"I love overalls- I feel so cozy and roomy in here!"

Early this morning before the sun even started thinking about coming up, I met with this group of awesome girls to eat donuts and talk about Love Does. I give them a reading guide of questions and verses to look at while they go through the chapters. Then when we get together they lead the conversation with things that stood out to them or questions they still have. I love hearing them get excited to love people and do stuff.

Excerpts from my 7th grade students' Things They Carried stories:

Miss Wright always carried friendship bracelets varying from red to blue and cups and cups of coffee.

The sevies carry commitment to those awkward 7th grade relationships.

As we walk away from Camp Weloki we carry bags of dirty clothes, small bags of love notes and bug bites. But we also carry hope; hope for the next school year and hope for forever.

The piano players carry keys. Black and white words waiting to become discovered by curious fingers. Singers carry microphones that hold them up when their knees wobble like jelly. They carry their hearts on their sleeves and on the tip of their tongue.

Yesterday I told my first period class to go home and watch the really old You Tube video Kittens Inspired By Kittens because it's awesome. Today I found this poster rolled up on my desk. Oh. My. Goodness.

I immediately freaked out because it's so awesome but the mystery artist wouldn't reveal themselves. I went next door to show Mr. Hodgin and his class and one of the kids in there said, "Oh my friend drew that, she had it on the bus this morning." I thanked the girl back in my room and immediately hung it up on the wall.

For the past two weeks we've been having a fundraiser for a library to buy new books. It's a contest between English classes but I picked my 6th period Comp to compete too. Today the last 9 students brought in money to complete our 100% participation. We found out we were $8 behind the leading class and my kids sprang to action to find $6 from their backpack, 50 cents in their pencil pouch, $5 from a kid in the hall and another $5 from a favorite math teacher, and somehow one girl found a check for a whopping $81 in her locker.

During the next passing period Mr. Hodgin asked, "What was going on in there? I heard screaming and running and doors slamming. Sounded pretty exciting." We'll find out the official winner on Monday but we're crossing our fingers.

After school teams gathered for the 2nd Annual Amazing Race. This year I got to play with Milly, Lexi, Liz and Emma and we repped the overalls and tie dye like champions.

Each team is made up of four students that drafted a teacher and each group donated a bag of school supplies to a local center as their entrance fee. Once the race began the kids had to complete academic challenges in every subject area and pull their teacher around on a scooter. The teachers had to complete minute to win it challenges.

I love this school. I love that kids and teachers care about doing fun things like this. Our staff cares about our students and is willing to stay after school on Friday, be crazy and goofy, and make memorable events for these kids.

We raced around solving complex math problems with the order of operations, organizing parts of speech, conjugating verbs in French, putting together a color wheel, using the periodic table to spell teacher's names and writing a rap. I had to play dominoes with CD cases, shake my head 125 times, stack apples, unstack cards and cups, catch pencils off my hand and try to keep up 3 balloons.

Every time we completed a task we got a stamp or sticker on our score card. The girls could get two stamps if they finished the task in less than two minutes.

Everyone gathered back together in the hallway after the race to find out who had won. Ingle's team of boys won first place. My girls tied with Boss' team but won the rap-battle tie-breaker for 2nd place!

So proud to be 2nd place champs with this crew.

Dave and Beth were passing through Indianapolis on their way back to Michigan so I got to have dinner with them. I love my parents and think they're the best. I love that they're spending their retirement visiting friends, getting involved in Holland and spending time with Katie, Nick, Red and Linc. I'm lucky that I have parents that love me so much and always want to hear about my life and help however they can.

I spent the rest of the night hanging out with my friends Emily, Kata and Paige and getting ice-cream. It was a perfect end to a really great day.