Literacy Night

Every year during Dr. Seuss week the girls' school has a literacy night.  At literacy night, each person that comes gets a slice of pizza, a bottle of water, a rootbeer float and popcorn.  Each child that comes gets a free book, a book bag, pencil,  and a book mark.  They also have several different activities for the kids to do.  This year the theme was "wild about books" so everything was centered around animals.  Each activity had something to do with animals.  They made animal necklaces, animal finger prints, clay animals, animal print book bags, bear cub cupcakes, monkey mix (trail mix), etc.  Each class also made an animal themed exhibit to decorate the cafeteria.  They also have the bookfair going on so parents and children can purchase books.  Here are some pictures from the event.  Unfortunately, only Ashlee and I got to attend for a little bit because Mikayla was at home sick.

Ashlee's Class did the underwater theme.  Ashlee made this turtle.

Mikayla's class did the dinosaur theme.  Mikayla made this egg.

Dance-A-Thon

Alyssa, Ashlee, Allison and Mikayla

Ashlee and Mikayla as 80's girls

Thursday at school the girls had a Dance-A-Thon.  They got to dress-up from their favorite music era.  There were awards given to the best dancer, best costume, most money raised and the class with the most participation.  Usually they do a jog-a-thon, but due to the wet weather they decided to do a dance-a-thon instead.  Ashlee and Mikayla were not happy about having a dance-a-thon.  But after they got some "costumes" they were a bit more excited about the whole thing.  Ashlee didn't care for it.  She said she can't dance.  Mikayla loved it.  She said she wanted to keep dancing.

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went on line a couple of weeks ago to look for a chicken and rice soup recipe. I found a Turkey and Wild Rice Soup recipe. But I also found this recipe too. So I had to try it. Here is the recipe.

2 sticks softened butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 oz bag chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chips)
1 pkg Double Stuffed Oreo's

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugars together with a mixer until well combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

In a seperate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda. Slowly add to wet ingredients along with chocolate chips until just combined. Using a cookie scoop take one scoop of cookie dough and place on top of an Oreo cookie. Take another scoop of dough and place on bottom of Oreo cookie. Seal edges together by pressing and cupping in hand until Oreo cookie is enclosed with dough. Place onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake cookies 9-13 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies. VERY LARGE Cookies.

While they were cooking, if the Oreo was coming through the cookie dough, I rearranged the dough around Oreo.

Valentines Day

On Valentine's day the girls and I got our hair done. Had a quick lunch at Wendy's and then came home to prepare a Valentine's dinner for John.

Ashlee cut off about 4 inches hair. Here is her new hair style.

Our dinner wasn't anything fancy. We tried to make the table look" festive on a budget." Mikayla cut out paper hearts and wrote little sayings on each of them. The plates were $1.99 at Target. We already had the cups, napkins and tablecloth. I had got the girls a little somthing for Valentines Day (those are their bags on the table).

Mikayla made this note for John and had it on his plate waiting for him.

The girls hid and when John came home they yelled "Suprise." Dinner consisted of pork chops, potato's, salad, bread and jello. Ashlee made valentine cupcakes for desert.

Beauty and the Beast

Ashlee and Mikayla's school has been working on performing the play Beauty and the Beast for a little over 5 months now. Tonight we got to see the perfomance. Ashlee and Mikayla were villagers. The play was an hour and a half long, but very well done. Especially when you consider the fact that the whole play consisted of Kindergarten thru Fifth graders. The costumes and props were great. All the actors had their lines memorized. My mom said it was better than a play she saw performed by college students several years ago.

Family

This weekend LB was in town for the Tulare Farm Show. Saturday night Danny, Teresa, Sam, Heidi, Carlee, Preston and Audrey came over for dinner. Teresa brought valentines for the kids. The kids loved their valentine goodies. Watching them open their valentines, reminded me of Christmas. They were so excited to open them and began eating their goodies right away.

Carlee taking pictures with Ashlee's digital camera

Preston taking pictures

Criminal Idiots

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I turn on the TV to watch the news, while I am waiting for John to get out of the bathroom so I can get in the bathroom. This morning I got up and then decided to turn on the TV after all. I hear the broadcaster say that the top story they are following is an officer involved shooting in Ceres. I think to myself, another wacko in Ceres. I can't wait to see what they have to say. I have to get ready and get the kids up. I decide to leave the TV on and go into the kitchen. After all I can rewind the TV to find out the details later. From the kitchen I hear them say a name of a road near the kids school so I go into the bedroom and rewind the TV.
Apparently a truck with 4 people in it was pulled over around 4am around the corner from the girls school. As the officer is patting 1 of the 4 people down, the guy pulls out a gun and starts firing the gun. Thankfully the bullet missed the cop but hit the cop car. The gunman takes off running. The cops shut down the streets around the school to look for this armed and dangerous man.
I wasn't about to take the girls to school and put them in an environment such as that. I have to go to work. I have to figure out what to do with the girls. I decided to text my friend who works at the school. She calls me back and tells me to not take them to school. She says she got a call from the district saying that she shouldn't report to work. At 7:30am the school calls and tells us that school will start in 1 hour due to police activity in the area. Another hour goes by, the school calls again and says to bring our kids to school at 10am. At about 9:30am I call the school and they tell me that they are cancelling school for the day. What a crazy day! How many lives did this 1 idiot affect today? How many people couldn't go to work today? In other parts of the country people deal with school delays due to bad weather. In California we deal with school delays and cancellations due to criminal idiots! Almost 12 hours later and they are still searching the area to find the guy. The girls are happy to have the day off of school and to be spending time with grandma. Mikayla asked if she gets to stay home again tomorrow since they still haven't caught the guy. I guess she thinks she's not going back until the criminal is caught. I hope they aren't afraid to go back to school after all this. It's times like this when I think maybe home schooling would be best. Or maybe it's time to move out of here. But there are criminal idiots everywhere. Just more in some areas than others.