Fairy tale castle

The past two weeks in class our theme has been fairy tales. We wanted to make it fun for the kids so in dramatic play we decided to make it look like a castle! So, as hard as it was, me and the other classroom teacher spent one whole afternoon making this castle. :) Don't you hate those days when you get to cut and paint things at work? ;-)





We thought it turned out quite well, so I thought I'd show a picture of it! The kids had lots of fun playing kings and queens in it the past two weeks....

And next week...we're off into space!!!

Cats...

So our little kitty, Lilly, is a very sweet kitty...some of the time. She has a mind of her own and will really do whatever she pleases...whenever she pleases...and pays no attention to anyone else. That is unless it suits her needs at the time. Most of her time inside is spent sleeping on the top of the couch, unless we put a blanket on ourselves in which case she immediately hops down and plops down wherever she wants on you. She'll snuggle and purr and want you to pet her, but don't you dare move an inch or she will attack! Quite literally! She is a biter! :) Most of her outside time is spent torturing the neighborhood dogs and squirrels. (What a sweet kitty)

This is her torturing our dog...she is gonna get it someday!



Anyway, all this to say that our kitty (who Eric lovingly calls "Satan" or the "antichrist") isn't such an angel after all. We recently built a new pantry into our laundry room (see posts below) which has been very handy and keeps things much more organized. However, the cat also sleeps in there at night and has recently taken to a nightly ritual of raiding the pantry. Every morning for the past week we have awoken to a meowing kitty (looking very cute) sitting next to a bag of whatever she found tempting the night before. Needless to say, it is getting annoying! Luckily, most of the food is in containers that she can't easily get into...but she will crawl to the very back to find the one thing she can get in to!



Ah yes...Lilly wanted outside and meows pitifully until you let her out...one solution is to shut her between the door and the screen. This is her climbing up the screen to get out! :) It was pretty entertaining!

Ahh.....cats....just in case you ever want to get a cute, little, furry kitty to keep you company....DON'T get a calico cat! :)

New hair cut!

So, I finally got the guts up to really cut my hair short. It is definitely the shortest it has ever been, but so far I like it! :) Lela told me that this was the easiest hair cut to have and I think she may be right!

Side view of the cut...Yes, I was cooking dinner when Eric decided to take pictures of me...It was a very tasty lentil soup though. :)

View of the back...it is pretty short...the girl who cut it had to shave my neckline a little even. Anyway, so far I am enjoying no having to worry about hair getting in my face or into whatever I'm leaning over at school. :) My students even gave me compliments on it! Thanks Lela!

My Classroom

Quite a few people have asked what my classroom at Head Start looks like, so here are a few pictures!

This one is of the "dramatic play" area. The kids made these really cute spiders and bugs out of styrofoam balls and pipe cleaners and that is what is one the bulletin board.

Not a real exciting picture, but this is the eating area...though we do lots of projects there too. You can't really tell in this picture, but the chairs are really short!

This is a view of the room from the door...notice all of the nice, light windows! I LOVE it! I'm pretty sure the windows are one of my favorite things about the room...but maybe that's because the past two years that I taught, I had NO windows and it was very dungeon-like. This is quite an improvement!

This is our "Library" and Circle time area. Isn't the little furniture cute? :)

Weekend projects....

Well...Eric and I were a little bored, so we decided it must be time to start a new project in the house! (On top of the 3 others in process) However, this was a much simpler and quicker project than most that we have done lately. We decided to redo the laundry room and make a pantry in there and a nicer counter. This is the before picture...it was always messy and ugly.

Here is one of the pictures afterwards...much cleaner and organized. The counter won't be completely finished until we decide what to put on top, but for now it works!


Another angle...

Here is the pantry we got out of the project! It's so nice not having a big black rack of food in our kitchen anymore! Now it is all hidden nicely in the laundry room! Yeah! (This was our favorite part!) Oh...and though Eric cut the wood..I put all of it together! :)


This is a random picture for Kari and the new picture she made for us...it fit quite nicely into our kitchen I thought. :)

While Eric was working on the parts I couldn't help with, I made a dog bed for Huck. I think that he likes it...considering the fact that he will hardly get off it to get up in the morning!

All in all it was a fairly productive weekend...and a pretty cheap project too! What comes next....

Christmas in Oregon!

This Christmas we went home to Oregon for a week and enjoyed spending lots of time with family! My side (Stanley) rented a house at Govt Camp for a couple days and had fun playing in the snow! This is the house we stayed at...very pretty!

One of my nieces, Essie, doing a puzzle with me!

My dad made a snow tunnel which the kids had lots of fun climbing through! This is Elijah coming out at the end!

Of course there were many snowball fights....and somehow Ian seemed to be at the root of ALL of them! (Notice the rather large snowball in his arms! ) :)

And gingerbread house making (with graham crackers). The kids were on a sugar high after this I think. :) But then again...who can resist that much candy!

Christmas morning at my parents house! The stockings are the best part!

Picture time! We did Christmas Eve with his family and had lots of fun!

On our drive back to Pullman we stopped to take some pics of Multnomah falls with snow! So pretty! I was hoping there would be more snow, but oh well! Someday I want to have a picture of Multnomah fall from every season! :)