Working Mom.

Well, I'm a working mom :) Luckily, I'm a working-from-home mom. I'm working for a non-profit organization that promotes personal health and wellness in school age children. Basically, I'm the coordinator for Madison County schools. I go to classrooms and do activities with the kids to teach them how to stay active, eat healthy foods and be the best that they can be. The program is called Wellness, Academics and You (WAY). It's funded by the Alabama Department of Education. To be brutally honest...kids in Alabama are obese (because their parents feed them crap)and we are trying to change that. In their defense, my step-sister, who is the Alabama director, has been to schools in Alabama counties where there is every fast food restaurant you could possibly want, but not one grocery store aside from a gas station. Can you believe that????

I went to my first classroom today and did an activity with the kids. They had to move like different animals and by animal #3 they were already saying they were tired and their hearts were beating fast. After that we watched a short video and then talked about how when we exercise our heart rate goes up and that makes our heart and muscles strong, etc. It was fun! The kids I had today were 1st graders so they were easy to entertain. Next week I have 8 classes to go to on Monday and Tuesday ranging from 1st to 4th grade. Eek! I'm a little nervous about the 4th graders! Wish me luck!

Funny story. For a couple months now I have been trying to get the teachers to let me come to their classrooms to do an activity. No one would respond to my emails. Understand that I get paid by the hour and if I don't go to any classrooms, I don't get paid very much. So I finally got so frustrated I just sent out a mass email to all the Madison County teachers and told them if they needed a "pre-Thanksgiving Break" break, to email me and I would come entertain their class for 30 minutes or so. I IMMEDIATELY got 10 emails back asking me to come! Haha! Yay!

Interesting things that happened today...

-When I told the kids to move like a cat, one little girl came up to me and started licking my leg.
-When I told them to bounce up and down, a little boy head-butted me in the, ummm, groin.
-I made the mistake of telling the kids to "act" like a dog instead of "move" like a dog and 17 kids began barking really loudly and it took 5 minutes to get them quiet. At this point, the teacher was probably re-thinking her decision to have me come.

Kids are weird. Today, I'm thankful for teachers ;)

Socializing Finley.

We joined a playgroup! I'm so glad to have little ones for Finley to interact with. My friend Katie invited me to join and I'm so grateful!!! I do plan on putting her in MDO after the first of the year, but this will do for now. We all met up at the park and let the kids play. It was hard to talk to the other moms although I did meet everyone. I have to do what Finley wants to do so I followed her around all over the place. Hopefully, as we meet regularly she will get to know the other kids and will play with them and not just watch them :) Tomorrow we are going to the Bridge Street Town Center to have pizza and watch the lighting ceremony. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!


Who's back there?

Abby pushing Finley on the swing.

Stuff my daughter does...

-There is a toy store in the mall that I take Finley to every once in a while because they have all the toys out for the kids to play with. They have a ton of those big stuffed animals by Melissa & Doug. While we were in there the other day she walked up to one of the stuffed dogs and said, "I luuuuuvvvv dog!" I think it was her first sentence if you don't count hello mama and hello dada :)

-Whenever you say Finley's name in the "you're in trouble" tone, she runs as fast and she can and hides. The other day we were outside and she pushed her push car down the driveway and it rolled into the street. I said (sternly) Finley! No, no! She ran as fast as she could back up the driveway and hide behind the car.

-If she touches something she's not supposed to and you tell her no, she takes her hand off of whatever it is and then a few seconds later she touches it again and looks you right in the eye with just a hint of a smile. I believe it's called "testing her boundaries". It takes everything I have not to laugh ;)

-Whenever I tell her I'm going to give her a snack or something to drink she won't stay in the kitchen with me. She runs and sits in her chair in her playroom so I can serve her. D.I.V.A.

Operation Christmas Child

Every year we try to do something for others at Christmas. It makes us happy! We usually don't do the same thing every year. This year, I think we may have found something we'll stick with :) Samaritan's Purse does Operation Christmas Child and it was easy, fun and inexpensive. I found out about OCC on the southernsavers website. Here is the link to their website and if you want to be suckered into participating, just watch the video below :) I've been meaning to post this sooner because the drop off week is this week. The website tells exactly how to pack a box. It's really easy!

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/



We did one box for a girl and one box for a boy, both ages 2-4. Everything in it came from the Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart. Each box was about $25. You can even print labels with bar codes so you can see where your box ends up! We put a card and a family picture in too. I wish we could see a video or picture of the child that received our box. How cool would that be? Here's what we put inside.





I know it will make two children very, very happy this Christmas:)

Christmas Card pictures... Take 1.

Here are a couple of pics I took of Finley for our Christmas card this year. I need help deciding. I'm probably going to try again because some of these would have been great they just need a few adjustments. I love the one in front of the door with the wreath, but she is blurry so I'm definitely going to go back and try again. Anyone know why she is blurry or what I could do to make the picture better? I have a Canon Rebel. I can't remember what setting I had it on.

She did great! Did not seem to mind having her picture taken :) (knock on wood)

It's that time of year!

Elf Yourself is back! It never gets old :) I think my favorite part is when Joey does the butterfly.

Success!

Successes of the day

-We booked a cabin for our Asheville trip
-I took a couple pictures of Finley today and she didn't get annoyed and she even smiled in one of them.
-I bought a few more Christmas gifts.

Playing outside with Daddy's golf balls


Practicing saying "cheese".


Our lovely street.


Today was a good day!