Keeping Up with the Joneses

This week, the Young Ladies Christian Fellowship webzine/blog is hosting a blog carnival. I participated last year and am eager to do so again this year. Great fun! The theme this year is weekly schedules and to-do lists.

I have a pretty steady schedule from week to week, so this is easy for me to look at my calendar and reveal...Keeping Up with the Joneses (for a week, that is).

Monday

Meg HATES having her pic taken!

It's 7 am. I am up before everyone else, as usual. I hurry through the early morning, chugging a cup of coffee. I gather my evening class books together, feed Meg our Welsh corgi and let her out, and finish my own quick breakfast and supplement consumption (i.e. Juice Plus, BarleyMax, enzymes, Epicore). I walk across the street to work. I am the principal and main teacher at CIAS, an umbrella school for homeschooled students. Students are sleepily waiting for their school day to begin. I start tutoring at 8 and break at 12 for lunch break. Lunch break for me included returning a phone call to one of my student's parent about a college dual enrollment schedule, checking my appointment schedule for the week, making copies of tests for afternoon students, and chatting with one of my secretaries. Back to tutoring from 1-5; that makes eight hours of teaching and supervising 15 students. I rush off to my college class, leaving my sister (and fellow teacher) Sarah to lock up. I am taking a class about exceptional learners, and have an early meeting with my study group about our project presentation on Autism next Monday. I sit through an interesting presentation on deafness, a short lecture, and a book report presentation. I am sooo tired. Driving home, I call Mom and let her know I'm on my way across town. My sister Tricia has dinner ready. Mom spends the evening reading, Tricia is studying, and I am grading my students' compositions.

Tuesday

I have a typical morning once again. Missed my coffee this morning though. :-( Several students get dropped off early at my house, so we walked to school together. I teach all morning; Tricia joins me at 10. I spend my lunch break printing my handouts and quiz papers for my afternoon writing classes. Thirty-five students are divided almost evenly into two classes. The afternoon speeds by, filled with sentence dress-ups, editing exercises, and students' oral essay presentations. I have off early this evening, so I come home and make dinner of pork sirloin and southern-style cabbage. I also try a new baked mac and 3-cheese recipe that turns out DELICIOUS! Yay! Tricia is across town at the university for an evening class. I am so proud of her, working full-time and nearing the end of a very hard-won accounting degree! We watch NCIS and NCIA-LA, two of our favorite shows. The evening is spent studying. Again.

Wednesday

Teaching all day. Have several wonderful "discipleship moments" with my students. I LOVE when they ask questions about life and the Lord!!! When I can open the Word of Life and show them that God has something to say about EVERYTHING in life, drawing a connection for them to the God of the universe. :-D I have an new student/parent interview from 5-6:30. It goes very well, and we have a new student enrollment..another middle school boy!!! I make another appointment with them for academic placement testing. I spend a half hour working on a senior's transcript for their college application and prepping for Thursday evening senior workshop. Tricia cooks dinner again; I LOVE taco salad! My sista-bestie is the bomb! :-D I eat slowly tonight. I am so sleepy, so I hit the sack early tonight.

Thursday

I am so tired today. I can hardly muster myself out of bed this morning. Ugh. A full day of teaching, the last one for the week. I teach and supervise 15 students today, and get a little break before the seniors arrive for their one-hour meeting/workshop on college applications, record keeping, and fund raising. We have a good turn out, and it goes smoothly. I am home by 7:30. Meg is rabid for attention and wants to play (i.e me throwing her toy so she can chase and retrieve)! My arm hurts after several solid hours. :-P

Friday 

CL chasing Aunt Tricia round and round. :-)

I sleep late, praise the Lord. 9 am...wake up refreshed. I needed the extra two hours of sleep. I am administering six achievement tests this morning, and also have two appointments (one new interview and one lesson planning meeting). Sendi, my Records Clerk, and I go over phone call messages before I leave at 2. A family tradition...the Jones family attempts to meet for lunch on Fridays each week. Cori is "great with child" and is getting more and more uncomfortable, so I take lunch makings to her house: Thai coconut soup, chock full of red bell peppers, baby bella mushrooms, tofu, and chicken. Everyone converges to enjoy my first culinary attempt at one of my fav Thai dishes and give me a vote of confidence. Yes! Another great new recipe. :-) We spend some quality time with Corrie Lynn, my precious niece. She is a precocious 18 month old now, and is babbling and talking and eagerly sits still for book time. She loves for us to chase her around the living room, crying, "I'm gonna get you!" If we try to stop, she starts running the circle and yelling, "Gon get chu." She's wearing us out! So much energy; I am too old for this!!! Cori is so uncomfortable now; she is three weeks away from her due date in November; little Juliana Mae is wearing her mama out! We are eager to meet her and anticipate being new aunties to another precious soul. We have a quiet evening at home. I spend several hours reading textbooks and doing homework for my two college classes. We watch several recorded shows from the week's lineup (Tricia records them each evening, and we watch them towards the weekend). I call it a early night, and read for several hours. YLCF's Gretchen has recommended some books that I ordered last week, so I get started on The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Looks good so far!

Saturday

I am up early and down to my family's Bread of Life Bake Shop for a day of wedding I anniversary cakes. We have a pick-up cake, as well as a delivery at the NAS officer's club today. The cakes turn out wonderfully (and beautifully!), and I head home around four for an hour's nap. I brought home some cinamon rolls from the bakery freezer, so I bake them and prep mulled cider. The house smells SO GOOD!!!!! We three grab our camp chairs and drive over to Dusty and Marisa's home for a pitfire and game night with old friends. What great fun! :-D Thanks, ya'll!

Sunday

The Lord's day at our house, and our Sabbath. Oh, how we look forward all week to our day of rest and prolonged fellowship with Jesus!!! I savor every minute as it ticks by, as it does all too quickly. Sleep in late. Then I watch one of my favorite pastor's sermon podcast online (Richard Crisco); good stuff. I read the Word for an hour (the Psalms and Romans today) and turn my new-er Kari Jobe CD on in the kitchen stereo. I decide to make omelets and biscuits for brunch, then I dedicate the next several hours to studying. I have an Power Point on Autism to finish for my study group's presentation on Monday evening, so I spend several hours perfecting the last of it. We have spent so much time on this project. I know that we will get a good grade, because it is fabulous! I check my e-mails, log onto MarryWell to check to see if I have any messages, and blog for awhile. Every fall, I get into a Jane Austen movie mood, so I go online and watch the new "Northanger Abbey." I <3 it! I get to bed late...not a good start to the new week, but it's my life. I'm a Jones.