Dragon Club - Join TODAY!

A few weeks ago, my students decided that they were all going to create and join clubs. It started innocently enough with one small group of students asking me if they could create posters for a "Dragon Club" and hang them around the classroom. I told them it was okay as long as ANYONE in the classroom who wanted could join.

The next day, all of my other students decided that they wanted to create their own club as well. Before I knew it, posters for "Sports Club: Boy's Only" and "Girlz Rule" were being put up around the classroom. I had to put a stop to it ASAP because inevitably someone would be excluded and their feelings would get hurt.

My original "Dragon Club" founder had already asked her mom if she could bring in treats for the class to encourage everyone to join her club. I had given her the go ahead, so she had come to class with small Oreo cookie snack packs and orange flavored Capri Suns that day. She handed the snack out to everyone during indoor recess. They were all having fun and enjoying their snack courtesy of the "Dragon Club."

I was at my desk grading papers and enjoying a Capri Sun of my own when one of my students walked over to me with a very worried look on his face. He asked me in a very serious tone that was just above a whisper, "Could you try your Capri Sun and tell me if it has ALCOHOL in it?" I was quite puzzled, but inquired further to try to understand his thinking. He explained to me that it tasted like his hand sanitizer which contains 62% alcohol.

The first thought that popped into my head was, Uh, I don't even know what alcohol tastes like. Then I talked to him about the dangers of eating your hand sanitizer and let him know that I didn't think that the people that made kids' drinks would put alcohol in something that looked like it was for kids. He still seemed unsure, but returned to his desk and promptly threw away his unfinished "Orange Wake Up" Capri Sun. (I guess hand sanitizer doesn't taste that good.)

My brother-in-law posted this picture on Facebook the other night with the following caption, "Juice boxes... now in mommy flavor!"


Uhhh... I guess I need to retract my earlier statement!

Snowmageddon 2.0

Doug and I headed over to Home Depot to get some paint for our dining room on Wednesday the 10th. After several days snowed inside with nothing to do, I finally decided on a color for the dining room. My friend Cassie recommended an application on Sherwin William's website. It helped tons! We bought two buckets of RED Behr paint with the primer already included.

The icicles at my parents house were huge! This isn't even the biggest one, it was the only 

one that I could reach with all of the snow on the back deck!

 We knew that the second part of the storm was coming, but we were hoping to make it back home in time. We went to go pick up the paint and when we left the store the roads were completely covered and slick. Luckily, my parents only live about a mile away from that Home Depot, so we went to their house instead of trying to brave the roads all the way home. It was nice to have a change of scenery after being snowed in at our house for several days with only each other for entertainment, but we were ready to get home and sleep in our own bed after a couple days.

We headed back home Friday morning and couldn't even make it into our garage with the additional accumulation and snow drifts. After about an hour of shoveling snow and a slight detour of making an igloo, we finally made it inside.

Our igloo! Doug and I are really just big kids!

Once we got inside, we got right to work painting the dining room. Red paint is REALLY hard to work with it, but I really liked the color and Doug said yes, so we went for it.

Here are some pictures of us painting...

  

The room after the first coat of paint.
 

Doug and I were both pretty skeptical after the first coat of red paint. It didn't really look that good and it was discouraging after all the work that we had put into it. We had bought plenty of paint, so we did a second coat... and third the next day to make sure that the walls would have a solid, even coverage.

Sherwin Williams projected results:

Actual Results:

Note: We didn't actually use the Sherwin Williams paint that I put on the wall 

in the Visualizer, but I picked one that looked close at Home Depot.

I like it. I think it totally transforms the room! I want to paint Doug's office across the entry hall a dark blue (I think) during my upcoming spring break. We'll see if he agrees to the color.

Snowmageddon 1.0

The snow storm the area received on February 5th resulted in Doug and I being off work for 7 days + 2 weekends for a total of 11 days! We didn't return to work/school until February 16th... just in time for my birthday! I was pretty ready to come back anyway. We stayed snowed in our house until February 9th when we decided to venture out for burgers at Red Robin. The roads were awful... in hindsight we shouldn't have been driving, but we really just needed to get out of the house.

About halfway there, Doug's car ran out of wiper fluid and we could barely see out of the windshield so we stopped by the new Wegmans to get wiper fluid and some other essentials.


You can barely see because the windshield was all gunked up, but the roads were BAD! This is a pretty major road that we're on in this picture.


This is Doug walking by a huge pile of snow in the parking lot. He's 6'2 and it towered over him.


We finally made it... the burgers were excellent as usual!

*Warning* Pyrex May Explode

The other night I decided to make Ritzy Chicken for dinner. I was really excited about it. It was a recipe that my mother in law gave to me probably about 4 years ago, but I had never gotten around to making it. I just was too busy preparing extravagant meals EVERY night... NOT! The sad truth is that I prepare an actual meal about 1-2 times every 2 weeks.

I threw together the ingredients really quickly because this recipe is a breeze. I even remembered to preheat the oven. I put it in the oven and came back when the timer beeped 30 minutes later to this...

KABLOOEY!

The Pyrex exploded while it was cooking! I had never had this happen to me before and it has definitely made me a little weary about cooking with Pyrex in the future.

Simple Recipe for EXPLODING Ritzy Chicken:

1) Cup up 3-4 pieces of chicken.
2) Spread chicken along bottom of bottom of an 8x10 Pyrex dish.
3) Mix 1 Can Cream of Chicken and an 8 oz container of sour cream.
4) Spread this mix over the chicken.
5) Crush up a sleeve of Ritz crackers and sprinkle it on top.
6) Drizzle 1/4 cup of melted butter over crushed Ritz crackers.
7) Bake for 30 minutes at 350°
8) Enjoy! (Unless it explodes and is full of glass slivers.)

11010 <--- 26 Years Old

I just celebrated my 26th birthday on the 16th. Doug made me a Funfetti birthday cake and realized that we didn't have enough candles at home. At that point he got a little creative and decided to light my birthday candles in binary. Binary is a base-2 number system that is used by computers. Computer geeks, like my husband, use it.

Here's my binary birthday cake. Binary works right to left instead of left to right like we read. I don't know why there are 9 candles instead of 6, but Doug seemed to know what he was doing.


Also, this Friday my class threw me a surprise birthday party. I really had no clue! My room moms met us at the bathroom on the way back from lunch. I got really worried and thought that they had rescheduled the Valentine's Day party that was canceled from the snow without telling me. One of them talked to me in the hall so I was the last one in the classroom. When I walked in the door all of the kids yelled, "Surprise!" I'm pretty sure that none of them had a clue (except for the 2 kids whose moms were involved). Kids basically stink at keeping secrets, but it was great!

The reason why I mention this is because I got this awesome spur of the moment present from one of my students...



YES, that is a cookie taped to a piece of construction paper.

I heart SNOW!

So in case you haven't heard, we've gotten some snow here in Northern Virginia.



Doug shoveled the driveway this morning.



I helped... by modeling this huge hat!


Next, I decided that Darwin might want to try out the snow.


He thought about it...


...but decided against it.


Then I came inside and made some of these...


They're really quite easy when you have a just add water mix...


I'm already off school Monday and Tuesday this next week... now I just need to find something to keep myself busy.

* * * S * N * O * W * * *

Snow in Virginia makes a happy teacher! We got school off on Wednesday because of some snow and now Friday for an impending snow storm!



:)