Such a blur, this time of the year!  Every day and evening is filled to brimming with something.  Tomorrow night, it's Tommy's Festival of Lights celebration, to the store to pick up presents for my classroom, a batch of something to contribute to Thursday's treats at school, and another round of making that will hopefully result in finishing at least two of the three projects hanging out there on my to-do list.

My birthday passed last week (43!!) uneventfully, but sweetly, with My Boys.  Erik bought me a new 18-55mm lens with gyro for my Nikon D90....my precious!  :)   I can now take clear pictures this close to something.

Like this thrifted sheet I used in a few projects recently (more to come on that, I'm sure!).  My kids gave the lens to me while I was trying to pee that morning, so I had to open it on the toilet, with them standing around telling me happy birthday.  What can I say?  Situation normal.

The other present I got was not being needed for my jury duty summons!  Which worked out great, since I was triple booked on my birthday....A class I was teaching, jury duty, AND parent conferences.  In addition to getting out of jury duty, I also managed to switch out my teaching duties; and so I spent my birthday doing 17 of the 30 parent conferences I would ultimately finish in two days (two no shows, but that's still pretty good!).  

25 of them had to be done in Spanish.  Now, I speak Spanish, but that's a special kind of headache, all that translating and thinking so hard!  The parents and kids I work with are so sweet though, and very grateful that I speak their language.  Habla espanol?  Ay, maestra, que buena!  Entonces, tengo una pregunta....  and they're off and running!  By this time in the year, they all know they can talk to me in Spanish, but at the beginning of the year, when they first find out that la gringa can understand, it's such a funny moment!

Last week was definitely the worst of it...with just a weekend of packed and quick fun to rejuvenate, we're off and running for this last week before our vacation.  Oh, oh, please let me get through this week!  :)