1. I got the Mother's Day gifts completed for preschool in a timely fashion (we make a scrapbook of pictures for each child to give to mom). I wasn't worried that I wouldn't, but I always have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind of WHAT IF's until they are completely done (like, WHAT IF there's a tornado and they blow away, which is always a very real possibility this time of year around here). Project completed and presented. Whew!
2. The preschool Mother's Day programs were this week, and they went very well. The Christmas program is a bit of a crap shoot; it's the first time we have them up on stage in front of an audience, and you never really know what will happen until it happens. By the Mother's Day program, we are all older and wiser, and it usually goes off without a hitch, which it did.
3. Our grass heads in my Primary class are finally growing hair! This could have been one of my Pinterest challenge posts in itself, but I didn't get pictures of the process from the beginning, so it will have to do to be right here. Instead of the mundane planting of grass seed in a soup can of potting soil this spring, I thought it would be FUN to try this Pinterest project I found:
Walmart had knee hose on clearance for 18 cents a piece, so it cost me next to nothing for the supplies. Each child sprinkled grass seed in the toe of the stocking and added potting soil on top. I tied it to make a ball, my lovely assistant Miss Janet stitched a nose on them, and the child added googly eyes and a mouth. Then we set them into a can of water. The end of the stocking was supposed to act as a wick and pull water up into the ball of potting soil, and soon, the head would grow grass hair.
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| Kind of Mr. Bill-ish, I know. |
Well.
Our stockings did NOT wick water up to the head, and the heads just stared baldly back at us for two weeks. After repeated baptizing (from a modest Presbyterian sprinkling to a full blown Baptist submersion), we finally got some grass to grow. They look like little old men in a nursing home, but by golly, they're growing hair!
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| In need of Rogaine. |
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| Two days later. Better.... |
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| The whole Grass Head family, mocking me. |
That was really long. I'll make the rest of the them short.
4. My daughter's last show choir concert of the year was this week. They did a new ballad, arranged by one of the senior boys in his music theory class, and it turned out just beautiful. If you want to give it a listen, here it is (the sound isn't great, of course, and the man three rows ahead of me kept getting in the way, but you'll get the idea):
Joplin High School Sound Dimension
5. Open windows with fresh, spring breezes wafting in.
6. Central air conditioning, for when those spring breezes turn humid and the air starts to smack of summer.
7. Being greeted by Ruby every time I return home with the same amount of enthusiasm, whether I've been gone five minutes or five hours (if you start talking days,though, she ramps up the enthusiasm).
8. Honey Bunches of Oats cereal.
9. My Time Hop app on my phone. It's really fun to see what I was posting on social media each day over the past few years.
10. I'm thankful for my mama, not just Mother's Day but always. She's been through the wringer lately with health issues, and she has stayed cheerful and positive throughout (okay, not going to lie, MOSTLY throughout) even when I do things like compare her to Maxine.
This is week 99 of the TToT, oh, by the way. 99! Can you believe it? That means I have found 990 things for which to be thankful in the past 99 weeks. Can you find just ten and join us? Consider it a warm up exercise for NEXT week, the 100th TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL! There will be a contest!
Fun fact: my husband used to work with Toto.
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The 'grass heads' make me smile. What a creative idea!
ReplyDeleteI wish it had worked better! I think they needed a good soaking BEFORE we added the eyes and mouth.
DeleteI can't decide if they are a Pinterest win or fail, but I'll try it again next year before I make that decision! Cat naps with cats are better than plain cat naps. Do you like corn flakes? Because Honey Bunches are fancy cornflakes.
ReplyDeleteI would be pretty much okay with the whole grass heads as long as I didn't have to sleep in the same room. Then they would probably creep me out and mock me for being creeped out.
ReplyDeleteI think Ruby and Mikey would get along just great. The second I open the door he yells at me and begs to be petted and adored and then licks the crap out of me.
In the windowsill at preschool, they look like a row of maniacal Mr. Bills.
DeleteRuby THINKS she's a dog. She fetches like a champ.
Love your grass heads!
ReplyDeleteI keep seeing little old men in a nursing home.
Delete990 is a hella lot! I only have 770.
ReplyDeleteThose grass heads are just about the cutest things I've ever seen!!
Mm...honey bunches of oats.
I did double posts a few times, so, really, I'm well over 1,000 already.
DeleteYou should do the grass heads with your kids. I recommend using the Yoplait containers in the Pinterest pin. Being narrow at the top is a good thing when you have a head stuffed with potting soil. We had to make a little hammock of tape to keep gravity from pulling our heads right into the cans.
A highly underrated cereal, if you ask me.
Your grass heads really did turn out cute. Maybe a cotton rope as a wick might have helped? Look at it this way though, if they had started growing sooner they would have all needed a haircut before Mother's day.
ReplyDeleteIn hindsight, I thought a piece of cotton rope as a wick would have helped, but it would have been a lot of trouble to stick it in the head and tie the stocking. It just should have WORKED and I wouldn't have had a problem.
DeleteI'm sending the heads home next week. They become the parents' problem.
I am loving your homemade Chia pets. Loving. You do such fun stuff with those kids!
ReplyDeleteI had naps on my list this week.
That Maxine comparison still cracks me up.
Those heads are so wrong and yet so right! The kids think they're hilarious!
DeleteNaps are always a good thing.
I'm probably going to hell for that Maxine comparison, because my poor mom couldn't help it, but it really should go viral.
Now you have me laughing at bald men in a nursing homes. And Maxine. Project was adorable, and so are you. Looking forward to the 100th post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Val! The half-bald grass heads look frighteningly like my poor mom right now, too, but I hated to say it.
DeleteOkay. Not a big Pinterest person, nor am I that crafty person (I believe they go hand in hand nowadays!), but those grass head dudes are awesome! The kids must have loved them when they actually started growing hair!
ReplyDeleteI'm not terribly crafty, but I do use Pinterest a lot for ideas for preschool crafts. The kids think the heads are hilarious, and that includes the kid whose grass head refuses to grow hair!
DeleteOh my ! I so want to do a chia head guy! lovely vid... I love how a choir sounds.
ReplyDeletePretty awesome, huh?
DeleteOhhh, thanks for listening to the song! They are really good, in spite of the lousy recording.
I love the Grass Head Family - I love their name too - your daughter's choir is amazing, Congrats to 99 I am glad that I can be a part of it and celebrate#100 your mom and Maxine twins hope she is feeling better. cat naps are great - naps are great too ! have a wonderful week
ReplyDeleteI may have to make my own grass head for home. Thanks for listening to the choir - they had just learned the song the week before; otherwise, their teacher wouldn't have come out and directed them. My mom just LOVES the comparison to Maxine, but even she has to admit the resemblance is uncanny.
Deletehave a wonderful weekend and happy mother's day too!
ReplyDeleteThanks, and right back at you!
DeleteThe grass heads are great, even if you did have to go for some inter-denominational baptism to get them to grow!
ReplyDeleteWell, it IS a Christian preschool, after all :)
DeleteYour grass heads are hilarious - so cute and so funny. I wish my Kidzilla had you for preschool!
ReplyDeleteNumbers 5 and 6 - absolutely. Our AC has been blowing at full throttle this week because once I got sick there was no way I was tolerating the heat and humidity that popped up here this week. (Not that I ever tolerate it...nothing makes a fat woman cry like humidity.)
So much good.
HEY maybe YOU know when my first TToT was? Because unlike other people I have never numbered mine. And I have searched my own blog and can't seem to figure out which was the first TToT post. Still working on it...but I know it was you who got me in, so, if you remember do tell me.
I would have loved to have had Zilla, too! I'd say you two could grow your own grass heads, but obviously, I can't promise it will work!
DeleteIt's a fine line between comfortable and sticky, isn't it? Pretty much the same between comfortable and freezing. Drives my husband crazy that I have such a small window of comfortable!
I will try to figure out when your first TToT was. I was a host already, I believe, so that will help me find it.
The choir sounds beautiful, Dyanne! I have a friend who's a choir director, and she'd love it! Those grass heads are really funny. The girls had a little grass head a while ago, and it was so much fun watching the hair grow :-) Have a happy Mother's Day tomorrow, and a great week ahead of you!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Stephanie! Emma loves being in show choir more than any other activity she is in.
DeleteI'm thinking about growing my own and letting the cats be the barber.
Happy Mother's Day to you too!
Those are the cutest projects ever. We just started seeds with my 11 yo's fourth grade class yesterday. Nothing that clever. And I love open windows too! Only problem is that our 115 year old houses windows are painted shut. :((. Enjoy your fresh air.
ReplyDeleteIn pre-k, we put potting soil in a quart freezer bag, drop in about 5 green bean seeds and less than a tablespoon of water, seal it up, and hang them all in the window. We can see the roots growing and the beans sprouting. It's really cool, then I send them home for the parents to deal with.
DeleteOur house is 90 years old, but our bedroom was an addition done 15 years ago and has windows that actually open! The rest of ours are painted shut, too. Old house probs!
#1 is a good example of the power of the internet/blogsphere…. any time I surf through the weather channel and they have a tornado show on, I stop and (sometimes) will yell 'hey! thats where Dyanne lives!'
ReplyDeleteisn't the blogsphere amazing!
cats (and dogs!) do that welcome thing so amazing! no matter what, you get home, you're the focus of their world…until dinner or time to go out!
Just the other day, someone mentioned Rhode Island, and I said I KNOW SOMEONE WHO L IVES THERE!
DeleteThe other two cats don't care that much whether I come or go, as long as they have food. Ruby is my Lassie.