The.best.husband.ever.

This week I came down with the flu and am finally getting over it...anyways, on Thursday, Andrew said he had to go uptown and do something...he came back a half hour later with a bouquet of flowers and set them by the bed stand so I could see them right away. How sweet is life! :)

December Happenings

We cut our Christmas tree at my parents farm a couple of weeks ago. I like the real trees that we would have each year for Christmas growing up. This is my first year of having my "own."
We brought it in and set it in the stand and then let it air out over night before we decorated it.

School is coming to a close for the semester. Only 4 days to go this week and then we are at Christmas break. This also marks the end of the second quarter, so then we are half way done with the school year. We have been making art projects for the season. Here we made snowmen.
Andrew has been working with his team of horses. They are making good progress. Today he hooked a wagon up to them and they are able to pull it with out being scared.

My reindeer/moose collection on our entertainment center.

Our decorated Christmas tree.

One of my favorite ornaments that has my name on it

Our house with the lights on. Andrew hung a bunch of lights this year, so it looks nice and bright when you come down the street toward our house.

Pictures of us--- our first Christmas season together married.

melt.my.heart.

Last week, on Friday before I left school, one of my fourth grade students came to me with a note that she had written. She waited until all of the other kids had left and then said that she had a note for me. She said that she spent the night before lying on the carpet in her room thinking about me, so she wrote it down!The letter told about how she loves math (the subject that I teach her) and the social studies book that we are working on.
Gotta love how the letter ended. The next day in school she told me that she loved me! Precious! :)

The rest of New York City trip....

We started the day off on Saturday riding around on the bus tour looking around the city. We went on the downtown tour where Madison Square Garden was.A little before 11, we got off at Carnegie Hall and went through a Beatles exhibit and then a walking tour of Carnegie Hall. The tour was good and it made me think it'd be fun to play my violin in there!

On the bus riding through the city

They had lots of horse carriages around that you could take a ride on...we never did, but you could for the low price of $50 for a 20 minute ride! After our Carnegie Hall tour, we went to Toys R Us and saw the ferris Wheel.

A big Willy Wonka chocolate factory-type area...They had lots to buy in this area, but it's cheaper to just buy the candy in a Wal-Mart back home, so we came out empty-handed!

After that stop, we jumped on the bus again and stopped off at Macy's. You can't go to New York over Thanksgiving without going to Macy's! It's a store with 11 levels of shopping and a wooden escalator. Downstairs they had a big food area. One of the things I liked was this gingerbread house village. I like to decorate a gingerbread house at Christmas time, so this was neat to see! The store was packed the entire time that we were in there with lots of people, so we weren't in there all day!

At night they always have broadway shows and musicals. If you wait two hours before they start showing, you can get the tickets half price. On Saturday night we went to "Radio City Hall Christmas Spectacular." It featured the Rockettes in it, which are very talented dancers. They did a very good job of telling the Christmas story, which is hard to find in today's day and age.


In NYC, it's common to have these bikers hooked up to a buggy, so when we got outside the hall after the show, there were a bunch waiting for riders. We thought it sounded like fun, so told him where we needed to go and off we went. They go right on the main roads with the traffic and are swerving right in and out with the taxis...made for an interesting ride, but we made it to the hotel safely and had a good experience!

Sunday morning we went and had breakfast and then had a van shuttle service come pick us up to the airport and spent the rest of the day getting home. It was a good Thanksgiving weekend filled with memories!

Our Day in NYC....

Well, I thought I'd post quick before we relax for the night...today was a busier day and a longer one...but fun-filled.
We started the day at 5 am so we could get up and stand in line to watch the Today show. We got there by 5:30 and waited for an hour before they opened the gates to let people in. It was interesting to see how they film the two hour morning show. We made the camera a few times....
After that, we bought a bus pass so we could go around the city and get off at different times and different parts of it. It was a double-decker bus. One of the stops was by the Ground Zero, where the twin towers collapsed ten years ago. They have a little museum-gift shop area about it too.

Then we bought a pass to go on the ferry to go to Ellis Island and to see the statue of liberty. Here is Andrew on the ferry going over.

Statue of Liberty

I like this picture of us-- it's kind of hard to get pictures because there's so many people around.

Us in front of the Statue of Liberty. I'm thankful to be married to my best friend! It's been a great Thanksgiving out here.
Well, Andrew fell asleep already, so it must be time to end the post...I'll catch up later!

Hello from NYC!

Well, NYC is a BLAST! Last night(wednesday) we got the the hotel by 6 after three hours of flight delays, but the ride from the airport gave us our first taste of the big apple. Our driver seemed like he couldn't go fast enough, or cut off enough other cars, or honk enough!

After getting checked in to the hotel and finding our room on the 21st floor, we headed out to get a feel for the city and find some food. We decided to go to a highend restauraunt and found that we had never heard of anything on the menu, and I mean it. Rebecca ended up getting flat noodles with mushrooms, cheese and some other stuff that we had never seen before, anyways, today we met up with my friend and got up to the 9th floor of a building to watch the parade and it was spectacular! The crowds were loud and so were the marching bands. The view was great and everything was really undescribable.

We went to rockefeller plaza and up to the top of the rock(top of the building). The view was like nothing else. The skyscrapers seem endless and you can see the statue of liberty out there, and central park and the empire state building. It is great.

We just got back from a broadway play called Million dollar quartet, about sun records and elvis, johny cash and some others. It was very very good as well. Well we are going to get some sleep now so we can get up early to get to the today show.

Blog Catchup

We ended the month of October by doing some carving of pumpkins and getting ready for the trick-or-treaters. We had quite a few, considering we live in town.


Here we are with our carved pumpkin, in between the kids coming down the street to our house to trick or treat.

We were in Lemmon last weekend and did some hunting and work on the farm. Andrew's two friends from Michigan, Dan and Mike came out as well.

Here we are hunting with our new gun.

The kids at school learned about clocks, so here is one activity that they did: they rolled the dice, and whatever they rolled on the dice was the time they would draw on their paper. I had a clock stamper that they used to stamp and then draw the time that they rolled...for example, a roll of a 5 on the dice would you 5:00.
I made these cute counting dimes cards...I found them on the internet and laminated them. They have dimes on each card and the kids have to count the coins and write the time on the corresponding sheet.

Today in second grade, we learned about ordering two digit numbers. I found these cards online also, so I printed them and laminated them for a future lesson (today.) Each card has four numbers and they have to put the numbers in the correct order.

And, finally tonight: winterizing our house, since it's the middle of November. We still have no snow, but snow is in the near future. Andrew is putting plastic on our windows to keep the cold air out.

Learning Halves, Fourths and Eighths with Apples

Last week the second graders were learning about halves, fourths and eighths in math class. We used apples to help learn about it. I chose 3 different kinds of apples, so then we could do it three times and then at the end we each got to taste the apples to find out which was our favorite. We made a tally graph and then made a bar graph to show our results. I started cutting the first apple into half and asked them how many halves make up a whole apple. We discussed that one part of the apple is called one half then. Then I asked how many pieces I would have if I cut both halves into half again (4.)

We had fourths then and knew that four fourths make up a whole. We discussed how each part of those is called one-fourth. I asked how many pieces we would have if I cut each of those into half again. Some knew right away that it would be 8.

We did that 2 more times, as I had two more different kinds of apples. Then the kids got a piece from each apple and had to decide on their favorite.

When they got done tasting their apples, they were instructed to raise their hand telling what their favorite kind was. I had 3 plates with the kind identifed on there.

As they raised their hand, I called on them to tell me their favorite. I made a tally graph as they responded. We tally each day, so the kids are getting good at that.

Here is what our results looked like...

Then the students used that information to make a bar graph based on how many students liked each kind of apple.