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A kindergarten sized thank you

Posted on December 27, 2008 9:44 am by TheAngelForever

As a teacher, I always love to see the creative items that my son’s teachers do with his classes. I have been absolutely amazed with NHL’s kindergarten teacher. Not only has she been a wonderful mentor for my son, but I have learned a lot from the sidelines as well.

The week before winter break, the kindergarten class celebrated three of the major holidays of the month. Wednesday was Chanukah and I went into play dreidel game with them. They also made latkes and had apple sauce with it. Thursday was Christmas where they made candy covered Christmas trees using ice cream cones. Friday they had someone come in to teach them African dances for Kwanzaa.

The day after I went in for Chanukah, I stopped by the classroom. As the room parent, I had been "secretly" collecting money from any parents that wanted to contribute for gift cards. A huge storm was coming in on Friday and I wanted to make sure that the teachers and aids had their gifts for the two weeks off.

When I arrived in the classroom, the kids ran over and gave me a giant thank you note. The teacher told me that they wrote it themselves and if I needed a translation just to let her know. The special envelope was made by one of the adults. Apparently they do special themed envelopes to make letters unique. Here are the two sides of the envelope:

And here is a picture of the really cute note from the kids. NHL told me that they all took turns going up to write parts of it.

This is definitely something that I will be packing away to keep so NHL can see what his classmates made.

Categories:
holidays interesting nhl photos school

A bloggy honor from Mommytalk

Posted on December 16, 2008 9:26 am by TheAngelForever

Last week I received an e-mail from my good bloggy friend Susan. She wanted to let me know that I had been selected as Mommytalks Blog pick of the week.

I was asked if I would share some of our Chanukah family traditions. Thanks to this honor, I created the Our Festival of Lights post to share things that we do for Chankuah.

Please head on over to Mommytalk to check out the features and meet some fabulous women.

P.S. Be sure to enter in my Chanukah Shopping Fun – Game Giveaway. Don’t be fooled, this is great game for non-Jewish participants as well.

Categories:
interesting me moments web fun

One Big Mama Pizza

Posted on December 14, 2008 11:09 am by TheAngelForever

Have you ever seen a 30 inch pizza before?

No really, I am being serious. Such a beast really does exist, and not simply on Food Network for an eating challenge. We recently found a new pizza place that is really cute. The people there are very nice and the best part, they make wheat pizza.

My mother called last Friday to see if we wanted to have dinner with her and order a wheat pizza since my father was working late. We said sure and figured we would try an experiment. Since there were five of us eating the pizza, and left overs would be great, we opted to order the Big Mama.

After walking in to pick up the pizza, we wondered if it may have been a rather large mistake (pun intended).

The gentleman had to walk around the counter to hand us the mega box holding this 30 inch pizza. I stood there in horror wondering how we were going to get that into our car. I knew it could not go on JL’s lap in the front, nor on the floor in the middle with the boys. Clearly, the trunk had to work. Problem was it was too big to simply go there. Thank goodness we have a mini-van and were able to collapse the third row. We were able to put the pizza back on that and wedge it into place with the stroller and NHL’s car seat. Here is a visual:

The pizza finally arrived safely at my parent’s house. Then another drama unfolded thanks to the size of the box. JL had to figure out how to get the box into the kitchen through the door frames.

Once on the table (where it took up the entire space) we could finally look inside the book to view our Big Mama pizza.

Lesson learned from this experience is that in the future we will leave Big Mama slice eating to the restaurant. We will not be taking home another one of these puppies any time soon.

Categories:
food glorious food interesting jl laughs photos sarcasm yummy

Chicago dreaming

Posted on November 30, 2008 10:59 am by TheAngelForever

Yesterday I really started to wonder if going to Chicago this summer was possible. Why do I want to go to Chicago? This is the reason:

The last two years I sat at my computer watching as bloggers from all over documented their fun at the BlogHer convention. The first year I had just given birth and was a newbie at blogging myself. Last year I wanted to go, but traveling all the way to San Francisco was not very practical. Chicago is a completely different story. Not only are there a lot of flights that way, but driving could be possible.

While out yesterday, I mentioned to hubby that I really wanted to try to go. I looked at flights. Of course booking this far out showed $400 options, which is insane! Then I thought about making it a family destination. I looked and sure enough there is a Six Flags in Chicago and we have those season passes that are good there!

Hmmm. . . .

It really made me think about the possibility of things to do in Chicago and places to stop and see on the way there and back home from BlogHer. There are SO many things that we could do, it is actually mind boggling. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. By next summer the boys will be almost 6 and just 2.

Update: This morning hubby informed me that he was pricing things out last night when I went to bed. He thinks that it may not be a bad option to make this into a family trip. In fact, he was also Tweeting about it to see if other families would be heading out to the BlogHer destination for vacations together. So if anyone is thinking of doing this please let me know.

This week I will be heading to AAA to pick up driving options to Chicago from here. I have heard that it is at least a 14-18 hour drive. We could certainly split it up and make it work with desination stops to see new places that we have never visited.

Categories:
decisions interesting me moments road trip travel vacation

Mitzvah Day Fall 2008

Posted on November 17, 2008 9:45 am by TheAngelForever

Have you done a mitzvah today? If you are not sure what this means, do not worry many people are probably curious as well. The term mitzvah, a hebrew word, has come to mean any act of human kindness. For further information about the historical meaning of mitzvah I will point you here.

People strive to do mitzvot in their everyday lives without making it obvious that they are doing so. Each year our synagogue has a Mitzvah Day in the fall where congragants go out into the community to do good for others. Some of the opportunities were to help out at the Ronald McDonald House, serve food at the local mission, and dance to entertain residents at a senior center.

The children from the hebrew school in grades K-3 were asked to participate in the dancing. NHL was very excited about this and wanted to go with his friends. We decided to participate. Everyone was supposed to arrive at our synagogue at 12:30 for lunch. When we arrived we were greeted by my grandmother working at the registration table.

After lunch we drove to the senior center for the dancing. NHL was quite excited and had a hard time waiting to get on the "stage" to dance.

Here is a shot of him dancing and having a fabulous time. He really is starting to understand the broad picture of what doing a mitzvah is now thanks to hebrew school.