Around Here Week 02: 01/07-13

 A glimpse into what it is like to be in our family at just this moment. 

photo cred: Abba

photo cred: Miss Emma

photo cred: Miss Emma (mat big sis & mat mom!)

Violet's snowman!

photo cred: Becky C

photo cred: Gemma

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 42+ MINUTES (of 1000)
aw man, I'm not even over an hour yet, but also, I'm leaning into my spirit that is just not a snow bunny. I'm too cold and I like cozy blankies and hot drinks and books and  fuzzy socks and that is what winter is for. The kids are still getting out and I appreciate that, but momma is a warm(ish) weather kind of girl and I will be making up these hours as soon as the temperature gets above 40!

Reading Unwind by Neal Shusterman which is pretty wild and has all my students losing their minds about it. I love having them stop me in the hallways and be like, "Where are you in the book!?" because just about every chapter has some insane thing happening next. Neal Shusterman is a great YA author (he wrote the Scythe books) and I knew it was going to be a solid pick for Project Lit; but the kids' enthusiasm for it is even greater than I was expecting! 

Making a 2024 book log. Violet wanted a copy to track her reading and if you want a copy too - here it is free for the printing! Read.all.the.books !

Wishing our families a happy Orthodox Christmas on Sunday! 

So proud and excited for our Miss Emma who started her college classes this week. Miss Baylee was with us for her first day this week (love her!) and Pappy was able to swoop in and help last minute with the morning trade off (thank you!) A new schedule for all of this, but it is going well so far and I am so grateful for our two nannies who love our babies so well. 

Seeing snow! We had a snow day and a two hour delay this week which spiced up the schedule a bit (hah!) The kids were happy to lounge around on the snow day while I did my Flexible Instruction Day. My students and I gave all the snow day credit to our Ekeko statue in the room, Emma gave him a post it not asking for a snow day on Monday afternoon and lo and behold on Tuesday we had one...coincedence? I think not! (jajaja)

When people say How do you do it? My two answers are: 1. with the help from our friends and family and 2. MY PLANNER.

Thankful for our village. The McKool family kept Grey with them between Sunday school and the confirmation class this week while we were at the wrestling tournament and then brought him back home (thank you!) and the Cable family took on Rusty and Violet after the half day dismissal on Friday and then gave Violet extra playtime during Grey's basketball game which she was thrilled about - even if it did end up in a glitter explosion on her and Evaley (hah! Thank you Cables!) The wrestling moms all helped me figure out how to figure out the matches/mats at the tournaments (thank you!) and we had lots of cheerleaders this week at kids games - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and Miss Emma and Colton! Even when our schedules overlap and we can't be at a kids' event, there is always a familiar face in the stands cheering them on and sending us pics and videos. How grateful we are to build this village around the kids that give them guidance, support, and love.

Teaching for a wacky week since we had a Flexible Instruction Day (a snow day but online learning) and a 2hr delay the following day.  We did clothing vocab and working on our Legalos model project in Spanish 1. Spanish 2 learned about Bolivia and El Ekeko to prepare for our next novel. Spanish 3 and 4 continued to work on the Preterito tense reviewing regular AR/ER/IR verbs and the irregular super 7 verbs. It was also the last week of Quarter 2, so everyone was in a mass scramble to turn in missing/late work which meant I was in a scramble to get grades finished up and check in with potential failures (ugh) before the first semester comes to an end! 

Sporting with a wrestling tournament at North Star where we got his first win! We started out by saying, "let's make the goal not to get pinned." and after that - he didn't! He just refused to get pinned and went all three rounds for every match. And then one match he got more points then the other kid and even won! During the week, he had two wrestling practices and then on Saturday, Rusty had another wrestling tourney at Somerset which was a lot of hard fought matches (1 win) and he is progressing every time.  Violet had one basketball practice, a basketball game, and a Sparks soccer practice this week. Gemma had one basketball game where she twisted her ankle so then she spent the rest of the week resting it and not attending jr high practices, but she did keep stats for the jr high team twice. And Grey had one pitching practice for baseball, one basketball practice, and three basketball games this week. Brandon and I lifted three times this week too! 

Making good use of my last month with 5Dinners1Hour and letting it plan my meals this week. For those meals, we had BBQ Beef over baked potatoes, Lemon Herb Pork Tenderloin & veggies (kids loved this one!), Potato, chicken, and brocolli Bake, Honey Garlic Meatballs, and Chicken Alfredo in the slow cooker. On Sunday night I had Chicken&Broccoli in the cast iron skillet and Brandon made the two of us spicy shrimp and rice one night when the kids ate all the dinner before we got any (#bigfamilyprobs).  For the snow day, we had old fashion donut muffins for breakfast and homemade stromboli for lunch. For Rusty's wrestling tournament day, we ordered pizza to my classroom and I made Peanut butter power balls too.