After some cold weather in January, February has come in so beautifully. This is part of the reason I love living in San Antonio so much – the mild and fantastic weather we have most of the “winter” months.

Kevin has been taking full advantage of the weather to play golf on his simulator in the backyard, and Arthur has been joining him, which is awesome.

Speaking of Arthur, he is killing it in the middle school Beanstalk competition for how many hours he has logged for reading. He is first in the seventh grade for last month, and first overall for the entire school year. Pretty awesome. I guess the reading apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – ha ha!

The other day, I had the funniest conversation with my little brother, Matthew. I was wishing him a happy birthday, and he told me that he was only turning 45, not 46 like I thought. It then led to me realizing that sometime over this past year, I began thinking I was 48, but I was actually 47!! What?! I was adding a whole year to my life. So I guess I get to enjoy being a year younger than I thought for the next month before my birthday 😂.

I follow quite a few religious and inspirational accounts on Instagram, and one of the is from a teacher at BYU named John Hilton III, who has a fabulous youtube/podcast course called Finging Christ in the Old Testament. It is amazing, by the way. Well, he was talking about how Utah is trying to get Good Friday made into a holiday, and everyone was chiming in about other places where it was treated as a holiday (for example, in Texas, it is always a holiday off of school), and I mentioned that in Pennsylvania it was always a holiday off of school, etc. Well, he asked if he could post my reply on his page and he did!! In his stories and in a post – so fun! It is like I am famous 😉.

Speaking of people I follow on Instagram, Hank Smith shared the most wonderful thoughts on feed the other day about how God loves us always – it is constant. “The Lord knows all about you, all the bad and all the good, and He loves you more than you can comprehend.” It was so good, I had to share it on my own stories.

School has been going great. We have had some super fun lessons about weathering, erosion, and deposition (I don’t think I will ever get the funny song out of my head 😂.). And then there have been all the many, many February birthdays – very fun!

We also made sure to heart attack Mrs. Staples door for school counselor week. I did it last year with my class, and they loved it, so I had to do it again. So fun!

A few weeks ago, Lily in my homeroom had the idea to put on a play, and so she and a bunch of the kids used the indoor recess time to write and practice it. Yesterday, they finally performed it for the class, and it was super cute, even if some of the girls forgot all their lines because they had stage fright.

In all the fun, there is a lot of work. I push those kids hard, making them accountable for taking notes in their journals, participate by reading aloud and hand signals, etc. I definitely try to make sure that everyone is involved. Oh, and it took forever, but we got an attendance award, and the kids voted on a pajama day.

Ever since my first week back at the school, I have been working with my new and amazing friend, Alison Martin, a 4th grade science teacher at Stone Oak Elementary, to plan together for science units. It has been awesome!! Such an answer to prayers. Well, on Tuesday morning, I was able to go and observe her teach and plan together. I also got to sit in on one of the 4th grade social studies teachers. It was great to see the different styles of teaching, but best of all, to be with my friend and work together.

And then on Saturday, it was time to see the Reagan High School production of “The Prince of Egypt,” which was spectacular! I had seen the cartoon years ago, but had no idea they had made it into a Broadway play. Derek was so excited to see some of his friends who are seniors this year, especially his friend who just happened to play Ramses. Pretty fun!

It was also Super Bowl weekend, and so I took advantage of taking it easy after church, to have Arthur help me finish the Valentines I made for all 65 of my fourth graders. It was so great to have them ready, and even better to have his help.

One other thing that filled quite a bit of our time, was Arthur’s Pre-UIL choir concert. He did a fantastic job with his choir, and I am sure that by the time they have their competition at the beginning of March, they will be amazing.

It has definitely been a great February so far 😊.