Fun School Day

I am in Marc's class every Thursday. This week was an extra fun day to be there! We took Mrs. Grimm her Christmas gift. We gave her a plateful of goodies that we made. She told Marc that "we rock!", I think he liked that. We also gave her a penguin that's holding a sign that says "I Love Snow Days", a penguin coffee mug filled with chocolates, and a Meijer gift card. Well, it turns out that she LOVES penguins!!
The first thing the kids did were meet in the hall with all the other kindergartners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders to sing Christmas carols all together. It was really cool to see ALL those kids together, having fun signing Christmas songs! :) (Marc is in the bottom left corner in a grey shirt)
After singing Christmas carols, both kindergarten classes got together and watched Polar Express and ate popcorn. :) While the kids watched the movie, I pulled them out one at a time and painted the hand prints to look like Santa Clause. :) I had SO much fun...they turned out SO cute!
After the movie the kids ate snack, had gym, and the outside recess, then it was time to go home! I think the teachers figured out that with all the excitement of Christmas and break, they weren't going to get a whole lot of work done, so they decided to just have fun instead!

Self-Control

Marc's class lead assembly on Monday this week. The virtue of the month is self-control. The kids sang a song about it. They practiced a couple of times and then we had a ton of snow days. It was kind of humorous to watch them. Nobody really knew the words or the motions. Every now and then, a couple of kids did a couple of motions. Very cute!

Presentation Project

I was shocked when Marc came home with this week's homework assignment. He had to chose an animal that hibernates in the winter. He chose a frog. He had to create a frog out of materials we had around the house. He chose to make his frog out of play-dough. i think he had fun being creative.This is his finished frog. Do you see a frog? ;) Not a bad job for him, being 6 years old, doing it ALL by himself. I am sure there will be "better" creations from some of the kids, but I like to see what he can do all by himself! :)
He also had to make a poster or book answering 4 questions about the frog's hibernation habits. He will have to present the information he learned to the rest of his class tomorrow.
Man they start 'em young! But, I guess it is good practice for when he gets older. :)
All in all, I think he did a GREAT job on his first class project presentation. :) I am very proud of my little boy...who isn't so little any more!! :)

Gingerbread Boy

Every year our local library here in Cedar Springs sponsors a gingerbread house decorating day. The kids can come in and the librarians have the house pre-made out of graham crackers and icing. They have bags of icing and various "decorations" for the kids to use. They had sprinkles, candy, cereal, pretzels, and a few other things. Daddy had to show Marc how to squeeze the icing out of the bag and onto the house.
Marc had trouble figuring out what to do first......
But then quickly go into it. :)
We finally had to tell him that it was time to be done because there wasn't much room for anything else.
His beautifully "sweet" house is now decorating our kitchen counter. It looks good enough to eat. ;)

Grab Bag!!

The Dollar Tree that we go to has grab bags for $1. Pretty much each time we go we let Marc pick out a "boy" grab bag. Both Marc and I enjoyed grab bags when we were younger so we figured why not create another grab bag junkie. ;)
One of the last times we went Marc asked if Samantha could have a "girl" grab bag. That was a couple of months ago and we weren't ready for her to have one yet. I went to the dollar store the other day while Marc was in school. I got a grab bag for both Marc and Samantha.
Marc said to me, "You mean she gets her first grab bag at 20 months old?!". Cutie pie!
Samantha liked the bag even before she opened it. She liked shaking and and hearing the stuff inside make noise.She really enjoyed looking inside to see what she got.
There are different grab bags available, so you just need to feel it and try to pick out the one you think would be good. The one I picked out for Samantha had a ring.....
a party blower.....
and some fat crayons that I didn't get a picture of. The crayons were good because she is always using her brothers, now she has her own to use and destroy. ;) Marc got a pencil, a ball, bubbles, and about 6 CARS stickers. I guess I picked pretty good!
I think we are going to have 2 more grab bag junkies in the house. ;)

Problem Child ;)

On Monday morning, Samantha woke up with a little froggy in her throat and just a teeny tiny bit of wheezing. I just thought that she had that gunk in her throat from just waking up. i took her to childcare while I went to work. When I picked her up at 12:00, she still had the wheeziness. I called the doctor and the earliest thing they had available was 8:30 on Tuesday morning. I took it. We came home had lunch and I put her down for nap. When she woke up she sounded horrible! Her breathing sounded like she was snoring, a temp of about 100, and she had a real "barky" cough. :( We got through the night and I took her to the doctor on Tuesday.
The doctor reminded me that I had Samantha in there in January for some wheeziness. the doctor asked if we had ever had any asthma issues with her. I said no. She told me that she was leaning toward Samantha having a very mild case of asthma. She thinks the only time she is going to have an issue is when she has a "little bug" in the cold weather. The combination of the 2 cause asthma to flare up. The doctor listened to her lungs and her heart rate. Then the doctor had me do a nebulizer treatment on Samantha. After the treatment the doc listened to her lungs and heart again and could hear a big difference. So, we now have a nebulizer machine and a prescription. For those of you that don't know what a nebulizer is, it is a machine that does the same thing as an inhaler does. I pour liquid meds into a machine. It has a motor that turns the liquid into a gas/vapor for Samantha to breath in while wearing a mask.We did her first treatment at home Tuesday afternoon. Usually when we d her treatment I put on Sesame Street for her to watch to distract her. Ah, the power of Elmo! We did the treatment 3 times on Wednesday, and just 2 times yesterday. We are already seeing her cold get better, so her asthma symptoms are decreasing. I am just glad that it is a very mild case and will not hinder her in any way.

Cuteness

We have taken some various cute pictures over the last couple of weeks, so here they are.

I bought Samantha a pair of Santa pj's and Marc found a pair of Buzz Lightyear pj's on sale for $3 so we bought them.The other day I decided to try to put Samantha's hair in pigtails. It turned out so cute!! I think she looks older with the pigtails. Daddy calls them her handle bars.
One day while Marc was playing, he decided to wear all 4 Santa hats all at the same time. Silly boy!
When the snow finally started to fall, we tried Marc's boots and snow pants from last year on him, and they still fit. So the only thing we had to buy were boots and snow pants for Samantha. So, on Monday, Meijer had a sale so I had Marc stop on his way home from work to pick them up.
There was only ONE pair of 24 months snow pants in the whole store! Luckily, they were purple! :)
There was only ONE style of size 5 boots. Luckily they were pink! :) I guess she was meant to have them. ;)
Well, I hope you have enjoyed some of the cute pictures from December. :)

Baking Frenzy!

Each year around the Holidays we have a baking frenzy. This year was kinda impromptu. ;) Marc had a snow day last week Friday and Daddy had a day off, so we turned out snow day into a baking weekend. We started off by cutting out and baking Christmas cut-out sugar cookies. We also made pretzels/Hershey kisses.We made candy cane, mint chocolate, cherry cordial, and hugs pretzel/kisses. I love these because they are a good "pop in your mouth" goodie.We also made Reeses. Marc had fun mixing the peanut butter part for the Reeses.....
and then adding the chocolate on top.
This is the first year that Marc decorated his own cookies. Previous years he would help us cut them out, but we never decorated them. He had fun being creative.
He did an awesome job!!
We also made coconut and peanut butter balls. Marc thought it was fun to play with this food. ;) He did a good job of forming the coconut mixture into ball shapes.
And then he helped mix the mixture for the peanut butter balls.....
and helped Daddy dip them in the chocolate dip.
he has really been a good little baking elf and we have had a lot of fun baking as a family. :)

Rockford Santa Parade

Every year on the first Saturday in December, the city of Rockford has a Santa parade. We took Marc to it 2 years ago (believe it or not, that year was Marc's first Santa parade!). We didn't go last year, we thought Samantha was too small to out in the cold that long. So we decided to go again this year. It was cold but fun. We got there about 15 minutes before it started and got a good spot not far from where it started.Marc liked getting all the candy. (I will post a pic of it all when the kids wake up and take the pic with them). Samantha liked all the horses. There were some mounted police and horses pulling a carriage with carolers right in front of the horses pulling Santa's carriage. Every time a horse trotted by, she smiled really big. She did NOT like all of the sirens on the rescue vehicles, Marc did though. :)
As part of the parade the firefighters walk in the parade collecting toy donations for Toys for Tots. If you don't have a toy with you, you can donate money by putting it in a fire boot. Marc enjoyed donating some money.
We were really cold by the time we left the parade but we had a great time. It was a fun way to get in the Christmas spirit!

SNOW DAY!!!

Well, on Friday Marc had his first snow of his kindergarten year. We went to bed Thursday night and all we had on the ground was a light dusting of snow. We woke up on Friday morning we had about 6 inches of snow and it was still snowing at a pretty good rate. There were 127 school closings in West Michigan that morning. Daddy Marc had just worked a 18 hour day on Thursday so he was home on Friday too. We turned our snow day into a baking day.

The first thing Marc did when he looked out the window was to ask if we could go out and shovel the snow...silly boy! Neither Marc or I wanted to go out in the cold, so we kept telling him "not right now". To distract him we started baking. :) (A much warmer idea)

We made no-bake blob cookies and cut-out sugar cookies. We didn't take any pictures. :( We still have to frost and decorate the cut-out cookies, I will try to get pictures of that.
After some baking, the kiddos took a nap. While the kids napped, I was able to wrap all of little Marc's Christmas presents and put them under the tree! :)

After nap, I finally decided to give in and take Marc outside. He shoveled the front sidewalk leading to the house.
He had SO much fun in the snow. I told him that is he got tired, he should take a rest and that he could take as many and for as long as he needed. I also told him that if he wanted to play in the snow instead of shoveling, that it was OK. He immediately threw his shovel down and started playing in the snow. The first thing he did was make a snow angel. :)After a break to play, he started shoveling again. He shoveled the sidewalk leading to the front door and the sidewalk in front of the house. He did a GREAT job.
I decided to bring a small snowball inside for Samantha to feel. (We don't have boots or snow suit for her yet). She wasn't sure at first, but she eventually took it and played with it. She thought it was really cold!
We stayed outside for about another 15 minutes after shoveling. We came inside because Mommy was cold. ;) he has been asking all day to go back out side and play again.
As long as there is not A LOT of snow, Marc is going to ask to shovel again...he earned $1 for helping!