more fabulous children's lit.

at my school teachers and aides do the lunchtime and recess supervision (duty). on fridays the teacher and aide in one of the grade 2 classes both have lunch time duty and therefore i sit with the kids while they eat so the others can go to the staff room and eat in peace. the kids love to be read to. so each lunch time i read through 2 books (it's actually really nice for me because it means that they are relatively quiet...selfish? maybe). mo willems writes great books!! i love his pigeon series and his elephant and piggies series. one thing i love about his books is the use of speech bubbles and voice. when reading these books you need to use tone and expression to get the point across. it's fun for the kids to figure out the voice that the author wants. here is a list of some of the ones i have read and loved:

elephant and piggie series:
There a Bird on Your Head!
Watch Me Throw the Ball!
I Am Going!

pigeon series:
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!
The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!
The Pigeon Wants a Puppy!

another great mo willems book:
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed

happy reading!

bootcamp update 2

did bootcamp 1 and 2 again today and it wasn't death, it wasn't even close to death. i must have had an off day yesterday. maybe i was dehydrated or something. anyway, bootcamp 2 is hard but i think i will keep plugging along.

bootcamp update

very quick bootcamp update.

i missed saturday due to my mom's 50th birthday party.

added on bootcamp 2 today and it's death. i felt nauseous and dizzy and terrible. so i only did half of part 2. i am starting to think that i might need to stick with bootcamp 1 for a while longer before bumping up to level 2. it's SO hard. i can barely breathe (having asthma doesn't help....maybe i should take my inhaler next time). i will give it another shot...maybe a couple more days and if i still feel like dying i might just do level 1. i am for sure feeling less motivated now. i was getting so good at level 1 and feeling so good about myself and now...yuck...i suck. :P

garage issues

this past august we moved from a condo to a townhouse. in our townhouse we have a sudo tandem garage. i HATE the idea of tandem garages but oh well, it comes with the territory of townhouses. most townhouses have 3 floors. top floor: bedrooms and bathrooms. middle floor: kitchen and living room. bottom floor: 2 car/tandem garage and entry. our layout is slightly different. our middle floor also has the entry (some stairs outside, the entry and a few stairs from the entry up to the middle floor). then on our bottom floor we have a garage for 1 car, another bedroom, a bathroom and the "backyard" (and i use the term "yard" loosely....it's more the size of a handicap parking space). outside of our garage door we have another spot for a second car. i like this better then parking 2 cars in the garage bumper to bumper (i don't know why i think this is any better, it's actually kind of the same thing but whatever....we have an extra room and bathroom)..............anyway, getting back to the point of this post, when we moved in the previous owners only left 1 garage door opener. you might think that this makes sense since we only have a 1 car garage. BUT, other people in our complex who have the same set up have 2 garage door openers. ALSO, we don't park a certain car in and a certain car out. whoever gets home first, driving whichever car, parks in the garage and then the other parks outside. in the mornings whoever leaves for work first takes the car that is outside and the other person takes the car that is inside. because our schedules are all over the place we both drive each car and it isn't consistent as to which car will be inside and out. because of this we need a garage door opener in each car. so for the past 8 months we have been trying to make this work. well i am DONE with it! it's too annoying. i can't stand it! i hate it when i leave in the car that is in the garage and find out that the garage door opener is in the other car (which steve has). it's not as easy as pressing the button on the wall in the garage and running out under the door....NOOOOOOOO the stupid thing has a sensor and if anything passes by the sensor the door stops!! so if i open the door with the button on the wall, drive the car out and don't have the in-car garage door opener i have to turn the car off, go into the garage, press the button, go in through the house, upstairs, through the front door, lock the house, back down the outside stairs and back into the car. not so convenient (especially when i am in a rush). i have been after steve to get us another garage door opener. we had trouble finding one that was compatible but finally this week steve struck garage door opener gold!! i was SOOOOO excited to have one for each car. of course there is a catch. it turns out that someone else's garage door opener is now able to control our door. it keeps opening at random times. when i came home from work the door was open. when i was cooking dinner it opened. about 20 minutes ago it opened again. so now we are back to square one. so......not......fun!!!

ship shape

getting in shape sucks. i HATE working out. i don't think anyone can really understand my deep loathing for exercise. when i think about exercising i think about how much time i will waste. it's not the working out that i consider a waste it's everything else. i know that if i go to the gym i will need to come home and shower. if my hair gets wet, i will have to blow dry and flat iron my hair (that alone can take 30 minutes). if it doesn't get wet i will still have to flat iron it due to the humidity making my hair crazy frizzy. the other issue is that if i am hot (like i always am after a work out) i can't flat iron my hair because having a 400 degree iron on my hair and then have that hot hair touch me makes me even more hot. i hate being hot. so i have to wait until i am totally cooled down.

when we went on our cruise over spring break steve and i went to the gym pretty much every single day. i did weights and the elliptical each time. i enjoyed doing it on the ship because we had nothing but time. there was no rush, i didn't have to straighten my hair for that evening if i didn't want to. i didn't have to feel stressed for time and worry about having enough time to cool down, shower, blow dry and flat iron my hair....i could go for a swim and i never had anything that I HAD to be at in the evenings or afternoons. it was great! no pressure!

now that i am back to reality i am faced with my usual trepidations.

so here i am back to battling with exercising. last week i popped in my Biggest Loser Bootcamp video (which i had never before watched) and i am not going to lie, it was an intense workout. it's 30 minutes for 2 weeks and then the next 2 weeks you add on bootcamp 2 which is an extra 15 minutes and then the following 2 weeks an extra 10 minutes with bootcamp 3. i have done 10 days in a row now and i am still finding parts of it quite difficult. today i decided to count up how many lunges and squats i have to do in bootcamp 1 because it feels like a lot. so i did a little tally. the total number of lunges is 90 and the total number of squats is 90!!!!!! that's craziness! that's a lot of leg exercise for less than 30 minutes. my legs better be ripped by the end. haha.

i am hoping to do this bootcamp everyday for 6 weeks....32 more days to go :P

yummy yum yum

cactus club ~ chocolate peanut butter crunch bar

a.....maz.....ing!!!!! words can not describe it. it's the next best thing to the immensely missed chocolate peanut butter oat bar from Starbucks (so sad that they discontinued it). if you like peanut butter you need to try this dessert!!! yay for rob feenie!!

heart attack averted

yesterday laurie, dawn and i went to ikea. dawn was looking for a rug and i wanted 6 white frames with white mats for one of the walls in my living room. so we went to the frame section of the marketplace. i had the cart that i had hung a big yellow bag on. the cart had been giving me some trouble so i didn't want to push it around the crowded section. i found, what i considered, a safe place to put the buggy and wandered around looking at different frames. i had no luck finding what i was looking for so i grabbed the cart and we moved on. a few minutes later we were looking at rugs for dawn and i saw a rug that i thought might work under our table in our kitchen, but i didn't have the dimensions. i thought that maybe i could call steve and he might have an idea of how big that space is (he is way better with that kind of thing). i went to grab my phone from my purse (which i had placed in the child seat part of the cart) but my purse wasn't there. panic hit me hard and fast. i quickly told the girls that my purse was gone. laurie was so calm and suggested that i look in the big yellow bag. i rifled through it really quickly and nope, it wasn't there. she said she would go back to the frame area and look around (which I kinda thought was stupid because how could it have fallen off my cart?? seriously?) and i went to find a staffer. i found a lady who was talking with some couple about pillows. i waited, not so patiently, for her to finish. when she turned to me and asked how she could help i tried my best to calmly say "someone just stole my purse from my cart". she walked over to a phone and asked where my cart had been and then called someone who could pull up the cameras. meanwhile, laurie comes back and tells me that actually, i had stolen someone else's cart and mine was still sitting in the frame section. oh my gosh!!! how stupid am i?? i had rifled through the yellow bag looking for my purse and didn't even notice that it was filled with frames and not the napkins, paper plates and cups that i had in my bag. thank goodness laurie went back there. it turned out to be a smart idea afterall. we had a good laugh and thankfully i avoided crying (which is unlike me in these kinds of situations).

dinner plans ~ update

so last week i posted about our new dinner schedule. this past week was awesome! i cooked 4 times, we ate out once and steve worked late 2 nights (therefore no cooking necessary). i just need to boast about how much of an improvement this is! steve was scheduled to cook 2 of those nights but i ended up doing it without him because I felt like it....what? how weird! i actually felt like cooking!?!?!

a couple of months ago i ordered a stack cooker thing from tupperware and the cookbook that goes with it. basically the cookbook gives you a bunch of options for each layer (there are 3) and you mix n'match. once you know what you want to make you put each thing in each layer, throw it in the microwave and VOILA! it's ready in 25 minutes. yesterday was the first time i used it. i made a potato casserole in one layer and a broccoli and cauliflower with a cheese sauce in layer 2. i skipped the top layer and fried up some farmer sausage to go with it. it actually turned out to be pretty good (better than you would expect a microwave meal to be). this won't be the main way i cook but it was great for throwing together a fast meal.

parenthood

i have found a new show to be addicted too. :S when i heard about this show i thought it sounded lame....the title kinda makes it sound like it would be very average. but then i saw some of the cast and thought that it might have a fighting chance.

Peter Krause - loved him in Six Feet Under

Lauren Graham - i like Gilmore Girls and i liked her as lorelai

Craig T. Nelson - he's in tons of stuff so he must be good

Dax Shepard - he's rather humorous

Max Burkholder - such a little cutie!

i had told myself that if i ever happened to be watching TV and i came across it i would watch and see what i thought. i didn't want to make it a scheduled recording on my PVR because i didn't want to force myself to get into this show. well, one saturday i was looking for something to watch and the pilot episode was on. i had missed about 15 minutes of it but i decided to watch anyways. man oh man. it was good. it sucked me in rather sneakily! seeing as i work with kids who have disabilities this show tugged on my heart strings. in that episode Max Braverman (played by Max Burkholder) is acting very much like he has autism. i was shocked at this kid's skill to portray a child with autism. i couldn't give the show up. i made it a recording on my PVR and i am always excited on Tuesdays when it shows up on my list of recorded episodes! it's SO SO good! if you have never seen the show, you should watch it. especially if you work with kids, elementary age or high school. i think most people can relate to this show.

not just for children

after having a convo with my sis-in-law about my love of children's lit i thought i would share some of my favs with you periodically over the next couple of months. (are you enjoying all of my abbreving?)

this book makes me feel like i am not alone in this world as the soul picky eater. mary anne hoberman write about the Peter family and how each child (and there are many children) has their own issues with food. i especially love this book because it rhymes. the text flows so nicely. the end of each pages finishes off with the same 2 lines and I love how that ties it all together. when i read it to my class the kids chimed in for those lines once they caught on to the repetition. i liked how the were able to join in on the reading despite the fact that there were 20 of them and they couldn't see the words. :)

it's a delightful read. check it out!