Amy's Annotations: Snow Day

Hello, Internets! It's been awhile, I know. There has been so much going on in the land of Amy's Annotations since I last posted. There is so much, I'm going to just do bullets until you are all caught up. I promise to try to be current in the coming weeks...

Guess what? I'm teaching 5th grade now! Yep! 5th grade. Science no less... SO loving that I get to play all day and teach kids about science. Our team has 86 kids... I teach the science, David teaches the literacy (reading/writing) and Julie teaches the math. We all teach our own social studies and spelling and social skills curriculum. I can't believe that they actually LET me teach the same lesson 3 times each day. You can see here the blog I keep for the science classes I teach. Loving it, guys. Truly loving it.
Our septic drain field failed this summer and we had to have it replaced. Ugh. I do have to say that my husband is the best. He kind of has a 6th sense for when things might go wrong and he is so proactive in getting things fixed. The old drain field was completely full of dirt, rocks and whatever so we had to totally move the drain field to the other side of the front yard. Our yard is a disaster, but, really, it's winter now and we'll bring in topsoil this spring and plant more grass. Ed decided to put lids in the yard where all of the lids are on the septic tank and also where the ends of the drain field pipes are so that they can be cleaned easily and we can pump out the tank without having to dig up the yard every time we need it pumped. I'm not to thrilled with the idea of having these lids (6 of them) dotting my front yard, but I'm not the one who does the digging up of the yard to find the lids, so I can't complain. I just want them to be easy to mow around.
Our back deck also bit the dust. We have this deck that crosses our back yard (about 20 feet) from the garage to the house. Our house sits a little lower than where the garage and driveway is so we need sort of a deck/bridge to get to the back door. We replaced it probably 10 years ago, and we use it everyday so it kind of needed replacing faster than maybe a normal deck. However, this time, we decided to replace it with Trex (sp?) because we DO use it everyday. So, two weekends ago, Ed decided to take apart the deck... WITH A CHAINSAW... and then promptly left for Utah on business. He's been working on it after work and we actually had a huge bonfire last weekend and burned everything up. It still isn't finished because at the moment, it's 8 degrees outside and everything is sitting under 6-8 inches of snow.
I got a Nook, y'all!!! Loving it. I'm such a book buyer. I was spending so much money on books that it was was more cost efficient to pay $150 for a Nook and then get my books from the library. Oh, it's SO cool... LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I ended up purchasing one of the "certified pre-owned" 3G, Wi-Fi Nooks. It works perfectly and I paid the same price as I would have had I purchased just the Wi-Fi Nook. It's great. Would HIGHLY recommend getting one if you are an avid reader.
We bought a "new" truck. Yep, Old Blue is gone. We loved her dearly, but she wasn't as powerful as the new trucks and certainly not as comfortable. (I cried when we left her at the dealership and Ed was all, "Ame, I thought that you wanted to buy this truck?!?!?" and I was all, "Yeah, but this was the first NEW thing we bought together... Jessie rode in this truck...") We got an '08 F350 Superduty. I have to say that it was super hard finding a truck that had a manual transmission. At our house, we don't purchase cars unless they are manual transmissions. Well, unless they are OLD cars... (my mustang is an automatic as well as the Falcon). We are definitely the minority in this case. And we also found out that Ford trucks made in '11 or after will not be made with manual transmissions. It costs a lot and apparently people don't like to drive them. All I can say is that this truck better last us forever because me driving an automatic is NOT pretty.
We observed the four year anniversary of Jessie's passing. We miss her every day and still haven't had the heart to get another dog...
We did a quick trip to New Hampshire to attend Ed's Grampa's funeral. He was 98 and lived in the same house that he was born in. How many people can say that they lived in the same house/town that they were born in for 98 years??? Ed was asked to speak at the service and he did a wonderful job. He was also asked to be a pall bearer. The service was really good, as funeral services go. Grampa's pastor has known him for years... Grampa was baptized in that church so he was a member forever. They had a viewing the Friday night before at the farm. Viewings are such an east coast thing. Rarely have I been to a funeral here where there was a viewing. I know for some people, this helps to give them closure. But for me, I did NOT want to see Grampa that way. My last memory of him is a kiss and hug at the airport last May when Ed took him home from spending the winter here. That's how I want to remember him. Grampa was a wonderful man, and we miss him everyday.
I got a new phone... the Motorola Droid X. Which I love. It's one of those smart phone thingies and it's WAY bigger than my last phone, but I'm really digging it. It's a bit of a learning curve to see what can be turned off to lengthen the battery life, but I REALLY like this phone. The other thing I did, was I bought the phone at Costco. Yeah, Costco! It was time for me to upgrade. I got the same price as I would have gotten if I'd upgraded online, except, that online, I would have gotten a $100 gift card for the $100 mail-in rebate. I got it right off the bat. VERY COOL. Also, they throw in the wall charger, ear buds, and a car charger! YAY! I didn't have to buy that stuff. I still don't know what else I can do with this phone, but at Thanksgiving at my parents house on Sunday, my brother and I found some fun Applications to load. (Driod Fart machine... yeah, I'm completely juvenile...)
The weather here is NUTS. It's 8 degrees right now and we have like 6-8 inches of snow. This week was supposed to be conference week. We cancelled conferences on Monday because it was snowing SO hard that we were worried about getting home safely. I did two phone conferences and two parents would like to reschedule. I have 8 more conferences from yesterday that need to be rescheduled as there was no school yesterday.