'Twas The Last Ten Things of Thankful For 2013

This is our last Ten Things of Thankful link up for 2013.

WHAAAAA....???

Since the next two weeks will see most of us long on thankful but short on time, the hosts of TToT will be taking an egg nog break until January 4. Well, I will be having a Diet Coke and peppermint ice cream break (not at the same time), as I don't like egg nog, but you get what I mean. 

All right, truth be told, I have never tried egg nog, because it has "egg" in the title. And I don't do nog, so....

Ten Things of Thankful starts now.

1. Another cold, blustery, snowy, icy, white crap falling from the sky week. Many schools in the area were canceled on Monday, but not us (our preschool follows the same calendar as the Joplin public schools, so if they are closed, we are, too). We worked like crazy all morning in Pre-K, because Christmas is coming and the elves have a lot to get done, plus more wintery weather was predicted for later in the week. We got the most important thing done that we needed to get done: our Christmas gifts from our kids to their parents are painted. Whew!

2. Having not seen the weather forecast that morning, imagine my surprise when I exited the bowels of the Mall to find frozen white crap falling from the sky Monday afternoon when it was time to pick my daughter up from school.  Got her picked up and home before it got slick, then we got to enjoy hearing school was closed for the next day THAT VERY EVENING, instead of waiting until that 5:30 a.m. phone call that serves to tell us of the cancellation AND startle us out of five years of our lives. 

3. Tuesday evening, everyone was speculating whether or not we would have school the next day, as many of the rural schools had already cancelled classes. Our superintendent, Dr. CJ Huff, sent out a tweet that he was going to go out and check the roads and hoped to make a decision later that evening. I was so amused by the high school students who replied to his tweet. A few of them weren't exactly nice (there's always a few), but most of them were quite witty, such as:

     "You all right, CJ? You've been gone awhile."
     "Stay safe. I've heard it's pretty dangerous out there."
     "What would Jesus do?"
     "As a teen driver, I'm scared to drive in these conditions...."
     

4. The students were all pretty disappointed that Dr. Huff returned from checking the roads to say he was 90% sure we would go to school the next day, and he was 100% correct; we did go. thus inspiring the follow-up tweet "Jesus wouldn't have done THAT." It was a little slippery, but I was actually glad we went back, because we had a Christmas program practice scheduled that morning at preschool with all the kids from both the MWF and T-TH classes practicing together in the sanctuary, on risers. And we REALLY, REALLY needed this practice. 

5. As  soon as preschool was over on Wednesday, I drove to Springfield to pick up the College Boy from school and bring him home, as he finished his finals earlier that day. And was he packed and ready when I got there? What do YOU think? Oh, well, I got to sit in the common area of his suite and watch several episodes of "Friends" while I waited for him to gather up all his dirty clothes and throw them in a laundry basket pack. I love "Friends."

6. Since we missed school on Tuesday for snow (or "inclement weather" as our district puts it when they call you and SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU WITH THE PHONE RINGING BEFORE THE BUTTCRACK OF DAWN, we had a lot to squeeze into our morning in my Primary class. 

First and foremost on the list was going to be to assemble our Christmas gifts for the parents. The gift is a Rudolph wall hanging, made by tracing the child's foot and hands onto brown felt and cutting them out (by me - they're THREE).  The pieces are then glued onto a 9" x 12" piece of white felt with a casing sewn along the top in which to insert a dowel rod for hanging, and it is embellished with a piece of green rickrack along the hem (the Pre-K gift is very similar, only we trace a hand onto white felt, paint part of it red and make it into a Santa head which is glued onto a green felt background).  I write each child's name and the year in gold glitter paint along the bottom, just above the rickrack, and each child glues on eyes and a red nose and it's done and it's a pain but it's cute. 

I had taken all the pieces home and had written the names on them and let them dry Wednesday evening. Thursday morning, I decided I'd go ahead and glue the head and antlers down before I even took my shower, so they would be dry and ready to embellish when the kids got to school. I picked up the first one, pre-arranged the pieces on the background (because I wouldn't want to MESS ANYTHING UP), and realized there was no casing for the dowel rod. (At this point, I would appreciate it if you would bear in mind that I don't usually teach a Primary level class, but because of a shift in enrollment this year, we had the need for more Primary classes than we did Pre-K. And that this is my 14th year teaching Pre-K. 14th. 14 years in a row.) One of the other Primary teachers had done the sewing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she hadn't made a casing. Did she GLUE the dowel rods on? Not very practical, but the Rudolph is pretty big, being made with a foot and all, and there's not a lot of extra space on the background piece, so maybe THAT'S why she didn't add a casing at the top? I decided to wait to glue the pieces on until I got to preschool and see how this teacher had attached the dowel rod on the ones HER class had already completed.

I walked into the preschool office Thursday morning and started telling the director how puzzled I was about the lack of a casing, picked up one of the felt backgrounds, and stopped mid-sentence. Then I said a very, very un-preschool like word or ten, because there was, indeed, a casing for the dowel rod, and it was right there at the top where it was supposed to be. Because in the Primary class, the rickrack on the background goes at the TOP of the felt piece. In Pre-K, it goes at the BOTTOM. If you're following this very convoluted story, I thought the top was the bottom and the bottom was the top and  I JUST WROTE 11 NAMES IN GOLD GLITTER PAINT ON THE WRONG END OF THE FELT BACKGROUND. 

(Here's the thankful part.) My assistant teacher, Miss Janet, took the upside down mess that I had made and was able to make a casing for the dowel rods and still leave enough room for Rudolph. Crisis averted, and I didn't have to throw myself off the bell tower after all.

7. My Primary kiddos had asked if they could make ornaments to go on our handprint Christmas tree on the hall bulletin board, so we did that with glittery fun foam and sequins (which I didn't notice until the kids were sticking them onto the ornaments that the bag of sequins included little sequin champagne glasses, forcing me to pick them off the ornaments and replace them with something a little more wholesome). 

8. Baked some gorgeous bread this week, because that's what I do on snow days: bake.

9. Thursday night was our preschool Christmas program. No one peed, pooped, threw up or cried, so I declare it a success. 

10. And we ended the week with, yes, another Snow Day, although Mother Nature pulled a fast one and the frozen white crap that was predicted stayed to the east, giving us nothing but a cold, rainy day.

Hook 'em up here.

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A Fly on our (Chicken Coop) Wall, Considerings, Finding Ninee, Getting Literal</ a>, Home On Deranged, I can say mama, I Want Backsies, Rewritten, Thankful Me, The Wakefield Doctrine

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