The snow was perfect for packing today! Eve wanted a snow bunny, so we worked on that first.
I think the bunny came out pretty good!
Snow bunnies!
The snow was really heavy!
Hard at work. It was great snow for building.
I love our snowman!!
The kids even gave it hands. :)
Back inside Lex finished building his EV3 R3PTAR (cobra-like robot) and it’s pretty cool.
Then we spaced out for the rest of the day. A little cleaning, a few games, lots of media and cookies. Vacation!
We have been busy little elves around here. Each year in the past we’ve made holiday treats for the kids to share with their teachers and classmates. This year I wanted to do the same, plus my classes. I also wanted to give my students little goodbye/thank you gifts. Unfortunately between the three classes (1st, 3rd, and 5th) there are 86 kids and I have about zero available time. I also wanted to come up with a super awesome thank you gift for my mentor teacher, and a little some thing for the other four teachers on my team. I have been quite torn between wanting to be awesome and make everything perfect, and just wanting to sleep. I finally decided I have to let go of the idea of individual gifts for the students. There are just too many of them. I thought it would be fun to get my 5th graders a MadLibs book (fits in with my writing classes, grade level, fun and educational, etc), but at over $3/book and 48 students, and me having no income… well, that just didn’t make sense.
This week I found myself on a baking binge and tonight we pulled together a nice showing for tomorrow. I have a stack of MadLibs as a gift for my mentor teacher; an awesome CD (They Might Be Giants, “Here Comes Science”) for Lex’s teacher, Eve’s teacher, and my mentor teacher; and a plate of cookies for all of the relevant teachers and staff. I started with eleven plates (five on my team, three in Lex’s room, and three in Eve’s room), but then Eve decided she really wanted to bring treats to the specials teachers and a few other people so she made bags (she didn’t like the plates I was putting together!) of cookies for nine people, plus the eight Lex and I did. Cookies galore! Every night this week Alan came home to find more cookies. He must have thought I was losing my mind! :) All of the classes are having parties tomorrow so I’m going to send in plates of cookies for the students as well. We’ll be lucky if we have any left after that! I’ll have to do more baking this weekend. ;)
Decorating gingerbread cookies a few days ago. Here’s a question for you: How do you ruin perfectly good gingerbread cookies? Answer… let children decorate them! So much sugar and candy on such a perfectly nice cookie.
Lex worked really hard on his designs this year. I think they came out so nice.
We packaged up several of the cookies to send out in care packages today.
I got a bag of Hershey Kisses from BJs and Eve insisted on opening all of them. I made a triple batch of Peanut Butter Blossoms and we still had tons of kisses left. This evening we made the pretzel/kisses/m&ms treats. Eve asked how many to make and I said we would make them until we used up all the unwrapped Hershey Kisses. It ended up being 3 trays full!
When I first asked the kids what we should do with all the extra unwrapped Hershey Kisses… this was their answer!
Lex and I started an assembly line cookie plate production. Eve came down later and threw her own kinks into the works, insisting on bagging hers, not using plates, and making an extra half dozen. How can I say no to sharing the cookie love! :)
Tomorrow is the last day before Christmas vacation. I believe every class will be watching movies and eating cookies. First and fifth have pyjama day and Lex is jealous that his class isn’t doing that. He’s happy that lots of “free choice time” was on the calendar for tomorrow though. Should be a fun day.
Oh, I forgot one big event in my update post below. The Holiday Concert! We have a new music teacher at school this year and she organized a great holiday concert! Here are a few from-the-back-row, low-quality videos for your viewing pleasure. Eve was SUPER excited about it and has been singing the songs for weeks now. Lex, on the other hand, was less so. They have been practicing in music class for awhile now, maybe since the beginning of school, and Lex has not been excited. In the beginning he was putting up quite a fuss in music class, telling me he was embarrassed and did not want to go to music class. His poor teacher, a girl fresh out of school, came to me in the lunch room to see if I could help. Apparently he was being a pain in the butt. He and I had a chat that night and we made a deal that if he had top-notch behavior in music class between then and the concert, if he participated and I heard nothing but good reports from the music teacher, then I would let him stay home from the concert. He agreed eagerly and was a model student for the rest of the time. His teacher told me that whatever I said to him had worked because he was a joy to have in class now. I didn’t bother to tell her about our arrangement. He even did well at the stage rehearsal the morning of the concert. That night he was really torn. He wanted to go, wanted to be there, but was nervous. So we made another deal. His teacher was one of the people who were standing behind the risers “just in case” and I told him if he got too nervous he could step off the back of the risers and stand with his teacher. I knew she would be fine with it. She was well aware of his stage fright and had been encouraging him to come and give it a try. He agreed to the deal, got changed into his nice(ish) clothes, and came to the concert. Once there, Eve happily ran to her place on the risers but I had to walk with Lex to his. Inconveniently his class was center stage. Right in the middle, front and center. As we got closer to his spot he got more and more nervous. We ended up stopping a bit away. He was crying and buried his face in me. His teacher saw him and waved him over. A friend came running over to help him along. A sweet friend who’s helped him through nervous times in the past. But no luck, he wanted nothing to do with it. He ended up coming back with me and sitting, very fidgety, on my lap for the whole concert. The place was packed! I would have preferred him on the risers, but you can’t force it.
Here are a few videos of Eve singing, and the rest of the school too! :)
The opening number… (Eve is the kid with the Santa hat towards the middle)
Kindergarten and first started with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Eve is the one in the Santa hat in the middle. She kept pulling the hat further and further down over her eyes. :)
Next up, “I want to be an elf” by kindergarten and first. Eve loves this one and has been singing it for weeks!
Lex’s class sang Frosty and played a song on the “barred instruments.” He’s the kid not in this video. :)
The whole school sang a funny song called “Someone’s in the chimney.” A 4th grader was hiding in a fake chimney and voicing Santa for the song.
And lastly, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, from the whole school.
There was a professional photographer there who I’m sure took much better videos than I did. In fact, he was right in front of us! :) But you can watch these if you’d like. Or not. Merry Christmas from DBS!
I’ve neglected this blog so long apparently Alan decided to pick up the slack! :) I was away so long that my browser required me to re-login and then WordPress wanted me to upgrade. After the upgrade I saw the title of Alan’s post in my dashboard and thought it was some weird advertising thing. Then I realized it was just a post by him. A (loving) knock on my holiday baking frenzy. :) Sadly I’m all out of wine, so cookies will have to do.
Anyway, I was taking school pictures off the camera the other day and realized I have a ton of non-school pictures as well. Lots going on these days! The time is just flying by. I have just one more week in 5th grade, then vacation, then kindergarten! I have mixed emotions about that! I feel ready to try a different grade and a different school, but I’m really going to miss the comfort of my well-known school and all the kids and teachers there. I know where everything is and I know everyone’s name and I like all the 5th graders and they like me… it will be a bit switch to an entirely new school! However, I’ve been in a funk lately, slow and dragging, and maybe a new scene will reinvigorate me. Or maybe vacation. Or maybe sleep. Someday.
So what else has been going on? Let’s take a look at the camera and see…
We got our Christmas tree last weekend. I got an email from Greg in CA saying they were trudging through snow to get theirs… not a flake on the ground when we got ours. (Things look a bit different outside now!)
Searching for the perfect tree…
Eve likes this one.
We settled on this one. It looks so tiny here, but it fits our (tiny) space.
There was a bit of a hole in the tree so Alan tried filing it with children.
The decorating went well. Lex was there too, I guess I just don’t have any good pictures of him.
Eve insisted on a decorated Eve picture.
I just realized I didn’t get a family picture in front of the tree. Oops. Maybe we’ll try for a Christmas morning picture instead.
What else? We are now on bread machine number three in our quest to replace the old one. The first two didn’t work. Luckily Amazon has an easy return policy! This one came last week and I was so darn busy I didn’t have a moment to deal with it. A few days ago the kids got tired of waiting for me so they got the bread machine out of the box and made the first loaf all on their own. Well… I was in the kitchen as well and offered some guidance, but they did all the work! The machine isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the first two. I’m going to have to decide soon if we keep it or send it back.
They were so eager for fresh bread they made the first loaf all by themselves.
A few nights ago I tried to open the kids’ door to check on them at bedtime (my bedtime, not theirs) and found the door blocked. I was worried for a minute, then realized Lex had shoved his mattress off the bed and it was blocking the door. When we got past that, this is what I found.
Look at that empty bed.
He made himself a crib!
Silly boy made himself a crib! Julie, I was thinking of you that night and our conversation about waking the kids. I dragged him back onto his bed, he fell on me in the process, I rearranged him and Alan pushed his mattress back on the bed. We laughed and took pictures. Both kids slept through the entire thing! Lex didn’t even remember it in the morning. He remembered moving his mattress, but had no memory of us fixing it during the night. My kids sleep like rocks! :)
Saturday morning we went to the annual Gingerbread House Festival, a fundraiser for a local charity. Everybody who’s anybody was there! Lex and Alan opted out. Poor Lex was actually really torn between going (he remembered it was fun last year) and staying (his new EV3 was calling his name). The final deciding factor came when he realized he had no clean socks. Somehow he only owns three pairs of socks! Eve and I took care of that problem with a trip to KMart after the Gingerbread House Festival. Actually, the KMart trip was for socks and because Eve had left her snowpants at school and swears she can’t find them anywhere. KMart was packed, what with it being so close to Christmas and a big snowstorm predicted for the afternoon. In the checkout line we ran into my mentor teacher. When I mentioned Eve’s lost snowpants he asked why I didn’t go back to school to look for them. D’uh!!! I have keys. Why didn’t I think of that! I think that’s one step back from being a teacher. Silly me. Anyway, we bought the snowpants and here are pictures of the gingerbread houses.
A candy castle
A Lego house
A pirate ship
The white one on the right was done by my friend Jen, and she won the prize in the professional baker category.
Snoopy
Our school subdivision
My friend Jen (whom we’ve made gingerbread houses with in the past) organized a school-wide holiday reward. She and a few other people baked gingerbread houses for each class and the students got to decorate them. Then she brought them all to be donated to this event. They gave us our own sub-division. :)
More school houses
A tree house with a Swedish Fish roof.
A cuckoo clock
Eve had her face painted like a snowflake and she made herself a Jan Brett Gingerbread Baby (like the book).
We bid on a few houses and I got a call Saturday night saying we won one! Unfortunately I was at a staff Christmas party when the call came in and they left only the generalist of messages. I have to pick up the house tomorrow, but I have no idea which one we won. I’ll post pictures of it tomorrow. :)
The staff party was fun. I didn’t take any pictures. I work with a crazy bunch of people… for one more week. Weird. We did a fun, and long, Yankee Swap and I came home with a fat coffee table art book. I’m going to re-gift it to my friend who is an artist. Re-gift with a full explanation of where it came from! :)
Saturday night the storm came and the snow started. We woke today (Sunday) to a winter wonderland!
Snow! Time for sledding.
They spent quite a long time hanging out in the neighbor’s back yard, sheltering themselves from the falling snow from his snowblower. He was clearing his back deck. They loved it.
Look at this big kid! He helped shovel the driveway.
For some reason I took pictures of my big kids but no winter scenery pictures. Maybe the snow will stick around for a few days and I’ll get another chance. There’s rain in the forecast for Friday, but I hope it doesn’t come. It would be nice to have a white Christmas.
My kids are so big in the snow. I just got lost in the blog looking for other snow pictures, from times gone by. Check out this funny one of them with Bone, and this one of them playing on the old swing set. They do grow up fast!
PS. I need a new blog header. I’ll add it to my list of things to do. The current one is so last season!
Here’s a hint: is has a lot to do with how much liquid has gone in and out of that glass. ;-p
The kids wrote Christmas lists today. They both want Lincoln Logs and Eve wants all the people with no homes to be happy. Maybe she’ll make some homes with her Lincoln Logs. :-)
We went to a holiday craft fair today and Santa was there. A very good one! Unfortunately my kids don’t really like the whole “sitting on Santa’s lap” thing. A church lady convinced Eve to go up by offering her a present, but even then she held tight to my hand the whole way. Lex, however, wanted nothing to do with it.
I love my kids with their strong minds and funny quirks. We had a really nice morning and decorating the house is on the agenda for the afternoon. Starting to feel a little festive. But first, quiet time for everyone! Fa La La.
Lex came into my classroom this afternoon looking a little peaked. I asked how he was doing and he said fine. His usual answer. I told him he didn’t look fine, and he said he was fine except for how his body felt. Poor guy. He clearly had a fever. I made him rest in the library while I went to a (interesting, but sad) parent meeting. When I got done (I only stayed for half an hour), I found him wandering around the library with his arms pulled into his shirt, shivering. We headed home. He perked up a bit over snack and spent most of the afternoon sitting at the table reading Calvin and Hobbes comics to me. After shower he snuggled with Alan and they watched a show. By the end he was clearly feverish again and barely moving. We gave him some Tylenol and put him to bed. If he’s still sick in the morning Alan is going to work from home, which is great, but really I want to be the one home with my sick boy. Is that selfish? I want to cuddle him and feel his forehead and make sure the world is gentle for him. Alan will do fine, I have no doubt, but I want to be there. Sigh. Just a minor downside to being a working mom. However, we are fortunate that the working dad has such a flexible schedule!
We are a little eager for vacation around here.
This is my solo teaching week so don’t expect to hear from me. I’m doing hours of work each night and still not getting it all done. So much for being prepared! I’ll be around next week with a Thanksgiving update and holiday cheer.
Here’s a quick look at what’s going on in our world. What I’ve taken pictures of, at least!
Snow!
They still enjoy the tiny hill across the street.
Lex loves his new jacket with the wrist covers.
Lex got his long awaited EV3 Mindstorm kit and, first things first, organized it. “I saw on a video that they said to do that first,” he told me. I wish that video had said to eat your veggies first. :)