Leaf Crunching & some venting...

Happy Fall Everyone!

Well now that our little snow storm has all melted away (BTW: we had snow here on Oct 21st You can see some pictures of it here, here & here.) we went to MIL's to try to install a snow melt kit for her gutters and rake up the leaves. The snow melt kit is a wire heating system you can put up to help the snow melt and keep it from freezing up your gutters. And of course you know about raking up leaves.

Darly was all excited to rake the leaves because she could earn some cash. She's trying to save up for another Webkinz. But DH got tired of waiting for her (she got distracted by the Disney Channel on MIL's TV!) and he started raking the leaves for her. He had most of the front yard finished when Darly came out and yelled at him. I was inside the nice warm house but noticed that Darly looked upset. After I found out the "problem" I was about to go inside but DH was about ready to help again so I asked if I could help her get the leaves in the trash can so Dh could mow the yard.

After we finished up MIL's hard we decided to do her neighbor's yard too. Now her neighbor has no physical or mental problem preventing him from raking the yard and he also hasn't bothered to pay anyone to rake the leaves...He just hasn't done it. This is normal for the neighbor...he never rakes the leaves. Well the wind (it's very windy here) blows the majority of the leaves into MIL's yard...which means more raking for us (see neighbor just waits until the leaves blow down the street instead of doing any work himself.) As we were raking, both of the neighbors came out to watch us...not saying anything at all to us. MIL went and said hi while we were raking and explained that we didn't want to have to rake the leaves from her yard...over and over. Neighbor didn't thank us and never talked to us at all...just watched us. Too weird. I told MIL it must have something to do with all the dead braincells they have...they do a lot of smoking over there and I'm not talking about smoking meat.

Anyway
Sunday School is going fairly well. Although the lessons we teach have quizzes to go with them to see if the kids are learning. There's also homework. But since the kids whined that they're too busy with "real school" they kinda stopped requiring that the kids actually do the homework...and there's no accountability for the quizzes. I'm not sure if the older kids have any requirements at all for getting through their confirmation. Because of the age of the curriculum I'm using it has been altered quite a bit from it's original form...but not completely altered. The Student book is 1 inch thick...the teacher's book is 4 inches thick. All the quizzes in the student book are much shorter than the teacher's version...some are so changed that the teacher's lesson doesn't even match the student's version. So for the past two weeks I've been re-writing the lessons to fit what the students have to learn.
The homework for each week covers the lesson we will do on Sunday. So we don't read the entire lesson in class...they should have done that for the homework. So I'm checking the teacher's book and trying to cover what it has if it's relevant to the student's quiz...but mostly I'm having the kids re-read where all the answers are and doing some explaining if it's necessary.

Even with this shortened version of the text we still just barely have enough time to cover the lesson.

So today my "co-teacher" decides to show up. Some background... For each class they like to have two teachers. I signed up last year. I knew I would be teaching. Mr. N wanted to teach the class for his son, but that class already had two teachers. These are the same two teachers that have taught that class for years. I suspect that next year they will also be teaching that class so I'll have to either teach a class other than Darly's or I'll have to take a class myself. So Mr. N decided that he would co-teach the 5th graders again...at least that's what he said.

On the first day, he showed up for a few minutes as he was on his way to some marathon that he was running that day. For the 2nd class he decided to "help" with his son's class...even though they didn't need him...and I did because I had 24 students in a room built for about 12!!! So he finally shows up for the 3rd class and keeps butting in with his opinions, which were relevant to the lesson so it didn't bother me too much.

but todayyesterday he showed up after not being there for weeks and started butting in again. Remember how I said I would be pressed for time? Well Mr. N started off on a tangent that was no way related to our lesson and I still had about 5 more topics to cover before I let them go...in like 5 minutes. Finally I just had to jump in and say "OKAY! For #3 we need to look up Genesis 24:..." well I don't even remember which verse at this point. We ended up being a few minutes late...not so good since today was Confirmation, so the Church was crowded.

Ya know, if he wants to teach the class...GREAT...let me know and teach the class. But to just show up and go off on a tangent about how Sunday School is boring to his son and how the kids should follow the commandment about honoring your parents...was so not cool in my book. (course it doesn't help much that I'm a bit of a control freak and he was throwing off my whole lesson. Okay, I'm a LOT of a control freak.)


Well now I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Halloween this year will NOT be interrupted by game 6 of the World Series...oh, that's the bad news too. DH is crushed.