Sunday 28 April 2013

A Week in Review (April 21-27)


Watched: The Wizard of Oz with Jack. As you may recall, we went to see Oz in the theater and he loved that story. He even got himself an easy reader book that told the story. So I kept wanting him to see the original movie. It's so hard to believe that it was produced in 1939. It's a classic story for sure. He really enjoyed it, but he was quite disturbed that the Ms. Gulch wanted to kill Toto. We also made time to watch the 2006 live action movie of Charlotte's Web. It is a well done movie with several famous people lending their voices. We have been reading the book for quite some time now, so Jack knew the general outline. The end of the movie devastated him. We both had water works flowing.

Read: Have you heard of the children's book, ? I had heard of it and read it before but never appreciated why it was a classic until I read it with Jack. He loves the story. It makes him laugh every time and he enjoys acting it out. So if you haven't read it in a while, pick it up and try it with your children. It's sure to be a hit! In adult literature, I finished up Sing You Home. It was a good story. I felt that it was fairly predictable and I didn't even know what the book was about. If you take issue with gay parenting than you might want to stay away from this book or prepare to have your beliefs challenged.

Listened: To the radio again, I haven't done that in quite a while because I usually have my audiobook on. It was nice, but I'm glad I have a new audiobook to start this upcoming week.

Made: An entirely new to me lesson plan and it was way too much for the students. It's always interesting to see how what you envisioned in your head turns out in the classroom. While I think the students had fun, I had problems fitting it all into our 2.5 hours!

Felt: Pretty thrilled that I have been able to take some garage sale steals that I have and resell them at a profit. It makes going to garage sales all that more thrilling to know that I'm most likely doing it for free with what I can make off my finds.

Planned: To get involved with a new charity, . Their missions really speak to me. I am organizing a book drive among my friends and hope to spend some more time seeing what I can do to help make this charity a success. I hope you will see more about it in upcoming updates.

Loved: My busy Thursday. I took my students on a field trip to a local nursery and then jetted over to Jack's school to accompany them to Deanna Rose. After that, we came home to play some basketball outside. It was then that I noticed that I'd allowed myself to get a bit red. The rest of evening, I played Bunco with my lovely ladies and had a blast, as always!

Here are the pics for the week: Jack's money has been burning a hole in his pocket this week and he has acquired several new toys. He used his birthday money from Grandma Pam to buy the one in the picture, so he wanted to take a picture to send to her. The batman suit was one of my awesome garage sale deals, only $3! Considering we are coming up to a crazy month for me, I thought it was important to remember the real to do list. The rest are from Jack's class filed trip.













Sunday 21 April 2013

A Week in Review (April 14-20)


Watched: The movie Argo with my hubby.  I was blown away by it. I realized that this is sensationalized history, but it was interesting that even such a thing happened.  What a gutsy call!  If you haven't taken the time to watch the movie, I would recommend it.

Read: I had to pause the book The Princess Bride.  I just couldn't get into it and it was due back at the library and there were holds on it, so I couldn't renew it.  I am not sure if it was just the writing style that I wasn't in the mood for or what.  I thought it was a decent, although not quite as catchy as the movie.  I put it back on my TBR (to be read) list, so maybe I will get back to it one day.  I started Sing You Home.  I found this book at a garage sale about a year ago and thought it looked interesting because it had a soundtrack with it and I love music. I am about half way through and it has been interesting.  I think I will be finished by next weeks blog to tell you more!

Listened:  I finished up Die for You. I only gave it 2 stars. I think my main issue was that there were too many story lines and took many narrators telling each version of all the story lines from their viewpoint. Plus, I didn't like how everything seemed to happen to everyone at just about the same time. Nothing very thrilling or suspenseful. I wouldn't recommend it to others.

Made: Juice Box boats with my students.  They were so much fun!  I would highly recommend doing these with your kiddos over the summer.  They would perfect on a rainy day because you could then go race them down the gutter.  Save an empty juice box.  Cover the straw hole with duct tape.  I cut a bamboo skewer in half to use for the mast arm.  Next I asked the student where they wanted their sail to go.  I then used an ice pick to poke a hole through the entire juice box.  You must puncture it all the way through or the mast arm just wiggles.  Then I students decorated a piece of pre-laminated paper with stickers and permanent markers.  If you don't have access to laminate, then you could find use a small piece of plastic from a takeout container or milk jug.  Once they were done, we duct taped the sale on the arm.  They then splashed about it a Rubbermaid tote I had filled with water for them.  They had lots of fun splashing around.

Felt: Finality as we have made the decision to make sure that our little family stays at three.  This, of course, comes at a time when Jack is in the phase of asking me to have another one.  I do know that this decision is what is best for our family, but it's kind of hard to imagine that we can't change our mind about the subject.

Planned: For Jack to do another Parent's Night Out and McCracken Gymnastics  He had so much fun. We had wrapped up our date and thought we'd go get him about 45 minutes early.  Not a good idea as we just had to stand around and watch him play.  Not that wasn't grand, but not exactly what we were hoping to do.  He's gotten into the "just one more" phase.

Loved:  My garage sale finds.  I have so much fun and it doesn't cost too much. This week I was able to find a much sought after Catwoman action figure, 2 movies that we enjoy but didn't own (Superman and Underdog), a steal on a wagon that I am hoping to be able to resell for a decent turn around on profit.  I found a new storage container for all of action Batman collection, which has grown be on the original container that I had bought for it.  :)  Picking up things at garage sales makes it MUCH easier for me to get rid of it after it has outlived it's useful in our house.

Here are the pics for the week:  Jack had one of his school friends over for a morning play date, my lovely little ladybug that I bought with my birthday money (Think Spring, right?), the juice box boats we made, and Jack with what he thought was a bag of Circus Peanuts.  I almost let him buy them just to get a video of his face when he opened it!








Sunday 14 April 2013

A Week in Review (April 7-13)



A Week in Review (April 7-13)

Watched: All the shows that I was behind on my DVR. I had good motivation to get through them when I realized one of my co-workers as watched Days, so we can chat about it over lunch on Tuesday.

Read: I finished up The Light Between Oceans. It was excellent. I was in tears at the end. I really identified with all of Hannah's emotions and actions, even when I knew that they weren't the "right" things to be doing. Tom reminded me of my husband too: a rule follower who would give anything to make me happy and would pay a huge cost so I wouldn't have to pay for my own mistakes. I also loved the way the author wrapped up the story. Excellent novel! Looking forward to more from this author. I began reading. It similar to the movie, but it doesn't work quite as well for me.

Listened: Mostly just listened to Die for You. I only have one more disc left!

Made: Cinnamon Oatmeal Apple in the Crock pot.  It was a total fail!  Jack has played a lot of Fruit Ninja over the weekend trying to unlock the rainbow blade (btw, he was thrilled when he accomplished this mini-goal of his) and so he decided he wanted to slice some real fruit.  I had seen this recipe: http://pintrestthings.pbworks.com/w/page/62098128/Apple%20Oatmeal  and had bought the stuff so that we could make it.  It didn't come out well at all.  The apples had horrible flavor, the oatmeal didn't cook up fully, and it was just an off flavor.  I will be deleting this from my pins as I don't want anyone else trying it either!

Felt: Slightly crazy at Jack's Fun Fair. It's way too noisy and crowded. I thought we'd get there early and be in and out. Instead, we ended staying over 3 hours. Jack had a great time and Nick survived it, so it was a good time for all.

Planned: To teach Jack 50 sight words by the time school starts in August. His teachers have said it will make his life easier, and since I know he will be beginning speech, I want him to have as much of a leg up as he can. He's already gotten a good start as he knows about 20 of them. 30 only amounts to learning about 2 or 3 a week. Totally manageable for him. I've gotten good ideas from friends and fellow teachers. Now it's just to keep him practicing.

Loved: Celebrating my 34th birthday. Jack made me an awesome card and picked out an ottoman for me to put my feet up and hide some stuff. He got the idea because they use one for Wii stuff at Ms. Beth's.

Our pics of the week are: Jack enjoying the PE portion of Little Lancers night, some birthday pics, pics from his Fun
Fair, and Spring Game pics.

















Monday 8 April 2013

A Week in Review (March 30-April 6)


A Week in Review (March 30-April 6)

Watched: A ton of TV shows to try and clean up my DVR. I didn't win the war, but I did win a few battles. It did really leave me wondering how my television watching friends manage to do it. TV is always the thing that I bump to the back burner and probably would have a bigger back log if not for filling up my DVR! Luckily, I don't have to share it with Nick, just Jack's love of whatever movie at the time. Currently, we have 4 Batman movies on there.


Read: Last week, I finished up The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. While I did enjoy parts of the book, I feel it would be best read one month at a time. The book is broke up into monthly sections, and it would read well if you could read one section a month. One of my favorite quotes from the book is actually a quote she found from someone else: "There are times in the lives of most of us," observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, "when we would have given all the world to be as we were yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed." I also started The Light Between Oceans. It is very absorbing (and due back at the library on the 10th), so I know I will have a review for you next week.

Listened: To complete my A to Z author challenge, I started Die for You by Lisa Unger. It's a decent story overall. I am excited to see where it takes me. I don't get a whole lot of listening time during the average week, so it takes me a while to get a book completed.


MadeOut like a bandit for my birthday. My sweet hubby decided that I needed the iPhone 5. LTE is considerably faster than even my home Internet. I was surprised by that, but a speed test verified it. Crazy, huh?  I still use my WiFi so that I don't go over my limited data. It's 2 gigs, but still....  I also got a new lifeproof car and it's a pretty tealish blue.  He even took the time to set it up and transfer my files so that I could just enjoy it without the work!

Felt: Proud of Jack as he completed his very drawn out swimming lessons. He does a very deep bob and will dive in the water, but he just can't seem to master the art of the float. Nick says that he still can't float either, which would contribute to why he doesn't like water. I'm enrolling Jack in some different swim lessons this summer. We will see if a different pair of instructors can help him understand this concept better.

PlannedWe are in the throws of planning a vacation. Jack has asked to see the ocean. Since Nick hates to fly and the prices of tickets are so crazy, we are trying to figure where we can go. I am think that maybe a white sand beach would satisfy him, but it wouldn't be the same. Have you ever done an ocean trip from the Midwest?  If so, where have you gone?

Loved: The start of garage sale season! I love seeing what great buys that I can find out there. I think my favorite buy was these giant tinker toy like building set. You can make a very larger structure out of them. While Jack had a good time with them, it's the students in my classroom that I will love them. I'm excited to see what they create.

Here are the pics for the week: Two Easter Egg hunt pics, Jack waiting to jump at his swimming lessons, a pic of Nick taken by Jack, and a night shot from my new iPhone.