlanta due to snow. She was not going to be able to get on a connecting flight for another day at the very least, probably not until Tuesday. so Keith drove her and met up with her husband at the halfway point, and they are now driving on home.

Keith is maybe making a tiny stop at the Alabama/Georgia border to get one or two or a hundred fireworks for Fourth of July. My very own firebug. They got snow driving down, but the further south they got, the snow started to go away. But Keith will be getting plenty of snow coming back up again.

I decided to stay home from church today to make sure my recuperation is complete for tomorrow, but now I'm wondering if we'll have school tomorrow at all. It's supposed to be sunny, so I imagine the snow will be gone tomorrow, but forecasters were saying that the snow was probably going to melt when it fell, which it's not. It looks like Winter Wonderland right now. I dropped off Keri Lynn and Kathleen at church because their choirs were being bussed to another church to sing. Kristofer is home feeling very pathetic with probably the same bug I had. Poor thing. The rest of the kids kept dashing outside to play in the snow, until I told them to stay in because we also have thunder and lighting to go with it. Odd combination!