Happy Valentine's Day!

I have to be honest and say I am not a fan of this day as a teacher because the kids are bursting with excitement from the moment they walk through the door in the morning. It can make for a long day for teachers. Of course, the kids have a blast exchanging Valentine's cards and eating cupcakes! I think my favorite part about this day, as a mom and a teacher, are the Valentine's cards the kids pass out to each other. I think it is so cute how my own kids spend 20 minutes at Target picking out just the right cards. This year, Elia chose Angry Birds and Ava chose Kung Fu Panda. I also love how they spend hours trying to decide which card to give to which friend. My students also love passing out their Valentines to each other. It is serious business in a 2nd grade classroom! My students spend about 30 minutes decorating their bags with just the right paper hearts and stickers. They take such pride in their bags and they are so fun to watch. I think it is the innocence and simplicity of Valentine's cards and bags that I love so much!

Kevin and I like to get the girls a little something on Valentine's Day. This year we got them a Club Penguin Puffle, some art books, and some candy. Elia's favorite candy is her Reese's heart and Ava's favorite is her heart shaped Peeps.

Kevin got me a box of chocolates. I got him some Reese's and a framed wordle. I had never heard of wordles before I read a teacher friend's blog. The website is wordle.net and they are completely free and easy to create. I entered words that mean a lot to us. Then I clicked print. I bought a cheap frame at Fred's and had a nice but inexpensive gift for my hubby!

Of course, you can't forget the teachers on a day like today. I hit the dollar spot at Target and found some cute boxes with matching notepads. I put them in the box along with some candy, a candle, and a gift card to Starbucks. Hopefully, the girls' teachers will enjoy their goodies!

Made it to February!

I have never been a fan of the month of January. It always feels like such a depressing month. It comes right after the excitement of Christmas so that is somewhat of a downer. It is cold outside and it gets dark so early. This January has been especially sad because we have not had one single snow day! It is true that February is also cold, and it also gets dark very early. However, the month after February is March which brings spring break and a little warmer weather! So, I am happy to say that we have finally made it to February! We have not been too busy at all this month. In fact, things have been a little boring which can be a good thing. Here are some things we have been doing the past few weeks:

Elia has been busy playing basketball for Upwards. Kevin is her coach and she is loving it! Here are a couple of pictures of Elia and Dalton playing ball in the cove:

Miley has been enjoying the lazy days of winter. This dog is so pitiful, but we love her so much!

Elia had to do a big project for Black history month. She chose Michael Jordan for 2 reasons: She loves basketball and it was easy to find something to wear the day they had to dress up like the person they chose. She just wore her basketball uniform.

One exciting thing that happened so far this month is that Kevin and I both finished our evaluations! This new teacher evaluation system is a little extreme and a lot stressful. We are so glad to be finished! We celebrated with a night out to Cracker Barrel (Ha!) and dessert at GiGi's cupcakes.

Here are a couple of random pictures from this month. One is of Jake and me outside at recess. The other picture is Elia at my mom's house. She actually let my mom curl her hair and I think she looks beautiful!

Weekend Wrap-Up

We had a fun but laid back weekend. It started Friday night with our trip to the mall. We walked around, shopped, ate dinner, and rode the carousel. It has been a couple of years since the girls have wanted to ride the carousel, but Ava saw it and wanted to ride. Elia acted like she was only riding it to be with Ava, but I think she secretly wanted to ride it as well.

Here is how they started out:

Here is how they ended up riding:

After we left the mall, we went for dessert at Sweet CeCe's. It is one of those new, do-it-yourself ice cream places. It was so yummy! You can tell Ava was pretty excited about being there!

Here is a picture of the girls in their new Abercrombie coats. They were having a big sale this weekend. We bought these coats for $30 each. They were originally $160 each! I LOVE a good sale!

We spent Saturday at Elia's basketball game. Then we went to the grocery store and stocked up for the next two weeks. Sunday morning we went to church. Then we got prepared for the bad weather that was coming our way. The girls tried to get their minds off the storms by losing themselves in the computers.

Of course, they slept with us that night and none of us got any sleep due to all the lightning and wind. Here is what I had to wake up bright and early the next morning:

Here is a picture of Ava trying to look like Justin Beiber. I had bought the girls some white capris at Justice and she got a little carried away.

January Theme Dinner- A Red Carpet Event

It is that time again! Theme dinner night!!! I struggled with what to do for the month of January. I want our theme dinners this year to be different than the typical holiday theme of the month. Sunday afternoon I realized the Oscars were coming on TV so I decided to do "movie night". We went to RedBox and rented 4 movies. Then we spent most of Sunday being lazy and watching movies. Once dinner time came, I started decorating for our movie night.

I had some help from Elia rolling out the red carpet.

The girls thought the red carpet was the most fun! Of course, they had to walk it a couple hundred times. Cami had come over to play while we were getting ready so all three girls had a blast playing movie star!

Elia was a "gangster":

Ava was a "princess":

And Cami was a "cowgirl":

Then Miley had to get in on the act:

After several walks down the red carpet and lots of laughs, it was time to start dinner. I found this recipe in a cookbook. It is called Tortilla Lasagna.

First I had to cut up a zucchini, onions, and tomatoes (shocking, I know!). Then I mixed it all together.

Next, I added black beans which Elia helped mix together.

Then I mixed the salsa and the southwest sour cream. I put a layer of the sour cream mixture. Then a layer of tortillas. Then a layer of the bean and veggie mixture. After that came cheese. I repeated the layering several times.

Here is the finished product:

Kevin, Elia, and I thought it was very good. However, Ava had a completely different opinion about the food. I made her take at least one bite to try it, and this was the outcome:

After we cleaned up from dinner, we finished watching our movies and enjoyed dessert which was popcorn of course!!!

Stay tuned for our theme dinner next month!

1st Week of 2012

The first full week of 2012 and has been pretty uneventful which can be a good thing. We had to go back to school Tuesday which was a challenge to get everyone up and out the door by 7am. We had been sleeping in every day until about 11am over the break.

Elia started basketball practice this week, and her games start up next weekend. She loves to play basketball!

Miley got groomed this week. Here is her before picture:

And her after:

The weekend brought some much needed down time. This was the first weekend we did not have one thing planned. It was very boring but also very nice. On Friday night we ordered pizza and the girls entertained us with their tricks all night. The rest of this weekend was spent going to the grocery store, doing laundry, and going to church.