Merry Christmas

But the angel said to them,"Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You wil find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in the manger" Luke 2:10-12. Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a great day. I know I will.

Holiday Tradition Q&A

 I found this over at Kelley's blog Brixton Makes Three. I love the holidays so any excuse to share them them is exciting!

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate, hands down. I think I am the only person in my family who doesn't like egg nog.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?  Wrapped. Half the fun is the surprise.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?  For me, colored lights on the house and tree. But I love all Christmas lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope. But maybe I should...

5. When do you put your decorations up? I don't really have a set time. Right now the outside has been decorated for about a week, but the inside is not.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? I don't really have a favorite. 

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? Every year my sisters and I would wake each other up and gather in one of the bedrooms, watching the clock until it was 8 am. That's what time we were allowed to wake our parents. 

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't really remember. I have always been a reader, so I feel like I might have read it in a book.Being the oldest, I just pretended like I didn't know. But we still get gifts from Santa under the tree.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Well kind of. We play a game on Christmas eve- we call it the present game. But that is a post for another day. :)

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? With lights and ornaments... is there another way?

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love, love, love. And we have hardly had any this year. It is so sad. :(

12. Can you ice skate? That is a loaded question. Yes, I can ice skate, but I am not sure if I can this year because of my knee injury. I am not sure if I'm healed enough yet.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? My most recent favorite was my nook that I got last year. It was such a surprise.

14.  What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? I love everything about the holidays. The lights, decorations, Christmas music, but especially spending time with my family. And I love buying gifts and seeing people excited when they open what I got them.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Cookies. Especially peanut butter blossoms (the ones with the Hershey Kisses). 

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? I have a couple. One is the present game that we play on Christmas Eve. I also love making Christmas cookies, a different kind with each Grandma. With my Grammy (my mom's mom) we make cut outs and then frost and decorate them. We just did those today. And my Grandma on my dad's side always makes Cuccidatti's (Italian Fig Cookies). That is a tradition going back to my great grandparents, maybe farther. We helped out with those on Thursday night.

17. What tops your tree? We have three different tree toppers; a star that lights up, a snowman, and an angel. Which one we use changes each year.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I love giving gifts. It takes me forever to shop because I put a lot of thought in to what I get someone. But I won't lie, I like getting gifts too. Who doesn't?

19. Candy canes: yuck or yum? Yum! I like the regular ones, but there are chocolate mint ones my mom gets sometimes (I think they might be Hershey's) that are great too. I am not huge on the fruity ones though, they have to be minty.

20. Favorite Christmas show? I like all the classics- Rudolph, Frosty, the Grinch, It's a Wonderful Life. Every Thanksgiving we watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- usually on Christmas too. It is so funny. Mikey hates it. But I do not like A Christmas Story.

21. Saddest Christmas song? Blue Christmas by Elvis

22. What is your favorite Christmas song? I have asked that question so many times in the past week or so. Julie and I are making CD's for everyone at daycare with everyone's favorite Christmas songs on it. I chose Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Cannon Rock for mine. But that is only one of my favorites.

23. Do you peek at your gifts? No, never! That's no fun, I love surprises.

Some of the best gifts...

...don't come wrapped.

This Tuesday was my birthday, and as birthdays go, it was pretty low key. But I don't mind it. I spent Saturday night with my family. My parents made birthday dinner (steak and baked potatoes) and my mom baked a cookie cake. I got some awesome gifts- very cozy sweat pants, some books, tickets to a concert, and the script from the taping we saw when we were in California- to name a few. But what was even more awesome was the time spent chatting, and my awesome spit take while watching something funny on TV (don't drink things while watching comedy- it doesn't end well).

On my actual birthday I worked. My morning didn't start well, but I don't even remember why because the rest of my day was awesome. My mom brought me to Manhattan Bagel, and we bought bagels for the whole staff (and I got a special one). We had my birthday lunch- I chose sandwiches and chips- and my mom made another cookie cake. I went back to the preschool room for the afternoon, and then I got two of the best gifts. One of my preschoolers woke up from her nap, and the first words out of her mouth were, "Happy birthday, Jenny!" And she ran across the room to give me a hug. I almost cried. I don't even know how she remembered. Later, another one of the preschoolers gave me his (half eaten) cookie that he was saving for his snack. Kids really know how to make you feel special sometimes.

I got out of work early to go to Kissmas Bash, which is a concert put on by our local Kiss (Top 40) radio station. My sister, Julie, got me tickets for my birthday.We had a great time together. We got to see Demi Lovato in concert for a second time, and I found a new band to love- We the Kings. I got a new Santa hat- it is blue with blinking snowflakes, and some tinsel in my hair. It is so sparkly and festive, and I may be getting more.

The only thing I didn't get for my birthday is snow. But it is coming. Soon. I hope.

P.S. No pictures today, but I may be doing a Christmas picture scavenger hunt. Keep a look out for it!

Thanksgiving Revisited

I really wanted to write this post before Thanksgiving, and when that didn't happen, right after. However, I have been sick. Not stuffy nose, a bit miserable sick, but full blown, I hardly got out of bed for two days, sick. But I better enough now to actually think in coherent sentences.

So anyway, every Thanksgiving all the children in the day care (except for the babies) gather in one room and we have a big Thanksgiving feast. I thought that it would be really fun for the preschoolers to make something to share with everyone who came to lunch that day, so we made cookies for dessert. Well we ended up eating them for snack that day, but it was fun anyway. Ideally I would have loved to make the dough with the children in the morning, but with my splitting time between the two rooms, I ended up making the dough myself to give it time to set in the fridge. But children did everything else.

They sprinkled the flour and rolled the dough.

Used the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies.

And helped pull the dough away so we (mostly my co-teacher and I) could place them on the cookie sheets.

And the next morning, they got to frost them. I wish I would have been there for that, but I should have planned better and done them before the day before we needed them.

  

This was so much fun, for the kids as well as the teachers, we will definitely be doing this again. I plan on giving the kids even more control next time.

The next fun thing we did was making turkeys from those giant marshmallows. That was truly a collaboration between my co-teacher and I. It was her idea to use the marshmallows and food coloring to make the turkey bodies, but she was having trouble thinking of what make the feathers out of. We wanted to make the whole project edible, so actual feathers were out. Then I came up with pretzels. Add some squeeze frosting and a jellybean for a nose, and you've got some of the cutest edible turkeys ever. At least I think so.

Even we teachers got our hands dirty and made our own.

So that was Thanksgiving with the preschoolers. Some of the best projects are edible.

My Thankful Post

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I am thankful for...
Mikey, my amazing husband
Finn our puppy
My family and friends
Hilarious game nights
My knee surgeon, physical therapist, and everyone else who had a hand in fixing my knee
My new acl
Everyone who reads this blog- you are a small group, but an awesome one

And to finish up, here is a picture of the turkeys we made yesterday. I forgot to mix up the frosting, that is why my turkey's face is green.

Pumpkin Time

So I had all those pumpkins from the farm, so the next step of course was to carve them. I did three, one with my toddler room (AM), one with my preschoolers (PM), and one for home.

The first one I did was the one with my afternoon preschool class. I had a few of the children help me cut the top off and then I scraped the insides out. I put them in a couple of bowls at two tables for the children to play with and separate the seeds, and I took those who didn't want to get messy at a separate table and they helped me with the face. I had six children, so I let each child draw one of the facial features, including ears. The result was one of the cutest pumpkins I've ever done.

  

The I did the pumpkin with my morning toddler class. Most of them were less then interested, but I had a few helpers point where we should point the nose and mouth (though I did have to move the nose down a bit because there was no room where they wanted it right between the eyes). But we ended up with an adorable sideways mouth.

Then I did my pumpkin for home. This is the pumpkin I wanted to do last year, but just ran out of time. It is a bit fancier then the ones I did for work, and I am very proud of it. Meet my dog, Finn!

And the inspiration behind the pumpkin...

I can't wait for everyone to see my pumpkin when they come trick-or-treating tonight! Maybe I will bring my work pumpkins home too.

And her is a bonus picture of the ghosts I made with Nutter Butters!

Happy Halloween!

Girls Day Out

One of my favorite fall traditions is a fairly recent one. For the past three or four years, a few weeks before Halloween, my family makes a trip to visit Kelly and to go to a pumpkin farm. This year it was a girls only trip (because our significant others didn't want to go).

 Julie, Mom, and Kelly on the hay ride

My sisters and I

First we stopped to see the animals, but I only got pictures of the alpacas because I got distracted by the 6 week old kittens that they had there. They were so cute, and it is probably a good thing I am allergic because we might have had a new housemate. And then I'd be in trouble. 

An alpaca (not a llama) 

Then we went through the corn maze. Last year they had local school names to unscramble throughout the maze, this year they had two paths, nursery rhymes and U.S. presidents. We started with nursery rhymes, but it was too easy, so we switched. I was always at the end of the line because I kept stopping to take pictures.

 Baa Baa Black Sheep

That's my mom!

And we went on a hayride. There's not much to say about that, but I did get some good pictures. So enjoy it with me.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the farm.

But of course the main attraction was the pumpkins. One of my favorite things about this farm is that they sell pumpkins they call "misfits" for 50 cents. "Misfits" are basically pumpkins that are flat on one side, or are bumpy, have no stem or something else that makes them not "perfect". They are the best kind of pumpkins to get, especially for the day care because the kids don't care if a pumpkin is perfect. Since we went a little later this year, the "misfits" were on the smaller side, so I ended up buying one pumpkin that was not a misfit because I had a plan for mine at home. I think we ended up with 6 "misfits" and my bigger one.

 This was one of the biggest pumpkins they had there, so I had Kelly pose near it for size comparison.

Apparently that is also tradition. Notice the date. :)

After we left the pumpkin farm we headed over to the Boardwalk Market at the Dunkirk pier. I love the little shops with their handmade and unique merchandise. I only wish that it was closer, and open nearer to the holidays. Almost all the shops are closed, or close at the end of the month.

We finished our girl day with lunch/dinner at our favorite local restaurant, and then Kelly taught us how to make the most adorable little origami stars.

Yes, the picture is blurry. My camera hates close ups.

So even though it wasn't a beautiful day weather wise, with the fun times we had, I didn't even notice the lack of sunshine. We made our own that day!

Making Play Dough

I have a real love/hate relationship with play dough.

The things I love are:

1. It is a great fine motor activity, starting with the toddlers- the squeezing, squishing, pulling, pounding; up to the preschoolers who like to cut (with plastic knives or safety scissors) and roll and start forming shapes. It all gets the muscles in their hands working to prepare them for writing.
2. It is good sensory activity. It feels different then the toys they are used to playing with, especially for the young toddlers. Plus when you make it, it can be scented, you can put glitter in it, or rice, or anything else to make it feel different. 
3. The children get to be creative. Play dough can become anything! 
4. It's not too hard to clean up. Play dough picks up play dough.
5. It's just plain fun.

The things I hate:

1. The smell of the stuff you buy in the store.
2. No matter how hard I try, it always gets in the kids shoes (and mine too).
3. Little tiny pieces of play dough on the floor (see above)

So the good definitely outweighs the bad. And I decided to make my own play dough. I worked in childcare for 10 years (11 maybe? I don't remember anymore) and I have never made it before. That is just not acceptable. I got my recipe from this site. http://www.makeplaydough.com/ I did the kool-aid play dough.

Step one: Gather all the ingredients. I started with grape kool-aid simply because I like purple and grape.

Step two: Mix the dry together in the pot- burner off.

Step three: Mix in the wet.

Step four: Turn on the burner to medium heat and stir constantly. Sorry, no pictures, I was busy stirring.

Step five: When the dough makes a ball on your spoon, transfer it to another pot or bowl for it to cool a little.

Step six: When the dough is cool enough to handle, kneed it for awhile- this is the most fun step. After kneeding I formed it into a ball to cool. Then I realized the center would never cool so I flattened it.

Then all you have to do is store it in an air tight container so it doesn't dry out. I made three different colors/scents. The yellow/lemon didn't turn out too vibrant, but it still smells good.

Some tips:

1. The dough will actually form a ball while you are stirring it. I didn't believe it would, so the first batch I took off the heat a few seconds too early. It is just a little stickier then the other two batches, no big deal though.
2. After it cools completely kneed it one last time before you put it away, I felt like it helped bring everything together a little better
3. If you are using this with your kids at home, make sure your pets don't get it. The play dough smells like people food, so dogs will try and eat it, and it will cause a bad salt imbalance in their system. I only found this tip on one site, and I think it's important to know.
4. It tastes terrible. Yes, I did out some in my mouth, I needed to know what it was like, because the toddlers will taste test. It is like pouring salt in your mouth. Now I know to have some water nearby.

I go back to work tomorrow after being off for seven months! I am excited. And a little apprehensive. And excited again. Wish me luck!

Package Swap and a Giveaway!

I've just participated in my first package swap through Carissa at Kissed a Frog! I found it through my sister Kelly's blog, and it sounded like so much fun. Basically all I had to do is send Carissa my address, and she matched me up with a partner and we sent each other a package of items that reminded us of Fall. I just got mine in the mail yesterday, and was I ever excited (still am)! So here is what I got:

A nice handwritten note, a leaf garland, a knitted cup cozy, and some tea!

Almost everything I got was handmade, which made it that much nicer. The leaf garland is already hanging on the front door, I can't wait till it is cooler so I can enjoy the tea. I am especially excited about the black currant that is at the end, I have never tried that kind. And I am seriously considering keeping the cozy in my purse so that I can use it asap!

The leaves on the door.

I can't wait till Ann gets my package, I hope she likes it as much as I like mine.

And on to the next order of business, Kelly (remember her?) is having a giveaway on her blog! She is giving away store credit for Carissa's Etsy shop. Check out her blog for all the details and links: Distracting from Halloween Giveaway

Maybe I will do my own giveaway someday. When I get 10 followers perhaps.....

A Massive Update

I know I haven't written anything in a long time, but I go through some times where I go through terrible writer's block and everything I write sounds wrong. I just have to get write through it and how it ends up is just what you get. So I am going to write massive update and catch everything up.

Summer Photo Challenge- I have an IOU that I have to fulfill: Trees! We recently came back from visiting Mikey's mom and step-dad (and other family and friends) in California which extended our summer. And I knew there would be tons of palm trees.

 

I also have to finish the last challenge which is simply Summer. I couldn't just summarize it with just one picture, so you get a collage, pictures from the Summer Photo Challenge, and other ones that just say 'Summer' to me.

 Therapy- This past week, almost everything I do at therapy just got harder. Not because I got hurt or anything, but because I am doing so well that my physical therapist said I needed more of a challenge. Most notably I have to do my 'favorite' rolling stool exercise for 4 minutes instead of 3. I also had more weight added to a few exercises, and for my balancing exercise I am standing on something different, a kind of inflated disk, and it is harder to balance. I also have a new exercise where I do sidesteps and squats with an elastic band around my feet. It isn't too bad. My PT said that I am doing well for a patient with an ACL replacement, but considering the both surgeries, I am doing extremely well. I have been having a small issue where my knee feels like it is hyper-extending, but I asked, and that is normal while the ligament stretches and the muscles get back to normal.

I also went back to the doctor the day after we came back from vacation, and I for the most exciting news of the week.....

I AM GOING BACK TO WORK!!!

Am I excited? I sure am. Am I a little nervous? Yep, I'm that too. By the time I go back it will have been 7 months that I've been out. Even though my knee is getting better, and is not unstable anymore, I am still afraid of falling, or getting run into. Falling shouldn't be an issue (knock on wood), but there is no way of avoiding getting run into. That's just the way kids are. So a week from Monday, we'll see how the knee is really holding up. :)

Rolling stool

Look at this, 2 days of blogging in a row! This one is a therapy update.

Who would ever think that an innocent thing like this simple rolling stool...

 

Source

 ... could become an instrument of torture! Ok, I might be exaggerating a little, but honestly my newest therapy exercise is the hardest one so far. I have to put my good leg on one of the wheel legs and wheel myself around the carpeted therapy room with my bad leg... for 3 minutes. It doesn't sound that hard, but seeing as it's been just 2 1/2 months since my ACL reconstruction, and I have to use my hamstring muscle (which they took the graft for the ACL from) it is not fun. I knew it was coming, because it was one of the exercises I had to do before therapy.

I also graduated from the exercise bike to the elliptical machine last Friday. I go backwards on it. The first day it was a little hard, but today was not bad at all. It is the nicest elliptical I've ever seen; it even has a fan underneath the display to keep the exerciser cool!

Summer Photo Challenge (Second last one)

Well, this is the second last challenge and this one was particularly difficult for me It is a bokeh- something I knew absolutely nothing about. So I looked it up and it is basically where part of the image is artistically blurry. I am still not sure I did it right, but the resulting image is pretty so, here goes.

The flower is a Rose of Sharon, or a Hibiscus syriacus. We have several of these in our back yard, and they are quickly becoming one of my favorite flowers. All the ones we have are purpley- pink. My mom transplanted this one for me from the side of our shed to its current location, next to the deck stairs. This pretty flower greets me every time I open the back door to let Finn out.

The last photo for the challenge will go up later this week, close to the official end of summer. I think I am going to find a challenge for Fall. Or maybe I will make up my own.

Post-post (hehe) edit... My flowers color coordinates well with my summer blog background.

Summer

Well, seeing as this Monday is Labor Day (already!?), and the unofficial end of summer, this is the perfect time for this post. My summertime guilty pleasures. This was my post from the blog swap, so you may have already seen it here, but for everyone else, here it is!

This summer has been very different then normal. At the end of June I had knee surgery, and I thought this summer was going to be boring. I was wrong. Instead of; working at the daycare (playing with the kids in the water, trying to hide from the sun in that little bit of shade that we have in the play area, enjoying the fresh air but not the heat) going to fairs and festivals with my family, and swimming when I can, I've been; sitting on the couch, icing my knee, watching TV or playing on the computer, learning how to loom knit, going to therapy, and best of all, bonding with Finn (our 18 month old goofy puppy), and hanging out with my mom!

So even though I haven't been able to do the same things as usual, there are some things I can't get through a summer without. These are a few of my summertime guilty pleasures:

Campfires with my family and friends: For me, there is nothing more fun and relaxing then hanging out, sharing laughs, and making s'mores over the fire. They are usually pretty impromptu events, someone suggesting "Let's have a fire tonight (or this weekend)!" and then we just run with it. We haven't had many fires this year, due to the heat, but the ones we've had were definitely bright spots of the summer, especially the early days of my recovery. My dad even borrowed an outdoor chaise lounge chair from their next door neighbors so that I could sit somewhere and have my leg straight.



Summertime reality TV: Mainly Big Brother, and America's Got Talent. I am usually not a big reality TV person. I don't watch Survivor, Jersey Shore, the Bachelor, etc., but as soon as the weather starts to get hot, I start looking for information on Big Brother. My sister got me hooked on Big Brother a few seasons ago because she never missed an episode, and I wanted to know what was so interesting. My parents watch it too, as does my husband (sometimes), so it gives us something else to discuss. I like America's Got Talent, because some of the talents the contestants display are just astonishing. I still find it amusing that the judges are from the UK and Canada though.



Kettle Corn: Summer is fair and festival season, and that means one thing, kettle corn! I love the sweet/salty combination, and most of the time it comes warm, straight from the kettle. I can't get enough of the stuff, so unless I am sharing, I try not to get the biggest bag. I'm not always successful though, especially since I learned that to keep it from going stale, all I have to do is stick it in the freezer. If it makes it that far.



So even though this summer has been different, it's been great!

Summer Photo Challenge and an IOU

I know I am behind on the Summer Photo Challenge, but there is a reason for that. I used my trees picture for the black and white from last week. I should have looked ahead, but I am not a great planner, so I did not. So I owe you all a trees picture. But it will have to wait for awhile, because we are extending our summer and going somewhere warmer soon!

But I am definitely ready for this week! The challenge was "something cold", and what better cold thing for the summer then ice cream? This is a sundae of my own creation (and if it isn't, don't burst my bubble) a s'mores sundae! Graham cracker crunch ice cream, marshmallow topping, and hot fudge. It really tasted like a frozen s'more.

This is the first cell phone image I've used for this, and I am not thrilled with the quality, so keep and eye out, because I might just have to get another ice cream and take a better picture. I will make that sacrifice for you all. :-P