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Friday, February 17, 2012

Librarian Extraordinaire


My Favorite Librarian stopped by last Friday
to be a Mystery Reader (and bring me a footlong sub - thanks again!!).

Liv Librarian Extraordinaire brought books from every genre and discussed each and every one.  
It was a long and very interesting book talk.

The kids learned so much, but even better, they learned about different types of books and found out what they're really interested in.

A joke book, cookbook, choose your own adventure.

My 'silent' reading has never been so loud because they want to share all about their book with their neighbors.  It's so wonderful.

Last weekend I cleaned out Maplewood's library selection of chose your own adventures and the students are in heaven.  I started reading one aloud and the class voted on the path we would take.
They loved it.  Unfortunately, choose your own adventures are more of third grade reading level so only about a third of my students can actually read them.  

A super huge thank you to Liv for taking time out of her afternoon off to spend it with Team 214 and me!

They loved it...almost as much as I did!


There's still time to get that teaching degree....








A Frost Like This

A couple Saturdays ago Auntie Sandy took Christian for a special day out for his birthday.  They went to iHop and MOA for some rides.

While they were gone I ran some errands with Victoria.  From our sliding glass door we could see the trees were covered in frost.  It was beautiful.

When we stepped out of the house it was breathtaking.  Everything was covered in frost.
It was stunning.  The lady at the end of our street was standing outside in her nightgown taking pictures, you know it's gotta be good then!

We hit a couple stores and then stopped at the mall.  As we were holding hands walking through the mall parking lot we walked by a bare branched bush.  We stopped to take a closer look.  I told her not to touch it since I (thought) could see the thorns were covered with frost.

Then I touched it.



They weren't thorns at all, that's how the frost formed.
That's why everything looked so stunning, the whole city was covered in thick frost like this.

Hopefully Liv will send me a link explaining it all. ;-)



Seven Years


Our 7th wedding anniversary fell on Super Bowl Sunday this year.
Did you know the least likely Saturday to get married in the 
United States is the Saturday before the Super Bowl?  Guess who picked it!

I guess every seven years I'll have something to look forward to;-)

My parents were out of town this year and gave us tickets to a Super Bowl party at Mancini's.
We invited Guy and Chris along and ended up having a great time.
If you ever can get yourself a pair of these coveted tickets for S.B. you must go!
The food was fabulous and it was a really fun time!

She won a free hat.

Since watching the Super Bowl is soooo not my thing, 
I talked through the entire thing except 
when there was actually some action and everybody was ignoring me.

On our anniversary Mark gave me a dozen red roses (just like at our wedding;-) and some very beautiful silver earrings I've worn almost every day since.

Then the following day we sent me a bouquet of flowers to school that are so huge I didn't even bring them home.  My students were so excited by that delivery trying to guess who they were from I figured I'd let them brighten our room for a couple weeks.

The Tuesday following our anniversary Mark took me to our favorite restaurant,
Lake Elmo Inn.
I had something I'd never had and plan on eating it every time I go there from now on.

We talked about all the other special times we'd celebrated there:
*engagement
* first anniversary when I was pregnant with V
* birthdays
* more anniversaries
* last day of summer when Mark surprised me with a limo

Lots of wonderful memories.

It was a wonderful anniversary.


In both of our cards we wrote something in like:
Looking forward to seeing what this year has in store for us...

I have a feeling 2012 is going to be pretty special!





Monday, February 13, 2012

My Favorite Holiday...Tomorrow

Anyone who knows me, knows tomorrow is my favorite holiday. Valentine's Day.  One of my favorite days of the year.  I love to make people feel special and Valentine's Day is the perfect day just for that.  A week ago we mailed out Valentine cards for family and close friends.  They were adorable.  I wish I would have taken a picture before I mailed them all.  They were accordion style with a cute people and a pink left handprint of Victoria's and a blue right hand of Christian's.  I loved that they were different from anything we've sent out for Valentine's Day before and I love that their little handprints are saved in time.

I made personalized Valentine's for the kids to take to school and daycare.

I made something very personal and special for Kris our fabulous Daycare Mom.

The scene is set for everyone to wake up to a special morning.  Red (fake) rose petals are spread over V and C's rooms and down the hall leading to the kitchen.  Plastic pink and red champagne flutes are ready for our milk with a little heart cookie, a little Valentine that says, "You Make Me Glow!" with a glow stick attached (same Valentine I'm giving to each of my students) and the first clue of five that leads them to find their little Valentine gifts.  Each of them will have to read the clue (that basically just tells them where to go) to find their little gifts.    I know they will love this more than the gifts themselves.

I have something cute for Mark. (He may read this before then;-)  Thank you pinterest!

I have something cute for my co-workers AB and LB.  Of course, February is the month my friends and I host the monthly luncheon at school.  Sloppy Joes and ready and waiting.

I have many activities to not only make my students feel special but also to give them the chance to make each feel special too.  One of the best things about being a teacher is being able to teach children how to be kind to each other and make other people feel good about themselves.  Tomorrow is a special day to do that.

I can't wait to wake up tomorrow on Valentine's Day!