Yippy!

I passed my writtens and orals!!!! I got an email from my professor the day after the orals telling me how proud she was of me and how articulate I was. I am so glad to be done. I have one credit to take this fall and then I will graduate in December. The credit is the ROCKE workshops that I would have been attending anyways, so it's really not that bad! The only problem now is I am incredibly restless. From studying and studying and studying all summer to not having to is a challenging transition for me. I have the new teacher orientation for the elementary music teachers in my district which I am in charge of this year and I need to plan for that but haven't started doing yet. I guess I'm also in denial that school will be starting SO soon! Justin goes back two weeks from yesterday and the orientation that I am doing is two weeks from today. Blah!

While I completed my orals, Justin completed some projects in the backyard, although he had a road bump along the way. (I'll tell you about this below)

Here is Noah's new sand box, which he LOVES! (See the pics and video clip below) and the area where we will put some play equipment next summer.

Here's the tree off the patio.

Here's where the road bump occurred. He had all of this done and noticed that the sprinkler system wasn't working correctly. He happened to walk by and notice water coming out by one of the rocks (right side of the picture). He lifted it up and water came gushing out of it. So, he had to move a lot of mulch that he had just laid, and the rocks and the plastic sheeting underneath it and repair the sprinkler hose. (He put a hole in it when he turned up the weeds that had been residing there.) Poor guy, but it sure looks nice now!

Here are Noah and I in the sand box (my feet are under the sand and Noah just pulled his up from being under the sand). I think this is going to be good preparation for a trip to CA next summer!

Here he is playing with a true boy toy: a truck (you'll see why I referenced this as such when you read below):

Noah LOVES to watch for planes. (The Erie airport is fairly close- not too close that it's a nuisance, thankfully!). He usually will go "yes" and pull his arm in to his side but as he goes to do that in this clip he sees another plane:

"Plane!!!!"

Now, I don't want any phone calls from Noah's uncles, but Noah has a "new" friend- Dolly. My Granny made this doll and I had it on the bed in the guest bedroom. Since he found her, she has become his new BFF. (Best Friend Forever) He takes her with him when he goes down for naps and bedtime. He asks for her first thing in the morning. He has to have her downstairs during the day and upstairs for story time. When we went out to dinner to celebrate me passing my orals he cried and cried and cried because "Dolly had to take a nap" while we were going to dinner (truth be told, we didn't want to take Dolly). (Sorry, Noah, if you're looking back at this in years to come and reading this- we didn't do it to traumatize you!)

Here are the BFFs watching Elmo. He kisses her all the time but I haven't got that in a picture yet!

Here's Noah with my 150 Folk Songs to Sing and Play book (I refer to it as my orange Bible, there's also the blue Bible (Sail Away- 155 folk songs) and the AM Bible (American Methodology)- and then the Jill Trinka Bibles- I use all of these everyday in my teaching. This one was on the dining room table, which has been used much more for studying on lately than eating on- we're working on fixing that!)

Searching the song index for a good song:

This is the best part of being done with class and the comps: