What????

So, it just hit me that I never posted E's 2nd birthday!!!!! We were having computer issues at the time and I found this in the drafts where I apparently forgot it????? Let's take a quick re-wind back to April...

E's 2nd birthday was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" themed. I had found the book and big stuffed caterpillar in the $5 'Kohls's Care' section of my local store some time before and decided it would be a great birthday theme. Once I brought the book out to E she became obsessed with it and I knew we had made the right decision. Just like her first birthday we had a planned a party at the local park, however the weather had other plans and we decided the morning of her party that we would have to move it to my mom's house. My mom and I put a lot of work into her cake (which turned out massively bigger than we planned), and I was sad that the ink on the birthday book we made her smeared, but other than that she had a blast!

Birthday Pancakes!

Birthday book to sign (but people closed the book to soon and the ink smeared on some of the pages!)

Celebrating 3 Birthdays!


The whole table...


Birthday favors that doubled as balloon weights!

The cake! I said it was big!

Brother helped blow out the candles!

Bwahaaaa!!!!

Source: franstar.tumblr.com via Sara on Pinterest

Rock Stars

Finally time to post a few pics of my room! Tons of time and effort went into my new room this year. Some things are still not exactly the way I wanted them, but we managed to have a successful first week!

Some of our power words


This year's theme "Rock Stars"


my little corner of the world


My mom made this 'find it' jar for my class


Our quote board - I re did the quote after this picture to make it not so small. I'm very proud of the border, I made it myself from scrapbook pages.


Our community area - my kids have started calling the foam mats "the squishies" (notice my crates from this post)


"Books that ROCK" - sort of a 'book recommendation' type of thing. Currently all of the 5th grade teachers have a named a 'book that rocks' and it is on the front of the cabinet (we call them "big ugly's" in our school). Throughout the year kids can grab a colored shape and add a book that they think rocks!


Our "just right" books posters.


Library



Missing picture: I didn't post a picture of this project because it has my kids' names on it, but I will post a blank one as an idea soon...

Our check in board - it's really a nifty idea. Each kid gets a card with their name on one side and their picture on the other. When they come in in the morning they flip their card from the name side to the face side, this way I know they are here. If they want a school lunch they grab one of the little tags at the bottom and put it with their picture. This way, when I do attendance and lunch count I don't have to interrupt anything, I can just look over and take a quick count. It also works great when we have guest teachers because they can put a name to a face for my kids.

Sleep, sleep, sleep

I went to bed early last night (J had movie night at Gram's), and even managed to find time for a decent nap today. I feel a little less like I'm on the brink of a disaster, but still not quite all put together. I was actually kind of glad it was wet and gloomy this morning, because I didn't feel so bad about snuggling under the covers! I am hopeful that I can spend the extra time I will be up tonight (thanks to the nap), to finish my plans for next week, since I wasn't able to get them finished this week due to everything else, and feel a little more on op of things. My fantastic husband though, made sure the house was clean and dishes were done when I got home at 8:30 Thursday, so it was one less thing to do this weekend, and one thing that will be easier to deal with this week.




My big 4th grader on the first day of school! It absolutely floors me that he is that old already!

No time to breathe....

I don't ever remember having a first week back to school that was this stressful and tiring! Seriously, if this doesn't get better I don't know what I will do - maybe cry - I have found time to do that a few times this week. It's really not the kids, they're super sweet, just crazy amounts of stress..........