Why do I always have camera problems!?  Tuesday morning I was totally prepared to get to the school first thing to help the 5th graders make gingerbread houses.  This is a tradition at our school and it’s super fun for the kids!  I had my memory card inserted in my camera (unlike when I forgot to put one in for Pittsburg Xmas), I took a shower & put on makeup ;), and had class party treats & gingerbread house supplies in hand by 7:30a.m.  I was really looking forward to this morning as this is Jake’s last year at Manchester Park.  Say it isn’t so!!  I don’t really know what went wrong, but I have no pictures on my memory card to document this event.  grrrrr.  What is it with me and my camera problems!?   So here’s the finished product…pretty great huh!?

The good news is, I had an absolute blast doing this with Jake and his friends.  The entire 5th grade brings in powdered sugar, eggs, graham crackers and tons of candy to decorate. All the volunteer moms frantically make the royal icing while they construct.  It’s pretty impressive!  Somehow I got stuck with the job of separating the egg whites…I’m pretty sure my hands will never be the same.  I don’t think raw eggs are good for the skin.  I managed to escape the eggs to go help Jake even though he really didn’t need it!  When I did this with Morgan 3 years ago, all the girls did such a fabulous job and all the boys were (excuse my language) annoying and had piles of graham crackers and candy with no effort. Here’s a flashback to Morgan’s house…

Isn’t she adorable!?  And awesome job on the house momo!!

I was expecting the boys to be a disaster this year, but to my surprise, they weren’t!!  They were actually trying to get a nice structure together!  I had so much fun and managed to get out of there without eating one morsel of candy!!  This is a major deal for me because I am like a little kid…I love candy!   I don’t think Jake can say the same….he was literally stuffing every pocket full of candy to get him through the rest of the day.  How he got an A on his really difficult dividing decimals math test immediately after remains a mystery! Maybe candy is the secret!?  Don’t even try it Jakers…it’s not happening next test!

I had a short break until I had to be back at the school for winter parties, I guess my laundry will have to wait!  My heart is always so happy when I show up in my kids’ classrooms.  They still get very excited to see me and I will never forget that!  Here are a few winter party photos that actually did make it on my camera memory card…

The 1st graders continued the tradition of wearing PJ’s to school, the principal reads The Polar Express, and they watch the movie together!We made these cute treats for her class.  I was supposed to make these cheese sticks into Santa’s but I decided tying a festive bow on them was just as cute.  Plus, I didn’t really know how I was going to do that anyway.  I’m not a pinterest kind of girl 😉

Here’s my 3rd grader, Drew Boo, who earned the chance to bring a stuffed animal to school. He chose Besler of course!  And I think he wanted to show him off to his ‘girlfriend.’  Girlfriend!?  I feel like this one is going to be girl-crazy….ugh!

Jake’s 5th grade class played a lot of fun games this time!  They played soccer while crab-walking, threw candy into wreaths and got to keep all of the candy, they drew snowmen on top of their heads with no eyesight, snowball bowling, and the famous toilet paper snowman game, super fun right!?  How am I going to follow this kind of fun up during winter break!?  yikes!

Woo hoo…winter break begins!!  I’m so happy this time of the year because sports slow down, I don’t have to quiz anyone on spelling words, or science, or social studies, I don’t have to pack lunches, the kids can sleep in if they want, I don’t have to stress out about bedtime, and Brian usually doesn’t travel much.  Most of all, I just love spending time with my family without a ton of distractions.  It’s by far my favorite part of the season.  I love you guys so much!  cheers to a fun-filled break!