Festival of Trees 2013

It has been a tradition for as long as I can remember, that I go to the Festival of the Trees with my Great Aunt Elinor the day after Thanksgiving. A few years ago, my mom started to join us, and this year, Charlie joined as well! His eyes were HUGE with wonder at all the beautiful trees!

Here's the base to the wonderful Rochester Woodcarver's Tree! Every year they get better and better. The inside of this church has people sitting on the pews, an usher handing out bulletins, a minister preaching and hymnals scattered throughout. Then there's a nativity in the front. SO neat!

Charlie enjoyed all of the festivities. He would jump around in his stroller and talk to the trees and kids passing by!

Here's the entire woodcarver's tree. Elinor carved 3 pieces for it this year!

Charlie got to sit with Santa while we were at the festival. I think he thought he looked a little similar to Grandpa Alan, so he wasn't too scary. 

He wanted to smile at all the other kids instead of at the camera!

Here's Great Great Auntie Elinor and Charlie after we were finished with the trees. Elinor took us to John Hardy's for a delicious BBQ lunch afterwards. Charlie enjoyed joining us for our fun yearly tradition to kick of the Christmas season! 

Christmas Photo Madness!

The photographer that did Amanda and Will's wedding, Fresh Click Photography, had a Holiday Mini Session a few weeks ago. I couldn't resist! Here are a few of the shots she captured for us!

Cousin Lovin'

Wednesday night, we invited Tony's brothers and their families to our house for some dinner and playing! I captured a few cute shots during the fun!

Charlie has only seen his Uncle Brian a handful of times outside of Remer vacation. He enjoyed snuggling on his lap for a long time! Maya wanted in on the action as well!

Maya had fun playing in Charlie's jumperoo!

She wanted to help me feed Charlie, so she hopped right up!

Then ALL the cousins joined in! 

I love this one because of Natalie kissing Charlie (something she does SO often, very sweet) and Charlie and Maya holding hands. Adorable!

Smiles! 

Sol let Natalie do some brushing before they took of for home!

We were able to spend Thanksgiving with the entire Knutson/Sutter clan. Laur captured a great shot of all of us! She posted it to Facebook. I think it'll need to be printed to hang in our house! I'll be posting more about our Thanksgiving break later.....

IA Roadtrip!

Saturday morning, Charlie and I packed up the Equinox and headed south. We made a pit stop in Stacyville, IA to grab my cousin Michelle, and then we headed straight for Cedar Falls, IA. My cousin Hannah goes to UNI, so we went and visited her for the day/night.

I tried to plan my driving around Charlie's nap schedule. He slept in the car from 8:15 until 10:30 when we arrived at Hannah's. Then he was a happy little camper! Hannah made us a delicious lunch, and Charlie explored the apartment. We don't have those noisy door stoppers in our house, so Charlie had a blast finding those everywhere!

We headed to Scratch Cupcakery for dessert! We bought a dozen cupcakes so we could share with others at home! I tried the Salty Dog there and I had the Butterfinger for breakfast Sunday morning. DELICOUS!

Saturday evening, we went to Texas Roadhouse for supper! My steak was perfect. Charlie enjoyed the crazy atmosphere, but the noise wasn't conducive to a good picture. Here's my attempt of Charlie with his older cousins.

Michelle stayed at Hannah's, and Sunday morning Charlie and I headed out around Charlie's naptime and made our way down to Cedar Rapids, IA, which was a little over an hour away. I did a post a while back about our friend Michael and Amy who left Bethel to join a different congregation in Cedar Rapids, IA. Since we were so close, I figured we HAD to visit them! We got to Michael and Amy's house with enough time to play play play before church. Charlie really enjoyed showing Caden and Hannah how big he's gotten!

We were able to attend worship at their new church. While Michael was playing guitar and singing with the worship band, Charlie was staring him down. It was pretty cute that he remembered Michael! After church, we headed to Red Robin and enjoyed some delicious food and fun visiting! Tony was really bummed he missed this visit with them, so we're planning to try and plan a trip sometime soon!

We made it home right around 4:30 Sunday night. I was exhausted, but Charlie was well rested and ready for playing with his Daddy!

What a great weekend IA road trip!

Eval

This morning I had my first formal evaluation by administration. State law says that a probationary teacher (not tenured) needs to be evaluated 3 times each year. My first evaluation was done by the High School Principal. I wouldn't say I was nervous, but I was making sure all my ducks were in a row this morning.

My lovely co-workers thought it would be funny to play a little prank on me. They knew I got to school at 6am today and was working very hard. At 8:25, the secretary called and said that Mr. (Principal) had called and said he couldn't make it today and reschedule it to Monday. I mentally started getting very angry. When I hung up the phone, I grabbed my lesson plan and reflection packet and almost ripped it up. BUT my co-teacher says "wait wait wait" it was a joke! He got nervous that I'd actually rip it. They thought they were so clever. :) Just wait, I told them!

The eval went off without a hitch. My students were little math stars (without even a bribe), and Mr. (Principal) said he was very impressed. I will formally meet with him to go over his evaluation next Friday. Whew..now I can wait until my immediate supervisor does his evaluation of me in a few months!

Happy Friday everyone!

Cake Cells

My students can earn the chance to do science labs throughout each unit we study. When I say earn, I mean that our program is almost entirely incentive and natural consequence programming. Therefore, if they do not complete the coursework or have intense behaviors, they do not get to participate in the "fun". Today was a day I had formed a fun science project for the kiddos.

We've been studying Eukaryotic Cells (plant and animal cells). They've read about them, talked about them, colored and labeled them; now we were going to make a model using cake and lots of candy! Unfortunately, only 2 of my students made the incentive today. But those 2 students had a blast. When another teacher or staff would come in, they could tell what each part of the cake/topping was what cell part and they could tell the function. Best learning activity I've ever done in my short 3 months as a teacher.

Since there were only 2 students doing the project, they each got their own cell! The circle is the animal cell and the square is the plant cell (you know, because plant cells have a rigid cell wall!) Here are the before cells with their organelles.

The boys working hard! Neither of them have frosted a cake before, so to put the cell membrane on the cytoplasm (frosting on the cake) we needed to have an important "how to frost a cake" lesson. 

Each time we put a new organelle (candy) on, we would discuss what it looks like and what the function is. Here is a list of the candy/organelle we used. Tony and I stood in the candy aisle for a while figuring out what they should be.

Cake-Cytoplasm
Frosting-Cell membrane
Yoke Peppermint Patty-Nucleus
Sour gummy worms-Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum
Gummy worms-Endoplasmic Reticulum
Peach ring-Golgi Complex
M&Ms-Lysosomes
Ghost marshmallows-vacuole
Orange slices-mitochondrion
Sprinkles-ribosomes
Green jelly beans-chloroplasts in the plant cell

Here are the finished products! We shared our cells with other staff. Everyone enjoyed their delicious cells!

Yummmmm

Charlie has been doing a lot of experimenting in the kitchen. Well, at least his momma has been, and he's been benefiting from those experiments! We've tried LOTS of new foods!

We've also been trying finger foods. These didn't go so well at first. Charlie would make a horrible face, start gagging and then spit it out. Yesterday, I put a puff in his mouth and then held it there. No, I didn't torture my son, but I didn't let him spit it out. After doing this a few times, he was going nuts over those puffs!! I of course had to catch this on camera...

Will and Amanda bought Charlie this awesome food mesh thingy. We put fresh or frozen fruits/veggies in it, and he goes to town mashing it and sucking down the juices! I put Kiwi in it for the first time the other day. Watch until the end. He makes the funniest face!

I finally snagged a picture of Charlie's 2 little teeth. He's working on more!

Big boy after eating a big meal! 

60!

I did a birthday post for my Dad, but I left out the biggest and best part of his birthday. We were throwing him a surprise party! Saturday night, a large group gathered at Will and Amanda's and surprised the heck out of my dad! We had a blast. A lot of people drove a long way to wish Dad a happy birthday! We served many different appetizers, but most of them had bacon involved in some way. Dad LOVES bacon!

Here he is with his Fredricksen cousins in attendance. Jim, Dick, Bob, Dave and my Dad.

I couldn't believe we pulled it off, but we did! Here Will and I are with the surprised dad!

First entering the party!

Whoopie cushion??

Just in case he can't hit off his other tees any more.....

We had so much fun! I'm blessed to have the dad I do, and we couldn't think of anything better than throwing him a party to celebrate his life! Love you Dad!

Survival.

Just had to throw a quick note out to the world saying that I survived my first complete quarter as a real live teacher. My grades are submitted. My progress notes for special education are submitted. YAHOO!!!!!

Now I can just sit here the rest of the day and do nothing, right? Oh wait,  my desk is still full of paperwork and lesson plans that need to be finished...and don't forget those 8 little students, sitting in their desks, looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to give them more knowledge. Back to work! (PS this is my prep period, so I don't really have students while I'm sending this short post to the world)