Things I love today...

Colleen and Emel are morning people. They wake up and start singing to themselves. They have conversations across the apartment before my eyes are even open all the way. Today Emel fashioned her hair into a bow, like her hair looks like a bow, for her work Christmas party.

While Taylor Swift serenaded us in the background, my kids worked on creating the covers for their book portfolios and a few of them started waving their arms back and forth to "Breath" like they were at a concert. In third period Rachel walked around mouthing the words to "Change" like she actually was Taylor Swift performing at a concert.

There are Christmas garland and lights strung across my classroom, a countdown till winter break on the white board, and all the final projects are coming to a close.

7th graders are doing frog dissections this week so I can hear squealing from the Science rooms, the hallway smells like formaldehyde, and everyone has stories about oozing blood and taking out the egg-filled ovaries. "Miss Wright, my frog has a lot of fat bodies. Looks like humans aren't the only creatures affected by obesity."

Friendship Bracelet Club is my favorite. Today we cut out snowflakes for my room and Rach had a minor, dramatic mishap with the scissors. We listened to more Taylor Swift and worked on bracelets and girls drew on the white board and the Vigrens gave me my first Christmas present and Maddy made me laugh.

Annie is really good at Skyping. Tonight she was explaining that she can't take the hardest AP Science class because then she would have to do 4 hour labs every night instead of talking to camp friends for 4 hours every night. I support that logic.

I like that while we were Skyping she got to see Colleen in a turban, play show and tell, watch Cameron cook in an apron, meet Clover the clover, talk about reunion ideas, get surprised by Rachel with me and find lots of treasures from camp like a corn dog candle.