Joyeux Poisson d'Avril!

Now traditionally I hate April Fool's day, but that's because I'm a teacher and I've had horrible things happen at school on that day. Luckily this year it's a Sunday and I'm grateful that neither my husband nor I believe in playing tricks on each other. I will say the French have a cool way of celebrating. They try and tape a paper fish on the back of someone without being noticed.

"In France and Italy children (and adults, when appropriate) traditionally tack paper fish on each other's back as a trick and shout "april fish!" in their local language ("poisson d'avril!" and "pesce d'aprile!" in French and Italian respectively)."

I think that's a much better tradition than doing something awful to scare or hurt someone. I'm honestly hoping to just go through tomorrow at school without mentioning it at all.

It's been a month-ish since I last posted. Jake is well into being 4. He's had another ear infection this month, but I don't think we're going to get tubes right away because insurance wants 6 in a year before they'll pay for tubes. Currently we're at 4 but if we make it through April without any, then we're back down to 3. It's incredibly frustrating because obviously he needs them again. I'm worried about him becoming amoxicillin resistant like Ellie has become with ear infections. Other than the ears though, he's doing well. He can write his name - which is super cool. He's also pronouncing words more correctly now. He used to say, "lellow" for yellow and since they worked on the letter Y at school, he says "yellow" correctly. He loves learning the letters of the alphabet and is really doing an amazing job at recognizing them. But along with all that comes the age 4 tantrums and he really is incredibly bull-headed and he just wants his way all the time.

Ellie turns 8 in about a week. That doesn't seem possible. We're having a bounce house birthday party at our house again - I'm praying that it doesn't rain. We've had such beautiful weather up until now. She's super excited for her birthday party and honestly, I am too. How is it possible that she's 8. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was pregnant with her and student teaching...

Speaking of teaching, things are going relatively well. The weather has been so beautiful that students are just done, and honestly, I am too. I'm glad we didn't have too many snow days so that we get out on time (my birthday actually) and it seems like the weeks are going to go really fast. It's definitely been a year of learning for me. I feel good about how the year has gone and I'm thinking already of things that I'm going to change for next year. I have 5 students that I'm taking to France with the teacher from Truman and her 22ish students (I don't remember the exact count). It will be a 2 week trip, the same one I went on when I was in high school. I'm incredibly nervous about it. I'm worrying about hosting someone here, staying at their house in France, traveling with students (in general), how my kiddos here are going to handle my being gone, how much I'm going to miss being at home with my family. I know it'll be ok, but it's just getting to that point.