Birthday, zoo, Yosemite

November 2023

We kicked off the month with celebrating our favorite nine year old. Matthew is a fun guy to hang out with. He loves reading (and his recent testing at school suggested he's at an eighth grade reading level). Matthew loves to play soccer, and he enjoys being extra curious about everything. This kid loves to take things apart, figure out how it works, and put it back together. I recently discovered that he learned about pythagorean's theorem from a book he read and he was able to describe what it is and how to use it. His curiosity and love of reading will take him far in life. His playfulness and ability to be goofy will bring him a lot of joy.

We snuck in a trip to the San Francisco Zoo on Veteran's Day, and we met up with the Schultzes there. What a blast! My kids were too young to remember it that last time we went to that zoo, so I was especially happy to get to take them before moving. And Andrew had never been there! It was so fun to mosey around while visiting with our friends, and of course check out the animals at the same time. It was also a lovely break from the organizing and cleaning out going on at our house. We had so much fun that I only took two pictures the whole time.

As a substitute, and even a long-term sub it's easy to feel unappreciated or unnoticed. It's hard to tell exactly where you belong, or to feel like you fit in with the other staff. Whenever students would bring teacher gifts and include me, I felt seen and appreciated and it always meant the world. To the parents and students who take the time to include the many teachers in your kids' lives, it means more than you know!

After officially finishing my teaching position (woooo!!), we took off for a trip to Yosemite for Thanksgiving week. We went with our wonderful friends the Ortegas and had such a great time. The kids were happy to run circles around the house playing with friends and having a multi-night sleepover. We played games, ate good food, and had lots of time to chat. We spent a day in the park hiking and climbing over boulders. On Thanksgiving day, we created an epic feast that turned out so good. Cami is the queen of the Thanksgiving turkey! Unfortunately, Thanksgiving day also brought strep throat for Andrew (though we didn't know yet), so he mostly spent the day in his room not feeling well. When we left the next day, we made a beeline for our house rather than stopping in Yosemite for another day. On Saturday, Andrew still wasn't feeling well so he went into urgent care and was diagnosed with strep throat. All the rest of us had been sick at some point over the last three weeks with similar symptoms to Andrew so suddenly I was a bit concerned. Michael and I got tested Sunday and we were both positive (even though our symptoms had been short-lived and were long gone). The text day, I took the other three kids to be tested and they were ALL still positive. It was wild to me because they'd had runny noses and coughs with their sore throats and felt better in a day or two- I didn't think strep throat could be like that. All that to say, sorry for giving strep throat to everyone around us for 2-3 weeks.