Happy Memorial Day!

We celebrated Memorial Day with a big lunch at my parents' house.  My mom had a big spread of  food - my favorite were the stuffed mushrooms!  We started out just hanging out together and snacking on appetizers.  Then, we ate our big delicious lunch.  Afterward, we headed outside for several hours and played lots of rounds of cornhole - or, as Katie Anne calls it, cornfield.  Then, it was back inside to cool off and enjoy dessert - I'd brought a cheesecake pie and rice krispie "crumbles" (I'd tried to make a healthy version, but they didn't really stick together).  Here are some pictures of the fun!

Katie Anne loves...

loves...

loves...

LOVES her some cocktail shrimp!  She ate TONS of them!

These two daredevils were seeing how close they could get to the edge of the deck without falling...

Katie Anne feels so big opening and closing the deck door by herself now that Gigi and Granddad installed a little low handle for her to use!

Watching Gigi grill the veggies and brats.

After lunch, it was cornhole time!

Katie Anne pretending to make pictures of the cornhole players...

We had a very happy Memorial Day!

We hope you did, too!

Great Deals at Costco!

Today, we headed down to Costco for a new phone.  Crazily, our house only has three phone jacks - two are back-to-back (one in the living room wall, one in the opposite side of the same wall in the kitchen).  Why would you need two so close together, when there's a door right beside both phones?  It literally takes 2 seconds to walk from one phone to the other... no reason for both.  The only other phone jack is in what is currently the office, but which will (hopefully!) become SJ4's nursery very soon.  So, we can't exactly keep a phone in there.  Yep, if you're wondering ... that means no phone in the master bedroom (or any other bedrooms except SJ4's), the whole upstairs, the whole basement ... not too practical.  Luckily, Costco carries lots of phones that only really need 1 jack to work.  You plug in the main phone in the phone jack outlet, and the rest are just cordless phones that only need to plug into a power outlet.  We've had a phone system like this with only two phones - one on the base in the living room and one cordless in the master bedroom, but it has died a slow death over the last few months.  So, we were so excited to head to Costco and find a new AT&T phone system with 3 cordless phones!  That means one in the living room, one in the master bedroom, and one in the basement - all for only $49.99!  Sweet!

That phone may have been the intention of the trip and was a great deal ... but it wasn't the best deal!  The best deal by far was some super-cute baby boy clothes for SJ4!  Costco has some great deals on baby clothes (up to 24 months) right now, and Katie Anne and I got very excited about picking out stuff for baby Saunders - so much so that big Saunders had to put the brakes on us and stop the buying frenzy that was occurring!  (I got everything in 3 months size, because I'm pretty confident that he'll be in that size - 8 to 12.5 lbs - when he's born, and it will be warm enough for him to wear short-sleeved stuff until October.)

Here's what we got...

 One-piece rompers: regular price = $16.00 each ... our price = $5.47!

Onesie and pants sets: regular price = $17.00 each ... our price = $8.47!

One-piece bulldozer plaid sunsuit: regular price = $16.00 ... our price = $5.47!

(I really wish there had been more of these in his size... there were so many cute ones! Fish, frogs, dinosaurs... but this one was the only 3 month one in the bunch, and I'm afraid to try to guess his size for next summer.)

Total Regular Retail Price = $115
Costco Price = $47.29
That's a savings of $67.71!!!

Crazy deals on cute stuff!  Now, I've just got to get that office changed into a nursery so I can put them away...

Summertime, Here We Come!

Today is the first official day of summer for Katie Anne and me, and I am so happy about it!  I don't think I've ever looked forward to a summer more than this one since I started teaching - working for the last few weeks while pregnant has not been easy!  I will be very happy to have a more flexible schedule and more chances to take a break during the day, and the ability to nap during Katie Anne's nap times can't be beat, either!  

We're not just going to be sitting around the house all summer, though.  We're taking it easy today, and then we're starting lots of fun things to keep us busy and entertained during our break.  Katie Anne's got swim lessons (we rescheduled them for later in the month after her arm injury this week), she's starting a weekly summer gymnastics class for three-year-olds, and she's going to a princess ballet dance camp in two weeks!  Plus, we've got our usual fun of library classes and movies each Wednesday.  This year, we've got season passes to the zoo, so we hope to visit the zoo several times with friends.  Of course, we'll play outside a lot and do a lot of swimming, too! 

Before I could officially start summer, I had a lot of work to do in my classroom.  When I go back to school in August, I'll be teaching first grade again instead of kindergarten, and I am sooo excited about it.  I'm going to be looping up with most of my kids (I'm dropping 3 and adding 5 new ones), and that will make my maternity leave and sub planning so much easier.  I love my students, and I loved teaching first grade last year, so both of those things make me really happy!  What was hard about this transition was that I had to pack up every little thing in the room because I'm moving across the hall.  The school is being painted this summer, so our principal is taking this opportunity to rearrange a lot of the teams and move a lot of teachers around.  I'm only moving across the hall, but it was still a ton of work to do - I can't believe how much school stuff I've accumulated in seven years!  Here are some pictures I snapped before I left yesterday of my old room, all packed up and ready for the move!  (The teacher who's taking my room has put some stuff on that back bookshelf, so that's not my stuff.)

Where's all my stuff?  Here it is...

Boxes, boxes, and more boxes...

I hope I have lots of helpful volunteers interested in unpacking all this goodness once my new room is painted...

:)

because I'll be 36 weeks pregnant when we go back for pre-planning!  

Yikes!

But, let's not think about that now - it's time to relax, recouperate, and enjoy the summer!!!

Katie Anne's Hurt Arm

Today, I got a call at work right before 4:00 that Katie Anne had hurt her arm at school.  A boy had pushed her off the top of the slide, and she'd fallen a long way and slammed into the ground on her right arm.  She was crying, holding her arm, and didn't want to use it.  So, of course I headed over to her school to pick her up and check it out.

I was hoping that she'd be feeling better by the time I got there, but she was still very weepy and wouldn't use her right arm when I arrived.  It was swollen and obviously hurting her very badly.  So, I put in a call to Doc and VJ's house to see if Doc could check out her arm - he told us to come right over!  He took a look at her arm and thought she needed an x-ray, so we headed over to his old office where his partner, Dr. Crawley, was waiting for us.

Katie Anne got two x rays of her elbow, and luckily nothing appears to be broken!  Daddy and I were VERY happy that Doc, Dr. Crawley, and the rest of the staff helped Katie Anne in her little hour of need  - and we were especially glad that she didn't have to leave with a cast on her arm for the summer!   She has a little tiny American flag sling to wear for a day or two, and she's supposed to take it easy until her little sprained elbow is all mended.  

She's feeling a little better now - she ate a grilled cheese sandwich, took some Tylenol, and is laying on the couch and icing her elbow while watching some of her favorite tv shows.  Hopefully, she'll be back to her old self soon!

Water Day!

Yesterday, while we were at Target, we saw some super deals on outdoor water toys.  For $4.99 each, they had all kinds of fun things - we chose a sprinkler hopscotch game and and a slip-n-slide.  Katie Anne could barely wait until it was warm enough outside today to give them a try!

The hopscotch worked like a charm, and the slip-n-slide was fine - but the sprayer was a little weak and kept spraying off in the wrong direction.  What can you expect for $4.99?  Of course, Daddy had a plan and an upgrade in mind...

So, with a little help from the sprinkler, the slip-n-slide went super-power ... and Katie Anne had a blast playing outside until way past lunchtime!  The yard was sopping wet and totally muddy, and we were all soaked by the time we were through - but as KA kept saying, "This is such a great family fun day!"

She had an absolute blast!  It was so cute at naptime - when I was getting her settled down, she said, "I keep finkin' about it, and I can't decide which part of the family fun day was my favorite ... but I fink it was the slip-n-slide."  :)

Kindergarten Baby Shower

Today, my class had a surprise baby shower for me and Saunders IV!  My room mom and my paraprofessional had put the whole thing together with the help of a few other parents.  It was so sweet, and the kids were beyond excited about it.  We started the festivities with a little breakfast of sausage balls, donut holes, fruit, and drinks.  Then, I got to open all the presents my students had brought for SJ4!  He got lots and lots of diapers and wipes, several cute little outfits, a Target gift card, baby booties, and a handmade blanket from Jonnathan's mom.  We had a great time celebrating together!

The kids think my belly is huge, so this is a picture of them staring at it in amazement:

My parapro Ms. Gina and me:

*And, if you think it looks like a bomb went off in my classroom, that's because I'm moving to a new classroom next year, and I'm almost finished packing every single thing in that room into boxes!  My goal is to be finished by tomorrow, which is the last day of school for students and Ms. Gina.

That night, Katie Anne had a great time going through all of SJ4's gifts with me and helping me organize them: