It's that time of year again!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen! It's that time of year again! The time when little boys and girls pack their brand new backpacks full of crisp lined paper, freshly sharpened pencils, PB&J lunches, and properly labeled colorful folders for each subject. Yes, you guessed it.....BACK TO SCHOOL TIME! (OK, I know it. I'm a nerd.) I used to love (not the actual going back to school part) but the "getting-all-new-supplies" part. I'm a school supply nerd, and even now at age 26 I can't walk into Walmart in August and not drool over the colorful supplies lining the shelves. I was just packing my classroom shelves at school today with new paper (every color you can imagine), new markers (a whole cabinet full), new nametags, new pencils...etc. I always overly purchase supplies on my yearly school supply list from my school. (Hey, it's a dream come true when my school secretary hands me $125 and a 6 page list of supplies and tells me to go at it!) How can you not go crazy when someone else is paying the bill? Anyway, it's always funny each year when one of my teammates run over to my room and says, "Are you the one who read the ordering sheet wrong and ordered 50 dozen-packets of post-it notes instead of 50 post-it notes?" (I was glad to say that it wasn't me this year.) It's always fun to laugh at the person, though, who has to walk away and find storage for 1000 notecards or whatever the supply was that we overly ordered for.

Anyway, in honor of the beginning of the school year, Gene and I thought we'd post pictures of both of our classrooms on Monday's blog (the official first day of school) and allow all of you to vote for your favorite classroom decor. For those of you who don't know, Gene is teaching 4th grade at Weller Road Elementary School in Montgomery County, MD and I got a new position this year teaching a 3rd grade Gifted class at my same school in Frederick County, MD. We are both excited for this year because we both have under 20 students in our class!! (something that VERY RARELY ever happens) So, stay tuned for Monday's contest...