I absolutely love 3 day weekends. It doesn’t matter that I don’t work full time or have anything to do on Monday…I love the fact that James is home for an extra day and I can spend more time with him, my family, and my friends. This extra time has contributed to shopping and game nights this weekend.

Yesterday, James and I left our house with the intentions of going 3 places: the college library, Wal-Mart, and a local used bookstore. We started at the library, where I printed about 25 pages for next week’s classes. I really wish my professors would become more environmentally friendly, and then I would just print at home. I don’t want to waste all my ink in a short amount of time though, as it would be gone in a month with the amount of things I have to print daily. We then went to Wal-Mart to get my oil changed and tires balanced, but with their wait time being 2 hours, we decided not to get it done.

My mom called us then, and said that her and my sister wanted to go with us to the bookstore, but wouldn’t be ready to go until about 3 or after because they were going to my great aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary party. It was only 1:30pm at the time, so James and I had some lunch, then stopped by GameStop and purchased Lego Batman for the Wii. It’s such a cute little game! When we finally met up with my mom, we ended up going to a clothing store similar to TJ Maxx and Marshall’s (New clothes, but last season’s styles so they are marked down drastically) first. I got a pair of gray dress pants and a dress shirt for just $18. We finally made it to the bookstore, and I purchased one book for myself and about 10 children’s books for my future classroom (an early start, I know!)

We also hit up the mall, which has a Barnes & Noble inside. I ended up with 4 more books: Frostbite and Shadow Kiss from the Vampire Academy series, The Essential 55 by Ron Clark (for the teacher in me), and Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (for a lesson plan I have to do in class). I know I really should consider purchasing books online, but when I go into a Barnes & Noble, I cannot leave empty-handed. After having dinner in the food court and stopping by Wal-Mart for groceries, our exhausting but fun day was over.

Today has been MUCH more relaxed. We’ve just been laying around the house, doing laundry, and playing video games. We are about to start dinner and my mom and sister are coming over. My step-dad and brother are gone camping for the weekend, which explains why we’ve had to entertain them all weekend. We are going to have yet another game night.  Our last one was Friday night, which involved 6 people playing a few hands of Skip-Bo. Tonight will be more geared toward board games.

Thanks to all of those who gave me some inspiration/advice regarding my last post. I really have to sit down, think about how bad I want to lose weight and get in shape, and then just do it.

I am becoming more and more excited about teaching. I know this has become the main topic on my blog lately, but it’s a huge part of my life now so I always have something to say regarding college and teaching. This week, I learned that the state has standards set that each teacher must meet. These standards are exactly what should be taught, depending on subject and grade level. What’s even better is that the website for the standards even breaks down each element (sub-unit of a standard) so that you know what and how to teach. I was always unsure on how to set up a curriculum, but it’s basically already been done. I just have to learn how to write effective lessons plans!

When I’m not in school or doing homework, I’ve gotten back into reading for pleasure. I haven’t read anything other than a textbook since the beginning of July, though I have a whole stack of books waiting to be read. I just finished Vampire Academy, the first in a series of 4 books. It was really good, and I plan to pick up Book 2 (Frostbite) tomorrow at Wal-Mart. I’ve also began watching “True Blood.” I watched 6 episodes yesterday, and 2 today…It’s quickly sucking me in! I never thought I’d get into all the vampire stuff, but I guess my love for horror flicks, then Twilight, and now these are really getting me into the fictional characters.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July. James and I slept in, then went to a local used book store that is supposed to be awesome. Everyone I heard that from was right. The store is HUGE, and have thousands of books at really good prices. We ended up with 10 books (1 for James, 9 for me ) for a little over $10. We traded in some books and got $11 in store credit, so the new books didn’t cost us a penny! Their prices run from $0.10 to $15.00 (maybe more, that’s just the highest we saw), and they have lots of paper and hard backs to choose from. The store layout took a lot of getting used to…we were in there for well over an hour just browsing through the shelves. I have decided that I will be trading in and buying the majority of the books there from now on.

After hitting up the book store, we went to James’ friends’ son’s 7th birthday party. He had “Harley Davidson, changed to the last minute to a luau” themed party. So there were leis, baked ham, orange and black balloons, and a Harley cake. He’s one indecisive little kid. The party was fun…the kids got soaked with water balloons, and then shot off fireworks when it started getting dark. James and I left not long into their fireworks so that we could get home and watch the city fireworks from our back deck. It’s nice to no longer have to fight the traffic to watch a 20 minute show of fireworks.

When our friend Austin got off work, he came over and we played Rock Band until almost 5am…well, James and Austin played longer, but I passed out on the couch!

Today has been a pretty relaxing day. We got up and James made a cheesecake (which I had planned to make but he beat me to it), and we are about to get ready to head up to my parent’s house for a fish fry. All in all, it’s been a good weekend!