This week was much better than last week on the school front, largely thanks to Conscious Discipline. That's a pretty okay way to start out a list of thankfuls, right? Here's why it was better:
1. I employed the breathing techniques I teach my children on myself when my class was not making safe choices. They aren't going to be calm if I'm not, so calm I was. Most of these behaviors were happening during circle activities, so I just sat and breathed deeply until, one by one, they joined me. What you focus on, you get more of. When I focused on what I wanted them to STOP doing, we had chaos; when I focused on what I wanted them to START doing, we got calm.
2. I didn't hyperventilate from all that deep breathing I did.
3. We held a Spirit Week in preparation for the Chiefs going to the Super Bowl. We dressed like Mahomes, Taylor, and Travis. We did football drills (how I wish I could post the video I took of my class doing my version of drills!). We did cheers.
4. Probably my very favorite thing to do with my kids is to sit on the floor with them and sing right before breakfast. They crowd around me, and we sing our favorites, such as "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window," "Down By The Station," "I Have A Little Turtle," and, oddly enough, the theme from "The Mickey Mouse Club," which I introduced them to and they fell in love with. This time of playfulness and touch helps create a bond between all of us.
5. I get so many hugs in a day. Some are stealth hugs from a passing child. Some come from behind me and I have to wait until they finish to see who it was. Some are wrapped around my leg so I can't walk. Some nearly knock me off my feet. Nearly all of them include "I love you, Dillon!"
6. It was warm enough to play outside!
7. I am changing my approach to tattling by teaching the kids to use their "Big Voices" when they sense injustice. Example:
Child 1: Child 2 pushed me!
Me: Did you like it?
Child 1: No!
Me: Tell Child 2 "I don't like it when you push me! Next time, walk around me."
Child 1 to Child 2: I don't like it when you push me! Next time, walk around me!
Child 2 (maybe not always meaning it, but it's a start): Okay! I'm sorry.
This week, I have heard two different children use their Big Voices WITHOUT HELP FROM ME! Progress!
8. We learned how to paint with watercolors, and we now have beautiful Valentine art to show for it.
On non-school related thankfuls, we are in Kansas City this weekend, as we had tickets to see comedian Nate Bargatze Saturday night, so I got to attend church live and in-person this morning, AND I got to meet our new associate pastor Rev. Stephen on his first Sunday at our church. My heart is happy.
Oh, and HOW 'BOUT THOSE CHIEFS?! Two Super Bowl wins in a row!
It's been a rough week. I've shed a lot of tears. something I don't do very often, and I've wished I could crawl in that hole with the groundhog and stay there until I'm sure of fair weather and sunshine and a lighter heart.
Such are the times when it's vitally important to remember there are still thankfuls out there. Here are mine:
Unseasonably warm weather perfect for much-needed playground time for littles (and the bigs who teach them).
Ice cream. Large bowls of ice cream.
A plethora of valentines made for me in the art center.
A new battery for an old but very reliable car.
Finding a brand new jar of moisturizer tucked away in a drawer, just when I needed a refill.
No. 7 brand of skin care.
A phone call from my Person saying she's coming to see me in March.
Learning to use Canva (thanks, Ashley and Abby) and using it to make a Chiefs-themed Spirit Week flyer for school.
An incredibly supportive husband.
My daughter celebrating her 25th birthday today. She is beautiful and smart and accomplished. In a few short months, she will have her Juris Doctor degree, then will sit for the Bar, followed by taking a position as a Public Finance attorney at a large firm that has already seen what a force she is after her summer internship there. Happy birthday, baby girl! You amaze me every day.
Whether your thankfuls are on the surface or you have to dig deep, find them, write them, link them.
When last we met, I was lamenting how January was NEVER going to end. It still hasn't, but we are down to THREE MORE DAYS, and I think maybe I'll make it, although it's been hit or miss how I felt on any day. And this leads me to Ten Things of Thankful:
We had freezing rain on Sunday night and Monday morning, so school was canceled for Monday. This marks the fourth four day week of the new year OUT OF FOUR WEEKS. There's a thankful for you!
I'm taking my dad to a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, so you know what that means? ANOTHER FOUR DAY WORK WEEK FOR MEEEEEE!!!
There has been rain, mixed precipitation, drizzle, fog, freezing fog, freezing rain, snow, sleet, sub-zero temperatures and wind chills, dangerously gusty winds, and little to NO SUNSHINE for those four weeks. That's the payback for getting days off, I suppose. But the sun came out this afternoon, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was a beautiful sight!
I'm still working on the 1000 piece Frida Kahlo puzzle that I began two weeks ago. I have maybe half of it done and am hoping I still have all the pieces to finish it, as I found out Nora likes to smack the table with her foot and watch pieces fall to the floor. I anticipate needing maybe two-three more snow days to find all the pieces and get it done.
I didn't spend my ENTIRE snow day this week watching documentaries and working on a jigsaw puzzle; I learned how to make homemade soft pretzels! It's really not very hard and TOTALLY worth it.
Ta daaaa! AND with homemade cheese sauce.
Walmart had 100% cotton flannel sheet sets on sale for $16.00, and you better believe I bought a set!
I'm thankful for Wordle.
I have the best job! Yes, it can be exhausting and frustrating, but I get more hugs and I love yous than you can imagine. We laugh. We sing. We dance. We play. We work. We keep each other safe. We are a family, and my heart swells with love just thinking about them.
Portrait of me. Note my curly hair and the green striped sweater that I was wearing that day.
Let's hear it for the Kansas City Chieeeeeeeeeeeefs!!! AFC Champions and going to the Super Bowl!
January is halfway over, February is a short month, and spring begins in March, right? There's a thankful to kick off this week's Ten Things of Thankful list! Moving on....
We had a three day work week! School was already scheduled to be closed on Monday in remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr., then the snow we received on Monday afternoon closed school for Tuesday.
Payback for having bonus days off is the kids are completely SQUIRRELY with the combination of snowfall outside and being cooped up inside due to frigid temperatures. Worth it.
My leaky, 100 year old home has handled these arctic temps remarkably well! Both furnaces have continued to work and the pipes did not freeze.
My husband was out of town all week for work, so double thanks that nothing happened to the house while he wasn't here. I hate having to adult by myself.
My friend Nikki's birthday was Tuesday, and the roads were clear enough that we made it out of the house and out to lunch.
My daughter found out she received two more CALI Excellence for the Future awards for fall semester, bringing her to three for the semester and four over-all. These two were for Estate Planning for Charitable Giving and in State & Local Government Law. She is awesome!
On Thursday, my friend Ceason's husband brought his new motorcycle by school and took me for my second motorcycle ride of my life (the first was when I was 7 and was done very slowly on our street by our neighbor's cool Uncle Bud). I had a hella time getting my leg hiked over the bike (note to self: do something about this), but I didn't fall off! Winning!
I visited my dad this weekend. Due to the snowy weather LAST weekend, I wasn't able to go see him, so I stocked him up on orange juice, bread, lunch meat, eggs, ice cream bars, Pepsi and toilet paper. You know, the essentials. We also went out to lunch on Saturday. It was my dad's first visit to a restaurant since May, and he was craving a good, greasy hamburger!
Danna's BBQ in Branson and the burger was delicious and not in the least bit greasy but he was still happy in spite of the look on his face.
As I opened the back door of the Sequoia to unload the groceries, there was a crash and a 24 pack of Pepsi fell out of the back of the vehicle and onto my right foot before landing on the frozen driveway. This was followed by the SECOND 24 pack that did the same exact thing. Both boxes exploded on impact, there were cans lying in the snow, frozen Pepsi drizzled everywhere, and my foot hurt. It took me some time to gather up 48 cans and two soggy cardboard boxes, but when I finally got all the Pepsi mess AND all the groceries into the house, it turned out that only one can had opened (thanks in large part to my FOOT for taking the brunt of the crash). I opened one of the cans today for my dad and the Pepsi didn't spew out, so much relief that my dad won't have to open each one outside.
Wondering if my foot was broken.
Looks like a little bomb went off inside.
BONUS THANKFUL. The Chiefs won their playoff game against Buffalo. Next, they play Baltimore, and the winner goes to the Super Bowl. GO CHIEFSSSSSS!!!
Jason Kelce, Travis Kelce's brother, after KillaTrav's first of two touchdowns. I assume my brother would do the same for me....
Well, this will be fun! My laptop just said no and I’m left with writing my TToT on my phone or not at all. Here goes nothing:
1. We had a Snow Day on Tuesday. I had already made it to work before it was called, so I threw some salt on the sidewalks and went back home.
2. It was cold and nasty all week, so we couldn’t go outside, but we managed to burn energy and stay entertained without the classroom imploding.
3. Diet Dr Pepper has been on sale at Walmart for weeks. I know (inside source) it will be going up next month, but until then. . . .
4. Winter jammies are on sale just when they are most needed!
5. I am thankful for Rotel Cheese Dip (simply called “hot dip” in our family). It is family tradition to eat it during Chiefs games, and while I don’t do so EVERY game, I did this weekend and it was just what I needed.
6. It’s not been the best season for my KC Chiefs, but they got the W at Saturday’s game, in spite of temps hovering around zero degrees with wind chill in the negative numbers.
7. I’m almost finished with the David Sedaris book I’ve been reading through the Libby app. Feeling pretty accomplished.
8. Can’t say enough good things about my heated mattress pad. Ahhhhh!
9. I’m thankful for streaming services. I watched movies all afternoon while working on a jigsaw puzzle.
10. I’m thankful for a warm home. It’s 100 years old and there are certainly leaks around doors and windows and other curious places, but it’s still warm and cozy on a day when it didn’t get above zero degrees AND snowed.
Made it! The type is so small on my phone that I can’t proofread, so fingers crossed!
Here I am, getting my act together for the new y--ahahaahaaahaaaa! Maybe I should insert "trying to" in there. I MEAN well, but let's face it, my ducks are NEVER all in a row*. Oh, one or two follow me, but the rest are wandering. One fell in the lake. A couple of them are eating cheese like there's no tomorrow.
*legendary story - once upon a time ago, I worked at a law firm with a sweet but dingy girl named Kay. She had just finished typing some letters that had been dictated (raise your hand if you ever used a dictaphone). She brought one of them around to all the secretaries and read it to them, because she thought it was so funny. In essence, the attorney had dictated "...let's get all our ducks in a row..." but Kay thought he said "let's get all our dicks in a row." One of the secretaries gently told her the phrase was "ducks," NOT "dicks," and she was so disappointed. "I kept picturing all these different dicks lined up, short ones and long ones and fat ones and skinny ones. Oh, well!" And off she went to correct the letter.
Anyway, mine are DUCKS and I'll always be trying to round them up. Caught the one responsible for writing the Ten Things of Thankful, so here they are:
1. My class had a delightful holiday season! They were sooooo excited for Christmas! We did lots of seasonal activities and drank hot chocolate and sang Christmas songs and made gifts for our parents (and wrapped them ourselves!). We played bells to "Jingle Bells," and then to "Jingle Bell Rock," which led me to telling them about this cute dance some girls did to that song. I pull up the scene from "Mean Girls" and show it to them without thinking about it possibly being a little inappropriate for the audience. Which it was, but they didn't notice that part, and they asked to see it EVERY SINGLE DAY.
2. I had eleven days off. Of those eleven days, I only spent three of them in my home, but it was worth it. My daughter (the almost-attorney) was home, my son and daughter in law (the doctors) came back for a couple of days, and my brother and niece (my sister in law recently had knee replacement surgery and wasn't able to be with us) came for a few days. We also went to Tulsa to spend time with my husband's sister and her family. It was all lovely, but I had to go back to work to get some rest!
My dad with his grandchildren
With my son
My kids: daughter, son, daughter in law
With my brother
3. Oh, one of the reasons I was exhausted from the festivities is because my husband shared his MAN COLD with me. He spent the week BEFORE Christmas huddled under a blanket in his recliner, coughing, checking his temperature (he never had one), taking a COVID test (negative), and going through a box of kleenex. The day before Christmas Eve, it was MY turn for the cold. I spent the duration of it wrapping gifts, grocery shopping, cleaning, baking cookies and making caramel popcorn, fixing meals, feeding cats, returning to work. No blanket. No recliner. I still have the dregs of it more than two weeks later, but there's a light at the end of the cold tunnel.
4. The long-anticipated addition of a garage and workshop to my dad's house is going well. It's all framed now, roof on it, and it's going to be fantastic to have the space.
5. Dealing with this construction project has taught my husband and me that we are never, never, EVER building a house.
6. I am thankful for cheese. I had a lot of cheese over the holidays. I'm currently in a 12 step program for it.
7. I FINALLY completely straightened and organized the closet in my classroom. It's only taken five months of being in that classroom to get it done. There's a duck! Next project is to finish organizing the observation room that is attached to my classroom. That duck takes off just as I get close to finishing the project, but I feel my duck corralling skills are on point right now, so we shall see if I can get it done.
8. I'm thankful (thanks to my daughter) to discover the Libby app for my phone. I haven't been reading very much the past few years, and now that I can just pick up my phone and read a book, I've returned to being a voracious reader! I'm reading David Sedaris's "Theft By Finding Diaries 1977-2002." I have enjoyed his readings of his works on NPR for years, but I didn't know very much about him. Let's just say that if I didn't already know he was alive and well, I wouldn't have thought he would have survived the 70s.
9. Speaking of my daughter, big shout out to her for her hard work so far in law school. She just got word that she received her second CALI Excellence for the Future Award. Don't ask me to explain this, because I can't, but it's a nation-wide program that around 200 law schools participate in where the top grade in each class is recognized. She got a CALI in the summer of '22 in Professional Responsibility, and she was just informed she got a CALI for her just-completed Estates and Trusts class. We are so proud of her!
10. Hey, I just remembered that I, too had to pass an exam. Long, dull story, but in order to fulfill a grant at work, I had to take a standardized exam (Missouri Educator Gateway Assessment/Early Childhood Education and never mind that I have LIFETIME CERTIFICATION K-6 and had a minor in early childhood education). Oh, and I also had to pass it. Our student workers who are education majors must also take this test in their content areas to graduate and receive their teaching certification, but they also prepare for it as part of their classes. I had not taken a standardized test since I took the ACT in 1978, so I was a wee little bit stressed about taking this one, but I NAILED IT. Yay, me!
Start your new year the TToT way and join us every weekend for the Ten Things of Thankful. Write a post. Link it up. Read and comment. Rinse and repeat.
I know the REAL December didn't begin until Friday, but PRESCHOOL December began Monday. Thanksgiving is over, and all they care about is Christmas. I decorated the room Thanksgiving weekend, decking the walls with candy canes and gingerbread men and women, placing Christmas-themed toys and Santa hats in the centers, setting up a small tree for them to decorate, and planning numerous crafts and projects to keep them busy for the next month. Let's all hope I survive it!
On to the thankfuls.
Parks and Recreation. What a gem of a show!
Vanderpump Rules. I finally made it through all 10 seasons. Sandoval is a jerk. Schwartz needs to grow some balls or get his back from Katie. I have loved Ariana from day one. Lala is insufferable. James continues to make my skin crawl. Raquel is dumb like a fox, as my dad would say. I'm glad Jax is no longer on the show, but I miss Brittney. I also miss Stassi's one-on-one clips, as she has a wicked sense of humor, but otherwise, she's mean. Scheana has finally grown up a little since she had a baby, but she still thinks she is a fabulous singer and she clearly isn't. Even Lisa Vanderpump is not immune to the natural aging process, and that is comforting. Now I wait for Season 11!
The weather is finally cool enough to make caramel popcorn.
I have purchased exactly 5 Christmas gifts so far, but it's better than NO Christmas gifts so far.
My daughter in law matched her top Fellowship choice at Children's National in Washington, DC. She will be focusing on vaccine development with the FDA. So very proud of her and her hard work!
The winter weather gear is in a basket in my entry hall, and Nora has wasted no time trying to bring every hat, scarf, or pair of mittens upstairs to my bedroom. I do not know what drives her to do this, but it's pretty entertaining, especially since she sorts through the basket and chooses what she wants to bring to me. We always know she's coming with something, because she says "MRRRROWLLL" the entire trip, all while carrying a treasure in her mouth. One day, she brought me five hats. FIVE.
Speaking of cats (especially QUIRKY cats), in a last-ditch attempt to find a litterbox that would force Finn the Fearful to keep his booty INSIDE the litterbox when he availed himself of the facilities (in other words, he backs over the edge of the box and pees and poops on the floor). I found THIS beauty at PetsMart and it has been everything I hoped it would be (except awkward to carry through my very narrow bathroom door to empty on trash day):
The new poo box
Bonus is it fits in a corner. Does he do his business right inside the lower "entrance" and hover dangerously close to the edge? Of course! But he's not tall enough for anything he has to give to miss the box. Big win!
Peppermint Stick Ice Cream.
I took my dad to a doctor's appointment on Friday morning, and when we left, we took a little side trip to look for a branch location of our bank that we had never noticed before. It's on a 4-lane road with a center turn lane as it goes through a fairly congested retail area, and as we were toodling along, we saw a car pull out from a parking lot at a pretty good clip (and may I add there was quite a bit of traffic) and right into a silver car. The silver car was pushed sideways into the oncoming lanes, which meant directly in front of me. I hit the brakes HARD and our vehicle (a very heavy Tahoe) came to a stop at the passenger door of the silver car. Our airbags didn't deploy, but the other two cars' airbags did. Many people stopped to help, and ambulances, fire trucks, local police, and the Highway Patrol arrived shortly. We don't know what kind of injuries there were, but they didn't seem to be serious, and the best news out of this is I DIDN'T HIT THE SILVER CAR. Can we all be thankful for anti-lock brakes? AND for the behind-the-wheel instruction of my high school Driver's Ed teacher, Mr. Noland? It LOOKED like we were right against the car, and the vibrating of the car as the anti-lock brakes did their thing led us to BELIEVE we might have hit it, but there was an ENTIRE HAND'S WIDTH between our car and the silver car. Glory be! That's a tremendous thankful. My dad and I both were convinced we were going to hit it and when the car stopped, were convinced that we HAD hit it.
My shaking hands taking a photo.
The first car.
My car on right
And that's how close I was to smashing into the silver car.
And there IS a bank branch on that road that we had never noticed. Our side trip was not for naught.
How did the last week of November treat you? Are you thankful? Write your list and link up with us at the Ten Things of Thankful!
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