Merry Christmas 2013 part 1

Pictures for the grandparents.  Mostly.  I have started a new quilt and have pictures that may sit in the camera for awhile, but in the meanwhile, here are my lovies.

Christmas program at school-  I've never seen such a good Christmas program put on by an elementary program.  Seriously top notch.  This year, being involved from the other side, I do understand why.  We started in October and practiced a LOT. Like, one week I didn't teach reading because we practiced so much.  Shhh.

Hannah was in a dance group and danced with a few buddies from her class and my class.  I was their chorographer, but that term should be used lightly.  Mostly, I watched the DVD that came for me and we copied most of what they did.

Lou was in the choir.  It had a spy theme and they wore black glasses for some parts.  Finding black sunglasses in the winter was tricky but daddy pulled through for us with a stop at Goodwill.

Here's Bee's dance group.

Christmas Eve:   On our way to church-

Dear Hubby listed taking the official Christmas family picture as one of his least favorite parts of Christmas. Boo.  In retrospect, we should stand beside the tree and not in front.  You can't see the tree, but can see the TV. 

Hubby did agree to help me photograph the dog, so my photo session must not have been as bad this year.

We let the kids open their gifts to each other on Christmas Eve.  They usually make each other something. 

Something very special. This year was homemade ornaments and paintings.

Hubby's parents brought a few gifts... or more than a few.

Christmas gets stretched out for us over several days and we sort of like it like that.

  

 

Lou got the long-awaited ripstick.  It's going to take some patience to learn!   And kneepads.

 

 

 Next, we're off to Christmas dinner at a friends house (after lazing around all morning!) and then to my moms house for another round of fun and gifts.

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

thanksgiving

I don't have any crafts or food pictures to share about thanksgiving.  Just pictures of some of my favorite people.

Lou, Bee and I celebrated school being out by raking up a big pile of leaves in the front yard. I love and loath the leaves. 

Bee is currently in a phase where she does not want to be photographed with Me and Lou, it's probably Lou.  The teenage years will be fun.

This is my dad's side who we always celebrate Thanksgiving with.  We have been celebrating Thanksgiving at my Grandma's house since always.

These fine folks are my siblings and their significant others.   Hubby started coming around when my little sister in the maroon and scarf was like 7 (and that's her boyfriend who has made his first appearance at a family event) and littlest sister in the maroon in the middle was 2 or 3.  That makes me old.  My little brother and his wife are on the right side.

My dad took the kids for ride around my grandma's neighborhood with the top down.  We had our own parade.

And then there's this.  The annual ad search and team planning. there was much less shopping this year and I was glad for it.  I much prefer sleeping in!

Hope your thanksgiving was as wonderful whether or not you were in your own parade.

airstream and me being a techie

Do you know about airstream?  It's changed things for my classroom. If you're a teacher reading this, I'll assume you have the greatest new technology and this is nothing. However.  I don't.  I'm one step away from an overhead projector.   I don't have a smart board.  I have a projector though and a desktop computer and my own ipad.  That's all you need.   Airstream is an app but there is some kind of activation that has to be done on the computer to connect it.  Insert building technology person.  My provided technology may be just a tad dated but they'll pay the 12 dollars or something that it cost a year for me to make it work. 

So it basically turns my ipad into the screen that is projected.   In the above picture, I have overdrive loaded (an app that lets me check out library books from my local library for free and have a digital copy loaned to me) so the kids could all follow along and see the illustrations as I read Mr. Poppers Penguins.

 If I have a picture or text up via educreations (another app that I sing praises for- and free!) then whatever manipulation we do to it shows up for all to see.  I had the kids draw hands on the face of a clock and sometimes mark sentences up for editing. 

They can draw or write or circle things in pictures, whatever.  Here I had them circle and label parts of the picture that showed us what kind of community it was.  This was rural, they found the farm land, houses far apart, few roads, etc.

Below, I've used educreate to write out some sentences that we are finding the plural and singular possessive nouns in.  I just ended my sentence with a preposition, but I can't figure out how to reword it.  I would not have pointed it out except this was a sentence about teaching English. 

I think I fixed it.  "I've used educreate to write out some sentences in which we were finding the plural and singular possessive nouns."  Lets go with that.

It totally motivates the kids!  Everybody wants a turns, everybody pays attention so they know what to do on their turn, especially since everyone will see what they answer.  I had rigged up a way to use the ipad and the document camera but I was stuck at the desk and that's really far away from the other side of the room and my mere presence of walking around can't keep one of my friends from folding a paper football and that other kiddo from reading a book hidden under his desk.   I secretly love when they read under their desk.  They love a book so much that they can't put it down.   You can't teach that.   Pretty sure that's more important than at least 60% of the other stuff I can teach.  I do not secretly love paper footballs.  Those, I strongly dislike.

*I apologize, the app I called educreate is actually named 'educreations'.  Thank you to the commenter who mentioned having trouble finding it.

surprise horses

 

This is about a month old, but I knew it would be Thanksgiving break before I got back here. 

We surprised the kids with a little horse back riding fun.  Bee and Lou love horses and after many many conversations about it, they seem to understand that one will not fit in our back yard.  We planned to go u the amusement park and took a late turn and ended up here... They were a little freaked out when I jumped out of the car and insisted we all go see the horses.  They still didn't get it when the girl said, "come on, you can ride Eagle."

Halloween

 This years Halloween got to be two days! Storms pushed a few events around on the calendar allowing us to enjoy more things.   Lucky us!  

We found this karate costume at a garage sale at least a year ago and Lou has worn it a lot since. I was glad when he wanted to wear it for Halloween.

The pictures are not great!  Honestly, I was hurrying us out the door to an event at church,  I may have snapped at everyone... I can't remember though.   Lou was also frustrated with me that I couldn't get his kick in the photo.  

When I finally got it, Bee was frustrated that she had to keep standing there.

Bee wanted to be a rockstar and we had the perfect dress that was a fun hand-me-down from a friend.  I think this friend wore it as an everyday dress.  Daddy was her roadie!

She got to pick out new earrings since she was wearing an outfit we already owned.  This was really just my way of making sure she didn't change her mind about the costume at the last minute.   This is the first of many pairs of dangly earrings I'm sure!  She's been pierced about 2 months, just in time to take out the studs and insert rock star accessories.

This was Tippy's first Halloween with us and got included too.  He didn't love it. I think he's eyeing me suspiciously in this photo.   He was needed for my costume though.  We walked him around the neighborhood briefly and then took him home.  He was overwhelmed to say the least.   I just traced a dog vest I made him last winter and added iron on vinyl cut with the silhouette.    It' nice to know that it will iron on to fleece as I wasn't sure.
 

I was Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus books. I've been planning my costume since last year when I was Pipi. I start thinking a year out!  I love Halloween for it's excuse for a costume!  I bought a purple button up and purple belt and blue t-shirt at the mission store and sewed on a blue skirt that I cut from the bottom of a blue knit dress that always fit oddly.  The shoes were a student gift last year!  They knew me well!  I added felt bugs and have fly earring on.   I just glued plastic flies to a pair of green earrings.   Bee let me borrow her lizard stuffed animal for Liz the lizard who is perched on my shoulder.  I spent about two hours on it over the course of two evenings.  The grading I didn't do is still on my coffee table!  I will wear it on book character day at school so I thought it was worth the time.  Plus, I just needed to do something I enjoy.  That's totally gotten pushed to the back burner this year! 

I has several people come up and ask who I was but many came up and excitedly said, "I know who you are!"  Several teenage boys asked me in the neighborhood who I was and when I said who, one of them said. "Dude, I told you... pay up!  Two snickers bars and two M&Ms!, Boohyeah!"   So they had bet candy on who I was!  Funny stuff.

on to the next thing

Like 2 posts ago, I wrote about soccer season just getting started... now it all over.  That's how things are going for us right now.... time is flying by!

That cute green number 9 is mine.

I started the season helping with coaching.  As the boys got more independent and I got busier, we were able to go down to two coaches.

Soccer season starts out hot and ends cold  It's a funny season but was always my favorite.

As I write this, Lou and daddy are at basketball tryouts.  We're on the next thing!