The Lazy Days of Summer

Well, my lazy days of summer officially ended this week as I began doing some work up at my school. I worked summer camp for 3 days and then had 2 days of new teacher orientation. Not the most exciting week, but I did find out which classroom is mine, so I can finally start organizing and planning it! It is very bright and cheerful, with 2 walls of just windows! While I don't like the lack of wall space, I love how bright, open, clean, and airy the room feels. I will definitely post photos on here once I get it going.

Of course, Brent also continued work this week, and he is still really liking it. I guess they like him, too (I mean, who wouldn't?) because they asked him to go with them to recruit at MIT! He is super pumped and I am happy for him, too. He'll be gone overnight to Boston and spend all day talking to students at the career fair. He'll also get to catch up with friends there, so that will be nice, too! That happens in September.

Spent time today just taking care of more business, and am happy to say that I am officially a Maryland driver and also have a joint account as Mrs. Allison McLaughlin. Whew! Glad to have most of that process done. And I have to share, the woman from the credit union (who had all of the OK questions last time) had one more funny one today. She was telling me that sometimes schools cancel classes for the day in Hawaii if there are really awesome waves, so that everyone can go surfing (jealous!) and then proceeded to ask me if, for religious purposes, we ever cancelled school due to pow-wows in Oklahoma.

Um, no.

Another funny story about moving from OK . . . we were going through orientation stuff at school yesterday, including the fire drill, bomb threat procedures, etc. I was so confused as I was flipping through the book, searching for the tornado drill procedures. I almost raised my hand to ask, and then the lightbulb turned on . . . OH! They don't have tornados here! They don't have to do tornado drills. Isn't that weird. I have been doing tornado drills in school since I was a kid, and even went through actual tornado procedures while student teaching in Stillwater because the tornados were that close. Needless to say, it's weird that we won't have to talk about tornado drills here.

Other updates . . . let's see. We pretty much finished our apartment on Sunday, aside from hanging pictures on the wall because I am still waiting on family and wedding photos. It is so nice, though, to come home to a clean, decorated, and cozy apartment every night. We love it! When it is completely finished, I will post pictures . . . be looking for those!

For now, I will end with a few pictures of our dear cat, Pumpkin, who is currently sitting on my lap, making it very hard to type. I took these last week (with our new, awesome camera that we love!) and I think they pretty much sum of the phrase "lazy days of summer" . . .

Isn't she just precious? Oh, how I love summer.

Loving and missing all of you! [hugs]