Crazy week

What a week I've had. To the casual observer, it might not have seemed all that stressful, but it definitely seemed like the longest week I've had in a long time. The biggest stressor was the culmination of the state-required senior graduation project, which for this last year is part of the senior English curriculum. When I started at this school district, it was structured like a debate, but we found that very few students truly knew how to debate well, and we didn't have enough time with everything else in our course to teach them how to do so. Once the creator of that structure retired, I was given permission to revise the project, and I changed it to more of a formal business presentation with visual aids. Then this fall, all four of the senior English teachers decided to change it to more of a science fair format, to which we would invite parents, faculty, administration, and other community members. Well, the dry run of this "expo" was on Tuesday with the big day on Wednesday. I was on my feet for all but 45 minutes of the day talking to kids, asking them questions, and evaluating their projects. Also this week I had 12 hours of rehearsal at church for our Christmas program, which was this morning and for which I played the keyboard. The weather was crazy this week, with snow, ice, and everything in between (usually worst when I had to drive somewhere). Also, my parents came on Friday afternoon and are staying until tomorrow morning and will come back Christmas night. How glad am I that presents were bought and wrapped, cookies baked, and cards sent before this week started!