Valentine boxes, field trips, PD drama, and one kid’s instant switch from hugs to mean mugs.

This week on Espresso Yourself, the girls are back for a post Valentine’s catch up, classroom edition and real life included. Becky breaks down the wild world of kindergarten Valentine boxes (think: a full 3D shark and an entire soccer field), plus the chaos of passing out goodies with 20 kids and zero patience. Add in a “Love Our Authors” celebration, baseball opening day, and a Valentine’s dinner tradition that ends with her too tired to even pour a glass of wine.

Katie shares her own unforgettable kindergarten moment from filming a small group lesson, complete with a sweet hug at the beginning and an Olympic level mean mug by the end (plus the audacity of asking for a ring pop after acting up). Then the conversation shifts into the very real teacher life: PD days, tech tools, bandwidth fails, and what actually makes professional development helpful (hint: smaller groups and real follow through).

It’s funny, honest, and full of those “only in education” moments, plus a sneak peek at what’s coming next week with field trips, shirts, and all the stories still brewing.

From sparkly cowboy hats to school chaos, this week is a full cup kind of recap. Katie is back from her Texas tech conference and returns with big takeaways, major exhaustion, and the most iconic piece of conference merch imaginable (yes… it involves a light up cowboy hat). The girls catch up on everything from unexpected run ins with running friends, education tech overload, and the post conference crash… to Moana rehearsals, classroom life, and the kind of everyday chaos that somehow always finds a way into the conversation. It’s a little bit teacher life, a little bit mom life, a little bit running talk...and a whole lot of real life.

It’s just Becky and Allyson this week (Katie’s off living her best conference life), but we’re not flying solo, we’re welcoming our very first guest! After a quick catch up that includes kindergarten chaos, Moana Jr. auditions (95 kids?!), and a week that felt like a full moon fever dream, we bring in Alex Baker (@ketchuptocancer) for a conversation that’s equal parts heartbreaking, inspiring, and unexpectedly hilarious. Alex shares how losing his wife to stage 4 colorectal cancer changed everything and how he turned grief into forward motion through running, fundraising, and his mission to “catch up to cancer” (yes, there’s ketchup involved). We talk charity marathons, the pressure of fundraising, why forward is a pace, and how a wild idea (and 5,000 ketchup packets) grew into something way bigger than he ever imagined. Bring tissues… and maybe a mustard-only hot dog.