December: Be Joyful

To catch up on all the happenings we haven't blogged about, I'm going to start with the most recent and work my way backwards month by month. Brad and I spent Christmas here this year, and despite greatly missing all our families and the craziness those gatherings are guaranteed to bring - we did enjoy a relaxing holiday together! 

Adorable letter written by one of my students

A Christmas present from a student...hmm, wonder what types of stories he tells his mom about our class??

The first part of December wasn't so relaxing but it certainly flew by for us! I wrapped up second quarter with my kiddos in grand fashion, throwing them a Snow Day on the last day before break. I wanted them to experience the best part about growing up in the Midwest - talk about a cultural experience! All they knew beforehand was that I was allowing them to wear pajamas and bring blankets/pillows. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures so just try to imagine this: you come through the doorway under a curtain of white butcher paper cut in long strips that said "SNOW DAY!" and inside, there are snowflakes literally hanging everywhere from the ceiling by fishing line about the height of an eight year old's head. 

After taking care of all the end-of-the quarter business, I told the kids to pack up and put their bags on. Confused since it was only 9:30am, they did as told and watched in awe as I shoved all desks and chairs against the back wall creating a huge open space in our classroom. After snuggling into their blankets on the floor, I told them what a snow day was and how exciting it was to wake up super early and watch for your school to scroll across the TV screen with the words 'CANCELED.' Then you got to spend the whole day in your pajamas watching movies, stopping only to intermittently go outside and play until it got too cold. So, we did just that - we all watched holiday movies (on a giant 10 ft movie screen fashioned out of white butcher paper), drank hot chocolate with candy cane stirrers, and even ate lunch in there. The kids had a blast and so did I - it was so cute to look around the room and see all the kids lined up in rows alternating napping and watching movies. Now if only we could have actually seen real snow...but apparently that all got dumped over everywhere else in the country!

       

Here are a few outtakes from our annual Christmas card photo shoot. Moral of the story: trying to wrangle two dogs in antlers is a lot infinitely harder than expected. As you can tell, Brad was exhausted by the end of the ordeal.

 

We didn't really take any pictures of anything on Christmas itself, so this is the one shot I have - proof we did put up a tree this year since people still ask if I staple garland to the wall in the shape of a tree (that was just one year). Happy Holidays!

Brad spent the end of the month rocking at his new(ish) job. Meanwhile, I ended the year napping, hot yoga-ing, and dog park-ing while on break from school. This is what I would wake up to most mornings -------------------->>

Normally, the dogs are not allowed in bed with us but Cleo is constantly trying to snuggle anyway. So with me on break, she realized once Brad had left for work, she could safely hop up and cuddle with me. Since I'm such a hard sleeper who never noticed, she always got a few more hours of zzzzz's in a warm bed. Oh, how I love my cuddle monsters of dogs!

And before you knew it, 2012 was over. Boom.