Hey, sorry. Hope you had a great Christmas and a good new year. I had plans on things to do during my last week of vacation but that didn't work out. I had the flu for the entire week. Now I have a sinus infection...the snot just never stops coming.

The kids have been back in school about a week now. The first day back they were actually pretty calm. They had a great day. It kind of disintegrated from there though. I thought maybe they'd turned a new leaf over the holidays...turns out they were just sleepy.

Today the kids were out for MLK Jr. Day. We had "teacher development" all day. That means you go to a bunch of talks. I was struggling to stay awake after lunch. I've completely gone off caffeine. That was tough because I really love coffee. It doesn't affect me that much most days but when I have to sit and concentrate is when I really feel it. I didn't realize how much caffeine helped me concetrate and stay alert I guess. Aside from that though I haven't had any headaches or withdrawal or anything.

The second semester is officially the testing season. Last week we gave the kids a practice test of the standardized test they have to take. This week we're doing a state mandated "field test" where they use us to try out new questions and whatnot. Then the week after next we have our first section of the official state writing test. We're starting tutoring this week for that to try and get some kids up to speed.

My kids did surprisingly well on the practice writing test last week. I'm proud of them for that.

Report cards also went home last week. So far no angry calls or requests for conferences. Knock on wood. My class was the only class in the 4th grade in which none of the kids had all A's for the semester. Oops. I had one kid who missed it by one point and another that missed it by two. Oh well...the good news is no one failed last semester.

Ok, I'm out. I'll try to get back in the swing of writing this blog thing. You get back in the swing of reading it.

Later.