Christmas books

You all know that I am crazy about books. So, of course I think the best gifts are books! Please, if you want to get books for your family or friends for Christmas, go to my book club site and order there! You get everything scholastic has to offer without paying retail or shipping! I am putting in an order on Friday, November 19, in order to make sure everything gets here in time! Please check it out! I get points and free books for all orders. I use these for books for my classroom and gifts for my students who don't have books at home. I promise this is worth it for you!
Website: www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Activation code: DH2FZ
If you decide yo order, please put your name in the student name line so I know who to bring everything to! I will deliver everything to you personally before December 4!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

My List of Yay!

Yay #1: Parent-teacher conferences are over!
Yay #2: Only two weeks until I have A WHOLE WEEK OFF for Thanksgiving!
Yay #3: Only three weeks after that until I have TWO WHOLE WEEKS OFF for Christmas!
Yay #4: Christmas is coming! (I don't own Thanksgiving decorations, so I started putting up my Christmas decorations today and I liked it)
Yay #5: We are looking for a new place to live!

Halloween Weekend

For Halloween weekend, Matt and I headed up to Richmond to spend time with the family. Diet, Myrna, Tim, Kamie, Steven, Kari, Jenny, Randy and Brad and Claire all spent the weekend lounging around, eating a lot of junk food, joking, laughing, wrestling, and doing all sorts of fun things together. We carved pumpkins, dressed up in our costumes, went trick-or-treating with the kids (in the rain), played games, and had a fun weekend! Thank you Jenny and Randy for sharing your home with all of us for the whole weekend! It was such a blast!

The Rest of my Birthday

Last Friday, Matt promised to take me on a birthday date. I was so excited since I had spent the whole day doing report cards and getting ready for parent-teacher conferences. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and cheesecake (of course), then we went to This is the Place for their haunted house/forest. We wanted to go to the Night at the Zoo but we were too late. Hopefully next year. We were not disappointed though by our choice at This is the Place. It was so much fun, and actually pretty well done for a haunted house/haunted forest mix. They used the entire place, inside and out, and had surprises around every corner. Our favorite part were the war trenches, it was so different from anything we have ever done before. What a fun night, and thank you to my cute husband!

Party Like a Fifth Grader

So Halloween at an elementary school is fun if you are a mom or a student, but SUCKS if you are a teacher. 600 kids on a sugar high, sweating to death in their costumes, slutty parents dressed in costumes chasing their kids around taking pictures during the parade... ugh. What a WASTE of a day.

This year, we decided not to do anything important, and just party all day. We have been working with the kids and parents on two goals that they work on at home. When they work on their goals, they sign a calendar. The kids who brought back the calendar completed went to a special Halloween party. We hung doughnuts up on strings and watched the kids eat them without hands (so funny by the way), and the kids loved it. In between doughnut hanging, we played Freeze Dance. This was the best part of the day (ok, the smell was terrible), and it was incredibly fun to watch the kids let loose. This video doesn't even do this justice. The music was blasting and you could hear it, with the door closed, down the hall. Funnest party ever.

The Deer Hunt

Matt spent every weekend this October hunting and camping. On the last weekend, Lance shot his deer. Matt of course couldn't let his little brother get a deer and not get one himself. So he went up with Diet on the LAST NIGHT of the deer hunt and SHOT HIS DEER! He was proud of himself, especially because his deer is bigger than Lance's deer (sorry Lance, but it's true). When I saw the pictures, I couldn't believe how gorgeous it was in the mountains with all the new snow! Wow.

Happy Birthday to Me!

On Friday I celebrated by 23rd birthday! This was my first year with my own class on my birthday and the kids were so cute to me all day. Some even brought me little presents and made me cards. Kids are so funny. My principal came in and sang to me, my mom and Cassie came and brought me flowers, and the secretary called me the "birthday girl" over the intercom all day. It was pretty fun. The kids loved the Krispy Kremes I brought to share. After school, Matt gave me my birthday present! He got me a sander for all my craft projects! So cute. Then I went out to dinner at Olive Garden with Jenny, Kari and Myrna! After dinner, we went to see "Thriller" by the Odyssey Dance Company at Kingsbury Hall. This is my favorite Halloween tradition, this is the fourth year I've gone to the show and I still love it! We met Kendra, Jenna, and Jenna's mom at the show. It's always fun to go with people who haven't been before. After the show, we all went to Cheesecake Factory for cheesecake! YUM! MY FAVORITE! What a fun girl's night out! Thank you girls for coming, and thank you boys for letting us go! (Matt headed up to the deer hunt just before we left for dinner. That's what I get for having a birthday in October during hunting season)

After the show!