First Day of School 2024

This year was a big year for us with Carter moving up to middle school. He was super excited and also a bit nervous and anxious. That morning he was very chatty and talking through everything. Elise was very nervous about being in a new grade and not having Carter at school with her. She was so nervous she wasn't able to eat her special breakfast which she had been so excited about. She was really disappointed about it so she had a waffle with Nutella and strawberries as an after school snack. Her bus was on-time on the way home and Carter's was 5 minutes early! I am so thankful for amazing bus drivers who get the kids to and from school safely and in a timely manner, it's not an easy job! Read past first day of school posts here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 Elise, 2020 Carter, 2019 Elise, 2019 Carter, 2018 Elise, 2018 Carter, 2017, and 2016.

Elise's 1st Day of 4th Grade Interview

• My School Is: Zarrow
• My Teachers Are: Sra. Izquierdo (homeroom and math), Sra. Tschida (reading), and Sra. Chavez (science and social studies)
• My 1st Day of School Is: August 20, 2024
• Height: 53" or 4'5"  
• Shoe Size: 4   
• Weight: 70 pounds
• I Hope I Get to Learn About: Science! 
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be: I want to be a teacher. 
• I'm Really Good At: Art
• I Want to Get Better At: I want to get better at art. 
• This Year I Want to Learn: Art and science projects. 
• I'm Excited About 4th Grade Because: Of my teachers. Carter says they are nice.  
• My Favorite Thing About Myself Is: I am good at art.

Elise getting on the bus in the morning.

Carter's 1st Day of 6th Grade Interview

• My School Is: Carter
• My Teachers Are: Ms. Naff (math), Mr. Ballew (science), Mr. Miralles (spanish), Mr. Wise (geography), Ms. Evans (technology), Ms. Hargett (musical theater), Mr. McGuire (language arts), and Ms. Dyer (advisory)
• My 1st Day of School Is: August 20, 2024
• Height: 60" or 5 feet tall   
• Shoe Size: 8 in men's
• Weight: 105 pounds
• I Hope I Get to Learn About: More advanced things.
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be: I don't know yet.    
• I'm Really Good At: I'm good at animating and video games. 
• I Want to Get Better At: Definitely animating! 
• This Year I Want to Learn: Better Spanish.
• I'm Excited About 6th Grade Because: It is going to be more different than elementary.  
• My Favorite Thing About Myself Is: That I'm awesome!

Carter getting on the bus in the morning.

Twisted Oak Trail 7 Miler

The Twisted Oak Trail race was on my radar for a while before I signed up. I wasn't sure if we'd be in town because we needed to drop the kids with my parents that weekend and were thinking we would go up and spend the weekend with them. I started back to work a week before the kids' first day of school so they would spend the week with my parents. Elise got an invitation for a birthday party that weekend so we decided we'd stay home and then meet up with my parents to drop the kids off on Sunday. Once that decision was made, I signed up for the race. The party ended up getting rescheduled because the birthday girl got sick, but I was already signed up for the race so we stayed in town.

Race weekend was on the way and we had a forecast for a couple cooler days. Then the forecast started to include rain. The day before the race they posted that they may push the start back an hour or 2 if it looked like it would be beneficial with the storms. My alarm went off at 6 am and I got up and started getting ready. It was raining and there was quite a bit of lightning. I remembered there was a chance the race start would get pushed back so I checked the Facebook page and it said the race was still set to start at 7:30 as pushing the start back didn't look like it would be beneficial. I did yoga once I was ready and then dragged my feet leaving the house because I didn't want to get to the race only to find out the start had been postponed. I checked multiple times and there were no updates so I left the house around 6:40. It rained the entire way to the race. I had planned ahead the night before and had a bag packed with all dry clothes as well as dry socks and shoes. I used an umbrella to walk to the car so I also had that. I wasn't thinking when I arrived at the race and left my umbrella in the car. I walked all the way down to the race start area to get my bib and realized I forgot my water bottle in the car so I had to walk back up to get it. I still had plenty of time to wait around in the rain before the race started.

There were quite a few race day registrants and they weren't using a professional timing company, they used a system created by the robotics team the race benefits, so they weren't ready to start the race at 7:30. They were working on getting everyone entered into the system right up until the wire. We started at 7:40 and went straight up a long gravel hill before turning onto a single track trail. So many people took off sprinting up the hill and I wasn't interested in that. I ran up the hill at a normal clip. Then we hit the single track and people slowed to a jog and I was stuck behind them. When we turned on the trail and crossed a gravel parking lot, I sprinted around everyone I was stuck behind and was able to stretch out to my race pace which felt great. My first mile was 9:16 and I felt good about that. The trails weren't super technical, but they were moderately technical with lots of rocky sections. They were definitely more technical than Lubell, Mooser, and Bales which I do most of my trail runs on. Mile 2 was 9:10 and I was feeling awesome. When I went through mile 3 in 8:53, I decided to try to make the race a progression run with each mile faster than the next. I knew that may not be possible because with a trail race the pace varies due to terrain and elevation and I didn't know the course. Mile 4 was 8:50. I was drinking from my water bottle about every 1.5-2 miles. I could see someone behind me a bit as I did some of the switch backs, but other than that, I never really saw anyone else. There were a couple points when I saw lightning, but the storm had slowed to just rain by the time the race started, thankfully!

Mile 5 had a decent amount of decline and I went through it in 8:29. I knew that would likely be my fastest mile of the race and I was right. Mile 6 was 8:49. I really took off the last mile. That last mile was the most technical and there were sections that were super sloppy with mud and I slid around a little bit. I ran that mile the hardest of the race and it was my slowest mile in 9:19, but with the elevation gain in that mile and how technical it was, I was surprised I ran it so close to the same as the first mile! I finished out with a kick at 7:37 pace. I was first overall female and 4th overall in 1:03:11 which was 8:58 pace. After the race I changed into my dry clothes and used my umbrella to stay dry while waiting for the awards ceremony. I had so much fun and the trails were absolutely beautiful! I plan to go back next year. They do a duathlon which includes a trail run, a mountain bike ride, and a trail run. You can do the race as a team and I think it would be fun for Ty to do the mountain biking and I'd do the running on a co-ed team!

Wordless Wednesday

3rd fastest carousel in North America at 15 mph! Faust Park

Butterfly House at Faust Park

Morning run past the Butterfly House in Faust Park.

I came up on 2 adult deer with a fawn who was nursing on my run, then went on to see 2 armadillos and 6 turtles!

"Look, I'm Miss Kitty!"

While we were visiting my grandma our pet sitter sent me so many cute pictures of the pets!

Elise with her friend at her friend's Girl Scout Troop's art show.

Pin the tail on the axolotl at a birthday party.

Before getting her braces off.

After getting her braces offf.

The kids wanted to do one of our anniversary pictures with all the pets.

Green Feather Book Store in Norman for an author event.

Katee Roberts book event.

What I Read: July

About halfway through the month, I totally forgot about taking pictures of my books when and where I was reading them. July was pretty packed with events and setting up my classroom, so I didn't read as many books as in June, but it was still a very good month of reading.

Books:

• Beach Read by Emily Henry- This was such a cute book and reminded me a lot of Book Lovers which was her first book I read. She is an optimist who writes happy endings and he's a realist who can't quite write a happy ending. They both have struggles throughout the book and land in a happy spot together by the end. I didn't like it quite as much as Book Lovers, but liked it WAY more than Happy Place.

• Sisters of a Lost Nation by Nick Medina- I loved how this book started, it hooked me immediately. The mythology throughout way my favorite part of the book. The issue of MMIW is such a huge and important one and he wrote about it in such a way that you really felt the pain of the family left behind. I also liked the view point of a two spirit character and living that confusion with her. I didn't like the way he jumped back and forth in time. There wasn't a chronological order to the past or the present sections, it was all mixed up and so hard to keep track of. It made it hard for me to get into the book and I was constantly flipping back to past sections to figure out where what I was reading fit into the timeline, which took away from the story.

• True Biz by Sara Novic- This story begins with 3 students missing from a school for the Deaf. Then it goes back 6 months in time to give you the background on each of their lives along with the life of the headmistress. During this time Novic is able to beautifully illustrate the complexity of Deaf culture and the rising issues with cochlear implants. I absolutely loved the sections between chapters on Deaf Culture, Deaf Mythology, and ASL. I learned so much from this book and I felt it was a necessary read for me as a teacher.

• Sarina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine- I read this book 3 years ago not realizing it was a book of short stories. I just thought it was a pretty cover and grabbed it when I saw it displayed at the library. When I realized it was short stories, I expected all the stories to connect back to Sabrina and Corina somehow since that was the title. I ended up being disappointed in the book because every single story left me wanting to know more about what happened with the characters and I wanted a connection through the stories. After hearing Fajardo-Anstine speak at a book event, I decided to re-read this book. It was such a different experience knowing it was short stories and they weren't all connected. I just read one or two stories a day so I could really immerse myself in the characters and think about their stories. I enjoyed it so much more that way!

• The Summer Pact by Emily Giffin- This was my least favorite of her books I've read. It just felt like there was so much going on, she didn't get to the heart of the characters like she normally does. I didn't feel a connection or click with the characters in this story like I usually do with her books. I didn't dislike the book or struggle to read it, I just didn't get excited to read or want to know what happened next.

• Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King- Carter read this and liked it so much, he insisted I read it so we could talk about it. King packed so much into one book. The main theme of book censorship is very timely with everything going on with book banning, censorship, and the forced teaching of the Bible in Oklahoma right now. I'm so glad this book exists and shows kids how they can take action to make changes and take ownership of their lives and learning.

eBooks:

• Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline- The sequel to Marrow Thieves was even better than the first book. Dimaline does such a great job of giving you hope even through all the struggle. Miig's quote toward the end of the book made me tear up, "Our ancestors are there not just to pile onto the load you carry but also to shoulder some of the weight." It's that little nugget of hope hidden within all the struggle that makes her writing so incredible. I also love that even though these are Young Adult books, the young adults don't do it alone like in most Young Adult books, the elders are so important to the story.

• The Blingsters by Andrea C. Neil- I loved Neil's Beverley Green series so I was really excited when I stumbled across this series. This one didn't do much for me, but I remember liking subsequent books in the Beverley Green series more than the first, so I'll give the next book in the series a try.

Audiobooks:

• This Body I Wore: A Memoir by Diana Goetsch- I've never read a nonfiction book about a trans person before this. She wrote her story in such a way that I felt the confusion along with her the entire way. Wondering what she would discover about her gender as she grappled with the ways she was different and how her body didn't feel the way her outer appearance made her think she should. This was so well written and made me aware of the issues of not just being trans, but the sexuality piece that goes along with it. Having to come out twice, once for gender and once for being queer, would be so difficult!

• The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson- I loved the little snippets of ice cream information at the beginning of chapters and I loved the inclusion of such a variety of characters. It just didn't really grab my attention or pull me in. It may have been because it was a young adult book so I wasn't the target audience.

• Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate- This book was incredible! The work Wingate put into researching and telling the story of the "elf Children" in Oklahoma in the early 1900's was very evident. She told the story of these Native children who were abused and neglected by "guardians" who were only interested in taking their land and money while also weaving in the history of women like Kate Barnard, who helped them, in a genius and compelling way. She intermixed those chapters with a more recent story following a National Park Ranger. Both stories were amazing on their own and, woven together, were an intricate and hard to put down story. If your mind was blown by Killers of the Flower Moon, just wait until you read this piece of long buried Oklahoma history. I am so excited to read a book about Kate Barnard to learn more about her life and service to the state of Oklahoma.

• Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh- I enjoyed the characters in this book. I also liked the way she brought the stories together. She packed so many important issues into one book without it feeling overly heavy.

• His & Hers by Alice Feeney- My mom recommended this book to me and I saved it to listen to during my drive to and from San Antonio because I knew I'd need something good to get me through over 16 hours of driving! The book kept me guessing the whole way through. I loved the sections from the killer's perspective because they were read through a voice changer. You couldn't tell if the character was male or female which left it so open. It was very well done.

• Leather & Lark by Brynne Weaver- I listened to Butcher and Blackbird and the serial killer scenes were a bit graphic for me. I was in the mood for something dark and decided it was time to read the sequel. This was just as dark as the first book with fewer graphic killing since which was perfect for me! The humor and nicknames blend in the perfect amount of lightness to the story. I enjoyed this one so much more than the first!