snow day!!!

I’ve had quite a nice little winter break. We were off for President’s Day, so that was a lovely and much needed 3 day weekend. Delaney has had a yucky cough and started running a fever on Monday, so I stayed home with her on Tuesday. Jeremy and I shared a day off on Wednesday because she still wasn’t up to par. And then today (Thursday we have a glorious SNOW DAY!!). We haven’t had a snow day in 2 years. And this was a big one. Do I dare hope for another day off tomorrow??

Delaney is feeling much better. She is still coughing a little and she has a bad case of cabin fever. Surely a little cold air in her lungs won’t do too much harm, right?

be mine

Here’s the Valentine treat I made for my kiddos at school:

They are forever searching for scraps of paper to use as a bookmark, so they were thrilled! And by the way, if you are shopping at the local Wal Mart and can’t find any paint samples in the pink or red family, you’ll know why. Sorry!

For math today, we did some data analysis using candy hearts. When we were finished, the kids could eat their candy. One little boy gave me this:

Cracked Me Up!!!

We made little Valentine pockets for the kids to put their Valentines in. One creative boy worked diligently on this:

 

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

that dreaded resolution

For the past several years, my unofficial New Year’s Resolution has been to lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier or any combination of these. Last fall, Jeremy and I were in a weight loss challenge and lost a combined 79 pounds!

Here we are last June:

Our challenge started Aug. 1.

And this is Oct. 30, after the challenge:

Well, needless to say, some of those pounds crept back over the holidays. Because I was determined to enjoy EVERY part of Thanksgiving and Christmas, especially the food!

So once again, I needed to shed just a few pounds. I joined an online game with a few friends at dietbet.com. Basically you put in money at the beginning and if you lose at least 4% of your weight, you split the pot with the other winners. But my heart just wasn’t in it. I enjoyed eating. I didn’t enjoy going to the Y. And I made very little progress. I was ready to just resign myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be a winner this round. But then that last week, a fire was lit and I got my motivation back. I read somewhere that according to the Farmer’s Almanac, it was the perfect time to start a diet. So I did the 3 Day Military Diet. You can read the details if you go to the link.

I made a few of the substitutions listed on the blog. I didn’t exercise after day 1. And I lost 5 lbs. in 3 days! I was able to overcome all temptations (birthday cupcakes in my classroom, no bake cookies at mom’s and donuts in the teacher’s lounge!) and I wasn’t tired or starving. It was the perfect jump start I needed and got me within 1 lb of my goal weight.

By the way, I was one of 4 winners in my dietbet game!

demolition

Earlier this week they started demolition on our old school. It sits on the same campus as our new school, so we spent a bit of our morning watching out the windows.

 

Here’s a Facebook quote from our band teacher:

Down goes Old Lincoln. Majestic New Lincoln rises above the demolition.

The entire school was down in two days. Trucks picked through the rubble and sorted out metal and bricks and everything else into piles. By day three, a good part of the destruction had been cleared away.

Goodbye “Old” Lincoln. Where 3 of my 4 kids started kindergarten and where I taught for 13 years. You served our family well!

Happy B-day Kansas!!

Today our great state is 152! And our school had a Kansas Day celebration.

The students rotated through several stations (soap carving, story time in a “log cabin”, quilting, pioneer games, etc.) I was in charge of apple turnovers. Whenever you feed kids, it’s always a popular place!

They were super easy and I had a lot of great help!

Start with a canned biscuit. Flatten it out. Put a spoonful of apple pie filling and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Fold over and crimp the edges to make a turnover. Place in the waffle iron for 2 minutes.

 

And there you have it! They weren’t the prettiest and they were quite messy. But the kids loved them! We drizzled them with some powdered sugar frosting. Now if only I can figure out how the early Kansas settlers cleaned their waffle irons (wink wink)!

We ended our day with a Cowboys and Cattle Drives demonstration from our principal.

 

Happy Birthday Kansas!!!