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new orleans

yeah. dad and i are in new orleans. for business purposes. it's a different world down here. but check it out....i caught a leprechaun!

helping where i can

since i am not really working outside the house, i feel i need to be extremely vigilant about my spending. I am pretty good at not really spending money these days, since i am mostly home anyhow. it isn't like i need to eat out or need clothes. Since it is holiday season soon, i do get to start buying Christmas presents, which definitely helps...since i really do enjoy shopping!
The one place where i will always get to shop.....the grocery store! This isn't my favorite thing to do and i had started to go to the grocery store....alot. To pick up what we needed for just the next couple days, getting some groceries when i went with gramma, or just grabbing some things after soccer practice. This was not a great practice for our checkbook, not terrible, but not fantastic.
so i decided to overhaul my grocery shopping process.
my first experiment was to try and shop only two times per month. my theory was two paydays a month=two grocery trips. This went okay. I had a hard time thinking that far ahead as far as Katelyn's lunches, and we ran out of milk; I bought way too much american cheese, but i did remember to buy some bread and put it in the freezer. We lasted just short of two weeks but i definitely was not loving this process.
my second experiment was to actually do the coupon thing. I had long shied away from serious couponing, with the idea that some generic brands were cheaper or that i would be buying things not needed just because i had a coupon. Well. I have really gotten on the coupon bandwagon. it takes alot of "planning"...scouring the Sunday ads and adding coupons on top of those sales. It does take a bit more effort. I felt like i was walking back and forth through the grocery store a bit more than usual, and spent alot of time calculating whether or not the coupon made it cheaper than other brands, or other brands on sale. i ended up saving a whopping $54.00 (more than 33% of my total). I was pretty proud of myself and if nothing else, it encouraged me to continue on with my newest plan, since at this point in my life i do have the time to save money in this fashion.

parent visitation day

Last Thursday was parent visitation day at Katelyn's school….and it was so fun!
When I went, obviously I didn’t really know what to expect…kind of like the first day of school! There were two sessions. A 9am-11am and 1pm-3pm session. I went to both. In the morning, they do their calender, complete with day, date, month, season, year, number of days they’ve been in school, and weather. They had station time. Katelyn's station was whisper reading. It consisted of Katelyn reading into a pvc phone. It was a 4 inch pvc pipe, with two small 90% angle pvc pipes, so when she read into the bottom part, it was “read” to her through the ear piece. There were five different stations going. The teacher was “supposed” to be with Katelyn's reading group the most…I think. Well, the lady who was supposed to be running the one station didn’t make it there on time and the computers for the computer station were majorly acting up. So on a normal day, without parents who are visiting, how in the world does one teacher do it all?! That’s nuts!
I came back after lunch, they had gym class, where they were hitting balls of different sizes and shapes with a plastic paddle. After that they read a book called Hold the Anchovies! Then cut out and decorated their own pizzas. After that we had music class, which was tons of fun, the kids got to play a two tone beat on the xylophone. Then the parents got to perform for the kids. Our two tone beat was much more coordinated, but not nearly as adorable as them!
I came away from parent day with a newer appreciation for Katelyn's wonderful teacher. I cant imagine having to take charge of 16 five year olds for an entire day. Also I figured that the teacher probably had about a million projects that she did with the kids each day, just to keep them busy. This is not the case. It is more of a slow and steady atmosphere.
I thoroughly enjoyed being in Katelyn's class room with her, it was really great to see her in HER element, interacting with her friends and teacher.

tonight we were kitties

every night before katelyn goes to bed, we crawl to her room with her on my back. we pick what animal we are. some nights we are camels, dogs, some night maybe we'll be snakes...that would be interesting, right?
well tonight, katelyn plopped down in our usual starting place with the cutest/orneriest face ever....in MY position. so i played along and "sat" on her back. (my thighs burn) we kept it up all the way to her bed where she was more than pleased with herself that she was being the mommy cat. you probably "had to be there" in order to truely appreciate the hilarity, but it sure was fun!

Book-It!

book-it makes me teary.
apparently the book it program has been around for about 20 years, which is obviously accurate, because i remember doing it when i was in first grade. when i was a kid, i read everything i could get my hands on, and i am pretty sure that i was reading above my grade level too. anyhow, the point of that is that i never had any problem meeting my quota, in order to get the free pizza from Pizza Hut. and this pizza was a big deal. we never had money to eat out, so this was quite a prize. my biological mom and i would walk to pizza hut (i have no idea how far that was) and proudly carry back our tiny pizza=D i think they might have given out certificates too. i have no idea if i shared it with my mom or not, but my guess is that she probably let me eat it all. i was always so proud of myself for being able to "provide food"....such as it was, especially by doing something that came natural to me, reading.
yesterday in Katelyn's take home folder, there was a book-it form, honestly i didn't even realize they still had that program. Katelyn also, loves to be read to and is making huge progress with her own reading skills. needless to say, like her mommy, she wont have any problem meeting the monthly quota of ten books, she'll be just as proud of herself for earning that pizza, and no, her mom wont let her share her pizza either =D

the last of the mass blogging

i leave today with two questions....
1. we are reading pippi longstocking at bedtime...any idea how to explain to a 5 year old what a cannibal is, without giving her nightmares?!
2.what mother lets a kindergartner where a bra, a kid bra? a few of Katelyn's friends do, and of course she wants one(wont get one) and apparently it isn't an undershirt. that also was a fun explanation of when she could wear a bra. bizzare.