First Day of Fall!

Today is the beginning to my FAVORITE season of all. I absolutely love sweater weather. Sweaters are my most beloved clothing item and I love being able to pull out those long lost friends after a long hot summer and reunite.

I love it when the sunny skies make it look hot outside, but you get that cool breeze that makes you reach for the jacket or favorite hoodie as you leave the house. I love brisk Sunday mornings where you race out to your car after church to keep from getting bitten by the wind to the car that's been warming in the sun for 2 hours.

Recess duty is much more pleasant in the fall. Cooler days = less smelly 8th graders!

Even though the weather is enough reason to love this season (hey that rhymed), Fall also begins the kickoff to TV season premieres! The gang's all back! Heroes, Prison Break, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Chuck, and other distant friends. Good times are a comin'.

E.O.M.

At Alcott we love acronyms, including this one, short for "Employee of the Month"! And for the month of September -that's me!! I'm so excited! Thanks Alcotters for nominating me. It means a lot. Much love!

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Jessica bugged me about 17 times this morning about not blogging for a week- so here you go...

Last night I went to the NHS v. NNHS game. Unforunately, the football part was not too interesting. However, I enjoy going just to people watch. I like hiding behind the crowd and being able to candidly watch my current and past students walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth each with a new best friend each time. Cracks me up! Every now and then I'll point out a student to Cameron and am then reminded that some people actually ARE watching the game.

Well, as we were walking over to the stadium, I saw a couple of current students and was pretty impressed with myelf for remembering their names outside of the classroom! And then we got to the stadium and they are everywhere- former students. This was the part I was looking forward to the most, and now I panic. I spent almost 10 months with these children and I cannot remember their names! Most came to me within a few minutes or so- but then it happened...
One girl runs up to me with the biggest smile on her face- I think she sensed my fear. "Hey Mrs. Hollongsworth! Remember me?" well of course I did. I remember she was in my fifth hour class and usually sat near the back and that she had pink hair most of the year. BUT what was her name... I thought I might get away with it, but then she really quizzed me. She asked "what's my name?".

Seriously? I can remember lots of other things about you, why the name? Why are you making me look like an idiot here? Why am I starting to hate you? Ah yes, it's because you are making me feel old.

I remembered what my friend Debbie had warned me about a couple of years ago. She compared her brain to a computer with limited memory space. Every summer she would "delete file" to make room for the new memory file of names. It's so true! My brain has been working so hard to learn all my new kiddos names, that I pushed all the old names out!

I thought that with only 3 groups of kids so far I could handle remembering 300 hundred names, but I was proven wrong. I know this will happen to me many many more times in the future, so I guess it's good to get it over with now!