Awards, New Blogs, and Giveaway

First of all, a huge thank you to

for these two awards!

Be sure to check out Teaching Joys for a chance to win a Target gift card! Who couldn't use one of those right now? She's celebrating reaching her first 25 followers. Please pop over there and check out what she's doing.

I'm so thrilled and honored that she thought of my little blog. I hope you'll understand if I combine the rules a bit. I'll post 7 random things about myself and pass the awards on to 15 more bloggers- which is good because I've been wanting to share some new blogs I've come across anyway. So this is a good time to do that.

So here it goes. Seven random facts about me:

1. Once, in college, a friend and I went to Macy's and on some strange whim we ran up the down escalator. It's really hard if you've never tried it. We were laughing hysterically and were firmly scolded by an employee at the top of the escalator. I never did figure out why it occurred to us to do that????

2. I never thought I could teach Kinder, 1st, or 2nd grade. Now I'm not sure how I'd teach kids who are as tall as me. It turns out that these low grades are much more fun than I thought 15 years ago.

3. Mexican food is probably my favorite food. I could eat it every day.

4. My favorite kind of music is country music, especially current Red Dirt/Texas/Americana music.

5. My favorite colors to wear are red and brown.

6. Thanks to my husband I'm a bit of a NASCAR fan. I was never big into sports although the rest of family love football, baseball, basketball, and golf. We've been to several races and I enjoy watching races on tv sometimes. My husband is a Jeff Gordon fan. Please don't hate me for being a Kyle Busch fan.

7. My first teaching job was in a tiny school district in the central valley of California. By tiny I mean a town with 1 blinking red traffic light, a volunteer fire department that was in a garage, and a school library that was actually the county library located in an old house down the street from the school. There was basically 1 teacher per grade level K-8. And the principal was the superintendent, 7th and 8th grade teacher and coach of a few sports. There are definitely advantages to a small school.

I'm passing these awards on to the following award-deserving blogs. Some are new ones I recently found and some are simply among my faves.