I absolutely love Washington, D.C. as if people already didn't know that! Last weekend I went to Howard University's homecoming kickoff with a concert by MaryMary. Awesome concert! The Howard University Gospel Choir really should be recorded. R.E.A.L. is a Christian R&B group made out of Howard and they were wonderful. Finally MaryMary...I wish they were able to sing more. They were incredible!

Monday I had a major meeting about one of my students whose mother is insane. My student's annual IEP meeting is coming up and we had to be briefed on what the mother tends to do in these meetings. Personally, I think the meeting was pointless. I then had to go over to another school and work with one of my 2nd graders. It breaks my heart because he doesn't know the alphabet and he's 7 years old. His teachers have just been passing him because they don't know how to work with him. The rest of the week flew by.

Thursday I had a field trip with 50 pre-k kids and 20 parents. PURE CHAOS!!! It was fun though. We went to the pumpkin patch. I had one of my morning kids, Keyshawn, tell the entire group, "Miss Conrad is my girlfriend!" That was too funny. Then one of the dad's goes, "He definitely doesn't have bad taste." Hmmm... stay away from that dad from now on. He's been hitting on me for a couple of weeks now and I am completely avoiding him. There will be no relationships like that with my students' fathers. N-O.

Yesterday was Howard's Homecoming. I didn't feel like chillin' in the rain all day so I went downtown D.C. and did the touristy thing then came back. Supposed to go to Cheesecake factory with Carla's family...we drove for 2 flippin hours when the restaurant was 7 miles away. Why? Because no one believed we knew the way there and so they followed someone who lives around here but doesn't live in Alexandria. We got to the restaurant, Carla, Camille (her sister who was staying with us), and I left because there was a 2 hour wait. I wasn't waiting until 10pm to eat dinner when I was already tired. Carla wanted me to go to a party at Love (club downtown DC) where Usher was having a Howard homecoming party. I wasn't feeling good so I declined. We got back to the apt. and Camille and I ran out to get some food and Carla went to the party. 1 hour later Carla was back because the guy that had the free tickets to get in wasn't answering his phone. I felt so bad for her b/c it was not her night.

Wednesday I leave for Las Vegas! I'm soooooo excited!!! I get to see my entire family again since the end of July. My dad is getting an award out there for work (which he doesn't know about yet) and so my mom wanted to surprise him by having the whole family out there. About a month ago I bought tickets for Patrick, Adam, and I to fly out there. My parents flew out yesterday so they're already there. It's going to be fun, yet exhausting because I come back Friday morning. Blah to that! I hope everyone has a great week!!!!

Question: What would you do if a father/mother of one of your students kept hitting on you and asking you out?

As I'm driving down one of MD's hwys which goes through the middle of nowhere next to the Potomac I start feeling the steering of my car going kinda whacky. I stop at a stoplight and this guy pulls up next to me and tells me to put my window down because he had something to tell me...my rear left tire was flat. Grrrrrrrreat! There was absolutely nowhere to pull over and check it out either. I had to drive 10 miles on this flat tire until I could actually get somewhere to change it. I pull over at a Shell station where they also had a service station and had some guy take a look at it. There was no way I was getting on my hands and knees on the wet nasty pavement before work. The guy puts a ton of air in the tire and in no time the tire was flat again. This genius who was standing over him watching was like, "I think there's a leak." DUH!!! Tires just don't go that flat that fast just like that. Then the guy working on the tire (not the idiot) gets a pair of pliers and starts pulling at something. There was a 4" nail in my tire!!!! He patched it up and miraculously I still made it to work on time. I really am not having any luck with this car. I now have had 2 flat tires and a cracked windshield, all since I bought the car in June.

My morning kept getting better. I was talking to one of the I.A's (Instructional Assistant) for pre-k when one of the afternoon kids and his mom show up. His mom starts talking about how she's not a morning person and how it was really hard for her to get up this morning, blah blah blah. Then the IA goes, "Is he going to be staying for the morning class today?" The parent says, "No, we're ready for the field trip!!" I had to step in and let the parent know that the field trip is on the 20th, which is next Thursday. She was incredibly embarassed and said that now she was going to probably forget about the field trip next week. Gotta love working in the public school system!!!!!!

I was bummed because I was hoping to go to the DC Festival which had a ton of Christian artists singing for free there. Instead of going there I stayed dry in my apt. and waited the monsoon out. We (the D.C. area) got 7.5" of rain in 2 days! We needed the rain really bad, but now things are starting to flood...so it can stop now. My dad came Monday-Wednesday for work and I got to see him, which is always good. I got a Louis Vuitton bag this week too. I really like it even if it does have cherries on it. It'll be a nice bag to take with me to Las Vegas...only 12 more days!!!

This weekend Carla and I are just going to hang out and relax. We're going to go see the movie The Gospel and then Sunday night we're going to got to part of Howard University's homecoming festivities with a gospel concert: MaryMary. That's gonna be sooo much fun!

Since I'm at work right now I need to go back to my little guys now! Have a great weekend!

So I guess I'm still posting. This past weekend was soooo much fun! Friday night I went to see Flightplan with Joanna, who I met at church. She is soooo funny. In the middle of the movie when a guy stands up to some guy she screams out, "I like that guy!!!" And everyone in the theater turned and looked at us. We then went to Wendy's and hung out until we were kicked out because they were closing.

Saturday Margee, Lisa, and I did a scavenger hunt all over downtown D.C. with another church group we're involved in. That was soooooo much fun! Even though my feet felt like they were going to fall off when we were finished, we won! That was the cool part because no one thought we were going to win, you know, since we were the new people. We started at 3pm and were finished by 8pm. LONG DAY! Sunday I had to really work on getting out of bed to go to church.

Work is going well. My highlight is definitely working with my kids everyday, I still hate the paperwork. Tomorrow I've got a staff meeting to prepare for another meeting that is happening next week. Gotta love special ed. Have a great rest of the week. Oh yeah, leave comments. I want to know if anyone else has done a huge scavenger hunt before and how long did it take?