Happy Halloween!

For our Fun Friday activity yesterday the little people decorated our classroom for Halloween. They're really into bats and tombstones this year. I organized them into little groups and each group got to be in charge of one area of the room. My super Room Mom sent in decorations for us to use and then the kids also made their own decorations too. It was a GREAT way to end a very crazy week!

The reading corner was their favorite part to decorate. They put plastic spiders all up in the web and they even wrapped some of the web stuff around the doorknob.

They thought the graveyard hanging sheet was awesome... and now I can work at my computer and have some privacy. The colored blobs are the ghosts that they made (and some other stuff that I couldn't figure out).




I am really excited for our class Halloween party this year! My favorite thing that we do on the morning of Halloween is crawl under a big table covered with a black sheet and we tell spooky stories. Usually the kids try to tell a story that they've written during writers workshop and then I also have guest readers come into the class to read spooky stories. Since the goals for many of the kids are related to sequencing, retelling, telling stories with a beginning, middle, and end, speaking in complete/clear grammatically correct sentences, etc. I'm actually still teaching the whole time and they don't even realize it. It's really dark under the table so the reader shines a flashlight under his/her chin to make it even creeper. There are some definite squabbles under the table as everyone fights for a good spot to lie down, but it's still everyone's favorite activity!

Last year I attempted to have the little people do pumpkin math activities where we carved pumpkins, took out the seeds, counted them, did math projects with them, measured the pumpkins, etc. Since most of the little people couldn't count past 50 and didn't know how to measure with a ruler consistently, the activity mostly just gave the adults huge headaches! We might try again... or else we'll just do my usual favorite Halloween math activity- M&Ms Math! I'll take advantage of any opportunity to use chocolate as I teach :-)

If you have any other fun Halloween activity suggestions for me to try, definitely pass them along!

Baths and Baby Stuff

Check out my new view every morning.


I arrived home on Friday afternoon to discover our shower walls ripped off. Then we discovered that we don't have a water shut off in our apartment... so now we have to get a plumber to turn off ALL the water in our whole building some day this week so that Kevin doesn't flood our apartment when he replaces our shower fixtures. I can already tell that we're going to make even more friends in our building now ;-) since turning off the water impacts 11 other condos. We are continuing to enjoy this little remodeling adventure and I am learning to love baths since that's all I can do in our bathroom now. It's amazing how much stuff you can get done at 5:45am when you're waiting for the bathtub to fill up. I arrived at work 15 minutes early today b/c of all the time I saved.

On a different note, check out the cute BYU baby gear my parents sent us. Can you tell what team our little guy will be rooting for during football season? :-)


One of my little students also brought us in some darling Batman sneakers. Aren't they so cute?! Another student who doesn't seem to understand the whole baby process brought me in a "Happy Baby Shower" card. It's been a great week!

Give Thanks!

Our family has a lot of things to be thankful for this year... so I thought I'd start thinking about Thanksgiving early and make this cute sign. We had Girls Night Out with our ward's Relief Society last Friday night, so I spent the evening chatting while I made this sign. It wasn't that hard, but I managed to drag the process out so that it took from 7:30-10:00pm... mostly because I did so many coats of paint! My friend Lindsey runs a business (www.ittybittyimprints.com) that sells these cute signs and tons of other darling stuff, so she arranged it so that we could make them. I felt so domestic and crafty as I sanded down my wood board. I think I'm going to have to buy some more kits from her and make some of these for Holiday decorations- I love the Halloween ones!

Some of the things I've been grateful for this week are listed below:

- A visit from Liesl, Allen, and the girls- we love our nieces!! Kate calls me "K-Tina" and it reminds me of when Jessie used to call me "Tina" when I was little.

- A trip to the SF Opera and Osha Thai with the Buskirks. The Magic Flute was beautiful! I just wish it would've ended before 11pm! My body can't handle late nights any more.


- Walking Field Trips and history- today I got to climb up Hoover Tower on Stanford University's campus and explore the Cantor Art Museum's exhibit about the Stanford family.


It was fascinating! Also, by the time the little people walked across campus and back they were too tired to have any behavioral problems at the end of the day!

- Potatoes! As many of you know, potatoes are the only food I REALLY like right now (other than chocolate). This week I had a different type of potato every night for dinner- I especially love Google's roasted new potatoes! (If anyone has any good potato recipes, please pass them along!)
- Elise and Dan's upcoming wedding! I am so excited for them and loved getting their announcement in the mail this week. They are such a cute couple.

- My new running buddy Alie! We attempted running at 5 am two mornings this week and it was so fun! (mostly it was fun after we woke up and were already on the road jogging... the waking up part was the hardest)

- My fabulous husband who does the dishes, remodels our bathroom in his "free" time, brings me potatoes from work, taste-tests my desserts and always says they're the best, reaches the high stuff on shelves for me, and gives me huge hugs when I'm being an overly emotional pregnant lady :-)

...and there is so much more to be grateful for!

Bump Watch

Here's the first belly shot at 21 weeks (approx 5 months). I'm starting to pop. Can't wait till next month ;-) My face is unusually flushed b/c this was taken right after church and I was still exhausted from running around after the 18 month year-olds in nursery! They all think it's fun to sing the "Sunbeam" song while they jump off the tables... and they think it is even more fun when Kev and I grab them off the table and carry them to the floor (they think they're flying)... so they keep doing it again and again.

Little People

I told the little people about our baby boy on Thursday and they were VERY excited! It's kinda fun to tell kids exciting news- especially when some of them don't have internal filters and just say the funniest things. One kid told us all about his mom's C-section and several other kids started asking me questions about how the baby comes out of my tummy. I deflected those questions and said that they should ask their moms. They of course thought that was logical and said, "Yeah, our moms are experts. You wouldn't know anyway since you've never had a baby before." :-) They were amazed by the ultrasound picture and spent several minutes describing what they saw. They also thought it was really funny that I was going to start getting fat because they baby was going to start growing. They also started listing off all of the things they were going to bring me from their houses- blankets, baby shoes, etc. One of my former students sent me an email after she heard the news (how cute is this?!).

Dear Ms. Buskirk,

I like your baby boy so much.
When I was a baby, I stayed in Mommy's tummy too.
When Andrew was a baby, Andrew was in Mommy's tummy too.
Then we went to South Lake Tahoe, are you going to take your baby to South Lake Tahoe?
Can I touch your tummy?

Love,
Allison

After I shared the news with the kids, I passed out cute little goodie bags

so that they could celebrate with me and little announcements for them to take home to their parents. I filled up little baby bottles with baby rattle candies.

It was a great fine motor task for the kids to try and get the candies out of the bottles...since it took me awhile to get them in there :-) Kept everyone occupied and happy for all of recess.

Surprises!

I have the most awesome sister ever! Check out what arrived on my doorstep today...


I am excited to have such a cute diaper bag to sport around- especially since it looks more like a purse than something just for baby stuff. I can always count on my super stylish sister to keep me looking fashionable. I'm looking forward to our Girls Weekend in SF so that she can help me find some decent maternity clothes.

Happy Engagement Anniversary!

Kevin and I celebrated the 2 year anniversary of our engagement today with a fun-filled trip to Ben & Jerry's. Each year we hit up a new ice cream shoppe or we revisit where it all began... Ghirardelli Square in SF with HUGE ice cream sundaes and a proposal on the beach. I cannot believe it has been 2 years! Crazy!

Here's a look back...
Since we've been to Ghirardelli Square for sundaes practically every weekend all summer, we decided to stick closer to home this year. I had a yummy Phish food and cookie dough sundae and Kev had the cookie cookie sundae. Definitely a great way to spend the evening... especially since our little guy and I have been craving ice cream lately. :-)

It's a BOY!!!!!!!

After an hour or so of doing jumping jacks, walking around, etc. our little guy decided to cooperate with the ultrasound technician and turn over and we wound up with some great photos. He was quite the poser and definitely liked moving his little legs! Hopefully he'll be my new running buddy come February/March.

Here's a picture of Kevin and I posing with all the photos of our newest family member while we celebrated with some Cheesecake Factory cheesecake and Linda's Fudge cake. Our favorite way to highlight the special moments in life!

Here's a great profile of the little guy. All the important parts were visible and my favorite part of the trip was when the technician zoomed in on the screen and we could see our little boy's mouth moving- he already takes after his mom and grandma and is talking to himself! I was so grateful that Kevin was able to take off work so we could enjoy such a special moment together. He got the better view during the appointment (I couldn't see the screen for the majority of the time while the technician was taking measurements), so it was fun to just watch Kevin's expressions of awe while he watched our boy move around.

This week has also been a special one so far since I have now finally shared our exciting news with both my principal and the PAUSD director of Special Education (my bosses)- I'm about to pop... so I figured I either tell them this week or by next they'd have figured it out by themselves. Both have been so wonderful and supportive and are already getting moving to find a phenomenal long term substitute for me so I can spend March-June being a 100% devoted mom. I will share the news with my students on Thursday and I am so excited to see their reaction- they love babies- especially boys- since 6/8 of them are boys. Should be an awesome week!