2013

Happy New Year!

In honor of the new year, I'm going to share some of my favorite memories from 2013: enjoy!

Last January, we went to the Music City Bowl to cheer on Vanderbilt. They won! And, we froze because it sleeted the whole game, ha! 

In February, we had Book Character Day at school and my friends and I dressed up as running record characters. Be jealous. This was definitely one of our finer moments ;)

In March, we took the second graders to Land Between the Lakes! This is one of my favorite trips every year.

Also, we were knee-deep in TCAP preparation in third grade! This was the year I learned allllll about standardized testing - joy. 

In April, this little stinker turned one year old!

At school, we took the big test and then had Teacher Appreciation week.

May was spent wrapping up the school year! We had a pirate week that the kiddos loved! 

They also made brochures for the future third graders. This one was my favorite :)

June was spent spending time with this little booger. She was pretty happy to have somebody at home with her every day.

We also went to Arkansas for a week to cheer on Matt!

I had a puppy play date at school with some super cute former students.

My mom and I took several trips to Gleason with our favorite little traveling companion.

And, we had some family come and visit us for a little shopping and fun.

Early July was spent setting up my classroom.

On the fourth, it rained. Sadness. 

And, in late July, I went to the beach with my friends! Soooo fun!

I was pretty happy to be reunited with this little pup when I got back! 

School started back on August 1st this year! 

I finally got my bedroom completely decorated.

And, well, mostly I spent August staring at this. It's what teachers do the first month of school.

In September, we headed back to Gleason for Labor Day.

At school, I taught tees kiddos how to read to themselves. Ahhhhh.....

I also spent many nights in September working on this. I reorganized my library by AR levels and I'm soooo happy I did!

We also found out in late September that Matt and Blakely were having a baby! 

In October, we made a timeline of famous Americans and learned how to research.

I had a pumpkin painting party with some friends

On Fall Break, I rearranged my bedroom and watched obscene amounts of Gilmore Girls and Friends. As you do...

My mom and I took a shopping trip to Atlanta, too.

On Halloween, it rained. But I still dressed up my little maltimoo :)

Oh, and my kids made te cutest pumpkin book characters I've ever seen! 

In November, we found out the baby was a girl!!! We had a big party at our house.

My grandma came for a visit.

At school, we spent a lot of time playing in the leaves.

We also took a field trip to the Parthenon.

And we spent two weeks studying the gods and goddesses!

The weekend before Thanksgiving I decorated for Christmas. Yes, I did.

We went to Gleason for Thanksgiving.

In December, we got our much-anticipated first snow day! (Hopefully, 2014 will have many more!)

I spent every single night watching ABC Family.

We added a new stocking to the mantle at my parents' house :)

I wet caroling after school with the third and fourth graders.

We made candy forests on the last week of school.

We celebrated Daddy Doug's 90th birthday.

And, we had a great Christmas. 

So long, 2013! 

Happy New Year from me to you...

Merry, Merry!

Hope you had a great Christmas! I definitely did! We're at my grandma's house and everybody has left but us. Which, not complaining! Ha! So, I've got a quick minute to post about our day.

We opened presents at my parents' house first. I got a new tv and a white duvet cover from West Elm (yes!!) and some other stuff. 

Stockings down! 

Love this picture :)

Yes, my dad's eyes are closed. But, the alternative was to post the picture of my eyes closed. So... 

We next went to my grandfather's house and had Christmas with my dad's family. It was fun.

Then, we headed to West Tennessee to visit with my mom's side of the family. 

This little stinker sat up front like she owned the place! Maybe she does...

There were lots of people there, but I only took pictures of the babies, apparently. That's okay, they're pretty cute :)

This is Baby K. We all were in the dining room talking and I looked in the kitchen and saw her just sitting there all by herself just as happy as can be. Ha! 

Me and Silas

Me and Kirsten

This is one of my favorite gifts: a giant box of Jelly Belly jellybeans. Awesome...

Like I said, everybody just left and we're enjoying the peace and quiet. 

I don't hate it :) 

Happy Holidays!!

Tonight I'm wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I have majorly slacked on blogging lately because I've been pretty busy and enjoying time with family and friends. But here's a super quick recap of the last two weeks:

At school, we did a Chris Van Allsburg author study. My kiddos absolutely, positively were engrossed. They loved it! 

They wrote page upon page in their Reading Notebooks. Which, believe me, is not an everyday occurrence, ha! 

We even wrote letters to Mr. Van Allsburg! 

The next weekend, we all helped Matt and Blakely move into their new house. My mom pulled these old dresses of mine out of the attic to hang in the baby's closet. Every baby needs some vintage smocked dresses, right?

She also has this entire stash of clothes hanging in my laundry room, too! Oops!! :) Hey, it's an aunt's job to spoil, I think...

I spent some time wrapping gifts and this little brat found her toy in a bag and pulled it and started playing with it when I was in the next room. She's a hot mess, y'all.

I added a little decoration to my door wreath. I love it!! It came from Kirkland's, one of my favorite stores.

My tree after I finished wrapping presents! 

At school, we listened to a looooot of this! A lot. Like, really, a ton. 

We took the third and fourth graders caroling. It was so much fun - one of my favorite school traditions!

I totally rearranged the desks in my classroom and I just adore this arrangement! The kids were so excited. Sometimes, it's just nice to have a change of scenery.

On Wednesday, we had Grinch Day! My kids did instructed drawings that turned out great! 

Then, I have them four discussion questions and had them write their responses on index cards. 

We also made snowmen with graph paper and found the area and perimeter of each part. 

That night, I had friends over for desert and Finley just went nuts. When they left, she crashed hard, as you can see!

On Thursday, we made candy forests. 

They turned out great!!

I made a Finley a new Christmas bow. She was NOT a fan, but she let me take a few pictures :)

Friday, we had a half day of school. We had pajama day and watched The Polar Express! 

Sunday, we celebrated my grandpa's 90th birthday! 

He's just the best and such a blessing to our family.

My cousin found this old picture of him with Matt and I. I think it's so cute :) Especially Matt's squirrelly little look, ha!

Last night, my mom and I went on our annual Christmas light tour. We go to the rich people's houses- they go all out! 

I realize I'm biased, but how sweet is that Christmas puppy in a basket?? 

And that leads us to tonight. We don't usually do much on Christmas Eve - just dinner and I always watch Christmas movies. Tonight, we ate at Buffalo Wild Wings ( how traditional!) and Finley's snuggled up in my lap, nice and cozy!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night! 

Blackfish

This is not going to be one of my regular posts. I'm usually pretty chipper on this blog. But, last night, I watched a documentary on Netflix that I can not stop thinking about! It was sad and it was disturbing, but it was very interesting and extremely eye opening. 

I highly, highly recommend it. 

(Photo from Current.com)

The film is called Blackfish. It was the number one documentary on iTunes in 2013. I'm pretty out-of-the-loop when it comes to movies. I haven't even seen the new Hunger Games movie yet (blasphemy, I know.) So, I had not heard a word about this film. But, it popped up on Netflix this week. I read the description and thought I'd give it a shot. Wow. Just, wow.

The film is about Tilikum, the Killer Whale. He is the largest whale in captivity and he is responsible for three human deaths: including the death of Sea World trainer Dawn Branchaeu. I'm sure you heard all about her death in 2010 because it was all over the news. 

I'm not going to tell you everything that happens in the film, because you should see it yourself.  But, I will say, never again will I set foot in Sea World or any other park where animals are trained to do circus tricks for paying customers. And, I've been to Sea World. I loved it. I loved the animals and the tricks and the shows and everything about the magical place. 

(Photo from awardsdaily.com)

But, I had no idea what was really going on behind the scenes. 

The ex-trainers who spoke in the film had harrowing tales of the horrible ways the whales are treated: withholding food, cages that are much too small, taking baby whales away from their mothers, etc. If you go to Sea World, they'll convince you that animals held in captivity live much longer than animals in the wild and that they are much healthier, as well. The sad news is that the trainers aren't lying, that's just what they've been taught to say. They don't even know the truth and they spend their lives working with these amazing animals. 

(Photo from magpictures.com)

In the case of Tilikum, pictured above, he was brought to Sea World after he viciously killed a trainer in Canada. No one bothered to tell the whale's new Sea World trainers about his track record. And, as he was a male, the other female whales would bite and attack him daily. So he was either hurt or isolated all the time.  The film does a great job of showing how important social contact is to these animals and how psychologically damaging it is when they don't get it. It's awful that Tilikum killed these people, but you can't blame an animal for being aggressive when he's living in a cage like this: 

(Photo from PETA.org)

After all, if you lived in a bathtub for 25 years, you'd be a little frustrated, too! 

Apparently, this is common practice in aquatic parks: to isolate whales in small holding pens. Here's another example:

(Photo from cbs8.com)

That just breaks my heart, y'all. 

I expected to watch this film and never think another thing about it. But, that's not what happened. I've become obsessed! That's how captivating it all was. And heartbreaking, yes.

After doing a little research today, I found that this is all very much still in the news right now! Apparently, a bunch of big singers canceled their upcoming concerts at Sea World because of this film. And, Sea World's PR people are working overtime right now trying to spin this positively, but they're panicking.  I'm glad people are taking notice of this situation and putting some pressure on them to stop breeding animals for captivity. 

I also bought this book for my iPad:

(Photo from Amazon.com)

I can't wait to dive in and find out more about this topic. 

Now, why did I write this blog post? Because, I want you to watch this film. The reviews are excellent, I spoke with real-life friends who have seen it today and they all thought it was great and it's the number one documentary if the year, y'all! Did I mention that already? 

You will not regret watching it. And when you're done, let your friends know how great it was. Because, this needs to be a film that everyone sees. If people stop supporting $ea World and other parks, maybe these animals will stop being bred to perform tricks for entertainment. 

Watch it, guys. Just watch it.