Craft Social (Yet Again!)!!!!!!!

Ohmygosh, we have had a long day...but I want to post a couple of pictures from the Craft Social last night before I collapse into a deep, dreamy sleep.

We were so excited to go to our third craft social. I'm not sure why I got it into my head that I wanted to host a craft...I think it was party Kathy's doing...but maybe it seemed fun at the time, but I decided to host a craft. It actually was a lot of fun. I had memories of my Close To My Heart days, which I loved, but could also be stressful. Anyway! I hosted a table where people could come and make holidays cards WITH FUN FABRIC YO-YOS! I thought they were very cute. I actually got a ton made for myself so I'm making lots of headway towards my own holiday cards!

Here I am showing my new blog friend, Lindy, I think how to tie a knot...not sure exactly!

And here are my Craft Social crusaders: Kathy and Silvia. They were so nice taking care of me! Kathy made me a sandwich and Silvia brought me treats and made me a terrarium! It's so cute. You can see some of the projects we made. I'll try and post closer up pictures later...when I'm more coherent. (Need sleep...)

Saving the Earth

Today I'm teaching a lesson about answering questions after reading a book and the book I'm using is called "Introducing Planet Earth". It's a simple book but it talks about how proud Earth is to be the only planet in the solar system that can sustain life, and how it rotates so everyone around the Earth gets its fair share of sunshine. It made me refocus on how important the Earth really is. It does say we can trust it to keep rotating for us for billions of years to come...but after movies like Wall-E and AstroBoy I really realize more and more how much we have to pay attention to what we do to our Earth.

I am by no means completely eco-friendly but I am proud of a few things we do around our house...little things that I hope make some kind of a difference. I'd love for you to share simple changes you have made to be nice to our Planet Earth!

1. We recycle like crazy. Seriously, everything that can be recycled, we recycle it. We already up-sized from the small orange box to the giant brown recycling bin and there are many times when it is completely full.

2. We use the Target shopping bags every time we go get groceries...AND now they scan a special coupon barcode that gives us 5 cents off for every bag we use when we check out. It's only 5 cents...but it's something!

3. When I pack my lunch in the morning, I use the reusable buckets instead of plastic baggies or foil so I don't have any waste that way...I've even started packing real silverware with my lunch.

4. I take a water bottle or mug filled with water to work and refill it throughout the day versus buying water bottles. I even took my mug into Starbucks the other day to get hot tea and she only charged me for the tea since I had my own mug...it was less than $1 at STARBUCKS!

5. And, finally, this is the one I am most proud of. I didn't think we were going to be able to do it, but we actually did it and it's not that big of a deal now. On a "green" website I read that one of the things you should never do is buy papertowels. It makes sense, but at first I completely thought there would be no way we could ever possibly live without paper towels. We used them for everything: napkins, drying the table, drying our hands...you name it, we used papertowels. When I thought about it, I told Chad I really wanted to try and not use papertowels as much so we bought a ton of kitchen towels at Target. My sister's boyfriend thought we were crazy and said maybe we could compromise and not use as many papertowels...so I kept that in mind. Less papertowels was at least better. After a few months with the dishtowels though we ran out of papertowels one day and we just never went to buy more. We are papertowel free!!!! Sometimes it freaks out other people when they come over because they instantly look for a papertowel and we don't have any...but I'm proud to say we are papertowel free!

These are just a few things we do! It's amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it. Little changes will really add up. What do you do to protect our wonderful Planet Earth?

Skippyjon Jones!

We had a sunny, Skippyjon Jones Sunday! In case you don't now, Skippyjon Jones is a fun Siamese cat who is the main character of several Skippyjon Jones books. He's a cat who thinks he's a chihuahua who goes on all sorts of imaginary adventures. He's so much fun!

It was a great day today! We did Skippyjon stuff all day! Here you can see all our Skippyjon day fun ready to go!

The dining room was all decorated for Skippyjon fun!

Jordan had fun eating fun-colored jelly beans and coloring his Skippyjon pages!

The blue ones were his favorite!

Here's me trying to be all photographer-like.
Bzzzz....bzzzz...bzzzzz....
Fun tissue flowery things to add to the festivity.
Hard at work.
Mmm...snacking on blue jello-o with pineapple and oranges that we made on Saturday. Jordan was all excited to eat the blue jell-o he had stirred up the day before but couldn't eat yet.
Skippyjon cake!
Jordan and I with cake!
After cake we played memory/concentration with Skippyjon cards!
Finally, it was time to go to the library to actually meet Skippyjon!!!! We listened to two Skippyjon stories and danced. Jordan and Maddy got these cool cat masks! At the very beginning, Jordan and Maddy were sitting on the floor and all the kids were silent waiting for the story to begin. Skippy was up on a giant screen and Jordan pointed, looked at me, and said, "Mom, It's Skippyjon Jones!" It was classic and super cute. I was so excited he was that happy to see him. Very fun! The whole day celebration was worth it for that moment.
Jordan and Skippyjon!!!!!!
Family photo with el Skippito Friskito!
One last hug, because we love you Skippyjon!!!!!
Whew! Chad and I have both agreed that we really like the bugs and the flowery decorations. It makes it feel fresh and springy in here...even though it's not. We like to pretend!

Party Prep!

Yesterday we spent the day getting ready for our mini-Skippyjon Jones party. Here are some snippets of what we were working on. I'll try to post later the real pictures of our party. So much fun!

Santa 2009

Yup, we did it! Last night we went to see Santa! It was kind of crazy and I was a little bit hesitant because it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but we went to see him anyway. One great thing about going so early was that we didn't have to wait in completely freezing weather. It was nice actually. We ate at Noodles and Company, walked over to see the lights being turned on, watched the fireworks and then waited for Thomas. Chad, Marc, and Maddy waited in line while Kathy, Jordan and I walked over to check out the Vera Bradley store. I restrained myself and didn't buy anything. Go me! Jordan was great with Santa, except he was really sad when he told Santa he wanted a train but didn't actually get a train. We prepped him to be nice to Santa and to tell him what he wanted but we forgot to tell him he wasn't actually going to get what he wanted yet. Poor kid. It was sweet.

Jordan with a talking reindeer!

Maddy and the reindeer!

This cracked me up, poor Chad just wanted Jordan to be able to see and Jordan was freaked out for some reason...
Maddy with Santa Claus!
Jordan talking to Santa!
Santa and Jordan!
The Garneau family - Marc, Maddy, and Kathy!
Maddy and Jordan showing me their presents from Santa.
The Vincent family - Chad, Jordan, and Jen!

Ms. Lori

Wednesday night was mall night! Jordan and I had pretzels while we waited for Maddy and Kathy. He was eating his when he got excited and showed me, "Look, Mom, J for Jordan!" He loves finding J's now. Here's his sweet cheesy smile and his pretzel J!

We really didn't even play at the mall because we went to watch a singer/storyteller named Ms. Lori. She's from WTTW and she is on the Readers are Leaders tour right now. Maddy is a great audience member for that kind of stuff. She volunteered to help Ms. Lori write letters! Here's Maddy patiently waiting for directions!

Here's a picture of the whole setup. Ms. Lori was telling another little boy what to do. You can see Maddy at her easel on the right, and then you can see Jordan's little head on the bottom in the middle. Isn't this picture so nicely labelled? I love Photoshop!

Jordan needed to take a potty break after a few songs and then when we got back he curled up right on the gray carpet with his eehee. He can sit quietly for only so long! In no time we were off to the food court for Happy Meals. It was a fun switch to mall night!

Purple Heart

Most Recently Read Book:

Purple Heart

By Patricia McCormick

Wow. I think I have to declare this another very strongly written book by Patricia McCormick. One of my students just finished reading Sold, also by McCormick. That book is an amazingly well-written look into child prostitution and this book is also a well-written book. This book tells the story of a soldier in Iraq. Post-traumatic stress disorder, which many soldiers suffer from, is a topic I am very familiar with because my dad is a veteran of the Vietnam War. The character in the book deals the stresses of being in the middle of a war and the reader gets to be right there with him.

At the end of the book, the author acknowledges people who she talked to while writing the book and who read the book to help her make it as realistic as possible. I'm glad it is a (hopefully) an accurate view of what it might be like for the soldiers fighting in Iraq. I hope people read this book and gain some perspective. I know I did.