Hey, check out my new logo!  I designed it myself because I’m, well, too cheap to hire a real artist!

Hey, teachers.  Sorry for the long layoff on the blog.  At the end of summer break I had a couple interconnected bits of bad luck.  It all started when my son noticed that a beautiful tree in the backyard had suddenly split down the middle.

🙁

 Sadly, after a lot of attempts to save it, we were forced to cut it down for safety.  The guys that cut it down, had this beautiful tree down to the stump in 4 hours.

Enjoying the tree one last time in the morning sun.

One hour later

3 hours later – that’s depressing to see

So what does this tree have to do with me not blogging for awhile?  Well, surrounding this tree we had about 100 large decorative bricks that had to be moved to the from backyard to the front of the house.  In the process of moving all of these bricks, I somehow messed up my back – big time.

I was laying on my side on the floor, in bed, or on the couch for about two weeks solid – not fun.  Fortunately, my back pain started to diminish right around by the time schools started.

I’ll say this, nothing makes you feel old like back pain.  I was feeling and walking a lot like the guy I dressed up as for spirit day last year.

You kids get off my lawn!

I’m crossing my fingers that it never flares up again.

Anyhoo, I am coming up on some really exciting milestones (500 followers and 1,000 reviews) on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Look for me to throw a big sale and give away some fun freebies really soon.  I’ll also try to finish up the posts about gamification of the classroom including some details about how the new things we’ve tried have been going so far.  Cool stuff!