Vakakes' Voyagers

I am officially in the land of 5th grade...and it is awesome!!! Let me introduce you to Mrs. Vakakes' Voyagers...here is a picture of my sweet, precious babies on the first day of school. The Lord definitely has blessed me with an amazing class of kiddos. I have 21 students and so far, so good. They are polite, respectful, hard workers, encouraging of others, and very interested in all that I have to say. What happens during the summer between 5th and 6th grade??? Just wanted to let you know I survived my first few days of school. I have been more tired than usual, but I think any teacher feels that way the first week of school. I absolutely love having the same kids all day. It feels more structured to me and my room stays much cleaner. I am missing all of my Drake folks very badly though, especially this week. But I am very thankful to have a great job that I look forward!!

Weekend To-Do List

1. Get classroom and self prepared for the first day of school...check
2. Grocery shop for back to work food...check
3. Do laundry...half-check
4. Cut the grass before we lose Bentley...check
5. Frame a wall in the bonus room...HECK YEAH...check!

That's right. John framed a wall in the bonus room this weekend. You are probably confused. The bonus room was framed when we moved here, but there is a corner space that was only framed half-way. We aren't sure what they were doing, but the AC guy is coming out this week to install the central heating and air unit and we needed the wall to be framed so he could mount everything. I have dreaded the process of getting the bonus room finished. I made John promise that he would have it done by the time football season rolled around for 2 reasons-1)It has got to be finished before we can begin the nursery and 2)John will be worthless on the weekends once football is here-and we will be in Auburn most of those weekends anyways. Two weeks ago an electrician came out and put in a phone line and cable outlet up there. I was relieved the process had started, but I did not think he would get a wall framed this weekend. John and Jamie went to Home Depot on Saturday morning to buy all necessary supplies which included a miter saw and a bunch of wood. He said he felt more manly just buying the saw...before he had even used it :) Against my better judgement, I left to run some errands just as he was getting started. To my surprise, he was almost finished when I got home. It took him about 2 hours to complete and I am most proud of him!! Who knew he was so handy!!

Measuring the wood...


Sawing the wood...


Framing the wall...

More Presents for Caddy!

Orange and Blue of course. Our sweet friend, Jamie Trussle, came into town yesterday afternoon and had dinner with us and spent the night(he was our first overnight guest!!). Today he is catching a ride with another friend to Dallas where he will get all of his things and move to Memphis where he is starting work for an inner-city ministry for kids. Jamie is awesome. John and Jamie were pledge brothers and they have been great friends all through college. He surprised us when he got here with a few gifts for Caddy. Can you tell he is hoping it will be a boy?! At any rate, one thing is clear. Caddy will be an Auburn fan-there is no hope. Between his dad, his dad's cousins, and his dad's friends like Jamie, I am sure this is only the beginning of the Auburn loot.

EXHAUSTED

I have never been this exhausted in my ENTIRE life, and I am not even sure that being pregnant has anything to do with it. I do know that being a slacker all summer is now haunting me. School starts with kids on Monday. This entire week and four days of last week have been spent in workshops. I have had zero time from 8-3 each day to work in my classroom which made me feel very overwhelmed yesterday. It is my own fault for not getting to work as soon as I knew where I was going to be. I have quickly realized that it is tough going from not doing anything all summer to being so busy you have no time to do anything! I have not gotten home before 6 any night this week. John has been such a help-he has come straight after work the past 2 days and helped me with final touches to my classroom. It is coming together and there isn't much left to be done. I am trying to keep it simple since I will be moving classrooms sometime this fall. Preparing for 5th grade is so much different than 6th. There are lots of things that I never did for my 6th graders because there were so many of them. Since I will now only have 22 students, there is much more to be done! And I love it!! I cannot wait to start on Monday. It is getting to Monday that is killing me.

3 More Weeks!!!

Until we know if Caddy is a boy or a girl!!! I cannot believe it is only 3 weeks away. It seems like we just found out we were going to have a baby and now I am almost 17 weeks. Crazy, Crazy. We are super excited to find out, although John informed me that he will refer to the baby as Caddy until the day he/she makes their appearance and is formally named :)

Bentley's Condo

After we moved into our house, we encountered a problem. The wood baby gate that we purchased when we first got Bentley was too short to fit in the doorways of our kitchen and dining room to block them off. It was our original plan that he would stay in the kitchen while we were gone, but with no baby gates, we have kept him in the guest bathroom while we are away. Poor thing...it is like the size of a small closet in there and it just looks cramped with his bed, food, and some toys. I went to several pet stores looking to buy larger pet gates. They do not sell the oversized ones in regular stores. We started looking on the internet when we realized these things are not cheap! But we knew we had to order some before I went back to work so he could be left in a larger area. Leaving him to roam was not an option. He has not had an accident on the floor in the new house and I do not anticipate one either. We paid $130 for these steel, pressure-mounted gates. John did not want to have to screw into the wall and these were the cheapest we could find-we even got 10% off and free shipping. We tried not to be bitter about the cost and were excited when they arrived. John got them all set up and we put Bentley in there to see what he would do. He quickly found a spot on the side and squeezed himself through. The opening was only 2.5 inches wide, but where there is a will, there's a way. So the next time we left him in there was Friday night when we went to the movies. After we closed the gates, we put blankets over them and then placed a pillow in front on the sides where he potentially could get through. We figured this would work just fine. When we pulled up after the movie, both of us thought we saw his little head in the dark doorway. Our thoughts were confirmed when we came in from the garage. Bentley had just moved the blanket to the side and pushed the pillow over and came on out! At this point we were both MAD at him. We had spent all this money and he was still going to have to be put in the bathroom. My engineer husband thought all weekend about a way to rig the gates up. He came up with plastic ties to create another slat so now he for sure can't get out. We put him in there to see what he would do and he just stared at his normal get-away spot with a look of defeat.

A Day of Dates

Yesterday was my last week day to do absolutely anything that I wanted to. Starting Monday, I will be under contract with Vestavia City Schools and summer life will be over. I can't say that I am not looking forward to it. I have enjoyed the summer to get settled into our house, but the time has come for me to go back to work! I am tired of anticipating what my new school and 5th grade will be like...I am just ready for it to be here and be like October so I am completely in a routine. I was able to meet John for lunch yesterday for the last time for a while. We have done this several times this summer since this is the first job he has had in the same town where we live, so it is pretty easy. I love meeting him for lunch! Then last night we went to the movies and saw The Dark Knight and our dinner was a large buttered popcorn! It doesn't get any better than that! I told him that we go out to dinner all the time, but I haven't felt like we have had a date in a while. Yesterday was the perfect way to wrap up the summer. And if you haven't seen The Dark Knight, we highly recommend it! The special effects were awesome!