Lloyd told me that I’ve already bought his birthday and Christmas presents. He bought a new phone and some doo-hickey that he installed in his computer tonight.
I am so crazy thoughtful. I knew just what to get.
… I hope I got a good deal…
by Lauren 4 Comments
Lloyd told me that I’ve already bought his birthday and Christmas presents. He bought a new phone and some doo-hickey that he installed in his computer tonight.
I am so crazy thoughtful. I knew just what to get.
… I hope I got a good deal…
by Lauren 5 Comments
1) Remember the Day Clock I made a few years back? It’s like a visual schedule for the kids. When they ask me when we’re going outside/eating lunch/having nap I just say, “Go look at the Day Clock.” It has dramatically reduced the amount of talking I have to do.
2) A long time ago I was IKEA and found a cool removable sticker that looked like a grandfather clock. We hadn’t built the new building yet, so I didn’t attach it to the wall permanently – we just looked at it and tacked it up with pins.
3) Somehow, during the move, I lost the clock sticker. I was very bummed, because now I had a place for it.
4) Another teacher came in today and asked if she could borrow my nativity scene. I opened the Christmas storage…. and there was the sticker! Hooray! Hooray!
We had to shorten it a bit so the clock would still be visible by little eyes.
Best part of my day!
by Lauren 2 Comments
by Lauren 5 Comments
So, with this nice new building, I wondered about doing something interesting with the Christmas decorations. If I had a lot of time and money, I’d lash old Christmas trees to the fence and light ’em up. (With lights, not fire.) Or put a bunch out on the playground (Narnia-like), or at least on the porches. That’s not practical or worthwhile, but I had another thought regarding our windows. I took a picture and did a little photo-shopping.
A giant Advent wreath! It’s construction should be exceedingly simple. Just some PVC pipe and some sort of flames? Sure.
Not wanting to spend much money on anything, I just rolled up some posterboard for the candles.
Lloyd helped me scour Wal*Mart for something for the flames. He has good instincts.
I got the prototype up in the windows and had to do some tweaking. It’s a good thing I used posterboard, because the actual candles need light inside or you can’t see them at night.
Well, it’s a good idea, but now I’m committed. That means I need to make and place a new ‘flame’ each week. Better keep the ladder handy….
by Lauren 2 Comments
Well, the parade is over. The borrowed battery had plenty of juice and the tires didn’t pop. Hallelujah.
This year it was substantially less work for me for two reasons. First, we didn’t disassemble the float and put it inside to ‘advertise’ for families to join us. That meant that it did not have to be taken apart, moved outside and then reassembled. In fact, I didn’t know that the place where we normally store our float needed the floats taken out a while ago. A co-worker and her husband have had it out on their farm for quite a while. They got nearly everything ready to go (including repairing a wheel) and got it to the CDC on Friday. (That’s reason two. God bless them.)
So my day was pretty much replacing light bulbs with LEDs so they’d suck less power, getting the star back up on top and getting costumes and props loaded up. We got the float to the parade site, and I was only expecting the nine kids that signed up to walk with us, but we had at least twice that many show up. One of the families brought three cousins along and asked if they could walk. Of course!
The weather was nice – cold, but not freezing cold. The afternoon had been so nice I was working in a t-shirt. As always, though, I need to fix the handles on that thing so it’s easier to push.
Happy Advent!
by Lauren 2 Comments
We had a Friday Thanksgiving dinner at Sam and Rachel’s, but it was a thinly veiled ruse to get us to do their work. Like all good little well-fed elves, we were happy to do so.
They have an old nativity set that Sam’s mom bought at a thrift store that needed to be painted. Somebody long, long ago drew the lines and wrote down the colors to use, so for us it was just paint-by-number. (Sam routed out the lines, though, which made them much, much easier to follow.)
I think we did alright, and even if we didn’t, our mantra was ‘thirty feet away’. That’s the closest anyone is ever going to get to them and they will not notice any little flub.
Can’t wait to see it up!