nice weather and a tale of a melted sleeping bag

the weather is gorgeous, it is currently 54 degrees in southern indiana...on december 31.

i love it!!

it means i could hang out a comforter that i had to wash (sick kid).
i do not like putting comforters in the dryer, call me crazy but i worry that they will catch on fire.

when i was 10 me and my brother each got a red sleeping bag for christmas. they were the first sleeping bags we ever got, mine was tan on the inside, David's was yellow.
we slept on the floor in our new sleeping bags for a week.
until.......
new years eve, my moms and dads went out and david and i stayed home with my aunt pat. david got sick and the sleeping bag suffered the consequences.

into the washer and onward to the dryer the sleeping bag went. everything from here on is fuzzy but the end result is that the sleeping bag had a hole melted in it and no longer zipped up, it stayed that way for years,used as a blanket under the bed spread, im sure my mom has gotten rid of it by now.

i always think of the sleeping bag when i put a bulky comforter in the dryer. and i never leave the house while its in the dryer.

notebook sleeve

yesterday when i got home from work rachel (super babysitter) and D were sitting on the couch, eyes glued to rachels Acer Notebook. when she started packing up her stuff, i asked her "dont you have a sleeve for that?"

she didnt. i grabbed my yardstick, took some measurements and filed the numbers away in my brain for later use. last night while drifting off to sleep, i was already assembling the notebook sleeve in my head.

i had an old nap mat from pre school just waiting to be repurposed into something useful.

it became the foam padding i needed for the sleeve. it took me about 2 hours give or take to finish this project.

and needless to say, i am very happy with the results.

stuff you may not know about me

i love mary jane style shoes

i sometimes wipe my hands on my pants instead of getting a napkin

i hate the texture of wet peanut butter left on the knife and soaking in the sink.

the only clothes i fold before putting away are my work tees and jeans, everything else i just cram in my drawers.

our pet spikey

friday night D and i were in the kitchen when i spied something moving near his foot, i pointed this out and D immediately jumped on to the nearest chair.

it didnt look like the spiders i had seen around the house, so i grabbed a jar, trapped the spider under it and carefully slid a piece of paper under the jar.

when i had him trapped securely in the jar D came over to look "aww, hes cute" says the boy.

i asked what his name was and he was dubbed Spikey.

we kept spikey in the jar saturday, and fed him a few ants that i found on sunday, gave him a few drops of water but by this afternoon Spikey didnt seem too happy.

we relaesed Spike in the bushes outside the house. he ran away immediately, i hope he stays warm because now its snowing.

nasty weather

well, it looks like im staying at moms for another day.

i got woke up at 6 to the sound of 40-50 mph gusts whipping around the corner of the house. i got out of bed and wandered down the hall where my dad was looking out the front door, my brother and niece were asleep on the couch. i looked out the big window in front and watched the wind blowing the powdery snow up into snow swirls and into drifts, across the road in front of the house. looking down the street the road looked like a sheet of ice.

i told my dad i thought i was going to have to wait until its light out to make a decision about when to go.

my dad's job as a service tech requires him to drive all over this side of the state. he told me even he hated driving in this kind of weather and thought it was too dangerous for me to drive. he also added that all the nasty weather was headed the same way i was.

so i guess we are staying for another day.

my mom is thrilled.

top ten of the day

10- sleeping until 8:30
9- finding out what a Squinkie is
8- getting a new pair of PJs for christmas
7- family photos taken at a studio
6- barnes and noble with Dominic and Stella
5- watching my brother use his infinite talent punching 2 punch balloons at once
4- cheese
3- teaching kindergarten AND first grade lessons
2- biscuits and gravy
1- happy kids

more adventures in teaching

todays "break-out lesson" (yep, thats my new name for distractions) consisted of my mom bringing an un labeled can into the dining room where we were working on our math lesson and shaking it, then announcing that she had no idea what was in it, but that it had cost only a quarter (a story backed up by the big orange 25 cent sticker on the top). she proposed that we try to guess what was in it and then whatever was in it, use it to make supper.

she was convinced before she even brought it in that it was some kind of cream soup. i shot that theory down pretty quickly by the slosh that it made when i shook it vigorously. dominic took it and shook it, turned it even sniffed it. then i decided we needed something to compare it to, so we dug through my moms cupboards shaking cans and comparing sizes of cans.

we determined by the sound (and the code TOMSC) that it must be tomato soup. then mom said "i dont really want tomato soup for dinner" and put it back in the cupboard.

my week of teaching

this week while we are at Mom's dominic is missing a week of school. his teacher sent home a packet of work and little notes to show what we should do on each day. and school goes off track fairly easily when im leading lessons.

Day1:monday, there wasnt that much to do, a little bit of hand writing, a page of numbers and...oooohhhh, learning about peru, thats the day that we decided that we didnt know much about peru and ended up shopping at worlds window and drinking lattes (now thats a social studies lesson i can get on board with)

Day2: tuesday, there was quite a bit more to do, 2 handwriting pages, front and back. a math paper front and back, 3 pages of reading and more peru.
also many interruptions while he watched my mom taking food out of the freezer, re arranging the buffet and the like. we did todays lesson in our PJs and did our reading work with D on my lap. we worked reall hard on good formation of the lowercase f in cursive.

Day3: wednesday, should have been the quickest and easiest day, 1 handwriting, 1number paper, and a maze about peru. it took way too long, an hour, why you ask? because we started a conversation about George Washington Carver, what he discovered, where he was educated and his personal religious beliefs.
i now have him on a search of the house to find things that start with the letters P-e-r-and u. in addition to this learning time, we spent time balancing a pencil on our upper lip, trying to balance a pencil on one finger and discussing what the meaning was of the name Edward (?).

so you see, its really easy to get off track.

toy crazy (or how i felt convicted while writing my latest blog post)

my son is toy crazy. i understand this is a common problem at this time of year, but we really have never dealt with toy crazy to this extent. he wants everything!

in madison, indiana we have all of about 5 places to buy toys. the biggest and most visited being walmart, of course. the madison courier does not include ads from places we dont have locally, it consists of a CVS ad, a walgreens ad, and a penneys ad. we get a walmart ad in the mail once a week and since we dont have cable,, theres not much of an opportunity to have the young mind filled with the knowledge of everything there is to want.

we arrived at my moms, in waterloo, iowa on friday afternoon. by friday night Dominic was already asking for pillow pets that he saw on the cartoon network. he has been asking for one for a while but its easy to say no and change the subject when the kid isnt reminded about it every 20 minutes.
over the course of the weekend we got loads of ads in the paper, including the toys r us big book and the target toy book.
i never realized that theres so much rubbish out there for toys. there are so many huge items that look awesome on christmas morning but where on earth are you going to store it when the awesomeness has worn off and that wrapping paper tube has come back as your kid's prized possession?
i also have come to understand (but not embrace, mind you) how it is that adults can go so overboard on christmas. little eyes light up at the thought of millenium falcon lego sets (that never get assembled properly), a ride on plush dinosaur that really lumbers and roars (and runs out of battery power, thus no lumbering or roaring) or a full service mini hair and nail salon for toddlers (total cost after all accessories are bought, 130 dollars). we imagine our kid's face when they see this amazing toy and at the moment of purchase we deem it "all worth it". now you might disagree and it may be all worth it to you, but what i really strive for is something he will love, something he would notice if i sneaked it off to goodwill while he is at school.
i do admit that the pouty face when i say "no" "youre not getting that" is a little sad, who wants to disappoint a kid at christmas but fortunately for me my budget is tight enough to not fall for the theatrics.
the other thing that has been getting to me about toy craziness is that it would consume my son's thoughts if it were allowed to. i have to make a point at these teachable moments to bring up the fact that God gives us everything we need and ALOT of what we want. im also seeing how easy it is for the media to show us what we should have our focus on, and lets face it, it is in no way shape or form pleasing to God.

link up!

want to see what im up to?

check it out!! i updated Dominics blog , its just easier to send you there, so i dont have to retype everything.

will be visiting with family for a few days!!! im sure there will be pictures to show when its over!

the birth of a catch phrase

we have alot of catch phrases in our house.

some from movies "anaconda squeeze" for instance (Nacho Libre)

some from tv shows "my momma bought me that car" is one that gets thrown around for no good reason (from my all time favorite episode of Psych)

and some from the mouth of the boy.

this is where we get one of my FB catch phrases.

last year he came home from school with a street rhyme that his teacher had taught them

chicka, chicka whole potatah,

half past alligatah

bim, bam, boo, legatah

give three cheers for the dippy, dappy, happy, scrappy

readers!!

are we happy? well, i guess

readers, readers, yes, yes, yes!

the last line changed MANY times around here, it became chicken, chicken, yes, yes, yes.

it became bath time, bath time yes, yes, yes. it became pretzel, pretzel, yes, yes, yes.

it finally landed on

Coffee, Coffee yes, yes, yes.

and as the old news anchor paul harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.