Meet the Teacher

Last Thursday we went up to the church so Natalie and James could meet their teachers and see their classrooms.  Natalie was up first.

There were these little screens that looked like fish tanks, and she was pretty happy watching the “TV.”

She made herself right at home.

James found the cars and the garage and was in heaven.  We were there for I think about 45 minutes, and I’ve never seen him so happy and independent.  I just kept checking to make sure he hadn’t left the room.

So I have my eyes open for one of these bad boys:

Natalie is so cute.  :)

James found this little car and kept saying “Eesa car.”  (Lisa’s car)  It does kind of look like her van!

When it was time to go to James’ class, he couldn’t let go of a car (so we took it and returned it later).

He was a little more apprehensive in his own class.  I’m sure that’s because this is often the room he’s in for nurseries and he thought I was leaving him.

I’m so excited for Preschool and MDO to start tomorrow!  James and Natalie are both going Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00-2:30.  I feel sanity returning to my life.  (Ha!)  Ray will also go the same days, and I will have baby Laura all to myself probably one of those days each week.  The other I might be all alone.  I already have a huge list of projects.  :)

Lunch this week, the Triple Stroller, and other School Stuff

On Monday night I packed all of Joanna’s lunches for the week.  I was a little concerned the Friday one wouldn’t still be fresh, but I was willing to take my chances.

Tuesday: A tortilla wrap (mashed avocado spread with ham, cheese, and spinach), grape tomatoes, and grapes.  Also, my mother picked up a huge box of those little bags of chips for Joanna to have sometimes, so I sent one of those as well.

Wednesday: almost the same with some snap peas as well.  Joanna calls them crunchy beans.  I sent some almonds in a snack bag along with because it didn’t seem like quite enough lunch.  But it was; she didn’t eat the wraps and she left her lunch box at school so I had to toss them the next day.  Bummer.  :)

Side view of the wraps – yum!

Thursday: tomatoes, “crunchy beans,” cheese, celery with cream cheese, apple slices and peanut butter.  The peanut butter in the muffin cup inside a little baggie actually worked okay, though I’m on the hunt for some small, lidded, reusable containers for dips.  She told me she looooved the apples and peanut butter.

And this would have been Friday’s lunch had she gone to school.  It’s the same as Thursday, just packaged a little differently.  The orange-lidded container worked well for the peanut butter; it’s just a little big, and I only have one.  James ate the peanut butter and a few apples for his snack today.  The rest of the goodies are still in the fridge.

But it all still seemed fresh enough for lunch, so that’s good.

Joanna had a fever and started feeling puny yesterday around 4:00.  Matt had been feeling a little off, so I think that may be where it came from, rather than a Kindergarten bug.  She woke up totally fine this morning and felt good all day until about 6:30 when a slight fever came back, and she didn’t feel great.  James took a 2+ hour nap (unheard of!) today so I was expecting it when he woke up with a fever.  He didn’t seem to feel too bad though, just a little puny.  Everyone got a bit of Tylenol to perk them up.  So far, Natalie and I are unaffected.  Hoping that lasts!

Tuesday I tried out my new triple stroller for the first time.  Don’t I have a good-looking bunch?!

That bad boy was HARD to push!  But I persevered, and I’ll probably get better at it.  I’m thankful I won’t have to do it every day, though.  :)  I’m super happy to have it and thankful we’ll still be able to walk to school, even with a full house!

This was also from Tuesday – Joanna’s first batch of “stuff” coming home!  She had a homework assignment due today (We finished it last night, and she was so upset she wouldn’t be able to go to school to turn it in!)  She’s been coming home with a handwriting paper and her reading bag each day.  She has a big zipock with a folder in it.  Each day she gets to choose a book from Mrs. M’s class library to put in the bag to read at home.  I have to enter the book in a little log in the folder and put my initials.

I think it’s a very nice way to read new books we don’t have at home!

Ninth Grade

This photo has nothing to do with the post; he’s just cute.  (And he was witness to my excavation that caused this blog entry.)

When I was in the ninth grade, I took algebra from Miss Nelms.  We had a class set of graphing calculators that she kept in pockets on the wall.  We all had an assigned calculator that we used each class.  I was in fourth period along with my best friend Laura; my boyfriend at the time was in sixth period.  That meant that on Thursdays with block scheduling, he had class right after us.  And he and Laura shared the same assigned calculator.  This is a long story all to say that I used to leave him notes on the calculator.  I thought we were being totally sneaky about it, but it turns out not so much.  A few years ago I ran into Miss Nelms (only now her name is Mrs. Snell).  We were at a spiritual retreat where I was a table leader and who should be at my table but my ninth grade algebra teacher.  Whoa.  And I had to use her first name!  Anyway, she mentioned how she was pretty impressed that my friends and I managed to send text messages before that was even invented.  :)

I was reminded of this today because somehow in all the moves and purging in my life, I still have this bin full of notes.  Most of them are from the ninth grade, and I’m pretty sure I could reconstruct my freshman year of high school with this box of paper.  :)

I took a picture of this pretty one from Kathy before I unfolded it.  I wasn’t totally sure I could refold it.

Most of the notes are from Kathy, Laura, and Jennifer, with a few smattered in from other friends, including that boyfriend with the calculator.

It’s fun to take a walk down memory lane with these little artifacts from fifteen years ago.  Some things, like notes I can’t read, hall passes, and copies of demerits, don’t need to be kept.  But I’m hanging on to a big stack of these notes.  They won’t take up much space, and I’ll have them when I need to remember what it was like to 14 years old.

No Puppies were Harmed in the Making of this Blog Post

I promise.

I was sad Matt had to work today, but the rest of us enjoyed a lovely day with our Joanna home from school.  (And I was so glad to have an extra day to get ready for the school week!)  We went to the grocery store this morning, and the kids were all pretty well-behaved.  I did tons of laundry.  We went to my mom’s and had lunch with her and David.  They fed us leftover brisket bbq sandwiches and some super-yummy beans.  Wahoo for not fixing lunch!

After lunch we took the kids out for some puppy socialization.

Favorite shot of the day:

This was Joanna’s first chance to meet the puppies.  She did spend most of her time fetching them for her brother and sister though.  What a great big sis!

My mother says all the things the kids were doing to the puppies is actually good for them, even though it might look terrible.  She says it’s puppy socialization 101.

And the puppies didn’t even whimper!

James is saying “puppies, c’mere!”

Seeing James with these puppies is the closest I’ve ever come to wanting a dog.  Keep in mind, I don’t want a dog; but this got me pretty close to even considering the possibility.

And then it was time to put them back in their puppy oasis pen so everyone carried one puppy back.

Is he the cutest or what?!!

Thank you David for taking all of these pictures and letting me steal your memory card!

The puppies are Reba, Roxanne, and Max, and they’re going to beagle rescue on Wednesday.  I hope they find lovely homes – they sure are cute (for dogs, anyway).

We took care of Junior Vandenberge this weekend, and I couldn’t get over how much less grumpy James was than usual.  Usually he wakes up just rotten awful in the morning and from his nap.  It takes a long time and much snack for him to be almost human again.  But this weekend he woke up and asked first thing about Junior.  That’s another thing that almost made me consider being a dog owner.  Almost.  Junior is suuuuch a good dog and so tolerant of the little kiddos.  He was a good house guest, that’s for sure!

Gingerbread Men!

Joanna’s class read some gingerbread men/boy/baby stories this week.  When she came home on Friday, she and Natalie spent some time drawing gingerbread men.  They were pretty excited about them, so I thought we should try and make some gingerbread cookies.  I checked my pantry and found the only thing I was missing was ginger!  I couldn’t believe I had everything else – molasses, people-shaped cookie cutters, shortening, etc., but I didn’t have ginger.  We decided to go ahead and measure out our other ingredients and have Matt stop for some ginger on the way home.

Joanna (and of course James and Natalie) helped me gather everything and get it ready. 

I used the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook since that’s often a good place to start.  I’m not going to type that recipe here because you all should have that cookbook.  :)  And I’m lazy.  I did make a couple of my standard substitutions.  I always use freshly ground white whole wheat flour in place of all purpose.  I also used sucanat in place of white sugar.  For the shortening, I used palm shortening, which is ridiculously better for you than Crisco or the like.

The kids were being kind of crazy so I didn’t get a second chance at this picture like I would have liked.  I thought it was so pretty how the paddle made a pretty flower in the shortening.  :)

I did not take many process shots since baking with three “helpers” is hard.

We mixed up the dough and let it chill overnight in the fridge.  It didn’t need that long, but it would have been too late for the kids to start that evening.

So this morning after breakfast we rolled out the dough and made the cookies!

Rolled out cookies are not my favorite kind to make – they’re far too labor-intensive.  :)

But this was educational.

I wasn’t going for perfection here.  I was just excited that I actually had people cookie-cutters.  In fact, I don’t even remember why I have them.

Matt took all these pictures, and I’m very proud of him!  (I set the camera on auto for him, but I think he did a great job of framing the shots and shooting from a good angle.)  Yay Matt!

This one is out of focus, but I still love the way it looks:

I LOVE how James turns to the camera to give a sideways smile whenever I pull it out.

The finished cookies!  You can see we slipped a gingerbread train engine in there as well.

I decided we didn’t really need to decorate them.  We only made half the batch of cookies, so maybe we’ll decorate the next go round.  Or, maybe not.

The leg fell off of Joanna’s gingerbread lady right before I took these pictures.  Oops!

I wasn’t really expecting the kids to like them very much (gingerbread tastes much too healthy to be dessert, if you ask me.), but they all loved them!

First I just gave James the head of the gingerbread man.

But he wanted the rest of it as well.

And this is what happened when he ate the whole thing and I wouldn’t let him have more.

He looooooooooooooves cookies!  I have no idea where he gets that.  :)

I didn’t taste them, but they were proclaimed very tasty by all the children, Matt, and my mom.  I did love how the house smelled like Christmas for a while here in September!

Some Kitchen Tips from Me to You!

I have a couple of things I think are wonderfully awesome and very helpful that I would like to share, just in case you didn’t already know them.

This first one I learned a few years ago, and it changed my life.  :)

Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration.  You can use your Kitchen Aid stand mixer to shred cooked chicken.  I read this somewhere, but I don’t recall where – it was before Pinterest.  I love to use this technique if I’m making chicken taco soup or barbeque chicken in the crockpot.  I throw chicken breasts (or whatever I’m using) into the crockpot whole in the morning, and when it’s time to take the chicken out and shred it, I throw it into the bowl of my stand mixer and attach the paddle.

Today I had some leftover rotisserie chicken from the store, but it worked just as well.  First I yanked all the bones off and threw in the meat.

Then I just turned it on low or the next speed up and let the paddle do it’s magic.  Pretty soon I had beautifully shredded chicken!

I used it to make “chicken patties,” which are much like my salmon patties, only with chicken.  :)

I hope that tip will be useful to you!

The next one isn’t just a tip for the kitchen, it’s handy in other areas, even a classroom.

I store a lot of things in jars, and while pretty labels would be ideal, most often I just don’t want to work that hard.  :)  I do like to know what’s in the jars though.

So I simply write on the glass with a Sharpie.

I’m sure there are a few ways to remove that Sharpie when the time comes, but this is my favorite.

Use a dry erase marker to cover the writing.  You can be as precise or not as you like:

Then just wipe it off with a cloth.

Beautiful!

Have fun writing on glass with Sharpies!