Tournament Update

My A team played some awesome games this weekend, but just couldn't pull out enough wins in the pool play to move on to the bracket play.  My B team ended up winning second place in their tournament!  It was pretty exciting, but we didn't end up leaving the school until 5:00pm.  Long day!

So the craziness of September is pretty much over now.  Life should calm down a bit, and I won't have any more tournaments.  We will just be playing games on Thursdays for the next month!  We're hoping to do well this season, so it should be a lot of fun!

Volleyball update

We played against Benold MS tonight, a school in Georgetown, an hour away by bus.  We got there just in time for all the kids to run to the bathroom and then start their warmup.  My B team game was pretty....boring.  The other team couldn't really do much, and my team looked awesome!  Lots of plays, bumps, sets, hits, and great passing.  I was really proud of them!  They won their game.  My A team game was a lot more exciting, only because the other team could play against us.   The first game was a nail bitter and finally ended with a score of 27-25!!!  Then my kids won the second game without too much trouble.  There were some amazing plays in that game as well!

I am really excited to see the progress they are making.  It's neat how the things we do in practice are transferring into the games.  More than once, I have had some of the kids say things like, "oh, we did this in practice," and "we learned how to do this!"  They are seeing how it pays off to practice the things we are practicing (like tipping on the net and hitting down the line) because we are winning points in games!

Big tournament coming up this weekend, Friday and Saturday.  We are going to be playing two of the best schools in the district, which is pretty exciting!  I can't wait to see the girls play more this weekend.  More updates on the games later....

Volleyball tournament and the weekend

My A and B volleyball teams both had tournaments this weekend, and both of my teams did a GREAT job!!  My B team ended up coming in first place for their tournament, and the A team came in second place!  We got gold and silver medals, and the kids were all so excited.  They worked so hard and did so many amazing things.  They are really coming along in their understanding of volleyball, and the rest of the season is going to be a lot of fun.  I can't wait to see where they are by the end of the season...I still have a couple of months with them, as our last game is not until November 6th.  We have our next tournament next weekend, so it will be an exciting week of practice getting prepared for it.

Travis was here this weekend to watch the amazing-ness of 8th grade volleyball, and ended up spending 10 hours in the gym as the games went on and on.  I was coaching pretty much the whole time, going back and forth between my A team and B team games, so he was just hanging out in the stands listening to his i-pod.    

The tournament finally ended around 5:15pm and we had to rush home, shower, change, and quickly leave again in order to make it on time to my birthday dinner reservations at the Melting Pot at 6pm!  We ended up being a little late, but my friends had already shown up to reserve the table, so it all worked out alright.  We had a blast, eating lots of fondue, and hanging out with my friends and sister.  I got a couple of early birthday presents from Sarah, and Travis gave me a new digital camera, since my other one had literally bitten the dust, and a wok pot that I really wanted!

Today (Sunday), Travis and I spent the afternoon looking around animal shelters.  I thought we would be allowed to take the dogs out and play with them at the Town Lake animal shelter, but you have to be a registered volunteer and go through an orientation before they let you do that.  I may volunteer to do that later (ie January or February...summer...) when things aren't so busy for me.  Anyways, we spent about an hour and a half walking around the shelter downtown, checking out the cute puppies and dogs that were there.  Travis found a bull dog, and I think if it was on the adoption list, he may have taken it home that instant.  He was incredibly excited about seeing the fat, drooling dog that was bouncing around in his cage!  There were lots of pitbull mixes there, that were adorable, and a Welsh Corgie and a Jack Russell terrier.  So cute!  We also checked out the cats that were there and had a chance to pet and play with a lot of them too.  I saw lots of orange tabbys, which I loved!!!  Then, we went to another shelter on the other side of downtown, but most of the shelter was filled with dogs and cats being held for the evacuees who are still in Austin from hurricane Ike.  They only had about ten dogs there for adoption and all the rest were waiting for their owners to pick them up and take them back to Galveston.

Then on the way home, we stopped by the new townhouses that are being built two miles down the road from my current house.  When I was looking for a place, these townhouses were still just a dream, and had not been built yet.  They have about 20 of the 101 houses built now, and they were AMAZING.  There were two models that we could go in and look around, and....wow.  The houses are built on a hill overlooking the preserve and the hill country, and the view from the huge windows was amazing.  I would live there in a heartbeat if I could.  The floorplan of the first place we saw was pretty cool, and the spacious rooms and vaulted ceilings were really quite impressive.  We also went to check out the pool, and it was pretty amazing as well.  It was a lot of fun shopping around for things we weren't really going to buy, but were interested in seeing!  

Longest fire drill EVER!

Today at school, we had a fire drill that lasted for TWO HOURS.  The drill started at 10:35 am, but the alarm was somehow broken, and the buzzers did not stop.  We (the teachers and students) were literally standing out on the lawn of the school for an hour and fifteen minutes after we evacuated the building, waiting and wondering what was going on.  We saw the fire trucks arrive and the seven firemen go running into the building.  There was no fire; this was only a drill, so we were all very confused.  Finally, they moved us to the stadium so we could sit in the bleachers instead of the grass.  We sat there for another 45 minutes while the alarms were STILL going off.  We finally got to go in for lunch because the alarms were turned off in the cafeteria.  Finally, around 12:45 pm, class was able to resume as normal.  

Too bad I was giving a math test today.  Too bad that I passed out the wrong test to my first period Algebra class (they got the 8th grade one instead...).  Too bad that progress reports are due tomorrow.  Oh well.  It all worked out in the end!  The test is now scheduled for tomorrow! And the kids will just have to deal with the grades they have right now. *sigh* What a day.

Three weeks of school have flown by!

I can't believe that three weeks of school have already flown by!  So much has happened in the past three weeks, and it feels like we have been in class FOREVER!  I have moved up to 8th grade to teach Algebra, and so far, it has been....interesting.  I have 76 students, spread out in three hour and a half periods per day.  51 of those students are in my two Algebra classes, and the other 25 are in my 8th grade-level class.  I love my students, and once they learn that, yes, they really have to show their work algebraically, we are going to get along great.

I am also coaching the 8th grade A and B volleyball teams, which definitely keeps me busy!  I have 20 girls playing on the team and 1 great manager who has been a wonderful help to me at the games.  I also have the most wonderful team mom who has already showered the team with food and presents.  We had our first game on Thursday, and it was so awesome.  The kids played REALLY well, and I was so impressed with how far they have come since I first coached them last year in 7th grade.   I am so excited for the potential we have for this season!  Both the A and B teams won their games this week, but we quickly learned that our competition this year is going to be pretty tough.  One of the B team games went all the way to 30-28 in a nail-biting, heart-pumping game!  The A team games were amazing too, and I was so proud of my kids!  The games I am looking forward to the most are the ones at the end of the season in November, when I get to coach against one of my favorite coaching friends.  Last year, my B team beat hers, and her A team beat mine.  That game will be quite a showdown this year!  (That game is happening on October 30th, for anyone who wants to experience middle school volleyball at its finest! AND...I have the home court advantage this year.  Whoo!)

I can't believe that it is my fourth year of teaching.  I was told at some point that it would get easier, and in many ways it has, but there is still so much paperwork and politics involved that sometimes it can be overwhelming.  The teaching part is easy; it's the dealing with the parents and the system that is hard!  It seems like everyone always wants to tell me how I should be doing my job and to tell me they could do my job better than I am doing it.  Besides all of that, though, I still love what I do.  The kids make me smile everyday despite all their whining and craziness, and I love coaching volleyball and being a part of the success of the team.  The kids are full of smiles and happiness which I enjoy being a part of every day.

So, luckily, I am all caught up with work at school and have no papers to grade this weekend, so I will be spending the weekend cleaning my house and volunteering to help shelter evacuees in the gym at our school.  (Only if they actually show up....they may not make it out this far north!)  Hopefully it will rain a lot so I can have an excuse to snuggle up with a good book in my clean house and spend some time relaxing!