Autumn in the Air..... 2012

 Once school started, life got that other kind of busy again. There’s summer busy, then there’s school busy, then there’s wrestling busy. Those are the 3 categories our life can be divided into.

With two boys in school and two boys at home in my preschool and with Wayne and I keeping new work schedules, we tried to take more weekend time off…… this never does seem to work out, rather we remain pretty busy the whole way through with company coming here, us going visiting or to events.

In August we…..

Watched Luke take off on his bike without training wheels!!! The bikes had shifted in the garage one day while we were out and when I pulled the van back in or out, whichever, my back wheel caught Luke’s little bike breaking the training wheels and popping the back tire. We pulled the training wheels all the way off.

Luke got tired of waiting for us to fix it, so when his brothers went down the street on their bikes one day, he hopped on his too, flat tire and training wheel-less. Wayne just happened to walk out the door and see it and yelled for me to get my camera. There he went, no help, no one showed him, he just did it, 3 1/2 years old. And that there is Luke, extremely independent, tough and motivated. I was sad I wasn’t the one who taught him, as I had taught Andy and Zach, but I did catch his first ride on camera so that was good enough to me. It was incredibly impressive...

We went to some football games…..

Then there was BHSU’s Homecoming……

We went to the Wildlife Sanctuary’s Family Day…….

We welcomed home our local troops from Afghanistan, the 842^nd…..

Our old neighbors and friends the Sorcics

We celebrated Luke’s 4^th Birthday……

He chose Avengers theme, see the full post HERE.

We also processed our garden and canned lots of salsa, some jam and some pickles!!!

We did our annual Canyons Run…..

Wayne’s Grandma & Grandpa came out from Salem to stay at a hotel with us…..

Jake turned 4 months old and started taking baths in the big boy tub…..

In October we…….

Had our Belle homecoming….

Some delinquent neighbor kids started a fire behind our principal’s house across the street…

It burnt right up to some house’s back porches. Raba was out there spraying his fence down with water, which saved it from catching fire.

We had our annual PINK OUT football game where Lukie got to release balloons for being a cancer survivor. See the full post on that HERE.

http://lessonsinlifefromlukielynn.blogspot.com/

We celebrated Zach’s 6^th birthday at The Lodge in Deadwood with a SHARK theme. See the full post HERE.

There were some Husker Games....

We got our first snow in October. There are a few more pictures of that on THIS POST…

We also had our 4^th Murder Mystery party which was Roaring 20’s themed, “Murder at the Juice Joint”….

Then there was my Lil’ Broncs Spooky Kooky Party…..

Our Pumpkins.....

Then Halloween!!!!! This year the boys were Phineas, Frankenstien with his located Brain from the Phineas and Ferb theme song, Ferb & Perry the Platypus…..

We went to our church’s carnival and did the Air Force housing loop and a couple of friends’ houses….

Andy got his special trick-or-treat bag from his buddy “Grandpa Sherm”….

Then it was November and Thanksgiving & Black Friday…

This year Gayle & I met Jenn in Rapid at the new WalMart, which was very nice. We went all night as usual and found pretty much everything on our lists plus some, of course!!! 

2013 End of the Year Appreciation Gifts

This Friday's FIX IT FRIDAY is on our end of the year appreciation gifts

Every year, twice a year, I do small appreciation gifts for teachers, secretaries, and a few other special people in our lives. At Christmas of course, and at the end of the school year are the two times I put in the planning and prep time, put all the gifts together and help everyone get them to where they belong. The end of the school year list is slightly smaller than the Christmas list, but not by much by the time you include thank you's and grad gifts.

Our list this year included:

2 classroom teachers
2 speech teachers
1 speech bus driver
1 second grade parapro
6 kindergarten parapro's
3 retirement gifts
5 secretaries
1 school end of year party treat
a double thank you

I also had numerous leftovers.


When considering who to give to, first I think of who has spent the most time with my children and who has helped them or us the most. This always includes their teachers and aides. I also include Luke's van driver as Luke is not always friendly or ready to go and their transportation helps me immensely. I include the secretaries not every time, but often. The elementary school secretary often has to call me when the kids are sick because I am horrible at remembering to call them before they get to me. I also include Wayne's secretaries at the high school as they are dear friends who not only help Wayne out when he needs a sub, but tend to our kids in the mornings before the bus comes, help us out on other out of school stuff and honestly, I have always felt they alongside the janitors, run the school. Unfortunately I do not know the janitors or afford them in my budget.

This year we had a couple of teacher friend/colleagues retiring who we will miss greatly. They are some great teachers and friends that make the days brighter and not having them around the halls will affect us all. As they leave, new friends will hopefully come, but it's always hard to say goodbye. The double thank you was for a teacher across the hall from Wayne and his wife (one of the secretaries) who did so many many things for us this year including lending us their car for a week while ours was repaired, helping out a couple other man cave teachers in repairing a family heirloom, and sticking their necks out defending us when the "miscommunication" mishap occurred in the hiring process in Belle Fourche where we thought I had a job, and somehow it ended up they had me in different spots, then no spot. This was entirely frustrating as you can imagine, but what made it more frustrating was how the superintendent treated Wayne over it. None-the-less, I did get an amazing job in an amazing school district with amazing colleagues whom I did student teaching with many years ago and under an amazing principal who in many ways reminds me of my grandpa. I have every confidence it will work out great and it just goes to show how the good lord knows what he is doing. As you may have figured though, the superintendent did NOT make my appreciation gift list.

Andy had the wrong day for his end of the year party and ended up missing out being home sick, but he did enjoy his treat after school the next day.    :(

Another Gift I made a week before for my in-laws' 39th anniversary- around $5

My appreciation gifts follow the strict rule of: IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS. With only a single income for a family of 6, I am on a TIGHT budget. Teacher salaries are joked as being low, well SD is 2nd lowest. Sooooo, I stay between $1-3 per gift. I spent $24 on my entire above mentioned list!!! ($30 if you include every supply and all the leftovers.)


To do this, I used some of my own ides, some childhood gifts my mom used to do and of course incorporated Pinterest ideas. I drafted and printed all my own tags. Free Google images aided in this as well. Microsoft Office 10 has wonderful features for image editing that make it pretty easy to do wash-outs, shaped and filled text boxes and overlays, remove backgrounds and tweek contrasts.

I bought smaller portions in bulk packages to help stretch over greater numbers. For instance, an 8 pack of 12oz bottles of Mt. Dew with a package of snack sized Mounds instead of buying eight 20oz bottles and 7 full sized candy bars. The cost for the Dew was just under $4 and the Mounds were around $3, making each cost just about $1 each apposed to $1.79 per pop and per full sized candy bar, about a $2.50 savings PER gift. I also bought a 6 pack of mini A&W's instead of larger cans. These were all purchased at WalMart.

A majority of my purchases were made at Dollar Tree. I restrict myself to shopping here twice a year as I absolutely love it and can easily fill my cart with over $100 in no time. This is mainly because I buy in sets of 4 for 4 little boys or find a themed party section for a theme we just so happen to need. This is awesome when this happens as you can not find themed party anything for $1 normally.

Random Purchase from $Tree- Tiki Cups we had Rootbeer Floats in for Jakers' Bday

The Lemonhead gummies, the glass mug, retirement jar contents, double bubble, glue sticks, hand sanitizer, and some of the leftovers which I will use for more gifts were all purchased at Dollar Tree. I already had some scrap fabric and ribbon and the widemouthed jars which we didn't like for canning. The paper is all cardstock, which again I already had. This did help bring my budget down, but you could just as easily used regular printer paper and instead of jars you could have used washed out peanutbutter or mayo or nut jars with paper on the lid instead of fabric.

Most of these gifts can be found HERE on my Pinterest "Gift It" board. 

Classroom Teacher Gifts:

"We're Stuck on You"  Jars of Glue Sticks.......

Wide mouthed jar, fabric remnant, 3 $1 packages of glue sticks each, cardstock tag printed from Word. $3



Speech Teachers & 2nd Grade Para Gifts:

"You Deserve a Hand"......

1 bottle of hand sanitize $1 each, traced hands on cardstock, cost $1 each. 

Speech Van Driver, and Kindergarten Para's (6 rotate between the 6 classrooms):

"Mounds of Thanks for all you Dew"......

Ignore my messes in the background, life is super busy and stressful this time of year. For these, I bought an 8 pack of mini dews then cut two off one end as there are 6 paras at the kindergarten. The last two I split, one for Andy's end of year class party treat (They could bring a pop and this was a great smaller portion for him as we normally don't do pop but for special occasions.) The other for Luke's Speech Van driver. 

I stuck a wooden skewer through the plastic binding of the remaining 6 dews and attached the card to it. I received many comments on this during the kindergarten program. It did turn out way cute.

For Mrs. Weaver, the van driver, I just taped directly. She even snuck in a kiss for Luke. This was a big deal as they started off the year mortal enemies. 

Retiring Teachers:

Retirement Jars......

....and for a teacher that was one of my favs on my 7th grade team who retired last year, but I missed it due to having Jakers that week, I gave "Your Retirement Blows", a perfect fitting gift as she always came to teaming period with a huge bucket of Double Bubble from Sam's Club to chew on as teaming was often a difficult thing to endure with many "bite your tongue" or "chew on this moments". Smart woman! Her hubby was one of the others retiring this year. We will greatly miss them. 

Secretary Gifts:

"To some A&Wesome Secretaries".....

And for the double thank you I had seen an idea on Pinterest with fitting wording considering the situation, however it disappeared on me, so I remembered best I could and drafted the tag with free google images.....

I love the glass mug found at Dollar Tree. It looks great as a candy dish, can't imagine it would function as a coffee mug though ;) There's a personal note on back expressing thanks. 

And there you have it. 22 gifts for $24 and leftovers to use in the future.