AMAZING families

I just finished my 2nd year of collecting items for a sub for Santa kinda thing. Last year Cassidy's honor society was making bags to send to a school in Ogden School District for the 1st graders there. I thought it was such a great idea and started collecting items to send. This year I asked Ms. William's class and Mrs. Lawrence's class to help out because I didn't get the notice that we were doing it again until very late. I only had 3 days to collect items. I didn't think we would get very much stuff because of the time restraint and of course because of the economy. I was so shocked when I saw the amount of items that started to come it. I don't know how many times I was close to tears as I would watch my kiddos bring stuff in and say "this is for those kids that don't have as much as we do". I am truly blessed to work in such a wonderful area with such fantastic parents. Thank you so much for your time and dedication to our school. You are all amazing and I am certain that a few more kids will have a better Christmas this year because of your generosity. Thank you so much!

Frosty Visitor!!

Dear Kindergarten Students,
Hello! My name is Frosty the snowman and I hope you don’t mind but I paid you a visit last night! I really wanted to come and meet you today at school, but as you know snowman only come alive at night.
I enjoyed playing on your playground. What a great school you have. I went so fast in the spinning baskets my nose fell off!
I decided to come in and check out your classroom. It was very fun! I really liked playing in the kitchen and with the Legos! I also found my favorite book The Snowman! I hope your teacher doesn’t mind that I sat and read it for awhile.
It seems that I have left quite a mess. Your classroom was so nice and warm that I started to melt a little. Sorry about that! Watch out for puddles of water on your chairs and tables. I tried to clean them up but I was melting so fast I had to go.
I noticed your playground doesn’t have a snowman, but I saw the wonderful snowman you are making in your cubbies. I also left you a little present in your cubby. I hope you like it! I have one just like it.
I hope you have a very merry Christmas! I hope I get to meet you some day. Remember snowman love to have friends to play with at night, so maybe you could make me a new friend sometime!

Love, your friend
Frosty

Annual Christmas Tree Hunt

It's a tradition in our family to go cut down Christmas trees the weekend after Thanksgiving. It is always cold, but fun. We walk and walk untill the perfect tree for each family is found. This year is seems that our perceptions might have been off, slightly! Everyone ended up with HUGE trees. Oh well, nothing a chainsaw can't fix! Of course poor me is stuck with a fake tree. I totally hate it. But hauling a tree up 3 flights of stairs and not being home very much doesn't lend for a very happy live tree. There is always next year!

David Archuleta

We had a fantastic weekend in Rexburg Idaho. On Friday I took Cassidy and Taelor to the David Archuleta concert. I dragged my friend Lexi along for company. I have to be honest, I could only name one David Archuleta song before I went to the concert. But Cass and Tae LOVE him! So I took them. It was CRAZY! The place was packed and honestly the college kids were acting like he was Elvis or something. They had signs, homemade t-shirts, and cameras going off like crazy! It was a good concert. The first part was his popular songs and the second part was Christmas songs. He is very talented, but kinda sounded like a DUH when he would talk. We think that maybe next time he should use cue cards! Cass called Grandma Thomas (who is also a David fan) to see if she would buy them shirts for Christmas. Of course she said yes. They were so excited to get them!

We stayed with Grandma LaRee while we were there. She was telling us about using brown paper bags or rags to curl her hair when she was younger. So I decided to try it on Regan. She looked so cute with her hair in rags, but the outcome...wasn't so cute. She kinda frizzed out! She cried and cried until I washed it out and straighten it. Not the outcome we were looking for!

Thanksgiving Kindergarten Style

We had such a good time celebrating Thanksgiving in Kindergarten! The best part was going to the cafeteria to have a traditional Thanksgiving lunch. It was a blast having all the parents come and to be able to eat lunch with our friends!

We are thankful for the kitchen staff at Buffalo Point! They stayed really late that day to make sure everyone got yummy food!

My name is Tom Turkey

And I'm afraid as I can be.

I'm wearing my disguise

So you won't catch me.

Kindergarten parents are the most creative! Look at some of the ways they disquised Tom Turkey this year!

AMAZING!

Super Hero Halloween

Every year I make my nieces and nephew their Halloween costumes, with a lot of help from my sister and a glue gun! Of course they all have to be themed, and this years theme was.....SUPER HERO'S! Plus one 80's girl and one 70's girl. I never did get a good picture of Taelor but her costume as cute.

Here is Wonder Women and Super Girl-well...that's my version anyway!

The cutest Robin ever!

So cute!

Batgirl, Batman and Robin

Of course I kept on asking Cass if she needed a costume and she said no. And of course the day of she gets invited to party and needs a costume. Good thing I had some 80's girl accessories!

Halloween

I know...this post is a little bit late in coming! I LOVE Halloween. I LOVE the costumes, the parades, the pumpkins, the field trips, and the parties! This year was so much fun! Thanks to all the parents that came and helped this year!

It is NOT Halloween without a little Witches Brew!

This is our decoupaged pumpkin project that I think turned out pretty good. We used our pumpkins to learn about measurement. This pumpkin won the biggest prize because it needed the biggest pumpkin belt!

My cute afternoon girls all dressed up for the parade.

This pumpkin won for the smallest pumpkin.


This is the only picture I have of my costume. This year I was the wicked queen from Snow White. It was fun!

Here are the tallest pumpkins!

We went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. We had a blast!

We made spiders....

and ate eyeballs!

Birthday Gifts

So, lets face it...birthdays are painful! Unless you are 5 and then you can't wait to turn another year older! This is why I celebrate my birthday every year with my Kindergarten kids. They get so excited about it that it's impossible to be depressed over turning ANOTHER year older. Usually my family all comes to school that day and they tell embarrassing stories about me and the kids LOVE it. But this year the fam couldn't make it so it was up to me! I decided that we would have a day full of things that I like to do. (creatively designed around the things we HAD to do that day anyway!) We started the day by finishing decoupaging our pumpkins(see the next post for a picture) with all sorts of bright colored tissue paper, and then sprinkling glitter on them while the glue was still wet. I think they turned out super cute. Then we had a picnic lunch with all my favorite things. As I passed out the food, I told them a story that related the food item to me. We had Cache Valley String Cheese-obvious reasons! Apples-because I love to ride horses and my horses name is Apples. PB and J sandwiches-because that was the sandwich my mom would make me daily growing up-LOVE THEM! And for desert we had sugar cookies because....well I couldn't think of a reason except because they were cheap and I was tired of shopping at that point!

It was a great day and a lot of fun! Thanks so much to my family and my school family for making my day fantastic. The presents and birthday wishes were the best!

All a person needs is a handwritten note and two Popsicle sticks glued together!

Yes...this is a picture of me and I LOVE it!

Feeling a little WITCHY!

I had such a blast this past weekend at Gardner Village. A group of friends got together and went to the Witchapalooza. It was a great dinner show and the music was the best. If you are looking for something fun to do for the Halloween season you should really go. I was going to dress up like a 80's girl for Halloween but I had so much fun dressing up as a witch I think I changed my mind. Plus the reason I'm dressing up is for my kinder kids and would they really get what a 80's girl is....I don't think so. So a witch it is!

Lex and I just being silly!

Lesh and Alyssa at Witchapalooza.

We had so much fun. We stayed by this witch for a long time just taking pictures with random people. I think they though we were part of the show.

We were practicing our cackle!

I love the witches socks!

Very, Very, Very hard post

I've been wanting to record my feelings and thought about my aunt Zona's passing, but for some reason it has been just too hard. Every time I go to start...I just get overwhelmed with sadness. But I want to share with you a little bit about this amazing women and a little bit about my heritage as well. I can't find the words, so I'll try it through pictures.

My aunt loved to be "done up". This is one of my favorites of her.

Here are 3 of my favorite women in the world. My Aunt Zona, my Mom, and Aunt(she has always felt like an aunt to me) Deloris. All 3 are so much a like. Bossy, fun, and crazy when they are together!

I loved seeing Deloris and her family at the funeral. I felt so connected to her as we hugged and shared in our sadness.

My mom and Zona

Zona and my cousin Cynthia. I was so glad that I got to know her a little bit better while in Oklahoma. She has such a calmness about her. My mom is so proud of her and thinks the world of Cynthia. I'm glad I've become Facebook friends with her and we can keep in touch.

I love my aunt Zona. Her personality is a big as the sky. She was so much fun to be with. Oklahoma to me will always be my Aunt. I can't put my sadness into words...

Color, Color, Everywhere!

The month of October is my FAVORITE month in school. We are so busy but it is a fun busy. We start off the month with colors. Most kids come into kindergarten knowing the colors. So we learn how to spell and recognize the color words. Each day we celebrate a new color. We learn fun songs, eat yummy snacks, and wear the color of the day!

Can you guess the color of the day?

One of my afternoon kiddos was so excited about purple day she had her mom bring in purple cupcakes. Very cool!

We had purple all over! It was fun!

Monday will be pink day, I always tell my boys that cool boys wear pink! We'll see if they buy it!

I Love Kindergarten!

I can't believe that we are well into September! This year is already going so quickly. I'm so excited about this group of kindergartners. They are such good kids and have gotten the routine of kindergarten down pretty fast.

I was so excited to see all the parents come to the volunteer meeting. I got tons of phone calls and emails from the parents who couldn't make it to the meeting as well. We have lots of help for class parties this year. It should be lots of fun. I've been working on the schedule for parents to come into the class and help and I've been overwhelmed! I'm trying to figure out a way to get all of these great parents into help out. We are going to be able to do some fantastic things will all of this extra help.

We have decided that we will be going to Black Island Farms for our field trip this year. The kids will get to pick a pumpkin and do all sorts of fun stuff there. It will be nice to have our field trip done so early in the year. The end of the year is always so busy so it will be nice to have one more thing checked off the list.

My class listened to Pres. Obama's speech this month. It was a little long for their little bodies to sit still but, we learn some good things. When I asked my class what they learned after the speech this is some of what they said.

• We need to wash our hands (that was a good one!)
• Remember to ask for help
• Try our best
• Grow up to be something (very good!)

It is always fun to get the kindergarten perspective on things.

Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow is my dad's birthday! I can be there so I'm sending my birthday wishes over this blog. It wasn't that long ago that I wrote about my dad for Father's Day. It was fun to think of old memories of my dad. So, for this birthday I'm doing my top 5 words to decribe my dad.

1. Patient-he had to be with so many girls in the house

2. Hard Working-he worked for USU for 30 something years.

3. Dependable-I remember hearing those early morning/middle of the night calls from the dairy. He would get up and be there no matter what.

4. Honest-I think it is IMPOSSIBLE for my dad to tell a lie. It is just not in his character.

5. Selfless-I can count the times my dad would give up his luxuries for his family. I know he worked extra jobs when I was growing up just to make sure we had everything we needed.

My dad doesn't say I love you very much, nor does he give lots of hugs and kisses. But, I know without a doubt that my dad loves me, and I love him. I'm so glad he is still here with us. Dad you are the rock of our family, even though you have to deal with so many head strong women. Thank you for all your support. I love you! Happy Birthday!

Cheerleading and Soccer

This past weekend I went to watch Regan and Lexi cheer at the Weber High School football game. They were so cute and did such a good job. Regan said she had a plan. She is going to do soccer for 2 years and then cheer leading. She wants to be a cheerleader in Junior High. She has the talent and can do it if she puts her mind to it. My sweet Lexi doesn't have it quite that easy. She has to work a little bit harder then Regan does at things. I know it is so hard for her because they are always being compared. But Lex held her own! She got out here and shaked it like no one else! I was so proud of them both! The next day was Reg, Lex and Haden's first soccer game. They were so cute in their little outfits. Haden did so good and almost made a goal. The little boys were so cute! Regie and Lex did a really good job too. They haven't ever played soccer and they are on a team with girls that have been playing for years. They tried their best and kept up with those other girls. They were so tired after!

Cute Lexi! Take special note of their cute hair! That was the whole reason they asked me to come. I had to do their hair!

Go Tigers! I wanted their team name to be the Cheetos!

Here is Little Man! He's getting so big!

The cute little guy on the end kept on telling the other team "we're going to take you on!" It was so cute!

This is Cass, and all her friends at the Weber game. Lex, Reg, and Haden too!

My cute Lola!

They had 200 little girls at this cheer camp. The little 3 and 4 year olds were so cute. Reg and Lex are in there somewhere!

I hope they grow up to be close! They fight all the time but then so did Karen and I!