Fall is Finally Here

It is beginning to finally feel like Fall here.  :)  PRAISE THE LORD!!!

In just a couple of weeks Isaac will be turning 9 and I will be preparing for Stephen to turn ONE!!!  Wow.  The time has flown by.  Isaac is half-way to leaving us for college and Stephen is getting ready to explore the world by foot.  :)  I asked Isaac if he wanted to share a cake with Stephen and he was fine with it until I started talking about themes for the party.  :)  He is very much still into sports and has asked this year for a Grizzlies cake.  I haven't decided what I will do for Stephen.

Sweet Autumn lost both of her two front teeth this past week, and she looks adorable.  I took one picture right before she pulled the second tooth, so I need to take another picture of what she looks like now.  I will post it on our smugmug site.

In other news, we are getting ready to adopt.  I will post the full story later, but this is something that has been on our heart since Joel's very first trip to China in 2000.  It's finally time!  I am not sure how long the whole process will take, but I will do my best to keep you posted.

I am in the process right now of posting some pictures and videos up on our site, but because of the size of the files they are not yet finished.  So, there will not be a lot of pictures attached here today, but travel on over to www.hartingfamily.smugmug.com to see more.

I filled-in a couple of weeks at a local elementary school and am happy to report that their permanent teacher is here now.  Woo-hoo!  But honestly it was a very eye-opening experience and it was a blessing to get to know some of them and to see how things go in the schools here.  So as of now I am only teaching at a preschool. 

I have 400 students from ages 2-5 (is it possible to learn their names when I only see them once a week?).  Each class has about 40 students with 10 classes total.  When I taught preschool in America I had about 15 students, so this is a new experience for me!!!  I asked for some ideas on facebook as far as discipline/encouragement.  I finally came up with an idea after I saw an example on the internet of a "punch card."---like the ones they have where if you get 10 punches you get something free.  Well, instead of doing that I made a mini-passport for each child.  At the beginning of class the teacher hands out their passports.  Then throughout the class

, I give them punches (not in the face...but on their passport) for participation while the other teachers walk around and stamp their books if they are behaving well.  It has worked remarkably well, but the teachers don't fully get the concept (or they are being lazy and don't want to help me walk around and give them to the children.)  Anyways, the kids seem to be very motivated to get the stamps. 

Most of the kids at the kindergarten are very well-behaved, but I have had some "encounters" with a few of them.  I am still SHOCKED that a student would look at a teacher and defiantly say, "NO!" Or that they would run around the room while the teacher chases them.  What ends up happening is that the homeroom teacher ignores the child, and then that ends up being a huge distraction for the other kids.  Of course I don't allow this to happen when I am there.  :)  I feel like the teacher should always win!  No kid should be allowed to walk all over their teacher--you know what I mean.  So I have my work cut out for me, and I need prayer to not lose my patience.