Happy Friday Eve:)

I’m so glad today was Thursday and tomorrow is Friday! I so don’t like having Monday professional days because by Friday, you’ve forgotten you had a day without students!

Teaching:

Today felt very mixed up. We started writer’s workshop this morning and it went quite well, though we had planned way too much. We got through a video about polar bears which was a really good documentary called Growing Up Polar. It was about an orphaned polar bear taken in by the Toronto zoo. We also made our polar bear habitats this afternoon. It was so neat to see how different they are and one child actually commented on that! We also had the chance to play outside today as it wasn’t raining for a bit:). On top of this all planning and prep for next week was completed:)

Exercise:

I came home and went directly out for a run. I can’t believe how much my Achilles bothers me until it warms up. It takes about a kilometer before it stops talking:(. I got 3.65km done which was good enough for a Thursday night, especially as I think I might end up running twice tomorrow.

Since my runs and workouts were finally equal, I also got to watch a hallmark movie and do a workout tonight. I ended up doing a minute of jogging between these exercises: bridges, crunches, burpees, squats, dips, mountain climbers, reverse lunges, curtsy lunges, plié squats, pushups, reverse crunches, froggers and bicycle crunches. It was nice to get back to this routine!

Movie:

Tonight I watched Nostalgic Christmas which was fine. I didn’t like the ending when the girl decided to take over her father’s shop at the drop of a hat. Wouldn’t they require more thought??? I know, I need to suspend reality!

Knitting:

I am attempting my date night sweater again. It seems like I have to start every knitting project five times😖. I hate to imagine how much I’d accomplish if I could start just once!

Eating:

I need to get back on track as the scale made me cry this morning. It’s such a slippery slope to where I used to be! Today I’ve had: rice cake with Pb, cheese and jam, yogurt with granola, apple and peanut butter, blood orange, cucumber and cheese, cookies. It’s still not great, but better than it has been lately.

Well I’m going to bed early as I’m getting up early for a workout with Lyndsay.

Have fun!

AJ

Thankfully Better

It was thankfully a better day in my classroom today, but I’m almost afraid to wonder if it will last.

Teaching:

The students came in and when they were done their morning jobs they had to join into a workout video I was playing from Go Noodle (a great site for lots of different types of movement for kids)! I couldn’t believe how peaceful it was. Usually the children get to read, draw or extra book, but this was much quieter than that. I even joined in when I was done my morning jobs.

We had the best calendar we’ve had in a while and then went off to music. After recess I changed things around slightly so that we had a quick go noodle, then quiet time (I need this time to work with individual kids), then our math drill and I taught the math lesson while the students were at their desks. I also chose a child to answer a question and each subsequently chose the next person. It felt like everyone was engaged in the doubles plus one lesson and everyone got their entire worksheet done:)

After an indoor lunch (I had begged for an outdoor recess), we did planners, another quick go noodle, and then silent reading at our desks. This is the first time in my career o haven’t let children sit wherever, but it was much quieter than usual:). I actually got through three children’s reading lessons! We finished he day with building a polar bear and playing dodgeball in gym.

Overall, a really good day:). Thank goodness as I’m not sure I could have taken another bad one!

Exercise:

After doing some start of month prep work, I got home just in time for some sunshine. I decided to combine my run with an errand and ran over to the yarn store. I felt like I was running really slowly so was completely surprised to look down and see my first kilometer was under 7 minutes. I actually ended up having a 6:43/km average, which I am completely happy with for an after work, midweek run. It was a gorgeous moment for a run!

This run also gives me equal runs and workouts for the year so far so I can go back to doing one of each per night.

Knitting:

I picked up a gray Pom Pom for Sarah’s toque and got that attached so that her toque can be delivered tomorrow.

I have been working on my date night Sweater and it’s been going great until I am now short one stitch:(. I have pulled out two rows but am still short. I don’t really want to pull it all out!

Well that’s it for me! I hope tomorrow is good too.

Have fun!

AJ

Trivia Tuesday #37

It was a horrible day at work, but thankfully got better outside of work.

Teaching:

My students are just off! They are hiding, sneaking out of the classroom, wrestling on the carpet. I’m to the point where I just don’t even want to go:(

We tackled a journal, two math drills, and a movie about the Arctic.

It felt like it was an uphill battle. The best part of the day was when I taught a reading lesson on sounding out. The kids were super engaged and it was good I did it as it reminded me how much work reading can be when you’re not good at it yet.

I think tomorrow I’m going to try a lot of exercise and teaching while they’re at their desks rather than the carpet. We’ll see how it goes.

Knitting:

I went home after my massage and worked on my Date Night sweater. I have high hopes for this sweater.

Trivia:

Tonight was a Harry Potter theme night.

We got 9/15 in the first round, 2nd place in the second round, 6/15 in the third round and 3rd place in the fourth round. Obviously I’m much better at Kahoot where I have choices.

Some of the questions I knew:

Who is the nephew of Bellatric LeStrange?

Draco Malfoy

Who was the youngest victim of the battle at Hogwarts?

Colin Creevey

Who took Ginny Weasley to the Yule Ball?

Neville Longbottom

Whose memories did Hermione alter before going in search of the Horcruxes?

Her parents

Who became headmaster of Hogwarts after Snape?

Minerva McGonagall

Whose home is in Grimmauld Place?

Sirius Black

What word did Bellatrix LeStrange carve into Hermione’s arm?

Mudblood

How many times do you have to walk by the Room of Requirement honking of what you need before it will open?

3

What serum was Cho Chang given to tell where Dumbledore’s Army was?

Veritaserum

What is an ingredient in poly juice?

Lace wings

What is Harry’s last name?

Potter

How many different actor cats played Mrs. Norris?

3

How many fake Harry’s were there for the trip to Grimmauld Place?

6

How many different uses for dragon’s blood did Dumbledore find?

12

How many different fouls are there in Quidditch?

700

Which group met at a pub in Hogsmeade?

Dumbledore’s Army

What actress designed her own jewelery?

Luna Lovegood

What is the pub in Hogsmeade?

The Three Broomsticks

Where does the tunnel to the shrieking shack start?

Whomping Willow

Which actor almost had to be replaced because he lost so much weight?

Dudley

Who saw the attack by Dementors on Harry and Dudley?

Mrs. Figg

What does Dumbledore see himself holding in the mirror?

Socks

Who made the prophecy about Harry and Voldemort?

Sybil Trelawney

Well I’m off to bed.

Have fun!

AJ

ProD

So ProD day, contrary to popular belief, is not a day off for me. I had to sit in a meeting all day. Can you tell how many times I’ve been bugged about this all day?!?!😖

Exercise:

Thankfully I started my day with a workout with L. It was tough to get out of bed and get going, but I am always so happy when I’m done. I must have been partially asleep though as I kept knocking the emergency stop button on the treadmill so my average pace was horrible today. I however know that I got up to 7.5 for my fast intervals, so I’m happy.

We also did some floor work that involved planks which demonstrated how long it has been since I’ve done that! I need to figure out how to put them into the Hallmark workouts! We also did some flies, pulldowns, and rows so I guess it was an upper body and abs day- not a bad thing for me!

Work:

My seminar today was not very successful as this woman was saying the same thing she has said the other six times I’ve seen her. I was told that our whole school had to go to this, but it really was a waste for me, which really bugs me because there are so many things I want to learn about!

Food:

I signed up today for Fresh Prep which is one of those services that delivers the ingredients and recipe to you and you then cook. The first week is half price so I wanted to try it, but I am very nervous about doing this as I always am about these programs that automatically bill every week/month. I am wondering how difficult it is going to be to cancel if I want to, whether it will be econominally smart for me to do this, how many meals I’ll get out of it, whether I will just spend more with still going to the grocery store, and of course, whether I will get sick. I guess we shall see.

Reading:

On the way home I stopped and picked up my Bookclub book, but today I managed to get the kids Bookclub book done. It was Chester and Gus by Cammie McGovern. The book is about a service dog who fails his test and is subsequently bought by a family with an autistic son. The book is told from the dog’s point of view which was very cool and imaginative. It was in some ways a sad book, but also one that makes you really think about bonds and communication.

Knitting:

I have also spent a lot of time knitting since finishing the book as I wanted to have both toques ready for Sarah to check out tomorrow. This one I think is going to be too wide and short but at least she can decide if she likes the colour and the pattern.

I have since started a Date Night too for myself in some very old Bouquet yarn. I’m not sure it’s going to work, but we shall see.

Well I need sleep as I’m thinking about running before work tomorrow.

Have fun!

AJ

Grateful Sunday

It was a very nice day:)

Exercise:

This morning turned into a walk with Brenda and Dennis as my legs were still tired from yesterday.

I tried to get a run in this evening, but that was derailed too🤣

Oh well!

Grateful: to be flexible enough to not let changes in my plans bother me.

Grateful: for the gorgeous place I live where I saw a heron up close on my walk this morning.

Knitting:

I have spent most of the day knitting, actually I have spent most of the weekend knitting.

I finished a wide headband out of my MJ Yarns leftovers from the sockhead slouch. I love how this headband turned out and you can see the details of the pattern I made up on my ravelry projects page:).

The hat is my version for Sarah, the secretary at work. It is the Wellem Im Sturm pattern. It went super quickly with the bulky yarn and used up another ball from my stash:)

I am currently knitting the hat pattern Sarah picked in the yarn she picked. Can you tell I don’t think it’s the best fit for her. She can take her pick and I’ll donate the other!

Grateful to have people around me who appreciate my hobby.

Grateful for ravelry where I can find so many awesome patterns and lose myself for hours looking at all the options.

Socializing:

I went out for a run tonight and just as I was coming into the park o saw my friend Cori and her husband and kids ahead of me. By the time I had caught up with Cori I found myself getting ice cream and walking around the park. It derailed my run, but I think the social time was way more important for both Cori and myself (she’s the friend who just lost her dad). The time definitely cheered my day:)

Grateful for friends that are easy to be with and just include me.

Grateful for Bruno’s friend who bought me ice cream:)

Grateful for the energy that kids display that spurred me on.

Well I’m going to see how much of this toque I can get done tonight.

Have fun!

AJ

SAL Update

I wanted to do this separately so that people who don’t want to know about my life don’t have to wade through that!

Stitching:

This is a picture of the project that has set on my shelf for the past eleven years. Yhis year I am determined and it at least moved onto the coffee table. This is where I was at. This is where I am at now:

I know it’s not a ton of progress, but that tie back wasn’t there before! I just counted and I put in 125 stitches over the past three weeks. I know I can do better, but it is more progress than I’ve made in the past eleven years:)

Be sure to check out everyone else’s progress! There are some amazing projects! If you’re interested in joining, just click on Avis’ link below.

Just a note, if there’s anyone in the SAL who can tell me an easy way to add all these names while on an iPhone, please let me know:)

Avis

Claire

Gun

Carole

Sue

Constanze

Christina

Kathy

Margaret

Cindy

Heidi

Jackie

Sunny

Hayley

Megan

Deborah

Mary Margaret

Renée

Carmela

Jocelyn

Sharon

Daisy

Anne

Connie

No Plans Changed

Yesterday morning when I was with Lyndsay, she asked what I was doing this weekend and all I had planned was a run on each morning. Well that sure changed…

Exercise:

I slept in this morning and then had to rush to be ready for my run with Dennis. It was pouring out again so it was a good thing that I was meeting him. We ended up doing 6.52km. It felt fast and when we were on the way back I looked at my watch and saw it was at 4.67km and I could possibly set a new PR for 5km, so I tried to step up the pace. It worked! My old PR was 31:45 and now I’m at 31:18. My goal is 30 minutes (fast for me but slow for everyone else). I was very happy to be finished and change into dry clothes!

Socializing:

I met up with Dennis and his wife Martha for coffee and couldn’t believe how loud and noisy Starbucks was!

Later in the afternoon, Michelle who is Life of a Canadian Girl texted to see if I wanted to go for coffee. She asked if I had anywhere new on my radar and I told her the o my two I had were about an hour away. She had nothing else going on, so agreed to try one out. (Yes she just shot to friend #1!).

We headed out to The Polly Fox. It was a very cute spot- white furniture, exposed brick wall, and natural wood tables. The small fridge case was slightly bare as we were there later in the day, but it all looked very yummy! They also had a full blackboard of drinks ( including four non dairy alternative milk), and two page breakfast and lunch menu. I got a chai latte and a cinnamon bun to eat and they were both wonderful. It took me a few mouthfuls to identify that the strong flavour in the cinnamon bun was coconut, but it was definitely not a deterrent. Michelle had a London fog and a vegan cashew bar that she finished and said was good.

What I enjoyed most about this cafe and bakery was that it was quiet and the tables were spread out so you didn’t have to eavesdrop. It was a lovely change from Starbucks!

Baking (Stretching My Skills with Sally):

Last year I tried a few of Sally’s Baking Challenge items and quite enjoyed the challenge of trying new things. I was talking with Abbey of Three Cats and a Girl and we decided to both try these challenges and then link up to talk about our results, so please check out her attempts too. I was really interested in doing this because I knew she would be doing the recipes as called for while I would need to convert them to gluten free and dairy free. I should say that I change as little as possible and just sub in gf and df ingredients to see if the recipe will still work.

For January the challenge was artisan bread. It was a very simple recipe of flour, salt, yeast and cool water that was left to rise for two- three hours and then you were encouraged to leave it for up to three days to build air bubbles in it.

I actually ended up making this recipe twice. I made it on Monday night and couldn’t leave it any longer than the two hours. I liked how this bread looked as it was a lovely browned dome, but unfortunately it didn’t rise a lot and it ended up being undervalued:(. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this one, but I cut off a thin slice from all four sides and then threw the rest away.

On Thursday night this week, I gave the recipe a second try. I had made the dough, using Bob’s Redmill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour (the recipe calls for bread flour but I don’t know if any gf bread flour) on Wednesday night and after leaving it to rise for the full three hours, I covered it and put it in the fridge. I have to admit that once again, it didn’t rise much in those three hours. On Thursday, I shapes it into two long loaves and then baked it. They only took about 18 minutes to cook rather than the 20-25. This time they were fully cooked, but it was a very hard and chewy bread. I ate all of it because even bad homemade bread is better than store bought, but I don’t think this is a recipe I will come back to again.

Thanks Abbey for taking on this challenge with me:)

I’m so grateful that my boring day at home turned into a fun day out with a friend:)

Have fun!

AJ

Gets Better as it Goes

The day was tough at work, but outside of work, it was lovely.

Exercise:

It was great to get back to working out with Lyndsay! I really loved how my new Garmin successfully tracked both my treadmill run and my cardio session. We did intervals and I actually got up to 7.6km/hr which is fast for me. On the cardio we did reverse lunges, squats with overhead press, burpees, bicep curls, sit ups, jump squats and five jumping jacks between each of these. I was definitely a sweaty mess by the end, but a happy, sweaty mess.

Teaching:

It was another tough day with the kids. We got through calendar, music, addition math games, and some polar bear learning.

I felt like I spent the day talking about kindness, that rules apply to everyone and the idea of persevering. One of these days I’d like to actually teach some content!

Socializing:

I met up with two friends for our annual Dine Out dinner. We went to Chicha downtown which is Peruvian food. It was a very small restaurant and the tables were very close together, but it was wonderful food!

Sorry for the poor picture- it was a very dark restaurant. I had the quinoa salad, the crispy cauliflower, the ceviche and then fruit for dessert. It was my friend’s turn to pick the restaurant and she definitely doesn’t pay as close attention to the dessert as I do🤣. My favourite part was the ceviche as it had a ton of seafood in it, along with pieces of orange which was really good.

Well I’m off to bed, have fun!

AJ

A Great Friend

Well it was another day just like many others.

Teaching:

My class has been so off this week that I just can’t wait for tomorrow to be over and hopefully they come in differently next week!

We got through a lesson on bossy r this morning, but it took into quiet time too because I was trying to help four students finish up the art from yesterday during calendar, but the rest of the class just couldn’t handle doing calendar on their own😖🙄. It’s January and they can’t even sit for calendar yet:( there’s a way to feel like a failure as a teacher!We got our art finished by the end of the day, but it took us three tries.

I went on my prep to pick up the Chinese food lunch some of the staff were having for Chinese New Year. Unfortunately I can’t eat the food, but I was the one with the prep.🤣

This afternoon we had buddies where we did lunar new year crafts and then we were supposed to have a lion dance, but the company that does it, didn’t show up!😖😖. Of course, our principal didn’t tell us that until two minutes after it was supposed to start, so we had to quickly come up with a plan. My students read for a few minutes and then we went to gym and played musical chairs. The kids loved it!!! It was definitely the best part of the day:)

Exercise:

After finishing up the prep, I came home and dragged myself out for a run. It was soaking wet and the park was mostly flooded, so not particularly fun, but I did get another 3.75km done. I can’t believe how little I have managed to run this month:(. We are expecting rain every day for the rest of the month, so this won’t be the last of my wet miles.

Baking:

I tried the bread again, but I will write about that more on Saturday.

Knitting:

I have been knitting on a headband to finish up the MJ Yarns I made my slouch hat in. I just want to finish it off so I can deduct it from my stash count. I am super happy with the headband so far though;)

Gift:

During buddies, my buddy teacher, Lyndsay, gave me a shirt she had bought me. It says, RUNNING, cheaper than therapy! It is a baseball style shirt and I love it!!! I think I might live in this shirt for the next little while:)

Well, I’m back to the headband, though I should be going to bed!

Have fun!

AJ

Maybe A New Habit?

Sorry for no post last night. My oldest friend came into town for a convention and made the trek out to see me for the night. It was awesome as we definitely just pick right back up, regardless of how long it has been:)

Teaching:

It was a tough day today as my students just weren’t listening well. We got through music and a math lesson on adding doubles. I had them jumping up and down for the doubles, but unfortunately, they just couldn’t handle it:(

We also worked on our snowflake art this afternoon. We were hoping to be done, but it looks like it will be tomorrow.

I was definitely frustrated by the fact that a parent sent an email to me today saying that three of my girls were in the office Friday at lunch because of problems on the playground, but I knew absolutely nothing about this:(. Argh communication people, please!!!!

Exercise:

I got home this afternoon and really didn’t want to run, but since I hadn’t been out yet this week, I knew I needed to go. I wasn’t fast with this cold, but at least I got a few more miles in!

Reading:

I finally finished the book, Seduction with Sapphires by Jane Feather.

This book is very entertaining. I liked the main characters as the female is strong willed and always true to herself while the male is enlightened and grumpy hero.

A well written and entertaining, though very modern historical romance.

I have read other books by this author and thoroughly enjoyed them, but with this one, I found myself continuously pulled out of the story by inconsistencies in behaviors. It seemed as though they were dressing in 1870s clothing and had some of the traditions of that time, yet they leaped into bed on their second meeting, he cane by the house just before dinner, she never came home some nights, and so on. It felt like 1920s behaviour. I found it quite distracting and it definitely took me a while to get through the book.

Knittting:

I finished my Seattle Sockhead Slouchy hat. This is the first project I have knitted off my queue and I love it!! The pattern is super easy and definitely appropriate for a beginner. The yarn was MJ Yarns One Ewe Fingering which is 100% superwash Merino in the colour Whirl, and was pretty and easy to work with.

I have about 85-90 yards left and am thinking of what to knit with it so that the skein will all be gone.🤣

New Habit:

I had to get up about a half hour early this morning as my friend had to leave earlier and I found I really liked having the extra time to just sit and knit and drink tea in the morning. I’m not sure if I’d be able to give up the half hour of sleep, but I may have to try it out:)

Have fun!

AJ