Required reading--retch!

As a part of the AP grant our school has every teacher must attend a week of AP training each summer. To date I've attended four AP trainings and will attend my fifth in a few weeks. Not all of these trainings have been a full week...but that's still a lot of training.

For this summer's workshop we were given the names of two books and an essay that we are required to read, though I double-checked the email and it did say "have read or have knowledge of." I plan to use the latter to beg out of one of the selections. I've been reading one of the books (the one I was excited about) for about a week now and I just can't get into it. I think it's the format coupled with an overly verbose author who likes to name drop. Actually I know it's all of those things. As I try to wade through the dreaded thing, I feel massive guilt over the required reading of the AP students at my high school. But I honestly think they have been given a good selection this summer...of course, perhaps this instructor feels exactly the same way.

2nd Anniversary

Jon and I decided last year that we would make gifts for our anniversaries instead of buying them. We thought this would be a good idea for the anniversaries that weren't milestones. To decide what to create, we went with the anniversary material that each year corresponded to. For example, your first anniversary is your paper anniversary--that was easy.
Jon made me a very sweet photo book called "The Story of Us" which chronicled our lives together from 2002 to now. He wrote the whole thing in rhyming couplets and had it published on a website to create a hardcover book--very sweet. I made him a large, framed collage of our greatest moments.

This year, it was the cotton anniversary--a bit of a harder task. I made Jon the body pillow case shown above. At first, I bought the fabric because Jon loves sock monkeys and I thought I'd make something for the baby, but I realized it would be better served in making a gift for him. Still, what do you make for a man in his 30s out of sock monkey fabric? Since Jon's back surgery last year he has to use a body pillow to sleep in a certain way and so the idea was born.

Jon made me an apron with a great picture of the two of us from our trip to Ireland. He also included an Oscar Wilde quotation that I had never heard before but that we both agreed was something I would reference had I known about it. It was a really cute idea as I love to bake and could really use an apron and as he's not much of a seamstress. He even added a sweet label to the inside...