1 more year

Tony entered his last year in his twenties this past Saturday. We went to Natalie's dance showcase, Noodles for lunch with the dancer, supper at The Loop, and a drink at The Tap House. I'd say he had a pretty great birthday! Since the weather was pretty bad last night, we cancelled band practice. My mom invited us over to have some dinner and cake for the birthday boy.

Charlie found his little piano right away! He even danced standing up. His little legs are just a going!

Playing with Grandpa Buck

Daddy and Charlie with the birthday cake. 

Tony left 1 candle lit....

Our little family 

Tony and Dad licking the candles...

Happy 29 Tony!

Christmas Lights

I'm a little late on this post, but I completely forgot I had these pictures until I was looking through my camera yesterday at Natalie's dance recital. I have to share a few...

Donors Choose

http://www.donorschoose.org/tricia.knutson

Click on the link above to check out my first Donors Choose project for my classroom. To read my entire project, click on "Emerging into the 21st Century". If you can help us out, my students would greatly benefit from it!

If you give within the next week and enter the code INSPIRE, Donor's Choose will MATCH YOUR GIFT! That's awesome!

Thank you in advance for your help!

Winter Blues

Since I post so many silly and smiley pictures of Charlie, I figured I should balance it out a bit with a few sad faces. We don't see sad Charlie very often, unless we tell him "No, you can't eat the kitty food", or "No, you can't play in the fireplace" or the last one, "No, you cannot suck on Momma's camera!" The last one is why I saw some tears this morning.

"Oooh, Momma has her camera out again! Sweet!"

"Why is she taking it away from me?!" 

"Now what will I do for fun??" 

"Please Momma, just for a minute?"

During morning nap, I did a little project. It took me longer than expected, so that's ALL I did during nap time. I suppose the dishes aren't going anywhere, so they can be saved for afternoon nap.

Download

I just decided I should clear out some photo space on my phone. When I plugged it into my computer, it showed 1001 pictures to download! Whoa...someone takes a lot of pictures. I figured I should share a few that you may have missed.

These are in no logical order.

Mindy and I had fun at Canvas and Chardonnay!

Someone likes to get rolled up like a burrito!

Drama drama drama in my classroom lately. Lots of boyfriend/girlfriend nonsense! I found this on one of my student's desk. 

If there's an electronic device, Charlie will find it! It's funny because we never have the tv on or iPad when he's awake, but he is still drawn to the screens. 

Waving hello to Grandpa Buck one morning. I send a picture every morning to my dad.

Cuddle time with cousin Meg. 

Tea time with Grandma Jayne. 

We brought our little ninja turtle to Grandma Jayne and Grandpa Bob's house at Halloween time. 

Connor and Megan were over and built a little toy fortress for Charlie. 

At a staff meeting, we were told to write a goal as a group. I was the smart alack who decided to write the goal as an IEP goal. The principal thought it was hilarious and took it to hang in his office.  My coworkers aren't quite sure what to do with me yet...

I think this is such a sweet picture. See Harvey's hand on Charlie's back. What a great big cousin!

Snuggle time with my favorite little man. 

Hope you enjoyed these random photos!

Sick Day

The Knutson house has been full of fun the last few days. Wednesday night, Tony came down with some sort of stomach bug and fever. Tony's been home sick yesterday and today, but right now he's feeling better. He's still tired, but he thinks he'll be going to work tomorrow. YAH!

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a very sore throat. I took care of Charlie all day yesterday, hoping my sore throat would go away, but it just got worse. Around 4, I finally decided to go into fast care at Hy Vee. I was supposed to have teacher workshops today, so I wanted to get on drugs if I needed them! Charlie had to come with me, since Tony was quite sick. The nurse practioner wasn't the friendliest about my sore throat. She basically told me, it looks fine, go home. I told her my niece was diagnosed with strep throat, and all but demanded they do a strep test. Apparently Mayo Rochester only does the 8 hour strep test now. SO, my results weren't in until 1:30am. When I called in at 4:30 (I woke up from extreme throat pain), I tested positive for strep. I had my prescription sent to Weber and Judd in Stewartville, so I looked up when they opened. They don't open until 9am! Ugh...I had several more hours to wait and feel like junk. Needless to say, I had to call in sick to work, on a workshop day! My administrator was very understanding, thank goodness!

A huge positive in this whole ordeal is that I had set up childcare for Charlie with Laur and Jill. They were going to come over to our house, but since we're under the weather, they drove all the way to our house and then took Charlie home with them! My mom is picking him up after she's done with work! We were very lucky to have the entire day to recuperate and let Charlie stay away from the germs.

After all that sick talk, here are some pictures I took of Charlie yesterday. I was starting to get very sad about having to go back to work today, so I wanted to document our play time! Lucky for me, I get to stay home on Monday as well since the governor closed all public schools on Monday!

Charlie has been very interested in his books the past few days. We've done lots and lots of reading and flipping through the pictures.

Someone noticed I took my camera out. 

Hamming it up!

He found some more books!

Charlie can't get enough of this car toy from Grandma Cher and Grandpa Alan. He loves honking the horn! 

A quick video with his clapping. It's hard to capture it because he wants to come and steal the camera from me!

Break Time Fun

Today is my last day of winter break. Tomorrow I head over to Austin for teacher training sessions. It seems a little strange to go back for one day before having the weekend, but I'm not complaining. I have had a wonderful relaxing break! I had a huge list of things to do in our house while I was home, but I ended up spending a lot of time with Charlie and the rest of my family. It was worth it!

Whenever I'm in the kitchen, Charlie follows me right in there! Since our cupboards are very hard to open, I decided to make Charlie his own little kitchen toy box. I put a bunch of containers and utensils in there for him to explore with. As soon as he found it this morning, he was playing like crazy!

Here's one side of it. 

After Tony took apart the old entertainment center, I vacuumed up the dust bunnies. Charlie helped me. 

Becky came to visit us. Charlie's sitting on his buddy or future girlfriend to arrive in late February. Notice the nice maternity sweater Becky's wearing? I loaned her some of my clothes. Maternity clothes are incredibly expensive! It was so fun to spend that time with Becky! 

Here's Charlie showing us one of his many silly faces and clapping his hands. 

Water has been a favorite of Charlie's lately. His sippy doesn't sit too far from him. 

Sol relaxing the day away. 

Like I said, I have had a great break at home! 

Elinor Christmas

This is a delayed post. We celebrated Christmas with my Great Aunt Elinor on Sunday. I was VERY under the weather, so I skipped lunch. The rest of the family went to Whiskey Creek. Apparently Charlie was showing off for them all and did lots of "so bigs" and "yahs" (clapping). I was very bummed to miss, but I had a bit of a stomach bug. I am about 99% sure it was a food problem. I had some lettuce that maybe I shouldn't have had...

After lunch, Tony picked me up so I could spend a few hours with them all and open presents. Since I wasn't feeling well, I didn't get hardly any pictures.

I did get a couple of Charlie opening his present.

He got an adorable stuffed dog named Mugsy. He LOVES him. 

We got these ornaments that Elinor chip carved. 2013 for Charlie and 2011 for Tony and me. 

This is wood burned on the back. 

Charlie's first carving. A cute little cowboy. 

My cross country skiing gnome! ADORABLE!

Charlie's gnome with the walking stick. Isn't he a cute one!?

We hung around Elinor's for quite a bit. Watched the beginning of the Packer game, then we headed back home so I could sleep.

Thank you Elinor for another great Christmas celebration!