6 More WakeUps til Spring Break!

I can't emphasize or express enough how excited I am that Spring Break starts next Friday bringing me ten days off from work. As many of my friends in the blog community can relate to, this is the time of year where kids go bonkers. It is nearing the end of the year, almost CRCT time, the weather is warmer( well that one is still up for debate) and the days are longer. It is hard to keep them focused. But right now, I feel like I am right there with them. Why? This has been a hard year in a lot of ways but lets just say calendarwise I feel like I am due. I have Perfect Attendance for this year and with all the flood and snow days taking out snow make up days along the way, that means I have not had a day off since MLK day. As a teacher, that is a long time. But instead of being really negative about it, I want to focus on the positive. Spring Break is coming !!! Here is the top five reasons I am excited Spring Break is just around the corner:

#5 - Flip flops are going to be coming back out soon. I love feet freeing shoes! I have lavender sparkly flip flops, brown, black, etc. I just love them and the warm weather means they can find their way back to the front of the closet. Yay!

#4 - Easter is coming. I like Easter. Carter will be an active participant in the Dobson Easter Egg hunt this Sunday . It will certainly be fun to watch him go after the eggs.

#3 - Certain candies come available for said easter egg hunts. I love some Starburst jellybeans and the Brach's Malted Milk Ball Robin Eggs. And the latter are hard to find.

#2 - Brad and I will celebrate our second wedding anniversary on the Monday of Spring Break. It is amazing to me that it has been two years. We are in a really good place in our relationship and things get more and more fun. Two weekends ago and we went to the lake and just had couple time. Last Wednesday night we went and saw John Mayer second row. Things are just always hopping.

#1 To celebrate our two year anniversary, we are going to NYC. Four Spring Breaks ago, I went to NYC with my one of best friends and former roommate Nicole while Brad went to Colorado to ski. I am excited to share the city with Brad. We have a plan of events and sites that we want to enjoy when we go. We will be there from Wednesday to Sunday so our actual anniversary will be in Loganville but two days later we are NYC bound.

So there it is my top five of why Spring Break can't get here fast enough. Of course, it should go without saying if you know me at all that I can't wait to sleep in. :0) What are you all excited to see come in with Spring Break? Do you have any suggestions for restaurants in NYC?

Funny Friday

Yesterday I took my first and second grade class to the computer lab. They are learning about the forest ecosystem. Therefore, we were making fact forests. They draw a tree but then it has to either be outlined or filled up with facts about trees. So I had selected two kid friendly sites to research from.

Well, we were the first class to use the lab because the computers were not on when we arrived. So we had to sit and wait through them warming up. I told the kids that the computers were just like them ( and me) and didn't want to get up out of their beds to come to school and get to work on a Friday morning. Most of the children just thought that was funny but one of my second grade students, Anis who is of Bosnian descent said:

"They don't want to get out of their Micro - soft beds!"

Oh the things kids say, but I thought that one was pretty clever!

Mom's Birthday

My mom celebrated her 56th birthday this Sunday. I started that day very early, at 4:45am when my husband woke up to leave on the field trip he is chaperoning for his school. Despite how quiet he tried to be on his way out, I am a light sleeper and I woke up to say "Good morning" upon waking up to the alarm and " Good bye, I love you" when he was walking out. I went back to sleep and slept through church after Brad left.

I then ran a few errands to finish getting ready for my Mom's birthday. I had already gotten her card a week before when Sarah and I shopped at the Mall of Georgia. I had bought her frame during the week. I had ordered the picture for the frame but I had to go pick it up, return a movie that Brad and I had watched Saturday night and fuel up the Honda. Then our fun evening was ready to begin.

To celebrate Mom's birthday, Suzanne, Mom and I got together to go out to eat Chinese. We split sizzling rice soup, general chicken and house fried rice. Then we came home. Mom had bought the ingredients for making haystacks. Haystacks are a candy/dessert that Mom used to make for us around the holidays when we were growing up. I had never made them before and I am in a habit of trying to get family recipes recorded or figured out right now. I have made Grandma do it recently with dumplings and in the past with biscuits. Too many family recipes have gone on with my loved ones and this is something special I like to do. It ended up being a special night of fun too.

Starting the Haystacks ( I am on the phone because Brad called to tell me he got there)

My sister scooping out her first stacks

Having Better Luck with the Stacking than I did with the Cookie Press at Christmas

The Spread

The Birthday Stack

After all the haystack makings were complete, Suzanne went home. Mom spent the night to be closer to work and keep me company. We watched Enchanted and went to bed. It was a good night. Happy Birthday!

Reader's Rally

Last Saturday, I coached my second Reader's Rally team in the county competition. Reader's Rally is a great program where throughout the course of the year team members are required to read 20 books off a chosen list. Five of them are picture books and the rest are chapter books. Team members may be fourth or fifth graders. Teams can have up to ten members and five are allowed to represent the Reader's Rally team in competition. Teams rotate throughout their division answering 8 - 15 questions a round and earning 10 points for each correct answer.

It was an exciting day. The competition grows every year and there were over 50 of Gwinnett's elementary schools present. 80 schools overall including middle and high school competitive teams. Do the Math and this is a lot of people, with just team members (10 x 80= 800) and then two adults required for every team ( a coach and a volunteer) and then parents are allowed to come out and serve as spectators in each room. There is a wild crowd.

My team was very nervous , since most of them were fourth graders and had never experienced this before. However, we loosened up and performed better in later rounds. While we didn't win our division, my kids were very impressive in the way they chose to look at the day " At least we got to read all of these really great books". I was also impressed with one of my noncompeting teammates. You see I had had fifteen kids practicing for a chance to be on the team. I had to narrow it down to the allowed maximum of ten. This was done by averaging their attendance, number of books read and knowledge of the books to reach a number score for each team member and taking the top ten. Well I had encouraged those who didn't make the team to come out on the day of competition and support us. And one boy "j" did and it made my heart soar.

As a coach, I have learned more in my second experience with this competition. I have a new perspective for strategy next year. Also, I have grown. This team outscored my team from last year by twenty points. We also had a team shirt and weekly practices which I had not done last year. So I am growing too. Additionally, it made me feel good that we beat the elementary school that our current school principal was an AP at before coming to our school this year as a principal. Hopefully next year we will do even better.

We Played in the Snow Last Night

We went out and played in the snow last night and it doesnt look like much has melted or gone anywhere. It is very pretty. Our neighbors were out too. Their dog, Dallas, was having a ball. We are supposed to go to the UGA game tonight but I dont know that a) it is still on or b) we could make it up there safely. Brad had a very tough and scary time getting home where the back of the truck was swerving back and forth. But he made it home safely and was happy to play in the snow. In most of our pics, you can see visible snow flakes (dots) because that is how fast and hard it was snowing last night. We had chili for dinner and watched a movie before I konked out around ten. Here are some more pictures:

Our Snowman who had chocolate chips for facial features

The Measuring of the Snowfall

The Bush to Show You the Accumulation

The Difference Between the Sidewalk and Yard is Amazing

More About the Snow....Make sure to read the post below it!

There were pics in the last post but here are more. I hope Brad gets home soon. And I don't know if this will all melt away soon, in time for the game or not! I am amazed at how thick it is ! The pictures are below! You can no longer see where I came in on the driveway or the tracks in the road in our neighborhood from any car.

The entryway at my house

Snow!

On what was supposed to be a holiday and then was taken from us as a snow makeup day, there was snow falling starting at about 1:00pm. I then stood in it for 45 minutes during car riders . It was pretty and I wasn't cold. Very festive. I came back to an email from my husband not to tell me to not play in it til he gets home.

Then I took Linda, my mother in law, home to her house where we built two miniature snowmen to welcome Mr Jack home and also had a snowball fight while cleaning the snow off the back windshield of my car. Once the snowballs stopped flying ( and we discussed that we should go to Colorado sometime soon for more of this fun), I left to go home.

And now here I am in Loganville and our house is in the middle of a winter wonderland. All the bushes and lawn is covered.

I love it and hope we get to play in it . However, I also hope that it clears up for us to go to Athens tomorrow to take in a basketball game that was part of Brad's Christmas present from me and we will go out to eat in town for Valentine's Day.

The back yard

My measuring.... at least an inch