The luckiest teacher on earth!

Right now, I honestly feel that way - like I'm the luckiest teacher on Earth! Every year, at the beginning of December, I send out a note to my students' families that they need not buy me a gift for the holidays, that I'd rather, if they wished to do something, that they purchase something for the classroom - something that the students would all enjoy playing and using - like Kid K'nex pieces, floor puzzles, Ello creation things, etc. This usually works out well and we get a nice assortment of things for our room. Well, this year, one of the mom's brought in a nice gift bag and said that it was from all the families in that class. At circle time, we sat down to open the class gifts and I was brought to tears when I opened the 'big class gift' -- they bought a digital camera! A Sony Cyber-Shot -- 6.0 megapixels (my old, now broken camera was only 1.3!)!! I was simply speechless. I feel so blessed to be able to work with families who care so much! They knew that I used the camera quite a bit in the classroom and was very upset when my broke, but this was beyond generous!

Something a little bit happier...

Because the news in the neighborhood is not good (had to call the police last night regarding the light the neighbors shine into my mil's house), I will distract myself to share one of my most favorite stories.....

About 2 years ago, at our church, Niantic Community Church, around the holidays they were talking about the Heifer Project and said that at our Alternative Marketplace, they would be selling the book, Beatrice's Goat. They also mentioned that the goat given to the family in the book was purchased by money raised at Niantic Community Church. Yeah, right. I thought. I was thinking that they were talking about how collectively the money that people (collective people) use to purchase the Heifer animals go to families in other countries and that this was a true story about one such family.

I purchased a book for my children for Christmas but it wasn't until the following year that I learned that it was true that the people who raised the money for a goat 20 some years before had indeed been from our church and that the story of Beatrice and her goat were the recipients of that gift (apparently through Heifer you can track who got your animal donation). That in and of itself is pretty cool, but the super cool part of the story is that not only was Beatrice able to attend school in her village from the money they could raise from selling the goat's milk and such, but she graduated from school and then began attending college (I'm getting goosebumps!) right here in Connecticut! At a college about 20 minutes from here! How amazing is that! Last year Beatrice came to our church and spoke to the children about how the Heifer Project changed her life. That year an anonymous donor offered to match our church's gift if we were to raise enough money to buy an Ark ($5,000 -- two of every animal), AND their employer had a matching donation program, so if we raised $5,000 we would be able to triple that to make 3 Arks. Well, we not only raised the money for the first Ark, but we also raised enough money to purchase another one with the money raised from the congregation -- so last year we were able to purchase *4* Arks all together!! It is just so heartwarming! It makes my heart sing!

Here's a picture of Ahren with Beatrice when she visited our church:

Almost done

The cookies are baked and I've piped on the edging of the royal icing. Tomorrow night we will do the flooding icing, thinned down royal icing that will flood the cookie, but stay within the piped edging, then add some sprinkles, colored sugar or whatever and we are done! I think all in all, we did at least 12 dozen cookies. The sugar cookies are the only ones that we will decorate. The whipped shortbread are a pretty fragile, melt-in-your mouth kind of cookie. They are just so yummy. I did do a new recipe of choco chip cookies for Sean - blech! I don't like them at all, although they everyone else in the house seems to love them and now they are almost gone.

In other news, the light is back on! The neighbors weren't here until today, and now after the light being out for a week and half, it is back on. ARGH!!! Tomorrow is the date that we are supposed to pay them the $900 (fat chance!), and since we haven't heard from them, we don't know if they are planning to continue with a lawsuit or not. We will see!

For something totally unrelated to anything at all: For some reason our bathtub drain has been very slow for about the past week or so and this weekend it stopped draining all together. Plain ole bleach wasn't doing anything for it. So I picked up some Liquid Plumber Power Jet and figured I'd give it a try. We had to block up the overflow drain thing, so I try to keep that in place while Pete did the Power Jet thing - even with me holding it tight, water shot out of the overflow drain and we were like, oh well, that couldn't have worked --- but we were shocked when he removed the container and the water flowed right down the drain - good as new! Neither of us could believe it! We looked at the ingredients and there aren't even any ingredients listed, the only danger disclaimers were about the contents being under pressure -- could it just be air and/or water??? I dunno, but it worked amazingly!

Cookies today!

That is the plan at least. I think I've got everything that I need for all the varieties that we will be making. This year, I'm planning on subbing the regular flour with a wheat-free blend that I've found to be undetectable in most things that I make. This way Sean can for the most part eat all the varieties we will be making.

If I had a camera I would snap some pics, but sadly I don't. :(

Because we wanted to do the cookie thing as a family it is looking like we won't make it to the Light Parade. The Light Parade is a big deal and usually EVERYONE goes to it, and will again this year because the weather is quiet mild. Pete usually takes the kids and I stay home to get stuff done. But I think we will all be missing it this year.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas! Today we got our tree (for the outrageous price of $47!! Next year, we are definitely getting a fake tree - no doubt it!). Ahren and Pete went to get the tree while Sean and I got the livingroom/diningroom ready for it (put away the non-Xmas stuff and got out the decorations). Right now, I have no idea how in the world we are going to get everything done that needs to be done by the 25th - we've not bought one gift yet! Tomorrow I will take care of the teacher gifts at the Alternative Market at church - my standby is a gift of chicks or bees or something from Heifer Project. I think I will also do that for my co-worker gifts - I'm really not a big gift buyer, so it works out nicely.

At some point we will need to actually do some kid gift shopping, which I'm dreading. And we still need to get to Lowe's or Home Depot and pick out some cabinets and fixtures, molding and lighting for the kitchen renovations that will happen during Xmas vacation.

Tomorrow the plan is that after church, we will do our usual cookie baking day and make bunches of cookies, which means I need to pick out the ones that we will do tonight to get the stuff for tomorrow. Ack!! More time - I need more time.

More things that make you go hmmmm.....

This weekend I got a call from my mom that apparently Pierre, my father (who I have not seen since I was 11 and only 1-2 a year since I was 2 years old) was going to be coming back to the town that I grew up in (where my mom and my sister all live) because his girlfriend died and was being buried there. My sister was planning to go and see him after the funeral.

So I got a call tonight from my sister telling me that she went and saw him today. I was so freakin' nervous about what she was going to tell me. But the overall gist was actually pretty good. So Dawn goes to the cemetery and waits until they were getting back in the cars and approaches the guy that she thinks might be right and says, "are you Pierre?" and he says no and points him out to her. She goes over to the other guy and says, "are you Pierre?" and he says "yes" and she asks if he knew who she was and he didn't say anything and then she said, "I'm your daughter." And he, without missing a beat says, "oh my god, Dawn!" Dawn was surprised that he didn't even have to think between her and I (when we young, people constantly would mix us up) and he started crying and gave her a big hug. He said that seeing her made his day. They talked for about 20 minutes. He said that he was so sorry for what he had done and not done. He kept saying that he was really, really sorry. She said he cried a lot. He said that he thought about us a lot and often wanted to contact us but didn't want to screw up our lives. She told him that he has 5 grandchildren. She gave him a couple pictures of her girls and one picture of Ahren and Sean.

She said that his hair was a sort of salt and pepper color, his skin was fairly olive toned (like he had a good tan) and he wasn't as tall as she would have thought, he was more round than any old (30+year old) pictures that we had seen, but he wasn't exactly fat. In his younger days he was very thin. She said he looked like he must have had a sad, sad, depressing life. At one point, he gave her his phone number and after he wrote down the number, he looked at the paper and then at her and then at the paper and then at her and said, "I don't know what I should write down", (like dad or Pierre or whatever). She asked if I wanted the number and I told her to email it to me. I don't know if I would be able to get up the courage to call him, but I'd rather have the number in case I do, instead of trying to get up the courage to also have to ask her for the number.

Needless to say, this has been just too surreal, especially just this past September I posted about him. More things to make you go hmmmm....

Doing a happy dance!!!

I'm so tickled right now!! I just got an email that I won one of the prizes for NaBloPoMo!! Woo Hoo! I'm really not a lucky person, at all. I won a hand-knit baby hat and matching booties. Although I several pregnant types right now, and Katie Lynn might be little enough to get some use, I don't know if I can even bear to part with them - since I won them, with all my blood, sweat and typing - it's almost like a labor of love. Maybe I will put them on my teddy bear. :)

For now I will sit here with a silly, stupid smile on my face :)))))))

Fun Facts

FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE (before the current employment)

1. summer camp counselor
2. store manager
3. weekend dorm maintenance
4. computer rental company secretary

FOUR MOVIES I HAVE WATCHED OVER AND OVER

1. Pulp Fiction
2. The Sound of Music
3. The Breakfast Club
4. Toy Story

FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED:

1. Winter Park, FL
2. Pottstown, PA
3. Plainsboro, NJ
4. Colchester, CT

FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH:

1. Law and Order (any and all)
2. The Office
3. Grey's Anatomy
4. Good Eats

FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON VACATION:

1. WDW
2. Long Beach Island, NJ
3. Ptown, RI
4. Block Island, (not sure if that is CT or RI)

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:

1. Pizza
2. Betty Crocker fruit snacks
3. Filet Mignon
4. Monte Cristo sandwich

FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

1. Somewhere sunny and warm
2. With good friends
3. In bed, snuggled under the covers
4. Back in time, to a simpler, happier place.

FOUR PEOPLE WHO WILL ANSWER BACK:

1. Most of my friends on my "Favorite E-mail List"

FOUR PEOPLE WHO YOU KNOW WILL NOT ANSWER BACK:

1. I bet some folks on our list won't answer; I almost didn't, but then I did. -- I agree with Diana.