Meet the Teachers!

Last Thursday was Meet your Teacher day at school. As I mentioned before, all the class assignments were posted on the wall of the school at 2 pm and we knew there would be a crowd. Thanks to Mark's insider info, he cruised by school at noon and everything was posted, so when we went back at 2 pm, we already knew Matthew's First Grade Teacher - we'll refer to her as "Miss B". We already knew that Andrew had "Mrs. M" as Matthew had her last year and we requested her for Andrew (Mark also volunteered in her class, so that may have sealed the deal even before we wrote an official letter).

So we went to school and found the boys classrooms are two rooms apart in the same hall. Matthew found his classroom, his desk, a couple of friends from last year, and met his teacher. Miss B is young (she has taught First Grade for 4 years) but I felt really bad for her when another mom walked into the room and asked where the teacher was. Miss B was standing behind her and the mom commented that she thought Miss B was a returning student! Oh the things people say! Here is a pic of Matt at his new desk:



On to the kindergarten classroom, running into friends, neighbors, and previous classmates along the way (read: hallway = sardine can). Mrs. M was glad to see us and was especially glad to hear that Mark was willing to volunteer in the classroom again. She had completely rearranged her classroom from last year in preparation for all day kindergarten so the boys had to check everything out. Andrew was especially smitten with the "housekeeping" station and with his love of music, quickly found the "audio" station (see photo).



Both of the boys have recess, music, PE, and art this year which will be a good thing. Since I am posting this late and already know how things are going this week, I cannot comment any further at this time.

Before and After

Our summer home improvement project is finally done, it was really a matter of us getting started. Our house is covered with siding except the trim around the garage, fascia, front door, and the windows (front of the house only). The front of our house faces north (thus it never dries out well) and about 3 years ago we had all the trim sanded and repainted. The front door has stayed nice since it is under cover, but the rest of the trim was looking bad until we had the house power washed in the spring, then it looked really bad! Power washing is an every 5 year endeavor here on the East Coast (otherwise your house turns green with mold). Unfortunately, power washing takes off more than just the mold.

So, here are a few "before" shots:

Here is an "in progress" shot (new on left, old on right):

and here are the "after" shots:

The guys spent 3 full days pulling off the wood, replacing wood, bending the siding to cover the wood, and installing and caulking the whole thing. The boys had fun watching them bend the siding in the big trailer in front of our house. They did a really nice job matching the color and it's guaranteed for 10 years so I think we are set for awhile.

Real men do make Quiche!

Ok, now that I have your attention again after a slow month of August blogging, I have to take this opportunity to commend the Head Chef of The Smith House for this lovely meal he made last week.

Spinach and Bacon Quiche - yum! A little watermelon on the side and it made an excellent lunch the following day.

So I have quite a bit of catching up to do, but this time I am going to be a bit more conservative in how I release the posts. I have 5 others backed up right behind this one but patience is a virtue, no? Ah, the suspense!

Ahhh, married life!

Nothing like a game of kitchen reorg to keep life interesting! Mark and I have been talking about reorganizing our kitchen for several weeks so the kids can help themselves (ok, I'll admit, a little selfish). So what do we do? Wait until the nicest Saturday of the summer and trap ourselves indoors for 5 hours straight, ripping everything out of the cabinets, sorting, recycling, discarding, cleaning, and putting everything back in a different place so cooking for the next week will be a challenge. Oh well, it was worth it and the boys earned seven quarters for helping with various odd jobs during the process. I should have taken before/after pics, but I wasn't that organized.

Busy but not so exciting week at work. A couple of my key coworkers were on vacation, so I was one person doing the job of three.

The boys are changing rapidly these days. They have been working on completing the entire bedtime routine on their own and they have done it several times this week. This includes brushing teeth, big boy shower, drying off, drying hair, and Matthew is able to get himself ready for bed including drying toes and ears with Qtips, lotion, lip goo, and PJ's.

They also switched from car seats to booster seats and is it ever wonderful. The boosters are not tied to the car so they can easily be moved from one car to the other. They have two cup holders (one for cup, one for toy) and the boys can easily buckle themselves. Yeah!

Last Sunday we took the boys shopping for school supplies including new lunch bags and a larger back pack for Andrew. Andrew went with Speed this year and Matthew chose a plain blue and grey lunch pack to go with his Batman back pack. They do a weird thing at elementary school...Thursday afternoon at 2 pm they post lists of each teachers and assigned students. Apparently the whole school shows up and then you go an meet your teacher and take your supplies in. That should be a great photo of 500 kids and parents all trying to look over each other to see size 12 font on the school wall. We'll see how that goes.

Supposed to be nice here tomorrow, we are thinking about getting everyone out for a round of golf in the afternoon after we clean the rest of the house.

Where'd Who Go?

Ok, I'm still here. Sorry to keep you all in suspense. All I can say is that I wish I could say I was on vacation. It has been a crazy couple of weeks since my last post and for most of it, I didn't feel like posting at all. I will try to catch you up quickly.


I last left you with Mark and Matthew getting sick. We limped through the remainder of the week and by Sunday, Mark was feeling half human again.


Monday (July 30th) was eventful because of Andrew's first fall off his bicycle. I forget now how it happened, but he ended up with a scraped elbow and a bruised ego but kept on riding. Unfortunately it was one of those scrapes that oozes a lot. Here is a photo from the following day looking better... So here is where the nightmare begins (wake me up when it is all over)... Some of you may not be aware that we are fighting a case brought by the Federal Government against our hospital. We have been gathering info at their request since February and have complied in all respects (because we don't believe there has been any wrongdoing). In gathering additional information from my staff last week, they blurted out some information to me that I was not aware of before and it was incredibly important to the case (let's just say not in our favor). I immediately contacted our attorneys with this new information so they could interview my staff without me tainting the discussion. In less than 3 business hours, they contacted the lead attorney on the case (who was on vacation) and were meeting with my staff. I am truly devastated over this turn of events, we will have to wait and see where it goes from here. Pause that thought for the remainder of Wednesday evenings fun...


I drive home from work not feeling well at all and barely ate dinner only to head off to the dentist appointment that has been scheduled for six months. Around here, you don't cancel your dentist appointment even if you are hospitalized. Within an hour of arriving home, I got incredibly sick (refer to post about Mark getting sick 1 1/2 weeks earlier). It has to be some sort of flu...body aches, fever, vomiting, uh...you know, etc. I was sick Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and finally managed to get out of the house Friday night for a couple of hours. Nausea and stomach pain continued through the weekend and I am finally feeling a little better today. I would not wish this on anyone, especially in the heat of summer.


The only good thing that happened last week is I finally got the test results from the Certification exam I took in May for Healthcare Privacy and Security (I was one of the first 30 guinea pigs to take the combined test - read **Discount**). The exam was 180 questions, 5 hours, and I actually passed!!! So now I have RHIA, CHPS behind my name. I have been wanting to do this for several years now and just never made it a priority, so I'm actually pretty happy about it.

Saturday, in the midst of not feeling well, we had our annual department picnic at a park by the water in Baltimore. It was near 100 degrees and absolutely miserable. I think we stayed for 2 hours and came home exhausted.

Today, Andrew got his letter from school to tell him which teacher he has and when he starts the "staggered start" process (aka test ride on the bus). Andrew has Matthew's Kindergarten teacher from last year - yeah!!! She is terrific and Mark really likes helping her class. Andrew's first day of school is not until 9/5 - which works out ok because he is the last staggered start day and gets to keep going from then on. His teacher conference is on 8/28 which is Matt's first day of First Grade, so I can take the morning off and kill two birds with one mom. Worked out as well as if we had planned it ourselves.

We have also decided on which contractor to have fix our wood trim on the front of the house so he was over here in a flash this afternoon ($$$) and when he left he put a sign in the yard so all the neighbors thought we put our house up for sale.

Oh, and while we are speaking of neighbors, the folks next door to us with 3 year old twins have been without a dishwasher and air conditioning since Saturday. We had a heat index of 105 today. I'll take the flu.

Whew, that's it for now, have a good rest of the week!