Song of my Life

Hi everyone! It's me! You know, the one who can't post more than one entry a week to save her life? I just want to start out by saying hi to Angela, the ITS (Instructional Technology Specialist) at my school who reads my blog. :) I'm thinking about applying to be an ITS in the future, so this year I'm going to be working with her a little bit. This next week at one of our staff development sessions, I'm going to be presenting with her about blogging in the K-2 classroom. I know you're shocked! Me who can't seem to get my blogging act together. That whole blog design thing just takes alot of time away from all the profound writing I could be doing. But apparently some of these things, as well as being a product of the first generation raised on computers, might make me a good ITS. I'm very excited about the prospect!

Since we didn't get to go on a real vacation this summer, I decided to take advantage of our last weekend before I go back to work. I found a great price on a four star hotel at Hotwire.com and planned a surprise staycation for me and Lucas. When he got off work on Friday, I had him meet me at my parents house where I'd dropped off the weenie dog. He thought he was coming to help my dad with something, but instead, I had our bags packed and we hopped into the car and headed down the road. He was shocked! I directed him to the Westin City Center hotel in Downtown Dallas. We checked in and went up to our room, which overlooked the ice rink at the Plaza of the Americas. After we got settled in a bit, we headed out to Mattito's for dinner. It was a very fun little Mexican place in Uptown which had come highly recommended by several friends. In an effort to stick to that resolution I made to take more pictures, we took one at dinner. We had the fajitas, which were great.


When we got back to the hotel, we went down to the Plaza and walked around for a bit. I tried to convince Luke to go ice skating with me (or at least take the zamboni for a spin,) but I think the prospect of helping me up off my butt all night probably wasn't that appealing. So instead, we opted for a couple of chocolate turtles from the candy store and headed back up to the room.

Saturday morning we slept in, which was delightful, and went downstairs for breakfast. While we were eating, we watched a bunch of kids taking figure skating lessons, which is the closest I've gotten to watching the Olympics this summer. One boy and girl were skating together and they were absolutely incredible for being around ten years old. I was impressed. After breakfast, we packed our stuff up and headed out to the Dallas World Aquarium!

I'd been to the aquarium twice before on field trips- once in high school, and once when I taught first grade. Neither experience were super enjoyable for obvious reasons, so it was nice to get to go and just take it all in without worrying about the welfare of twenty plus students. In case you haven't been to the DWA, which I'm assuming most of you probably haven't, it's really more of a zoo than an aquarium. I'm not actually sure why they even call it the aquarium. Basically, it's an indoor rainforest. You start out up in the canopy and make your way down through the layers of the rainforest. When you make it all the way to the bottom, there are some fish, sharks, and penguins, but the majority of the place isn't aquatic life. Visiting the aquarium was a great way to get me all psyched up for our jungle themed school year- "Wild about Learning!" Haha. Below are some of my favorite pictures that my cute husband took.

Me with the flamingos- my favorite!

Me and Luke in front of the flamingos- still my favorite.

Look! We found Nemo!

Us in front of some incredible anemone-type creatures.

A penguin eating a fish. No, that's not me feeding it.

More flamingos.

The beautiful (sleeping) jaguar.

A toucan?

The cutest little monkey I've ever seen.

A real live Sloth! He was taking a little nap.

The polka dotted sting rays, along with some turtles and ducks.

Some kind of poison frog.

After the aquarium, we headed back to my parents house to pick up Bailey. We had a great weekend and Lucas was very surprised, which is what I was going for. I love surprises!

Hope everyone has a great week- especially all my teacher friends!