Winchester Mystery House

We've returned from our summer road trip, and are getting ready for Back To School.  

Our first stop (after picking up Grammy) was Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  

The house itself was crazy, and the grounds were beautiful.  My mom felt the city should have not allowed buildings over a certain height to be built right next to it, though.  Skyscraper hotels detract from the ambiance.  

There was a very friendly orange kitty.  

I'm so glad my mom came with us!  It was a once in a lifetime trip we'll remember fondly.  

Inside

This was Sarah's bedroom.  Our tour guide was... bland.  He recited memorized facts in a monotone.  I really felt like a fun guide would have made the experience better.  

Parts of the house are just strange.  

There was a very outdoors feeling to this upstairs room.  

Always have to take pictures of the sewing machines.  

Lath and plaster construction.  One would think I'd learned this from my dad, who was a carpenter, but I'm pretty sure I picked this up from Paul when he studied building construction.  You have to understand how things are put together to guess how they'll fall down.  

There were several stained glass windows.

It was an interesting place to visit.

I wouldn't mind going back to San Jose, as there are other things there I would like to see, such as the Egyptian Museum.  

And that was the first attraction on our 11 day, 1,900 mile summer road trip.  

Our Teacher Appreciation Week

The downside of working mornings only is that I leave before the taco bar happened.  Which is a bummer, because I love tacos.  

But I did get my door decorated, which was a fun surprise.  

I was hanging out with Jack in his room when I noticed Grumman camped out in a pile of his laundry.  Weirdo.  He also loves the smell of warm shoes.  

I read the kindergarten class If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and we painted paper plates to look like chocolate chips.  I wore my Mouse a Cookie dress that day, but didn't get a picture this year.  

City library run.  

Coming to the end of my second year of library, I finally had a light bulb moment and made myself a binder for the leftover coloring pages I had stuffed in my desk drawer.  

My preschoolers get a take home coloring page related to the book we read each week.  But there's often extras due to kids being absent.  

It occurred to me that instead of reinventing the wheel every single week, next year I could make copies of coloring sheets I've already used when I read the same book again to a new class.  I'm looking forward to this saving me some lesson planning time next year.  

So, back in December, Paul ordered a truck.  

It's finally here, and we went and picked it up this week.  

We don't get much wildlife in our suburban neighborhood.  So when I saw this turkey walking down our street, I took a picture.  

Crayon & watercolor with my 3rd graders

I wore my London skirt in honor of Coronation weekend, so it seemed appropriate to pull out the Kings and Queens of England book.  

Not sure why this picture only partially uploaded, but I'm thrilled that my Sam flowers (a type of lily) are coming up again.  He gave them to me as a birthday or Mother's Day gift a couple years ago.  

I think Fiona is influencing Grumman.  He never played in boxes, but Fiona loves boxes.  After she hopped out of this one, he had to get in and see what all the fuss was about.  

 And that's all for this week!  

The End of Catching Up on April

Okay, so yesterday we left off with the cats and the bunny.  Let's see...

Jack showed me a sign he placed.  Being the proud mama, I took a picture.  

The spring Fine Arts Fundraiser occurred.  The sign on the left says ART in the Library.  Other teachers also posted samples of art from their classrooms.  

Oh, there's the crabby ocean scenes I mentioned yesterday!  I read the kids Eric Carle's Home for a Hermit Crab the week that they colored the crabs, then the following week we did the cut, paste, embellish parts.  There was glitter and sequins involved.  I'm pretty sure the janitor sighs a lot when he vacuums the library.  

There were drama, choir, and hand chime performances to go along with the visual arts.  

And dessert was served.  

I mentioned that I haven't been home Friday mornings lately.  I'm getting weekly iron infusions.  Turns out there are things besides motherhood that can cause exhaustion.  Who knew?

Our local adoption support group puts on a respite camp weekend for the kids.  I was so excited to get spots for the girls this year.  This was Hannah playing with sticks (she enjoyed whacking the trees--free therapy!) while we waited for official drop off time.  

And Katie with a branch.

Drop off was Friday afternoon.  

I helped her carry her stuff.  

Pick up was supposed to be Sunday afternoon.  

Saturday, we got a call that Katie was refusing to walk to the dining hall.  That she was being non-compliant.

2 hours later, we got the "she's sick, come get her" call.

I ended up picking them both up because I had no desire to spend 5 hours in the car 3 days in a row.  

Hannah and I went grocery shopping, and since she'd missed out on s'mores night, we got the ingredients to make them at home.  

Hannah got Hershey's bars; I decided to try using Ghiardelli squares instead.

It's not the campfire with friends experience, but 

they were still tasty.

Jack had some, too.

Miss Hannah had a birthday.  

She was full from dinner and asked if we could save "cake" for the next night.

Hence the costume change between presents and turtle pie with flames.

I printed and laminated some button placing pages from Twinkl to use with my K students.  

I tell them we're exercising their Lego muscles when we do things like this (threading beads on a pipe cleaner is another fun one we did recently).  

We're getting so close to the end of the school year that everybody's a little more keyed up than usual.  The weather got nice and good behavior went right out the window.  It's cooler this week, so hopefully we're be able to reign it back in a little bit.