Action Sports Art

For those of you who get emails from rolltide.com (tidem@il), then you just received an email about my dad's company! Go order your own print today. They are beautiful! Click here. His company is decorating part of the stadium with their art. They also have a canvas hanging in Saban's office! Look for it on ESPN interviews. :)

Tomorrow my dad is going down to Auburn to talk to their athletic director. (Action Sports Art has auburn canvases too!) Maybe he will get to do stuff with those down there too. Check them out! They are really beautiful!

Out with the Old, In with the new...

Week One of year two is over! It went really well. I have a great bunch of kids. I'm teaching a few bilingual kids and over half of my kids are ESL students... so there will be a lot of language barriers this year. It will be interesting and difficult and I will have to be extra sure to explain what I mean, but it will be worth it. I really like my students and I'm excited about getting to know them better.

However, I also miss my old students. I literally had the best homeroom I could have asked for last year. We were seriously a little family and I have missed their smiling faces. Seems like they have missed me too! On Monday, I had three old students come into the school just to say hello. Tuesday I have received two facebook messages from two different ones. (No, I don't add my students on facebook. But they can send me messages.) Then yesterday, one of my student's younger sisters brought me a letter from her sister. This is it:

precious, I know. :)

Then this morning I had this in my box:

Yes, a completely random picture frame from another one of my former students. It was the thought that counts! And it made my day. :)

Teaching is such a blessing, especially when you get little reminders like these that show you that you really are making a difference in the little one's lives. :)

Business Cards

A package I have been waiting on has finally arrived! Free business cards from Vistaprint! I was so excited about these when I ordered them. At VistaPrint, you can order 250 free business cards! All you have to pay for is the shipping. I ordered 250, but I paid an extra $2 to get a blank back. (If you don't pay the extra $2, it simply puts their vistaprint logo in the bottom back corner.) I then had a special offer to order another 150 for $3... so I got a total of 500 business cards for $5! I thought it was a good deal. Didn't they turn out cute?

I'm going to give these to all of my student's parents. This way they have my number and email address at all times. They also have our class website. I thought it was a good idea because they can hang it on their fridge or keep it in their wallet.
I also got a free stamp! I am going to stamp this on the back of a business card and send it home with the student any time that I have scheduled a parent conference. This will be the parents reminder. I will write in the date and time! AND, my number and email are on the other side in case they need to call/email to cancel. :) And it was FREE!

I also ordered a super cute pen. It has polka dots and says "Miss Harwood" on it! And yes, it was free. :)

Of course, not all things are really free. The more things you order, the higher the shipping. But if you don't mind paying shipping, then it will be worth it! I love my purchases... I'm thinking about going back and ordering more stuff. :)

Snail Mail

I just checked my mail, which is pretty rare. I always forget to go check it, but today the mail held two treats for me!

Treat #1- An updated picture of my WorldVision "daughter" Grace. Grace lives in Uganda and is in second grade. I "adopted" her in February and donate money every month to her village. I was so excited when I got this picture! She has gotten so big. I love this little girl more than she would know. I pray that some how, some day, we will be able to meet.
Treat #2. Melissa is a girl that I know through different people. We have a few mutual friends, so I guess you could call us acquaintances. I had a letter from her, and I had no idea what she could be sending me. I opened up the card, and out fell this! My mom's wedding announcement! It turns out that her mom's best friend's wedding announcement is on the back of this one. They are divorced now, so there was no need for anyone to keep it. Melissa recognized my mom's name, and decided to send it to me! I was pretty excited. My parents were divorced before my mom passed away, but I still love having anything that was hers. Isn't she beautiful in this picture? What am I talking about, she was always beautiful. :)

Day One, Year Two

Wasn't it just yesterday that I wrote this post? (Where I summarized the first day of school...)

Day one of year two is over, and it went pretty well! I got to school at about 6:45, which is pretty normal. School starts at 7:30 so that gives me about 45 minutes to get everything ready. However, today was apparently different. I was getting things ready to go copy at 6:55 when they came over the announcement and said, "Don't forget, we're letting kids in at 7:00 this morning!" Yikes! Therefore, everything was put away and I started greeting the kiddos thirty minutes early. I guess I need to start reading my emails better!

While greeting my new students, I had several students from last year come by! They are all at different middle schools now, but middle school doesn't start until 8 something so they had time to bring their little siblings in to school. It made me so happy and sad at the same time to see them! I've missed them this summer and so I was glad to see them, but I was sad knowing they weren't coming to my class.

Another weird part was the fact that Lacey wasn't there. When the third grade teachers came by after their lunch, I just expected to see her. When I didn't, it was really sad. And after school I was sitting at my desk working on stuff and I thought, "Oh, I wonder when Lacey will stop by to recap the first day." But of course, she didn't. It's so weird without her! I know I'll get use to it, it will just take some time. I don't even want to think about what it will be like when Bonnie goes on maternity leave!

Overall, my new students seem really great. I have about 60 students right now. I may get more tomorrow though. There a few that I will need to keep my eye on, but overall it seems pretty good. I am excited about getting to know them better.

For now, I think I'm going to eat dinner and go to bed. The first day wears you out!

My Classroom :)

Oh.My.Goodness. I am exhausted!

The past two days have been crazy. Our school is not done being renovated, but they let us in anyway to work on our rooms. I have worked like crazy to get things done. I wish I had taken a before picture, because there was seriously nothing in my room besides desks. It was so overwhelming! But now, my room is mostly decorated! I still have tons of organizing to do before it's ready for school, but at least the major decorating is done!

I teach 5th grade in Irving, Texas (which is right outside of Dallas). I am the reading/social studies teacher. It is seriously my dream job, and I can't wait to start year two! This year, I didn't go with a theme. I just went with bright colors. It's kind of girly, but I think it turned out cute!

The students will put their school badges in that chart. Those are our new hall passes below! They are zebra and super cute. :)

Our front meeting area!
My favorite part of the entire room- the classroom library! I have spent tons of money buying those books (and also got some great deals!). I made the pillows and painted the shelf to the right. This is my favorite part of the room!
Class jobs! Our class schedule will go on that blank poster.
Our back wall. The polka dots are hot glued to clothes pins. I will then hang student work from those clothes pins! I did this last year, and it worked wonderfully! It was so easy to change out student work. I painted those canvases on the little wall. They have some of my favorite quotes! The pink and blue baskets hold our reading and social studies notebooks. The colored trays are for different things, such as spelling tests, station menus, make up work, late work, and extra paper. :)
Our whole group meeting area. I got the rug at office depot for a pretty good price, and I love it! It's pretty girly, but I like it. That is our word wall on the bottom. Last year I had it up high and it was really hard for the kids to use. I'm going to buy velcro so that they can move words on the sheets. The paper is actually purple, and the letters are the same zebra ones that are on my homework board. That little table will hold my document camera (once we figure out where it is... got to love working in a construction site!)
My computer corner! I made those chair pockets and they will store their headphones in them. I had so many broken headphones last year! I'm hoping that these chair pockets will help to solve that problem. The blue bullentin board has a houndstooth border and I am in love with it!
We do the Daily 5 in my classroom, and I love it! But, since I only have the students for 90 minute rotations, we really only do the daily 3. I split the kids into 4 groups and they go to 3 stations that are 20 minutes long each. They are color coded, but I lost some of cards over the summer so I will have to make some more! It worked really well last year, so hopefully it will this year too!
My circle table, where I will do small groups. The shelves on the back need to be cleaned out and organized, so hopefully I can do that this weekend!
Our agenda/homework board. I thought it turned out cute!

Whew! I will try to take a picture of the class as a whole soon. If you want to see more pics, there are some on my facebook. There are lots of little things that I have left to do, but I will post pictures when I am officially done!

Valid.

(Refer to this post to understand the following post.)

I'm currently listening to the podcast from the church where this man now works. The podcast is from yesterday, and he addresses the church on the issue. I just felt like I needed to hear how he addressed the church to help me understand and cope with what is going on. This is one quote that he said, and I think it was a very good point.

"Keep your eyes on Jesus. Men will fail you, but Jesus never fails. What has happened in the life of this one man does NOT discredit what God may have done in your life THROUGH this man."

This really helped me to cope with the situation. Just because this man has fallen, it does not mean that the things he allowed God to teach me through him are invalid. It does not mean that I need to forget everything I learned or all the things he helped me get through. God used him in a mighty way in my life, and that is still valid. It is still something I can be thankful for.

My prayers will be with him and his family for quite a while. I pray that somehow, something good will come of this. It hurts my heart to think about it too much.

Thank you Lord, for letting this pastor speak to me about this situation.

Back to the Classroom!

I got back into my classroom in one hour and 45 minutes!!!!!!!!!!

It is going to be so stressful trying to get it all together in a week. Especially when two of those days will be full of trainings! But I am so excited to finally be back in there. It has been stressing me out lately, and I will enjoy putting it all back together! I'm so ready to start school back with a new bunch of kids. Yay!

I will of course post pictures asap! :

Also, as to the post below... please keep praying for everyone involved. I'm having a hard time dealing with it. It's a long, complicated story. I may share one day, but for now, prayers are greatly appreciated.

Broken.

I don't even know how to explain the emotions I am feeling today. How do you talk about something like this? How do you get past something like this? I feel betrayed... and hurt... and disappointed. Yet at the same time, I know I am called to forgive. Who are we to judge whose sin is worse? Sin is sin, and my sins from today are equal in the eyes of our Lord.

This will affect hundreds of young adults and youth. This will affect people who didn't even know him, and because of his position, it will hurt the name of Christ. I am angry, and I am broken.

I just don't understand. I feel like everything he ever taught me... he didn't do himself. I feel betrayed. I am confused and hurt and... mad. I pray that God will help me get through this and help me to understand why this happened.

John 8:7-9 "Let him who is without sin be the first to throw the stone. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left."

God, be with his family and precious children. Be with all of us who were guided by him and trusted him and taught by him. Help us to understand and to forgive. Help his current youth to understand. Somehow, bring glory to yourself through this. And bring him back to You.

New Teacher Blogs

Apparently I should start a new business- designing classroom blogs. Today, I have done three.

They are no where near being finished. Next week I have to sit down with the teachers and have them add the pages they want and the details. I've strictly set up the base of the sites. I think they are pretty cute though. Check them out here:

Tumlinson

Hamilton

Robertson

Also, I went and added a picture of Charlie to Lacey's header...

Lacey

AND next on my list is to fix up Bonnie's class blog, and then make Holly a class site on blog. Should be a busy weekend! But I love doing it. :)

P.S. Yes, I created a Texas and LSU blog for these teachers. But, if you look carefully, I added a little Alabama to each of them. If you click on that Alabama part, it will take you to my class blog. :)

Baby Charlie take two!

Today was back to the real world. We had training alllll day. It was torture. We learned about the new science TEKS. I realize that I need to know this even if I dont teach science... but seriously, an all day training to teach us 10 new TEKS? A little ridiculous. We have more training tomorrow on language arts. Hopefully it will be a little more thrilling. I am so ready to get back into my classroom Monday and start putting it back together! I only wish we could do that tomorrow instead...

After training, I headed up to the hospital to see little Charlie. I just can't stay away!

He is so adorable... He was wide awake when I first got there. Look at those beautiful eyes!!

Then Lacey and I decided to take him for a stroll around the floor... doesn't she look amazing?! I can't believe she had a baby two days ago!

Then he fell asleep in my arms for about an hour. Let's just say I fell even more in love then.

It's going to break my heart when they move away a week from today. I'm trying not to think about!

They go home tomorrow and I told Lacey I wouldn't come see him tomorrow. I told her I'd give them time to get settled in at home before I come over. You better believe I'll be there Saturday though! Got to soak in every minute before they leave Thursday!

Here is my favorite picture from yesterday. Baron took it and sent it to me today. I brought him that frog yesterday- his name is Ponds. :)

Charlie :)

I am in love.....

with a little baby boy...

named Charles Owen Martin.

He is perfect in every way. I can't wait to go see him again! Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful blessing.

Ps. Holly likes him too. :)

Now I am even more excited about Tiffany and Bonnie's babies getting here. Is it November yet?

Job 1:21

One of my favorite worship songs is by Philips, Craig, and Dean. It's entitled "You are God Alone" and right now, part of those lyrics are incredibly true for my emotions tonight. It says "And right now, through the good times and bad, you are on your throne. You are God alone."

Good times: Charles Owen Martin entered the world tonight at 6:40 pm. He weighs 8lbs 6oz! Since Lacey was so incredibly exhausted, I decided not to go see him tonight. When she called, she said he was perfect in every way! My heart is exuberant for Lacey, Baron, and baby Charlie. I am dying to meet him! What a wonderful and beautiful gift from the Lord. I will post pictures tomorrow night!

Bad times: Jamie is the ESL teacher at my school. Since I wasn't ESL certified this past year, he had to come into my classroom every day. He came every class period for thirty minutes each. He would pull small groups or work with individual students-pretty much anything I needed. Without his help, I would have never gotten so many kids where they needed to be for TAKs. I'm praying that just because I'm (hopefully) ESL certified now, that he won't be taken away from me. I love his help and his character.

My heart is breaking for him right now. His brother fought cancer, and he fought the good fight. Tonight, the Lord told him he could stop fighting and brought him home to be with the Lord. While I don't know what it's like to lose a brother, I do know what it's like to lose my mom to cancer, and I imagine that it sucks about the same. As I think back to the days after losing my mom, I think back to the strength and comfort that only came from my Lord. I am so thankful that Jamie has that same faith in the Lord. I pray that he and his family feel that comfort and relies totally on the Lord during these next few days, weeks, and years. I'm praying for you, Jamie. Will the rest of you join with me?

So many different emotions for one day. A beautiful birth, and a heartbreaking loss. Thank you Lord for your blessings and your comfort.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die."

Job 1:21 "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

Charlie is almost here!

Lacey was my first friend in Dallas. We met at new teacher orientation and instantly clicked. All of our co-workers thought we had been friends forever, but it was just one of those friendships where you feel like you have known each other forever. She is that friend who is straight up honest with me, and I can be my complete self with her. I have loved getting to know her and her husband over the past year.

Today, their first child is going to be born! I was at the hospital with them last night. She was all smiles last night and ready to have this baby!

She just called and is having contractions every few minutes! They are expecting sweet Charlie between 4 and 6. I am so excited! I can't wait to hug and love on that sweet baby boy. I will of course post pictures as soon as possible. I plan on going up there to meet that sweet boy later tonight. He is going to be adorable!

For now, I'll leave you with a picture of Charlie's "big brother" Scout. I am dog sitting while the rest of them are at the hospital waiting on Charlie's arrival. This is a picture of him when I picked him up last night. I'm pretty sure Scout knows something is up- he hardly slept last night and has been constantly pacing since he got here!

Class Website

I just finished creating my class website! I'm super excited about it. Check it out here. There is also a link to our class reading blog on that site, but in case you can't find it it is located here.

I'm getting so excited about the new year starting! :)

Tongues of Praise or Tongues of Curse?

Pike is currently doing a serious on Overestimating ourselves and underestimating God. I do that all the time. In particular, I did it yesterday. There is this certain situation that drives me crazy. Apparently, it drives the other person crazy too-- but we both think the other is the one doing the driving of crazy. Does that even make sense? Anyway, in this situation I am constantly overestimating myself-- assuming that whatever I say will make this person realize that I did nothing to her. But today I realized I am underestimating the fact that God is the only one who can change her heart.

Anyway, I was going to write a (5th grade version) of a post yesterday to vent about my frustration with this particular situation. I didn't... but it was mainly because I wanted to be the bigger person and not blog badly about someone else. Therfore, I'm still not going to do it.

As always, the Lord had a message for me today, and he relayed it through Michael.. (Michael is our singles minsiter.) We are currently studying the book of James and I love it! Today we looked at chapter 2 of James, but we also skimmed a few verses in chapter 3. It's the verses in chapter 3 that the Lord used to speak to me. I am going to quote them and then talk about what I learned.

"But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly posion. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be." James 3: 8-10

Michael said that the translation of the word "curse" in this verse does not mean literally using a curse word about the person. The word "curse" means saying anything about the person that is not positive. Ouch. First off, I do that daily. But especially in this certain situation I was talking about above. Yesterday, I was wanting to write hateful things about this person in a stupid blog! First off, thats extremely middle schoolish of me, and second-- that is me cursing someone else. What is even worse is this person is my sister in Christ! She is someone I am suppose to love-- she is made in the likeness of my Lord and Savior! Therefore when I curse her and say ugly things about her, it is just like I am cursing my Lord and Savior. And the worst part is, I went to church today and praised my Savior with the same mouth.

Talk about conviction. I realize that this is something every girl struggles with every day, but I particularly struggle with this girl. She says ugly things about me and I feel like it's for no reason., therefore I feel like I'm justified to say ugly things about her. But I'm not! This is something I'm really going to try to work on. It's hard, but I want my tongue to be one that doesnt praise and curse. And hopefully this sister in Christ will do the same. Because rather I like her or not, one day we will be spending eternity together praising our Lord and in the end... that's all that really matters.

Blog Makeovers

I've currently been re-doing blogs. I've tried to do them all myself, but everytime I make a background it doesn't fit right on blogger. Therefore I find backgrounds I like and then make my own header to match. I also make signatures to match. So far I've done mine, Lacey's, Bonnie's, and then mine and Holly's classroom blogs. Here are the links in case you want to check them out!

Lacey's

My Class Reading Blog

Holly's Class

Bonnie's

My Class Website

They are not anything great or amazing, but I have fun doing it! :)

So Long Insecurity!

I'm just going to be straight up honest in this post. If you don't want to hear my honest thoughts, don't read them. No one is making you.

I'm currently reading "So Long Insecurity, you've been a bad friend to us" by Beth Moore. My bible study is reading through it, and it's amazing. We are reading three chapters a week, and I am currently reading through the one that has hit me the most. It's chapter five in the book, and they are talking about different things that can cause our insecurities. I haven't finished the chapter, but I have finished the part that pretty much hit me in the face. But before I continue, let me rewind.

Years ago, there was this boy. He was my best friend. We hung out literally every day for months. Then one day we kissed, and after that we were together for a long time. I thought he was my everything. (Which was my first problem- only God is your everything! A boy will never complete you, only God will!) Anyway, I was crazy about him. Then one day, I broke up with him. It was the beginning of summer when I broke it off. We spent the next five months figuring out what we were or what we were going to be. During those five months, we changed our minds a lot. One day one of us would want to get back together, but the other wouldn't. It flip flopped for awhile. This continued until October or November, I don't really remember when.

I do remember one conversation we had during those five months though. I don't remember much about those five months, they are actually the most vague in our whole relationship to me. Probably because they were full of pain and I try to block them out. But this one conversation... I remember it like it happened last night.

It was the beginning of July. We were sitting in his driveway in my car talking about where to go from here. I had started the conversation, because I had been praying about if for weeks and finally felt like the Lord was leading me back to him. I explained this to him, and was completely expecting the same response from him. But, this is what he said. "I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to think that I never loved you. I loved you more than I've ever loved anyone before. But I don't anymore. You aren't the girl for me. I just want to be friends."

Bam. Rejection.

Which is what Beth Moore talks about in chapter five. That night, my heart shattered. I was numb, lost, confused, and broken. And I remained that way for weeks, months, possibly even years. When that boy and I finally went our separate ways, it was because I couldn't live with the threat of being rejected by him anymore so I just cut him off entirely. Even now if I really think about it, it breaks my heart all over again. Not the fact that that boy did't want me... he isn't the one for me, and I'm completely over him. It's the rejection that I'm not over.

Have you ever felt that before? Rejection? It sucks. And just like Beth Moore said, it can be the root of our worst insecurities. She talks about what it feels like when you are first rejected. This is what she says:

"No matter the source, the shout translates into the language of the soul as one jolting message: I do not want you. Here's the even trickier part: nothing elicits quicker concurrence on our part than feeling rejected. Our equally deceptive agreement with the original lie doubles the strength of the bond, and through that betraying handshake, we find ourselves nodding. You are so right. I'm not worth wanting. I'm not worth loving. I'm not even worth liking. I'm not worth pursuing. I'm not worth fighting for. I'm not worth keeping. I'm not even worth noticing."

Wow. Those are the exact thoughts that go through your mind when you are rejected like that. On the next page, she goes on to say this: "Taken badly enough, rejection can muster up some temporary insanity. Reflect on your own history, and I imagine you'd come up with the same summation that I would: the craziest, most uncharacteristic things I've ever done have occurred in the wake of major rejection. It's insecurity with a fever." Wow! How true is that? When I think back to some of the crazy things I said and did after that rejection, it's humiliating! It's so refreshing to hear that I'm not the only one who has gone through momentary insanity after a major rejection! (ha)

Rejection. It hurts. And like Beth Moore said, it can cause insecurities for years, if not for the rest of your life. Like I said earlier, it's not the boy that I'm still hurting over. He's long been out of my life and I don't give him a second thought. It's the sting of the rejection that lingers. Here is how Beth ended this segment of the chapter. I love how she worded it, so I'm going to quote her again.

"If you've suffered a serious case of rejection, you need to make sure that you're letting God tend to it. Each root we've mentioned so far is painful, but this one is poisonous. Putting up a front doesn't work. God knows exactly what happened and what toll it took. He knows the number it played on your mind. Let Him bring you peace. Let Him tell you you're worth wanting, loving, even liking, pursuing, fighting for, and yes, beloved, keeping. Whatever you do, don't reject the only One wholly incapable of rejecting you."

I have chosen you and not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. Isaiah 41:9-10

Goodbye Summer Vaca...

Where did this summer go?! I can't believe it's basically over. Next Tuesday I'm taking the ESL test, Wednesday I have a grade level meeting, and Thursday and Friday I have training. The next week we finally can get back in to our school! Therefore, Monday and Tuesday will be spent setting up my room. Wednesday-Friday we have training, and any time we aren't training I will be setting up my room.

Summer went be so fast! It seems like just yesterday that it started. I am so thankful for the break. I was able to spend it relaxing and getting to know my friends better. We didn't go on any fun and exciting trips, but we didn't really think it was needed. We spent the summer getting better acquainted with our new city.

I'm excited about starting my second year of teaching. I loved the first one, so hopefully I will love this one too. I think I will have a hard time adjusting to the new kids. I just loved my other classes, and I can't imagine teaching different kids. Hopefully they will be as great as my last one.

On another note, Lacey's baby boy Charlie will be here on Tuesday! I am so excited!!!!!! So basically any time that I'm not in training or working on my classroom, I will be spending time with that beautiful baby boy before they move to 'bama on the 19th. :)

Well, I'm off to enjoy my last Friday of summer. I won't have another Friday off until Thanksgiving break, and that is just depressing....

Completed Bookshelf!

I posted here about the bookshelf I was re-painting for my classroom. Well, I finished it! It didn't quite turn out like I wanted, but it is definitely bright and colorful. I've decided that this year my classroom is just going to be really bright and colorful, so this will definitely fit in. I had fun painting it, and it will definitely add color to my classroom.

I also painted these signs for my room. I haven't decided exactly where they will hang, but they are quotes that I really like and they kind of match the bookcase.

Yesterday, I went and bought new borders and posters for my class too. They are so cute. I am super excited about putting my classroom together! Tomorrow I am going to Lacey's to make the chair pockets for my computer chairs. I had so many headphones broken last year, that this year I am making pockets to store the headphones in. Hopefully that will help solve that problem.

They say the school will be finished by August 16th. Let's pray that is true, because then we will get a week to put our rooms together! *Fingers crossed*