Feel Good Friday - All Things Fresh and New

A great blogger, The Girl Next Door Grows Up, used to do a Feel Good Friday link up every week, back when she had time to keep up her blog.  I miss it.  Her friend Lia Sophia Tomgirl kept it up for awhile, too, but it seems to have fizzled out.  It really made me think of the positives in my life, and I need to be encouraged to do that more often.  So I'm going to do it on my own this week (I tried to finish it up this morning but just couldn't quite wrap it up before I had to leave).  If you want to join in, just leave a comment with your link - I don't know how to do linky things and I don't have time to figure it out right this minute....

Here's five things that happened, or that I did, or that I saw, this week that qualify as "feel good" things.

1.  I started a new job, in food service at the local alternative high school.  It's where all the kids who "can't, for one reason or another, go to the regular high school" go.  That's how it was described to me.  It's a few kids with special needs and a lot of kids with shall we say, behavior problems.  It's never going to be boring.  I'll never have to go to work during a day the kids have off.  I'll never have to be there before or after school. 

This week was a little hectic and stressful, but I think we're just working through some first-week-of-school kinks.  And, I get paid.  I'm not just a volunteer, anymore.  Whee!

2.  The boys had a great first week of school, for the most part. There are a couple of new kids in their class and after a few hours of staring nervously at them, AJ actually requested to do an activity with them.  That's my boy! 

Zack is eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day (yay, he's eating something that regular kids eat....), and AJ is working on that.  He has to eat cereal right now for lunch, he can't manage the sandwich yet.  It's only the first week though, we'll work on that. 

Otherwise the notes from their teacher say that AJ has been testing, and "defiant."  That doesn't surprise me.  He's got a naughty streak, and will test boundaries every which way he can.  He's my little rebel, I guess.

3.  Aliza had a great week, too.  She is starting her 5th year in this elementary school (K thru 6th, and she just started 4th) and she knew her teacher a little beforehand, and she knows most of the kids in the class.  Made for the easiest first day of school ever.

Those aren't Christmas lights still strung around the deck.  They are.... first-day-of-school celebration lights.  Yep, that's it.

4.  I'm excited for Aliza's dancing year.  She's in a new group and will be having classes four times a week.  It'll be a total of seven and a half hours of dance instruction per week.  She is pumped for it. Today she wore her dance jacket to school, and reviewed for me all the competitions she's been in, which is where all the pins on the collar are from.  She won't have much time left over for basketball or any other sport, but she loves dance so for now, we'll keep it up, because I think it's very beneficial to her self esteem.

5.  The infamous pink shirt?  It's back.  Some things never change.