Second Time Around...

Well, its been a couple of months since we got the news about FAO. At the time I originally wrote this a few weeks back, I had less than 4 weeks left with my students, and I tried so hard to mentally prepare myself to say goodbye to them. Some of them will, without any effort on their part, make that moment difficult for me. (Yes, I cried, but not in front of them.)

Holiday Spirit Week in my classroom!

We've started sorting through some of the things we don't intend to take with us, and we've begun the process of figuring out how we want the move itself to look. We hired a real estate agent to sell our home for us. And we might spend a few days in Texas with several of our closest friends, before moving on to a brief ski trip in Utah with my in-laws. 

We're preparing for our last Christmas (and Hannah's last birthday) with us being in North Carolina. Its so utterly bittersweet, because I know this round of birthdays and holidays will likely be the last for quite some time in which I have all four of my babies together. There are some major changes coming our way, and I don't really know how to predict the emotional fallout.

My students, colleagues, admin, and my students' families have all been made aware that I am leaving. I have a small surprise planned for my kids on the 14th (our holiday movie day). Ya know, just when I thought I was a fairly well-liked teacher, my collective 100 students condemned me to a full day of watching the same Tyler Perry movie three times in a row. Maybe I'm not quite as popular with the Jaguars as I thought I was becoming. Ha.

I find myself growing more and more sentimental as we get closer to my last day and to moving. Life will be changing so drastically, when usually changes are much less dramatic. 

Other than my own personal thoughts, we aren't quite close enough to go-time for there to be any substantial updates, but those will come, and they will come with increasing frequency in the following weeks. I need to remember to stash more tissues in my classroom. I feel like I'm very likely to need them.