In case you were wondering why....

Why did I decide to start a blog?? I have a friend at church, Pam, and when I was home on maternity leave with Quinn, she sent me an email checking on me. She also mentioned that she had a blog and I might want to check it out while the baby was napping.

My first thought was, "She has a blog? What in the world is a blog?" So being Curious Kim, I had to click and see. And I kept coming back to see what was new in Pam's world.

After looking at her's, and others, I decided to write one of my own.

We recently went to Pam's house after church. She showed me how to make homemade pizzas, with dough from scratch!

They turned out great, and tasted better than anything you can get in a restaurant! I think they were even ready in 30 minutes or less....hee hee!

After lunch we went out in their backyard to see their chickens. They live out in the country and have two hens and four roosters. They were pretty vocal while we were out there, and the hens are even laying eggs now.

Since Pam was one of my inspirations for starting a blog, I want to put in a couple of plugs. Click here for her main blog, and if you are in the area and in the mood for something that is "Tis So Sweet", click here!

Super Savings!

A few weeks ago, my church's MOPS group held a children's consignment sale. My parents had come up to visit that weekend and while Buddy and Daddy went to do "guy stuff" (skeet shooting), Mama and I went to grab bargains and stock Quinn up on some fall and winter clothes.

Here is a picture of all the great things we bought. We found lots of things in his current size as well as some 12 month items that he will hopefully be able to wear in January.

Believe it or not, all these items cost me just under $30! And on top of the great price, I got some more expensive name brand items for $3 or less! I think we got a great deal, and it looks like Tillman thinks so too.

If you have kids, I highly recommend consignment sales. Why pay full price for clothes that they will just out-grow in a few months?

Prayer Needed

I found out tonight that my neighbor's daughter was diagnosed this week with breast cancer. My neighbor, Cookie, has several children, but Stacey is her youngest daughter. Stacey also has a young son that is about 4 or 5 years old.

According to her CaringBridge website, "On September 22nd, 2008, Stacey was diagnosed with “Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). IDC accounts for about 70 percent of all breast cancers. The cancer cells form in the lining of your milk duct, then break through the ductal wall and invade nearby breast tissue. The cancer cells may remain localized (staying near the site of origin) or spread (metastasize) throughout your body, carried by your bloodstream or lymphatic system.”

I've met Stacey several times when she has come up to visit with her mom and she is always so nice to talk with. Please add Stacey to your prayers.

Please click here to visit her CaringBridge site and see her story.

A peek into my classroom

I am going into my 6th year of teaching 5th grade. I really like this age group. They are kids on the verge of becoming young adults. I can treat them like they are older and I expect a lot of responsibility from them, yet we can still have fun together. I love how at the beginning of the year, the girls stand heads taller than some of the boys, but by the end of the year, the boys start to catch up. Sometimes the students end up taller than me!

This is what the door to my classroom looks like. As you can see, I love incorporating my fire department stuff with my classroom. The door says "Fifth Grade is on Fire" and each child's name is writing on a flame. Then I outlined each one with gold glitter glue. (OK, so maybe I am a little creative).





The next two pictures I wanted to share even though September 11th is over for this year. Since I just started my blog, I didn't want to wait until next year to show it.

My class and I created a flag from red, white, and blue paper chains. (I got this idea from The Mailbox, a teacher's magazine.) It took two other people to help me get this out onto the wall. The kids wrote papers telling why they love America. Some of the writings are really interesting, because I have a very diverse classroom. One child is from Vietnam and about 5 are from Mexico. They all remember what it was like to live in another country and could really explain why life in America is better for their families.




This is a close up of the top of the display. The red cross is called a Maltese Cross and is a firefighter symbol. Click here to read more about this.
The numbers stand for the 343 firefighters who died on September 11th, simply doing the job they had to do. Some stations in New York lost almost all their members. The paper is just a small write up that I made to explain in simple terms what happened. To put this into perspective for all of you, my students were only 3 years old when this happened.



Hopefully my students learned something from this....and why we should never forget.....

Beef....it's what's for dinner!

This past Saturday night, we decided to cook steaks on the grill. Our favorite grocery store had ribeye steaks on sale, and cooking at home is much cheaper than going out to eat. Not to mention the fact that Buddy is a grill master.



Here is what they looked like after they had been put on the grill. We cooked the two little ones for our sweet neighbor Cookie, who also had a craving for steak.




Here they are almost ready. We use my dad's "not-so-secret" steak method of marinating them in Worcestershire sauce for about an hour or so, and then putting a little pat of butter on them as they cook on the grill. Daddy prefers using charcoal, while we use the gas grill more often.





Here is the finished product! We had au gratin potatoes and green beans to go along with our steak. Yummy! Who needs a restaurant?

Welcome to my blog!

Hi there. Come on in and have a seat.

This is my blog! I have been wanting to start a blog for awhile now. I have read some blogs over the summer while the baby was napping and have finally decided to give it a shot. So here it is. It is a work in progress, so bear with me as I figure all this out.

I look forward to writing down what all we've been up to, because, quite frankly I'm not creative enough to scrapbook.

I hope you will enjoy reading and will come back for more, because at our house, the door is always open!