Snow Days Already

 When they called for "inclement weather" last week, I wasn't exactly holding my breath.  The bigger the deal that the news makes about upcoming snow, the less we tend to get.  But we have a superintendent from Georgia so he called two days out and then a half day on Wed.  Made my week at school pretty easy last week!  Except that there is NOTHING easy about staying home with 4 kids while they can't go outside and burn off energy.  Not much snow for us, but lots of annoying ice and rain.
Jason wanted to climb everything, Emily wanted to do tons of art projects, but there were two things that everyone could agree on:  annoy play with the dog and take out all of mom's pots and pans and tupperware.

I'm teasing the dog!  It's so much fun!

Ummmm.....no, I didnt take out any Tupperware.  Why?

Better than my birthday, I tell ya!

Caught in the act

And to think that I bought them actual Christmas presents....

Two remotes and a prime sofa seat:  Garrett's position for pretty much the whole 2 1/2 days.

Teacher Christmas Gifts 2013

 Heavens no, I wouldn't be referring to any gift for ME, the teacher, just the gifts that we put together for Garrett and Caroline's teachers.  While the load I receive every year is getting slimmer and slimmer (blame the recession, blame apathy, blame anything....I just want my Panera gift cards and boxes of chocolates back!),  I like to come up with creative and unique gifts for the kids' teachers.  I tend to search Pinterest come up with my own awesome ideas every year, but this year I really did do this one all by myself (God, I sound like Emily--I want to do it by myself!  You no help me Momma!  BY MY SELF!)
I saw these very cool soup mugs with lids at Walmart.  Brand name ones (Corningware) were $7.  These were $3.67.  Add a pack of soup mix (88 cents) and a bag of Goldfish crackers (12 pack for $4) and boom!  We have ourselves a winner!  Even with 10 teachers to buy for (4 for Caroline, 6 for Garrett, and that doesn't include the 3 in Emily's class or Jason's Mom-Mom Margaret) I kept it under $50 for all!

The front has "Merry Christmas" and kid's names

The back says "Thanks for being such a "souper" teacher!"  And yes, I did come up with that all by myself!

All put together, pre-tissue paper

Chicken noodle, creamy potato and chicken enchilada

All wrapped and ready to go!

Christmas Card 2013

At this point, our cards have been in the mail for four days and I think they are still floating around the mail trucks.  I'm not worried that you are seeing this card before receiving it; the four people who read this blog are most definitely going to receive a card in their mailbox in the next day or so!  :)  
I got a bug up my butt (not literally) to get my photo session underway about midway through November.  The weather was still fairly good and I definitely wanted to do the pictures outside.  I knew the kids would not be the easiest to work with--what toddler, baby, teens and tweens would be?  Garrett and Caroline were great, so I posed them first and then threw various siblings into their laps and hoped for the best.
I wanted to do a coordinating color theme, and the fall colors outside helped with that.  We went with yellow accents and gray and white as our base colors.  I realized after I downloaded the pics that Tim and I weren't in any!  What a travesty!  So Caroline took a few of us outside and we actually liked a few of them.  It's always easier to do a card with just the kids but Tim and I like to be on the card every once in a while (we are paying for the thing, darn it!)
So even though you will be receiving one soon, enjoy the lack of surprise by looking at the pics below:

front of card

back of card--a play on the "ho ho ho! merry christmas!" wording