Mystery Valentine and The Name Game

HAPPY CHOCOLATE DAY!

All the lovey dovey stuff is great but when it all boils down to it- it's the sweets for the sweet that make this holiday tolerable!

The Mr. and I used to make a big deal about valentines for each other ! But then we got older and became parents. Which led to all the frantic shopping on the evening of the 13th and the sitting at the table for hours over the years trying to get a 5 year old to write his name IN THE LITTLE BITTY SPACES.....22 TIMES!!!
After that it just kind of became okay for us to say "I love you" on the morning of .....and enjoy the calm...until we had to shop for Easter!!!


Speaking of writing names- I thought I would share with you the just a few variations of MY name- that came from children who have been in my class for 103 days.

The correct spelling is QUARLES.

This one was rocking it with the name....lost it  on the Squirrels.

I am not supposed to have favorites- but this one has moved up in the ranks...

In the mood for a great joke.....

I am grateful for every sweet treat that came my way today.... whether it was a heart full of chocolate, an index card with a hand drawn heart, or my favorite- a hug! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they cared enough to give me any of those! I thanked them all just the same:)

However there is one friend who couldn't be thanked...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dear Life...

Dear Life,

We get it. There are ups and there are downs. We no longer need the "examples" that you keep sending us i.e.
sick Littles,
sick Mr.s,
sick Squirrels,
snow days,
lost holidays because of snow days,
teenage attitude,
pre-teen attitude,
no-reason-to-have-attitude-attitude,
cold,
bills due to cold,
and last but not least
DRAMA.
We totally get that there will be a little of each. We have learned all of our little lessons that inspirational quotes on Instagram WON'T fix. So we would appreciate a few weeks where everything is just normal. Like normal people normal. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to a few drama free weeks.
Your Friends,
The Squirrels


If anyone has the address where I can send that and get a response, we would greatly appreciate it!
Can you tell by the dates between blog posts that this squirrel-friend has been busy? Can squirrels be busy beavers? I wonder if that's an insult in the real squirrel world? hmm.... something to think about.

I missed Friday- thanks to a sweet little gift I received- PINK EYE!!! WTH? What am I, in seventh grade??? And I have to admit I was a little pumped about having the house to myself- because I am NEVER alone. Like really, NEVER. So I figured that me, myself and EYE (get it?) would hangout and watch netflix with the one good peeper. - NOPE. Not in the cards.

Littlest Little ends up with a fever and not keeping anything down.
We make it through the weekend. And then Chickadee starts Sunday night! So she was home today. AND to top it off, I was at the walk-in with Little Mr.
(I have decided that Middle Little sounded bad- we all remember how weird Jan Brady turned out because she was always "in the middle"??? I figured "little" represents that he is still one of my Littles and "Mr." refers to the fact that HE IS JUST LIKE HIS FATHER!!!!!)
So anyhoo- Little Mr. doesn't have have the stomach bug, but instead has "something viral" in his head!

Don't you love "viral"? Could you imagine a parent coming in to a conference with you and you told them, "Well, I'm not quite sure what the problem with Johnny is. We just have to let it run it's course and see if it gets better. Now that will be $160 office visit fee."

I just want everyone to be healthy and stop being icky. I'm tired of all the sickness. Bleck!

Something else I am tired of????
This cold! It isn't snowing here right now, so I guess I should be thankful for that. And I don't want anymore snow because we have already started losing holidays to make up for the ones we missed! But we are trapped inside!
The Littles don't go out when we are home. They don't go out at school. We are trapped. It's either too cold, too wet, too dark. Too something!
I just need them to go. They need them to go out! We all really NEED to go out.

I feel bad for the kiddos at school. They haven't seen the playground since before Thanksgiving!
And bless their hearts, my classroom is just not set up for Mega Recess this year.
My room is smaller and there is bigger furniture and more of it! And all the toys and games that I have are developmentally appropriate for K and 1- not 4th.

This weekend I decided that I had to put some order into our inside recess and try to fix some of the cabin fever with OLD NEW STUFF.
NEW as in I had to purchase it.
OLD as in oldies but goodies.

So I put ALL the other recess things away and these were their choices today.
CHECKERS OR CARDS.

I bought 5 cheapo checker sets and 8 decks of cards from the Dollar Tree. This morning I laminated the boards and the rules for Checkers. And I placed the rules for 8 different card games you can play with just regular decks of cards.

Yep. You should have seen their faces when they found out these were their only choices.

The cards are in the soap containers that I used last year for crayons and the checker pieces are in the glad containers.

There are  8 sets of rules for 8 games bound together for partners to take.

And in case there are some friends (more than half) who are not sure how to play checkers (without cheating), I laminated the rules that came in the boxes.

Can you hear that? That is the sound of Organized Mandatory Fun.

Who knew that $12 and some sheet protectors could bring such peace during Inside Recess??
Even if "Life" doesn't answer my letter, I may have something to smile about come recess time tomorrow!
Hope  you're staying warm (and sane)!