Caution: Enter At Your Own Risk!

Oh my goodness friends!  I have been one busy little beaver these past three days.  The moving-in process FINALLY started on Monday.  My husband and I showed up at the school  bright and early Monday morning, ready to begin the long process of hauling my 3 + pallets of stuff  from the receiving room to my classroom (did I mention that the school was nice enough to let me store all my stuff there until my floors were finished)? Anyway, I deem it necessary to point out that the distance from the receiving room to my room is a really, really, really big one when your pushing or pulling or carrying mounds of boxes!  So we were about thirty minutes into it when we saw a man coming our way from the far end of the hallway.  The man started waving at us and I looked at my husband and just shrugged, saying "I have no idea who that is", but as the man got closer my husband recognized him as one of his Sergeants!  Turns out that my dear sweet husband had recruited some help without even filling me in.  So the two super strong men cleared out the entire receiving room in about an hour!  It was wonderful.  We begged his Sergeant to let us buy his lunch but he steadfastly refused and just looked straight at me and said "Thank YOU for teaching our children!"  Aahhhh.....how incredibly sweet and amazingly refreshing to have someone completely unrelated to you or your profession take the time to give such a sincere thank you.  While moving and working hard, the sergeant shared with us that THIS had been his elementary school as a child.  I thought that was so cool!

So we finished moving things in on Monday but then spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying a delicious lunch-out.  It is VERY seldom that the husband and I ever have time alone together without our two kiddos tagging along.  So we took advantage of the day and made it into a lunch date.  I did go back later that afternoon on my own but spent about two full hours just standing in the room and thinking about where things would go.  I like to take my time when setting up a classroom and tend to be very methodical about every decision.  I have never been able to fathom how some teachers can wait until those work days at the beginning of the year and then come in and have their room all ready to roll in one or two days.  It ALWAYS takes me at least a week, and when moving classrooms, at least two!

So now two days later, progress has been made.  It is very slow moving as I spent ALL day yesterday and the majority of the today just cleaning out the cabinets.  The teacher before me had left quite a bit, some that belonged to the classroom or school and some that had belonged to her.  So I had to go through everything to decide what belongs in which pile.   I made a give-away pile, a return to supply closet pile, a move to storage room pile, a recycle pile and a trash pile!  The give-away pile is HUGE and continues to grow.  I hope people claim it all, otherwise it all get's trashed!

I have a few pictures to share to give you an idea of the chaos that is my room at the point:

Day 1: Most of what came out of the receiving room, now spread out in the classroom!

 Day 2: Let cleaning and unpacking begin!

 Table and assistants desk full of things that need to find a home somewhere in the classroom!

 Another new teacher came in to work on her classroom today and as she passed through my room she said "I feel overwhelmed just being in this room...you have so much stuff!"

 But here was the highlight of my day.  My brand new carpet was delivered!  I was going to wait until I had everything in place before unrolling it but I just got too excited and curious about how it would look so...

Isn't is BEAUTIFUL!!!:)  

So tomorrow, I will return with the goal of having EVERY box unpacked by the end of the day so that I may spend next week on bulletin boards, wall displays, and organization things.  I'll be sure to keep you all updated!