Welcome to the blog! Let’s pick up where I left off with my last post- the end of October.

Since then, Koby was a zebra in a school performance.

The kiddos school had the best Halloween bash! There was trick or treating, a costume contest, cake walk, slime station, mad scientist lab, a haunted tunnel, bowling, tons of games and more!

This year Klara dressed up as Wonder Woman, Koby was Sonic the hedgehog, and Kylan wore his football gear. Again. [Insert eye roll here]

Kylan’s football team played in a tournament and even though we didn’t walk away as the champions, we had the best football season we have ever had!

Four words, y’all. Homemade biscuits and gravy. That’s all.

We jumped right into basketball season and Kylan is so excited.

Jordan and I started our Christmas shopping pretty early this year. We dropped the munchkins off with their Mema and shopped til we dropped. We even made time for some Mexican food.

We had our first parent teacher conference with Klara’s teacher. We heard great things and little miss was so excited to show us around her classroom. As a teacher, I love visiting other classrooms (especially Pre K classrooms). Gimme all of the ideas!

As we were leaving our conference, we walked by the gym on our way out and saw Koby’s teacher from last year. She was in the middle of a basketball game. Koby saw all of his old friends in their jerseys and later that night, he asked if he could play basketball with them! I contacted his teacher and she invited us to the next game. Koby played and he absolutely loved it! He played three games before the season ended. If you’re new to my blog, you wouldn’t understand how HUGE this is for Koby. He is autistic and has never had any interest in sports of any kind. But with the challengers league, he was surrounded by his friends that he loves. His best friend, Ms. Cordle. And even his big brother was on the court with him helping out with the other kids. I am a blessed mama.

We took the kids to the movie theater to see the new Grinch movie. They loved it!

My handsome hubby turned 3-0 and we celebrated with lasagna, gifts, cookies and cream birthday cake, and cookie dough ice cream.

The night before Thanksgiving we watched Charlie Brown. Family time is the best time.

On Thanksgiving morning we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while we worked Christmas puzzles and looked through black Friday ads. We went to Jordan’s mom’s at 1pm and went to my mom’s at 4pm. I made a sweet potato casserole and peanut butter balls this year!

That night Jordan and I tackled the crowds and done some shopping while the kids spent some time with my family. We woke up early on Friday and, yet again, done some more shopping. Not without coffee though, just sayin’.

That afternoon we stopped by Jersey Mike’s for lunch. It’s one of our faves!

We finally put up our Christmas tree and our elf is back!

This is Klara’s second year decorating her Christmas tree that’s in her bedroom.

Some other fun things that have happened since my last post was our trip to Sweet Frog, Kylan was in the Christmas parade, we had a ‘mom and Kylan day out’, and we had the biggest snow we have had in years!

Tonight we continued my favorite tradition with the kids. Grinch night!

In the classroom

I introduced our class pet and the kids (and their parents) have blown me away with their journal entries. What happens is each Friday we draw a name and that kiddo gets to take the pet home for the weekend. When they return to school on Monday, they get to sit in the “teacher chair” during circle time and share their weekend together with the class.

To finish up our community helpers unit, we had a visit from the fire department!

We put together these adorable community helper booklets that week as well.

We had a fun movie and pajama day. We watched Charlie Brown and had popcorn! On Halloween, we had a fun Halloween parade and partied with pizza, chips, and cupcakes. I dressed up as a unicorn and of course all the girls loved it.

We learned about pumpkins and then I blinked and we were welcoming November!

We are still working on name and letter recognition, but there are several kiddos that have been loving sight words.

Having the kids explore with different textures in science has been so much fun!

To celebrate Thanksgiving, I put together a ‘disguise the turkey’ project for the kids to do with their families. Everyone was so creative! Good news– none of our turkeys were eaten over Thanksgiving break!

The board provided the staff with a hot lunch before Thanksgiving break, and the next day a parent ordered us bagels and soup. I love my job!

December has been a whirlwind. We have been preparing for our schoolwide Christmas program, making Christmas ornaments, and had a school wide Polar Express movie and pajama day! This past week we had fun learning about gingerbread.

On Thursday of last week, I had an amazing opportunity to attend a teaching conference with two coworkers and our director.

We have had two snow days already this week. What better way to start our Christmas break?!