Crazy Busy Week, What Else Is New? :)

Ella giving Pooh Bear a big hug. She loves her Pooh Bear and enjoys reading him stories.

Hannah wearing the skirt and shirt that I made for her. It fits perfect and is too cute. I love it!

It's been another crazy week at school. The end of the school year is approaching and that means state testing. We have 20 school days until the End of Grade (EOG) tests. My co-worker and I are working on some really exciting EOG review for our kiddos. I think it will be grand. We've got some super interesting reading passages and exciting ways to re-enforce test taking strategies. I've gota handful of kiddos who are close enough to being on grade level that they have a shot at passing the tests. I know they can do it! I know I am a teacher-nerd when I get all excited about these things, but I embrace it. :) I really do love my job.

We wrapped up our unit on the Iditarod this week. My 5th grade reading group, which happens to be all boys, was reading a series of stories about the Iditarod and they were so into it! We followed the real Iditarod race since it was going on as well. Each of my kids picked a musher to follow. They learned so much and were so exciting about reading more and more about the race. Unfortunately the musher I picked was out of the race early on with an injury, but for the most part the guys picked strong teams. This past Thursday was the Science Fair at Royal Oaks, so we did a wicked cool project about dog sleds. The boys built a dog sled out of cardboard and then we raced it outside. We were investigating how the amount of weight in the sled affects the speed of the boys pulling the sled. They got so into the project. After we did all our trials with our weights I got in the sled and had them pull me. It was very funny when I wore two butt holes in the bottom of our sled. One of my kiddos said I better check my pants to make sure they didn't have holes because that was not something he was going to do. Love these kids. I will certainly miss them when I move back to Minnesota. They are a little rough around the edges, but have such big hearts.

On the kiddos front, Hannah can now say "Ella" and it's really cute! When I was telling Ella to come inside Hannah was holding onto my leg and standing next to me saying "Ella! Ella!" She's such a cutie pie. Ella Bean is getting very excited for her birthday that is coming up soon. She is so excited to have pink cake and play with balls. I figured those are pretty simple requests. We got her the American Girl - Bitty Twins Double Stroller for her birthday. I got it at a consignment sale so it needed some cleaning and some elastic repair, but that was easy. It looks like new now. She's young enough now that she does not care if it's not brand new. I will take advantage of that as long as possible.

Tomorrow we'll be off to soccer bright and early. This will be Ella's third soccer "game" (it's really just a practice) and she seems to enjoy it. She is proud to tell people she "falls and falls and falls" but she gets back up. So that is good. The highlight of soccer is often the snacks at the end.

Exciting News.... We get to fly to Minnesota over spring break! We are so excited! Philip found a great deal on tickets so we'll be headed North. It's not a direct flight but we can deal if it means we get to go see Philip, Bode Dog, family, and friends.