{ a painful ordeal }

So, I fought a very, very painful battle with two little kidney stones these past 36 hours. I can easily say that this was the most excruciating thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I am now fighting the aftermath, which is almost just as painful but which at least promises to ease up within a few more days, especially with the help of painkillers and some antibiotics to fight the probable infection.

Our houseguests, along with Kona's little puppy sister, have just left this morning, and this will leave Derek and I with a lovely, lazy afternoon in which we can gear up for our New Year's Eve party tomorrow night! Yay!

More updates (and photos) soon to come.

{ three tidbits for today }

In puppy news:

So, puppy training is going quite well. Kona was more or less outdoor potty trained in a mere one day! She has had a few accidents, but is doing amazingly well, all things considering. She and her sister are also sleeping through the night, without any accidents or whining, so Derek and I are finally getting our holiday rest!

In other personal news:

Derek and his brother Patrick picked up a copy of the PS3 game "Rock Band", and we've all been rocking out these past two days. It is actually hilariously fun. If you lived in the neighborhood, I'd invite you all over for a rockin' good time!

In Canadian federal news:

I like this rundown of some "oddities" from 2007 (The Canadian Press).

{ Merry Christmas! }

So, we have a big new addition to our family, and no--I didn't have a baby! On Friday, December 21st, we welcomed little Kona into our household! She is a five and a half week old puppy, half Border Collie and half Australian Shepherd. We bought both her and her sister (Roxy) with the intention of keeping one and giving one to Derek's brother for Christmas. While Derek's family is staying with us for Christmas, we have both rambunctious puppies running around our household, learning how to be potty trained, skidding around on the linoleum, taking tons of little naps, and giving a million puppy kisses and nibbles to all our visitors.


We are so happy to welcome this furry little bundle of joy into our lives this year, and I wanted to share her sweet face with you this Christmas Eve as I wish you all a very Merry Christmas with whomever you love!

{ someone special }

I took an underwater tour in a semi-submersible submarine while I was touring in Catalina Island (just off shore from Los Angeles) this past August. Underwater we saw hundreds and thousands of these grayish, silvery fish. Then we saw one bright orange garibaldi appear out of nowhere. Every now and again, there would be one orange garibaldi venturing into the throngs of these other silvery-colored fish. The shot did not come out perfectly, but I love the contrast of it nonetheless. This photo has not been photoshopped; this was just how much of a natural contrast I viewed out the tiny porthole window!


I've been talking to my grade 8 boys about their uniqueness lately. I told them about Nelson Mandella and how one person really can make a difference. They seemed moved when I told them how much I love their individual special traits and that I see some of them doing really great things one day. Today while musing about that and perusing old photos, I thought the parallel to this garibaldi photo was nice. However, I thought you might appreciate the analogy a little more than the grade 8 boys would!

{ heartstrings tugs }

So, although I have been away from the blog for many months, this does not mean that I have little to share, especially when it comes to my job. Life at K School is certainly anything from hum drum.

This year I have the opportunity to have the neediest bunch of kids in the school as my homeroom class. They are a group of grade 8s--4 girls and 14 boys--who all struggle with reading and writing, whether because of English as a Second Language errors, a troubled past schooling history, or another form of learning disability. In my life, I think there could never be a more lovable bunch in my eyes. Many other teachers brush them off as being juvenile (which they are), irritating (which they certainly can be), needy (absolutely!), or just too much work (you definitely have to be willing to put the effort in). I, however, couldn't be more in love with these 18 kids. I have them for homeroom twice a day--once before lunch and once after--to count them for attendance and to essentially try to corral them in a small square room until the bell rings. On a daily basis I break up fistfights with on-again-off-again best friends, remove children's smiling faces from headlocks, and tell everyone to stop screaming, pinching, pulling, tugging, doing this, and doing that. They crawl all over each other and all over me like puppies just dumped out of a box. They are mini in size, each one of them smaller in stature than any of their other grade 8 cohorts, with the cutest accents on the face of the planet and some of the hugest hearts you'll ever encounter. Aside from homeroom, I also teach them language arts once a day and am endeavoring to teach them all how to read and write, starting with the basics all over again, like phonics and sounding out and making a sentence with a capital letter and a period. Some days I feel like we are all making progress and some days I feel like we are all regressing (myself included), but every day they are the thrill and the deepest joy that keep me going.

My four girls are so different from one another--one is the total mother hen, one never speaks, one is frequently referred to by other staff members as being a "ferral child" (I don't often disagree with this!), and one comes from a rough background of living on the streets and missing large chunks of school. Somehow in their "girl power", they bond together when necessary to fend off the ridiculous group of 14 boys, who are the absolute rowdiest bunch of hooligans I have ever in my life spent time with.

There are a couple absolutely precious characters in that bunch, though. For the sake of everything on this blog, I will rename them. My three secret favorite boys (I call them secret favorites because you can't let them know they are your favorites or they walk all over you) are Bilal, Rami, and Mohamed. Bilal is a Lebanese boy who came from Colombia just last year and who speaks Spanish learned with a Lebanese family. Thus, he has the most amazingly humorous accent when he speaks English--it is a Spanish-Arabic mix accent that never fails to leave us all in stitches. "MEES! CAN I GO TO MY LOCKER, PLEEEEEZE?" (All the kids call me "Miss" all the time, and that is all; I and all the other female teachers at this school shall be forever nameless and referred to only as "Miss"). Bilal has the most precious laugh and gives a shrill weeze every time he sucks air in. No matter how much I want to reprimand him, I nearly always have to turn away because he makes me crack up.

Rami is from Jordan and although he is fourteen years old, he is only about four feet tall and probably 85 pounds. He is a total ringleader, a role model, a class clown, despite being the smallest. He has the sweetest face and a winning smile and I often refer to him as "the little moon-faced boy" when talking with friends and family because his perfectly round little face just beams light and joy wherever he goes. He aims to make people happy, though not always through the best personal decisions. I taught Rami social studies last year, and he has been my secret favorite for a long time now. His Jordanian accent and his gruff little voice could melt anybody's heart.

My last and newest secret favorite is Mohamed. He is a charmer if I ever did see one, and he can weasel his way out of just about anything with his smile and charisma. His pride and joy is his spikey haircut, which his mom cuts shorter and shorter every time he gets suspended in the hopes of crushing his vain ego (once he was suspended three times in a period of three weeks and he had nearly none of his gorgeous locks left at the end of the month! Ha ha!). Mohamed is nearly fatherless, with a dad who works out of town and is never around, and a mom and older sisters who do not know what to do with him most of the time. I think this has had an intense effect on who he has become as a budding young man, because he longs for romance and companionship more than any fourteen year old Muslim boy openly should, according to our school's wider community. He has many secret girlfriends and has often asked my opinion of a special love poem that he has penned for one of them. Today on my way just out the door to meet Derek, I ran into him late after school. "Mo, what are you still doing here?" I asked him. He told me his sister had come to pick him up, and indeed, I had just seem the 16-year old young lady myself. "She sure is not lovely," he said in a younger brother's mumble. "I can't stand her! She's always beating on me and she's so annoying." I joking lectured him on the fact that all sisters are lovely and he should grow to appreciate her more in time. "I don't know about that," he said, "I'd call you lovely, but not her." And then, as if realizing what he had just said, he turned and sprinted away as fast as he could, shouting, "Okay! Bye!" down the hall after me. It warmed my heart and of course I had to crack a smile. It was so Mohamed.

There are so many other stories to tell about this very special grade 8 class, but I thought I would start with the three heart-melters who never cease to amuse, annoy, and even bring a sweet tear to my eye. I shall introduce you to the others as time goes on. Frankly, I would love to write a book about all our escapades together sometime--maybe Chapter One should be my Christmas vacation project. We'll see.

{ back from a long hiatus }

Hello my faithful readers ... are you still here? I know I've been gone a very long while ... nearly five months, to be exact. We have been without internet for exactly that amount of time!

In these past few months, we have moved houses twice and have finally settled into our NEW house, the one that has been under construction since last winter. We moved in just two weeks ago, but it is already becoming cozy, homey, and "our" space. Unpacking is ongoing, but we are doing it little by little, trashing and donating a lot as we go along.

As you can see, I have revamped the layout of this page quite a bit in honour of winter; I've decided that I am in a clean and sleek mood, hence the minimalism this time around. Lavender and grey are two of my favorite winter colors this year, so I decided I would pay tribute to them on my little corner of the web.

Updates will be back regularily now since we got our wireless router installed yesterday. For close friends, I'll be back on MSN in the evenings and on weekends, and for those of you who are photo-lovers, I've already posted a new photo on my flickr site with many more to soon come.

Anyways, I don't want to overdo it on this quiet, relaxing Saturday, and so, I bid thee adieu with the promise of another update later tonight or tomorrow.

Please drop me a line if you're still hanging around and reading this blog as I'm horribly afraid I may have lost all of you during my unexplained absense! Leave a comment below if the urge strikes you! I'd love to write you back :)