The Challenge Begins

Here we go again.
The last few years have been very rewarding, I have taught preschool now for two years and this is my third. I am teaching 4 year olds again but this time I have 3 days a week instead of 2. I am glad because I can fit more in.
Now I am a worrier and I am always nervous on "Meet the Teacher" day. I met my students yesterday and found out that I will be having another challenging student. The first year I started out with a little boy with speech delay (I thought it was a lot more than that but...) who left after October because I told mom how disruptive he was (pulling papers out of cubbies and walking around the room tearing any paper he could find) and he was replaced with a little girl who spoke no english! So that was my first year teaching, then last year I had another challenge.
A little girl who seemed to me to be somewhat mentally challenged in that she has a hard time following instructions and could not answer simple questions with anything that made sense. For example if I asked, "What is your favorite thing to do at school?", she would say, "My mommy is going to get her hair cut!" There seemed to be a connection missing there. This year I will have a little boy that has been diagnosed ADHD. I am not an expert so I don't really know how to deal with him. I am hoping (since mom pulled him out last year because he couldn't handle it) that he has grown enough for this to work. Mom is very willing to work with me so that is good. Better than her being in denial. He apparently was adopted and is a drug baby, so the problems started there. So I am praying that this year I will be able to step up and do a good job for these kids and their parents! Wish me Luck!

Legoland Monday!

After a great nights sleep at Steve and Annamarie's cabin, we headed for Legoland! The weather was pretty nice and the kids had a great time! We did meet up a couple times with Vince, Kelly and the boys and did some things with them like the Driving School and they also introduced us to the cool 4D movie! We hadn't seen any of those before! Thanks for that!

Cole's highlight was going on the newest rollercoaster, "Technic Test Track" It was pretty high and pretty steep drops and at first he didn't want to go on, but Dad was very encouraging so he did it and loved it! Kaleigh said no to that but for the first time went on the Dragon rollercoaster. It is definitely more tame than the Technic but it was still more than she had done before! They both went on the trackless rollercoaster, "Knights Tournament" and I took photos. That was toward the end of the day and I had a bit of a headache, so Carl swapped out with them and they both did level 2! I was very proud of them for trying new rides! The photos are of the kids in the stockade, Mom and Dad in the stockade, Kaleigh on the Aquazone ride and Kaleigh and Cole with SpongeBob! It was a really nice day but at the end of the day we were all pooped! As you can see in the first photo, which was of course the last taken, we are beat! But a great time!

A Big Thank You!!!

On behalf of my family as well as for most everyone that attended, a big thank you is in order! I know some have already blogged a thank you but I thought it needed to be said again! We all had such a great time and that was due to the planning and inspiration of Steve and Annamarie!

I also want to thank McKenna, Lauren and Patrick for their hospitality as well, they made it really fun for the kids! Another thank you goes out to Robert and Celeste for making the shirts and doing the Geocache stuff! Thank you also to Diana and Hayley for watching over the littler kids too! I think we all enjoyed this trip, and would like to do this again sometime! With all of the address swapping and Christmas card promises, I hope we can all keep in touch!

Thank You Renee!!! So while down south for the reunion, Tina, Diana, Kaligh and I drove into the city to drop off Leonie at the airport. Before we needed to go there we stopped at Horton Plaza to do a little shopping. We also ran into Renee and her beau Justin! While we were looking in the GameStop store, I told Nae about the kids love of Lego Star Wars and that they were saving their money to get the Indiana Jones game. Renee decided it would be a good idea to get Kaleigh and Cole an early birthday present and proceeded to purchase said game!!! So a Big Gigantic THANK YOU!!!!!! The kids are already playing it and I had to cut them off at 4 hours!! It was good seeing you Renee and nice meeting Justin!!!

Getting Ready!

Ok, so we are getting ready for our trip down south and are working to get all the laundry done, and pack and make sure we have space for the Kiester clan to land and sleep! I don't think it will be any problem, we have the room and lots of things to pile up to make it nice and comfy. I am working on moving a coffee table to make more room so there isn't any weird configurations needed! Kaleigh and Cole are having a watch as much Spongebob, Fairly Odd parents and other Nick toons as you want day. I know it isn't great, so sue me! Just an expression people! They did go over to Aunt Helen's for about 2 hours and just played their little hearts out and soon they will get bored, and I will send them outside once the air cools off. Maybe they will go outside and play in their moonsand, who knows. It was just kind of a lazy day. Something that most people don't really recognize anymore! I am happy to say I don't feel the least bit guilty either!!! I know I usually do if I know that something really needs to get done, but today isn't like that at all and it feels great!

The kids are pretty happy too!

A T & T 3 in 1

As techno-illiterate as I am, I kind of understood when Carl told me about something new (about 1 year ago) that AT&T was putting together. Computer, phone and TV hook ups all through the one company. Fast computer, more channels and well....the phone stays the same I guess. So they finally put in the boxes in our neighborhood and about a week ago we got a mailer stating we are now able to get this AT&T thingummy. Well, all I know is that Carl said we would get what would be considered similar to basic cable. Cool. More choices for tv like home design and cooking! I am good with that. What I didn't anticipate was the reaction from Kaleigh and Cole! They were soooo excited when the guy came! All they could talk about was getting to watch Spongebob and some of the other cartoons that they only see in motels when we are on vacation. Luckily, they don't seem to realize how much is available, and I ain't tellin' 'em!
Of course there were a few glitches like at first we couldn't connect to the internet and Carl had to do some rewiring and then they rehooked up the playstation differently so we couldn't really figure that one out without some help from Daddy! Cole was very relieved. Out of the two kids, Cole is the playstation junkie and I have to limit the amount of time he spends on the games. I did however drag them to a church work day this morning, so they get a little more grace than normal. But all in all it seems like there are so many channels and still not much to watch during the times that I am mostly watching! Of course it is the Summertime and I may actually use the DVR to record some stuff come the fall! In a nutshell, I hope to add some new favorites to the current ones. I am happy that ION television is playing things like Quantum Leap and The Dead Zone series, pretty cool and that one was free!

Duck Pond Cupcakes

So this last weekend, yesterday in fact, Carl's cousin's wife had a baby shower. This is the second child and we decided to go simple. Just dessert and coffee and punch, gifts and a couple games. So I was the one who got to make the cupcakes. I have always found cupcakes to be, in general, rather boring. I am not a master confectioner, so I don't know how to make beautiful cupcakes. I enjoy putting them all together to make a different type of configuration. This was my idea. We had a boy themed ducky shower. So at first I was just going to do the blue frosting with the duckies on top. Again, I thought that was kind of boring, so instead as you can see I made a duck pond with dirt and grass/moss (the frosting was supposed to be stiff like grass but didn't cooperate). Everyone enjoyed it and I got a lot of compliments. Easy to serve and everyone got to pick chocolate, yellow or white cake cupcake. It was fun, though not as fun as Kaleigh's 6th birthday Pirate cup "cake". Although, now that I look back at that photo, I like the Duck pond better! hehe, but the kids adored the pirate cupcakes too! I also note that Kaleigh's cupcakes were for 20 kids whereas the shower needed around 60! Whew, good thing Kaleigh helped with these!

Summertime -Packed vs. Relaxed

Growing up my sisters and I never went to camp, didn't go on "playdates" didn't have planned activities or sports. We of course had a pool that we spent most of our time in and we did have friends over to swim. Summertime was really for relaxing and playing and going on vacation.

Somehow parents today don't seem to really get that idea. Almost every parent I know has there kids in everything to sports, to camp, to horseriding etc. The problem with this is if you want to just have someone over to play, there has to be a scheduled day and time because everyone has "things" that they have to schedule around. No more calling someone on the same day to come over and play. I find this rather sad, and so do my kids. There is a friend that will just call and say, "Hey, can Kaleigh and Cole play?" Which is surprisingly refreshing and we always say yes!

My personal opinion is that parents are afraid of spending time with their kids. They don't know what to do with them! Most kids if left alone and given a few ideas will last hours without complaining. My kids (just like my sisters and I) have great imaginations because the learned from my example, coming up with made up games, like "Police Sketch Artist", Puppet shows, and "Towel fashions". The ones in quotations are the ones Tina and I made up.

The first is where two people sit facing each other, one with a sketch pad. The other describes the "burgler, robber, perp etc." The person drawing asks questions like, "what shape was his face, did he have a narrow or wide nose, what did his hair look like?" And so on. Then when the drawing is done, the person drawing says, "so is THIS what the robber looked like?" Not only is it hilarious to see the end result, but you can really go far with it, scars, moles..in fact I think once Tina said something like, "well, the guy didn't have any cartilage in his nose so it was just hanging there!" What a crack up that was! It also helps children learn to really listen and helps with using descriptive words too!

Towel fashions haven't happened yet because it was something we did to pass the time after coming out of the pool. We would take a few towels and wear them in different ways, then one of us would be the commentator saying, "here is Tina, wearing a lovely skirt and top combo, with a turban as an accessory!"

So, as you can tell, we had fun with what we had access to. It is sad that people have to pay other people to entertain their children. By all means don't let them stay at home where they will just whine about being bored! We have solved that one too! My Mom told us if we ever said those two words, " I'm bored", it was code for "it is time to clean". So we were very careful! My kids are very aware of this code!

As we speak they have their toy Chevron cars that they have been playing with for about 2 hours so far. They build them houses or should I say garages with DVD cases. Then they have families go on vacation they visit different parts of the house and this will go on for another hour probably. Then they will try and think of something else fun to do. If they can't come up with something they will ask for suggestions. I have a few other ideas up my sleeve, because I too used to need things to do, and Tina and I had a great time playing our homemade games! So watch out kids, here comes the "Chicky Game!"
Tina, don't laugh too hard!!!

Photo's from our swim day! First one is the group, see below, the second one is Kaleigh going down the slide, and the last is Sydney, the dog diving in after a tennis ball! Pretty funny to watch.

Swimming with the Teacher!

So, Kaleigh and Cole both had this teacher for first grade. She is a fantastic teacher and a good friend. At the end of the school year she let me know that she wanted to have Kaleigh and Cole over during the summer for a swim visit. She has a pool and wanted to spend some time with us! Well, with vacations and all we just were able to talk in the last couple of days, so we decided to go over there today. Carl was home so he came too. We had a nice pizza lunch and then went into the pool.

The video is of the hot tub that is connected to the pool and her daughter showed the kids how to make a whirlpool. It was pretty funny watching them swirl around! Cole laughed his head off because he couldn't stop!

The photo of the group is Kelli, me, their teacher Roberta (sorry no last names), Kaleigh and Cole. Carl took the photo of course. We really appreciated Roberta as the kids teacher she is fun and fair. She is also a lovely person outside of school and I look forward to working with her more and more as the years go by. I only wish I had more kids so they could have her as their teacher! Oh the other photo is of Kaleigh going down the cement water slide. As you can probably tell the pool is a rock type pool very nice. It is relaxing to just sit and soak!

Sorry, no photos at this time. There is a glitch of some sort and it is not letting me add photos.

So check back later to see the photos, I will try again.