Saturday 24 May 2014

A Week in Review (May 18-24)

A Week in Review (May 18-24)

Watched: My sweet little boy graduate from Kindergarten.  The teacher put together a slide show and then they sang sweet songs about moving onto First Grade.  I, of course, had tears of happiness streaming down my face.  I am so glad that my mom was there to share them with me.  When the teacher told me that the event was going to happen in the classroom, I didn't think that could work.  But it clearly it wasn't her first rodeo and things were fine.  I think everyone had a nice time.  I caught a couple videos of Jack and his songs.  They aren't the highest of quality, but Jack and I still enjoy them.  We hope you do too!

Read: I finished up Cinder .  It didn't grab me as quickly as I thought it would.  Overall, I didn't really like this book. I found it way too predictable. The characters weren't all that likable.  I will start the 2nd book in the series only because I have it waiting right here for me.  Let's hope pulls me I'm a bit more. 

Listened: To Jack giggle with delight while my mom and I were screaming during Spinning Dragons.  On Monday, we took our trip to Worlds of Fun.  Jack is now over 46" tall so it made it a totally new experience.  He loved finally being able to ride on his own after 4 years of having to ride with me.  There are several pics below.

Made: A Monday morning trip over to see Jack's reading day celebration. He was awarded a medal for reading 4000 minutes over the school year. Several of his classmates also made the goal for gold.  Because the school made their goal for the reading minutes, they taped Mrs. Veatch (the principal) to the wall with duct tape so that she could fly. She was a good sport and it held for a couple seconds. I was able to get in a quick photo, but the quality is pretty bad. You will get the idea though.  The students had a lot of fun and I am sure it will hemp motivate them for next year too.

Felt: Bummed.  We found out on Tuesday that Nick would not be getting a memorial day weekend, so we decided that he should just stay in SLC instead of being home without really being home.  That left a lot of time for Jack and I to hang out together.  On Saturday, we played the hate game again.  We began with Jack's pick of watching Iron Man 3 and ended with 15 of book reading time. We also played some wii, some floor hockey, ate at Fazolli's and painted his nails gold. It was a good day. 

Planned: To just buy Ms. Beth a plant for her year end gift, but I couldn't find one that I just loved. Luckily, mom was here and pointed out this super cute one called a Purple Passion. She was awesome enough to spend some of her last time here helping me pot it. This inspired me to have her plant Jack's wildflower that he had gotten from school too. We were excited that they already have tiny sprouts. 

Loved: Spending time with my mom. It was great to just share in our everyday stuff together.  I loved that she was here to walk Jack to his last day of Kindergarten. And that she got to see him do gymnastics. We got to go swimming and all be silly going down the water slide. I loved getting my toenails done with her. I am so very thankful for my mom!

Here are the pics for the week:





Our annual snoopy pic


He really wanted to play a game and had a very hard time walking away when he was out of money. Luckily, we found an every game is a winner (and a very nice operator) at another booth and Grandma Teri gave him the funds and he won Pink, Pink, Pink Monkey. 


Jack and Grandma Teri heading up the Spinning Dragons for three times in a row. 

Jack's First and Last Day of Kindergarten

A final day collage


Working on planting his seeds
 
Sprouts!

Jack's gold toes. He is thinking about doing his nails too. 

A Week in Review (May 11-17)

A Week in Review (May 11-17)

Watched: My students do a great job performing Hey Diddle Diddle for our end of the year performance. After the pictures were done, I rushed over to Jack's belt ceremony in time to see him earn his green/blue belt.  This means he has achieved 75% mastery of his green belt curriculum. He has had a great time learning karate and I think it promotes great body control and self awareness. It's been awesome to watch his growth over the year. 


Read: I finished up The Wedding. I think that I must have read it before I had Goodreads to keep track of it for me because the book had a vaguely familiar feeling and I knew the ending dead on. I think the idea of a husband who can change his romantic tendencies appeals to a large number of women. I can see why this was popular among my Goodreads friends.Next, I picked up Cinder . It is supposed to be on the fractured fairy tale line, but I am not seeing it so far.   

Listened: To Nick have to tell Jack time after time to look at the camera when we were trying to update a good pic of the three of us. I really love the shots Nick got. Plus, we had a ton of fun goofing off at Hillsdale lake. Nick caught me with a huge splash that soaked my pant leg and gave us all a good laugh.
Made: Lots of yummy treats on Wednesday. I made Banana Bread muffins with icing and gooey peanut butter bars for a Teacher Appreciation lunch. I also made a couple dozen sugar cookies for my students last day treat.  I also took icing and sprinkles so they could decorate how they wanted.  I also took some Neapolitan ice cream for them and some of them added sprinkles to that too.

Felt: So excited that my Mom was coming to town. We are very excited to share in the every day events in our lives that she doesn't often get to see because we live too far apart.  While she is going to be here 5 days, I think we have enough crammed in that it will go by in the blink of an eye. I felt very thankful that I mentioned my plans to a husband of a Garmin employee though. We were planning to go WOF on Sunday, but the park is closed down due to the annual Garmin event out there. It would have been such a bummer to drive all that way for nothing. It would have felt like the end of the movie Vacation. 

Planned: On being hot at Jack's field day on Thursday, but Mother Nature had other plans. When I woke up it was 47 with a high of 57 for the day.  Since we had bought matching field day shirts, we just put on long sleeves underneath and went out.  I worked the slide bouncy house.  I only got to see Jack about 10 minutes, but I know it takes good parent volunteers to pull off a big event and I was glad to do my part.

Loved: Being spoiled on Mother's Day. My boys slept in so I started the morning off with some Parenthood and laundry. When they were up, Jack just couldn't wait to show me my gifts. He made a clay wind chime at school for me. He and Nick also printed a card for me and Jack wrote inside it.  Then they gave me my big gift. An iPad mini with a data package all ensconced in a LifeProof case. I tried it  in the shower while the boys prepared some fondue for me. It was delicious once again.  It had the added bonus of making a great leftover dinner for Jack and I while Nick was out of town!  We ended the day playing a game of Payday.     It was a great day!

Here are the pics for the week:

A little giggle at the domain name the Mission Repair guy used for Nick's email. 

Jack coming off the slide I worked at his Field Day. 


My kiddos

Some of my favorite shots









Sunday 11 May 2014

A Week in Review (May 4-10)

A Week in Review (May 4-10)

Watched: Too much Parenthood. My MIL has been telling me for years to watch this series and I can see why she enjoys it so much. Thanks to Amazon Prime and Nick being out of town, I stay up far too late watching episodes. I've already made it through the first season. There are 5 seasons so I might get through it all by the time Nick is done with this design build. I have a feeling the summer will make most TV watching come to a halt. 

Read: Not as much as normal. It happens when I get involved in a TV show. I did finish up When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie, #3)This is the second Kate Atkinson book that I read. I started off with Started Early, Took My Dog, which is the fourth book in Jackson Brodie series. My son picked this one off the shelf because he has a crush on a girl named Kate and I asked him to pick a book off my shelf for me. I enjoyed this story line. It jumped between characters without a lot of transition which took some time to get used to. As with the first book I read, she took all the seemingly unconnected story lines and wrapped them up into one nice package. If you would like a fun little mystery, I suggest giving this one a shot.  I found The Wedding last week at a garage sale and decided to start it because I thought it would be nice and fluffy. It starts off pretty sad so far. I am sure it will pick up and I will finish it up next week. 

Listened:  Jack figure out that he has enough energy to go up the escalators while it was going down.  He found it ultra entertaining.  We actually missed Nick getting off his plane because he didn't want to stop.  :)  I don't know what I will do when he isn't entertained by the simple things in life.  It's one of my favorite things about being a mom!

Made: It up over a skyscraper of steps, according to my fit bit. It said that I walked a total of 60 flights of stairs on Thursday. We were mostly at the zoo and it didn't feel like a ton of stairs, but it was pretty intense. I didn't take many pictures as I was in a charge of a runner and the zoo was soo crowded that I was positive that I was going to lose him. Luckily the worst thing that happen is that he took the water bottle out of a fellow moms bag and was drinking it after his ran out. In his defense it was like 90 and I would have liked to have unlimited water too!

Felt: Horrible for Nick. He was kicked off his Delta flight for mentioning that the plane was too small. He may have used the f word when getting on the plane in reference to its size.  Apparently the flight attend asked him if he was okay and he said he would be fine.  Later she asked him again if he was okay and he said he was fine.  He was then called up to the cabin and told that he was "too nervous" for the flight.  He says he will get a full refund of his ticket price.  Luckily Southwest had a ticket on their final flight to Salt Lake City.  The customer service is so much better with Southwest. It would be stellar if they had a direct flight between MCI and SLC, but alas, he is stuck with Delta for the remainder of his flights.

Planned: For Jack to have his friend J over for a Minecraft play date. What I didn't plan for is that when we went to get him C would assume he was coming with us, say bye Mom, and be severely disappointed when that didn't work out. Luckily, I think we will be able take him Monday for a couple hours to ease my guilt. I am so glad my boy is bonded with those crazy kiddos.

Loved: Our Saturday. It started with Jack waking up and asking me to read him a great children's book 
.  After that I took the time to watch two episodes of a show he is currently enjoying, Lab Rats. Then I snuck out and went to a few garage sales.  Found a couple good deals for friends of mine.  Came home and took Jack to his double header football game. He had two sets of visitors  because his Aunt Valerie and Uncle Chewy were in town for the Nascar race they took the time to drive out to his first match. Also his Aunt Debbie and Uncle Kevin drove up for the other too. The boys were doing some fun jumping off the benches that she captured and I posted below.  After the game Jack asked them back over for games. While Debbie and I ran for OK Joe's, the boys played some darts. After lunch, there was a game of monopoly on the Wii, which is just like real monopoly only electronic.  Uncle Kevin went out first, followed by Jack, and Aunt Debbie ended up winning it all. She was pretty excited and also snapped a couple shots of Nick, post defeat.  They headed home and I went and bought a new clock I love off Swap and Shop. :) When I got back the bosh were out shopping for Mother's Day. I watched an episode of Parenthood and then we played 6 months of Payday.  Nick did end up winning that game and I got dead last.  Jack was so exhausted, he fell asleep while we were reading books!

Here are the pics for the week:

Jack takes good care of filling up the bird bath that I found a garage sale. I was so excited to see one using it that I had to snap a picture for him.

Five Kindergarten boys and one 2 year old squished in an egg. 


The Jack Show featuring the amazing escalators trick


Team Jump Pictures

My new clock


Sunday 4 May 2014

A Week in Review (April 27-May 3)

A Week in Review (April 27-May 3)

Watched: My students be so goofy. At the end of the day, I was taking each of their pictures for their Mother's Day present and they started hamming up.  I love hanging out with my group of kiddos and I can hardly believe that we only have two more classes left. 

Read: Last week, I picked up and finished The Enchanted: A NovelI picked this book up after a couple women in my book club read it and said that it was a book about a man stuck on death row who used books to escape his walls. While I must say that held true for about 5 pages of the book, the rest was just a horribly sad look at prison life. Everyone was being sexually abused in both the present stories and the back stories. There was plenty of death too. Overall, not at all what I pictured. I wouldn't recommend it.  I also made quite a bit of progress on When Will There Be Good News?. Each characters story line is getting more detailed, but this is how we will find them all connected. 

Listened: I got in the audiobook for 
When Will There Be Good News?. It is weird because when I began reading the book, I "heard" them all in American accents even though the book is set in Great Britian. Once I began listening to the narrator speaking in the correct accent, it's how I hear the characters.  It's amazing what the power of suggestion does!

Made: Homemade Fondue. I found a fondue pot at a garage sale and so we tried making it at home. It was really quite yummy and easy. We didn't have any dipping sauces and I will be trying to make some. I did splurge and buy $29 a pound Filet Mignon and it was soooo good.  I can see this becoming a once a month treat. Much cheaper than the Melting Pot.

Felt: Relief and Sadness all at once. We sold the boat on Saturday. While I am glad we won't have to worry about what to do with it if we happen to move or the floor goes out, it still feels very weird not to have it as an option. I am glad Jack got to drive it one last time.  The picture of him just makes me smile. 

Planned: May Day baskets for some friends. We had a great time delivering them and Jack loved seeing how it made people happy!  He was particularly glad that he never got caught while he was delivering them. 


Loved:  Seeing Jack get so into his roll of Teacher for the Day. He was excited when his teacher donated this item to the PTO to help raise money during the silent auction.  He couldn't take a backpack, didn't think he could go to PE, thought he'd get a lunch break, and wanted to know how much he would get paid. His teacher even made him up his own little badge.  The first one you will see I took at home before he left, early of course because teachers arrive before students, and the second one his teacher sent to me.

Here are the pics for the week:

Nick took a super nice picture for me. ;)


Jack driving the boat one last time. 


I remembered I hadn't taken any pics of our May Day baskets, so I snapped this one while we were waiting at a light. :)

Mr Thomas