Around Here Week 51: 12/14-20

 This is it parents, the week we train all year for - Let's make that holiday magic happen, baby!

photo cred: Jackie F

photo cred: Michael O'Ship

photo cred: Megan M

photo cred: Chelsea L

photo cred: Maria G

fire alarm evacuation photo (hah)

photo cred: Michael O'Ship

photo cred: Michael O'Ship

photo cred: Jackie F

photo cred: Uch

photo cred: Uch

photo cred: Chelsea H

photo cred: Jenn V

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 572+ hours (of 1000)
Wacky winter weather this week. Enough wintry mix conditions early in the week for a 2hr delay for all the schools, then the temps reached almost to 50 degrees, only to drop back down for crazy ice on Friday afternoon (right at school dismissal time?!), and then back up again to nearly 50 again on Saturday afternoon. The weather whiplash is crazy. B took advantage of the sunny weather on Saturday to pick up some hay to stock up before winter remembers to come back. 

Reading By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult 

Listening to My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Marco antics: Wearing a Spiderman mask hanging over the kitchen table, wrapped the TV with Christmas wrapping paper, rolled up in a tortilla on Taco Tuesday, littering the kitchen with a bunch of post-its that say '67' on them, holding a fishing pole over our trout mount in the living room, hanging in the mini basketball hoop, and asking to play rock, paper, scissors (with a real rock, paper, and scissors). 

Christmas movies watched: Home Alone

Christmas prep: 

• wrapping! 
• picked up teacher gifts (we did peppermint sticks) for 13 teachers for all our kids! Brandon printed the notes for me and we got them all assembled and handed out by Friday!
• Ordered our family matching Christmas jammies (Old Navy)
• dress up days for pre-K, elementary, and high school! all the spirit days! 
• buying and wrapping Rusty's class gift exchange gift 
• helping Gemma buy and assemble her friend group secret Santa gift exchange 
• Delighted that Grey's secret santa gift for his friend group exchange arrived in time (it was tracking as late all week)
• Violet's gift exchange for the jammie sleepover at Addy's house 
• cookie baking! 

Letting out a huge sigh of relief when the PA State Ed Department sent a confirmation that everything had been received and all is fine and up to date with my certification. Whew, that scared the crap out of me and thank goodness it is over.

Hosting a wild cat around here. Hah, exactly what we need. We have known about a stray black cat that hangs around our community, but this week we have spotted it mostly around our house. I think our kitties and it are friends and we keep mistaking it for our cat, Nova - but then we see it run past and then turn around to see our Nova. We started calling it Shadow because it's always right out of the corner of our eye zipping away. 

Watching one of my fav 'Christmas' movies, While You Were Sleeping. (Not really a Christmas movie but takes place at Christmas / New Years) While B took the kids all to Pappy's house to vacuum pack all the deer meat, I got a small window to be as productive as possible and I wrapped a bunch of presents. Nothing makes me smile bigger than Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman slipping on the ice together, and the family all talking over each other!, and Joe Jr...I just absolutely love that cheesy movie. 

Celebrating our two little Pre-K'ers at their character trait award assembly. Red and Olive were both selected by their teachers to win the "Mindset" character trait award! Brandon and I were invited to the assembly in which they were honored (thank you to the teachers who covered for my classes so I could attend! Grateful for you Sarah, Mike, and Mandy!) They were so proud to have us there and the assembly was very spirited and cute! 

Thankful for a new dresser for Grey. His had fully busted out of the bottom of several of the drawers so we got our resident Facebook Marketplace extraordinaire on the job (Chummie). Chum found a big dresser and side table for a great price and picked it up to deliver it to us (thank you!!) He and Grey got it shimmied up to his room and Grey did a great job cleaning and reorganizing his room. So thankful to have that random task finished with zero effort on my part (thank you Chum and Grey!!) because it was making me twitch to see clean clothes in piles on the floor with no where to put them! 

Free Night for Mom & Dad when all the kids were out of the house. We ate dinner and relaxed before the full crazy of Christmas descends on us. We had full intentions of getting some things done (like wrapping or cleaning) but bailed on that and just chilled without any kids demanding our attention (it was just what the doctor ordered!) Red, Olive, Violet, and Gemma were all at Aunt Uchie's house, Rusty was at his friend AJ's house, and Grey was at the Valentines for a sleepover. 

Time with Family and Friends The football seniors to the rescue again, babysitting Red and Olive at Gemma's game so that Brandon and I could watch without kids hanging off of us. Red and Olive adore DJ and Cohen and sat with them for the whole game laughing and teasing them. (we love you guys!) Rusty got to take the bus home from school on Friday straight to Abba and Chum's house so he and Chum could go on a wild goose chase for new sneakers together (no luck on finding any but they still have a blast together!) Rusty also had fun at his friend Logan's Harry Potter birthday party and at a playdate with his friend AJ. Violet went to her friend Addi's Christmas Jammies sleepover on Saturday night. Grey went to team dinner at Primanti's with the basketball guys on Friday night. He also had a Secret Santa gift exchange party with his best buds at Gabe's house (thanks for hosting Valentines!)

Teaching and hanging on for our dear lives because the Christmas-crazy-antsy-pantsies are out in full force. Elementary school learned about Navidad traditions in Mexico with the read aloud 'Twas Nochebuena. Expo finished up their geography unit and took the map test this week. Spanish 1 finished and turned in their capibara RAFT projects and learned about Las Posadas and used Navidad songs to fill in missing lyrics. Spanish 2 learned about La Lotería and El Tío Nadal - both Navidad traditions in Spain. 

Sporting with a basketball practice (Rusty tagged along) and an indoor soccer game with the Sparks for Violet (thank you for taking her McDannells!) Gemma had three basketball games, two basketball practices, one basketball shoot around, and an indoor soccer game (and a partridge in a pear tree). Grey had four basketball practices, two basketball games, and team dinner and film at the Dinyar's house (thank you for hosting and feeding!)

how I laughed, when Heather messaged me this.

Making sausage and pepper sammies in the crockpot, beef and noodles, tacos, takeout pizzas (Grey earned a whole pizza pie for taking a charge in the basketball game!), copycat Olive Garden chicken pasta, cheddar/ bacon/ ranch roasted potato fries, and shrimp fettucine 

Christmas cookie baking: 2 dozen white chocolate dipped gingerbread and 2 dozen shortbread cookies that were eaten on the back porch by a creature - Shadow? a racoon?....So, I remade 4 dozen gingerbread cookies, 4+ dozen Christmas swirl sugar cookies, peanut butter balls (Brandon's favorite), I am very thankful to have the happiest ugly cookie taste tester: Reddy. He said, "I will taste any cookie you ever need tasted, Mom!"