Good-bye Kindergarten!

Yesterday was the last day of school and after some tears (and a surprise appearance by Dr. Klein) my little kinders left our classroom for the very last time. It looked so empty without them!

And after a whirlwind packing spree (my wonderful husband came in again today!), my classroom really looks empty:

And as of 3:30pm it's actually my "old" classroom. Since the district was only giving out "interim" contracts when I interviewed (due to budget cuts of course), my job officially ended today. I felt very lucky to be given the position when it opened mid year and couldn't have asked for a better team of teachers to work with. Teaching kindergarten has been incredibly rewarding. Having said that, I'm definitely ready for summer : )

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Sex and the City 2!

Here's a photo from last night's Arizona opening day showing of Sex and the City 2:

Thank you to my hubby for not only spending the day helping pack my classroom, but also standing in line for an hour so we could have fabulous seats at the movie (and then using his super-engineer skills to make sure we were eye level and in the middle of the screen). The manager came out before the showing to welcome everyone said that we were in the "Cine Capri" - their largest theatre. Max predicted that with the crowd (consisting mostly of rowdy groups of women) the poor guy would be eaten alive. True to his prediction, one of the groups of women yelled at the guy to "take it off!" and he had trouble continuing.

Seeing it on an opening night was great since the crowd was super into it and even cheered after. The reviews for the movie, however, have been absolutely awful! While I think that the actors seemed a bit removed, and the comedy was somewhat forced, every Sex and the City fan just wants more Sex and the City, and more screen time for the iconic characters - so this fan was quite pleased and loved all 147 minutes of it : )

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Ms. Patty Visits Mrs. Klein's Classroom!

While out here in Scottsdale earlier this week, my mom also got to visit my kindergarten classroom! They seemed to be blown away by the fact that I have a mother, too ; )

She was here for the end-of-the-year class party, too which was Luau themed. Thank you, Ms. Patty, for being in charge of the fruit and marshmallow shish kabob making station : )

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Do It Yourself-ing

A much as we love our house and our backyard, there was definitely some "deferred maintenance" which was evident when we moved in...

These are our rosebushes, which have been overtaken with aloe and weeds (lots of which is dead) and over on the right is a giant rosemary bush creeping its way over:

Since my mom was in town last weekend, we all made a day out of clearing up the (what seemed at first like a) small area:

My mom and I found that aloe takes over anything - here's a plant growing on top of the rosebush:

And the only good thing about trying to take it all out is that there is the nice gel inside the leaves for soothing all the cuts and scrapes from the thorns:

Max found a wall! It was there the whole time behind the rosemary!

And although we're not finished yet, looking at the befores and afters is a nice reward for the cuts and scrapes (and the sore muscles the next day):

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Pool Light Take Two

Once again, we moved into a house with a broken pool light! This gave us an excuse to buy a new fancy shmancy color changing one : ) But first, the old one had to come out. We estimate the wiring for the old one had been in the same place for about two decades so getting it out tool a little elbow grease (Max's of course). Once he got it moving, the wire came out super quickly:

The old pool light:

My hubby prepping to put the new light in:

And showing how neat and flat it is being all LEDs:

Pool light prettiness:

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Sister Visits Scottsdale!

My sister Lindsey was our first official guinea pig err... visitor at the new house. She discovered that the upstairs shower sets the fire alarm off (oops!) and was the first to spot a javelina in our front yard (after which she came running back into the house screaming, causing me to scream too. Though they're herbivores, they look a bit scary.)

Here are more photos from our weekend of fun...

Downtown Scottsdale (Lindsey loooved the cactuses):

We tried to look like we knew what we were doing going horseback riding... instead, the head cowboy asked us if we had ever seen a horse before:

We can't wait for Lindsey to come back and of course for the other two sisters to come visit AZ, too!

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The Theatre Room!

With two full time jobs (I'd actually call them full time plus ; ) it's been slow moving over here in Happy Valley Ranch getting our house in order. At the top of Max's list is setting up the theatre room. He finally has the space to do it properly in our new home! I've loved my supporting role in this endeavor...

Here Max is cutting the space for an outlet to get to the speaker wires. This wifey is sooo happy they'll be hidden in the walls! ; )

He's such the engineer!

Getting those wires to the right spots was a bit of a challenge involving Max running around the attic dropping wire down the walls all the while on the phone with me, and me peering into the holes with a flashlight searching for the wire to pull it through the holes. I'm quite the engineer's assistant now : )

Mounting the projector also involved Max heading up to the attic, this time to cut a hole for the projector mount and to rest a 2x8 on top of the rafters so that the projector will hang nice and securely:

And while there are still some to-dos in the theatre room, we are now enjoying larger than life HD and surround sound. Yay!

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Mythbusters at Exponent!

Back in the Fall, Mythbusters paid a visit to Exponent's Arizona facility where Max's office is located! Max and I are big Mythbusters fans. As a teacher, I appreciate that they use the scientific method, and as a boy, Max likes that they often blow things up. The episode finally aired yesterday and it's definitely worth viewing! The show tested whether a head-on collision of two cars (both traveling at 50 mph) shows the same impact as a car hitting a wall at 50 mph or a car hitting a wall at 100mph. They used Exponent's test track for the crashes, which was neat for us to see on television! If you're a Mythbusters novice, it airs Wednesday nights on Discovery. Below are links to the clips : )

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