it's official--

Here are the reasons why I am now officially a grown up:

1) I entered '24' as my age on a work out machine at the gym

2) I hard boiled eggs all by myself yesterday

3) I am now the proud parent of a metallic chrome kitchenaid stand mixer!

words of wisdom

So, my birthday is this Friday. I don't really make a big deal about my birthday, but I've been joking with my students by saying the following: "Now, I won't be at school on Friday, so I'll be accepting my gifts on Thursday." Most of them are really curious about how old I'm going to be. The typical guesses I get from them are 26,28, or mid 30s. Which is funny, because I've talked to all my classes MULTIPLE times about when I went to high school, when I graduated from college, etc.


Best (appropriate) quote of the week so far:

"Life ain't easy. You can get a splinter sliding down a rainbow."

A student told this to his friend when she was complaining that the worksheet I gave them was too hard.

the mystery of the fire dragon

Nancy gets to go to Hong Kong! We learn a lot about the Chinese culture in this book. And guess what? Ned Nickerson (Nancy's kind of boyfriend) is studying abroad there! HOW PERFECT.

So, there are two things that really stood out to me in this book:

1) Nancy's friend, Bess's (the plump one with blonde hair who always tries to get Nancy to stop solving a mystery) weight is mentioned a lot in this book. There are several references to Bess being hungry, wanting to eat, or her friends laughing at her because of her appetite. For instance

Bess's worries did not seem to affect her appetite and she was able to eat every crumb of the food brought to her. George and Nancy declined dessert, but Bess...ate custard pudding dotted with almonds. Keene, c. (1961) The mystery of the fire dragon. New York: Grosset and Dunlap

2) Okay, so this is Nancy's 38th mystery. You'd think she'd get the hint: Peeps want to kidnap you and then mug you. YOU ARE NOT SAFE ALONE, Nancy. So what does she do? She leaves her friends at dinner to walk the New York streets (this is before the trip to China) to go to a stationery store. And what happens? Oh, you know, a flowerpot just gets thrown at her head, she gets knocked unconscious onto the sidewalk. Do her friends think to say, "hey, Nancy, we'll come with you" or "hey, Nancy, do you remember that phone threat you got from an unknown caller?" Nope.

Don't get me wrong, I love Nancy, however, I think sometimes she lacks a bit of common sense.

Do you have any math tums?

Today marked the end of a full FIVE day school week since January 14th. WOWZA!
I was somewhat anxious starting this week, not entirely sure what to expect, anticipating the kids being wild, but all in all it was a pretty good week.

Here are some of the highlights:

1) I finally feel like I fully understand the quadratic formula! Like, it's wild, and yes, I know this is going to sound REALLY DORKY, but, I just feel really connected to parabolas and their equations.

2) I did this dance called "The Bernie" for my students. They were blown away by my moves. And yes, this is a dance based off the movie, Weekend at Bernie's

3)I was told: "Ms. Ebberts, watch, one day come dude is going to open his mouth and breath fire all over you." This was a student explaining the phrase "spitting fire", which is similar to the phrase "spitting game" only the 'fire' part of it implies that the person is hot or something like that...

student: not to be offensive or anything...but it smells like kitty litter in here.
me: oh, i'm not offended. oh, but you know, i did put on my kitty litter perfume this morning.


(As I'm biting into my apple)
student: can I have that apple?
me: i just put my mouth on it.
student: we can share it. i only have herpes, so it's nothing serious.