If you live in Tennessee, then you are experiencing exactly the same thing as me. If you don't, then you may not have had the pleasure of the wonderful 4-6 inches of snow, plus the thick layer of "wintry mix," (code for ICE) that we received yesterday and this morning. It's pretty amazing...or not amazing, depending on how you look at it. Most people I know think it's pretty amazing! Of course school got cancelled yesterday, and rightly so, so yesterday was a nice and restful day off for those of us educators. Actually, most people I know ended up getting home early from work, no matter where they work. I got a couple of errands run in the morning before the snow started, and the rest of the day was spent totally relaxing! I wasn't feeling well yesterday- came down with a silly head-cold, so I blew my nose a lot, made taco soup and guacamole, and we watched "Hoosiers."

Today, I feel much more "clear," and am thoroughly enjoying day #2 of being "snowed in." I am taking advantage of not being able to leave my house by doing all of the housework things that typically have to be CRAMMED in: things like cooking, clothes washing, cleaning, organizing, etc. I decided to go ahead and plan this week's meals and cook as much ahead of time as possible. So, here's what I planned for our week:

Sat. night: BBQ chicken pizza

Sun. lunch: Thai chicken and veggies w/peanut sauce/edamame

Mon: Ham & potato soup/Arugula salad

Tues: Baked cajun tilapia/rice and veggies/homemade bread

Wed: Baked chicken/ haricot verts/spicy black eyed peas

Thurs: Low-fat ckn alfredo/haricot verts/homemade bread

So, here's what I have made for the week

- 4 rounds of whole wheat pizza dough, 2 that have become pizzas: 1 to eat tonight and 1 to freeze (yes, you can make your own healthy frozen pizzas! The other 2 doughs will be frozen for later pizzas- we LOVE homemade pizza) :-)

- Tomorrow's lunch: peanut sauce, brown rice, chicken and veggies (will combine all tomorrow)

- Ham & potato soup

- Rice & veggies

- Haricot verts (cooked and flash frozen, ready to be reheated)

- Spicy black eyed peas w/red bell pepper and jalepeno-mmmm!

- Alfredo sauce and chicken (frozen and ready to be heated)

- Homemade loaf of 4 seed whole wheat bread (this is actually still baking-it's smelling great!)

It's basically my own version of what you do at the places like "Super Suppers." The idea is to prep everything so that during the week you can simply thaw, or heat up things you have already made. I LOVE it because I love to cook, and I make pretty much everything we eat from scratch, so having the time during the week is challenging, and this is much better option.

Next on the agenda: grading Direct objects and predicate nominatives quizzes!! Yay!

Have an awesome day, whatever you are doing!!!

One of the funny things about being a teacher has been to learn how teachers think and act about certain things that you never realize as students. (Or maybe you do) Some of those are snow days. Around Page Middle School, everyone's been freaking out because the forecast has been calling for 1-3 inches today or tonight, and in Williamson County, that means no school for a minimum of 1 day! I grew up here, so I know how quickly they call it off. Even though we just started back Monday from Christmas Break, the students were SO excited. But that's just the students...I personally think I saw more begging and pleading from the teachers than I did the students. It was funny.

Yesterday at school, me and the math teacher on our team decided we were just going to act like we were definitely having school, so all day we were telling the students we couldn't wait to see them tomorrow, and "don't be made if you're here tomorrow;" basically stuff like that :-) One of the teachers who was holding out for snow big time, and not shy to say it, ran around outside the building during the last class of the day putting snow flakes on our windows that read "believe." Pretty funny stuff!

So last night around 6:30pm I got a call on my phone that school had been cancelled for today. Pretty funny stuff, considering not one flake had fallen, or has fallen to this point. Yesterday the radars had been showing that we would get snowfall in the middle of the school day, and I'm sure the superintendent felt he would rather take his chances in cancelling then deal with the circus of an early dismissal at all the schools. It's pretty hilarious now though because it looks like we're not going to get much of anything. :-) I personally will enjoy the day off, but am a little more concerned about getting the work done that we need to. So all in all, I am sure the kids will enjoy their day off, but I think they'd like it more if they had snow to play with. Oh well! I certainly enjoyed the sleeping in. I mean, I am sitting here typing this in my pajamas when I would have been teaching paraphrasing and summarizing right now. :-) Have a great day!

Snowy Surprise

Most people say they can't stand Tennessee weather. I love it! I mean, where else do you go to sleep on the last day of February and wake up with this on the first day of March?






So pretty! And I'm LOVIN' it!!!