A Doozie I tell ya...

Sometimes life throws you for a loop.  For me, that means a lot of God stuff.  It means I have to lean in hard to Him and trust that, in the words of my pastor, Greg Surratt (Seacoast Church), I need to "not lose faith in the end of the story."

2016 was a very rough year for my family and I.  Divorce, a move and crazy immediate family drama are all part of the storm that I have traveled through in the last 365.  It's been hard and it's been sad and it's been yucky and it's pushed me to be all in with God or hang out on the fringe.

It's a slow Sunday afternoon for a tardy Five for Friday!  Sorry I have been absent for a few weeks but my family is going through a major upheaval and sometimes just waking up each morning is the best you can do.  I'm moving forward though and thats a good thing!  If you are a prayer...say a prayer for us!  We need it! :)

Looking across teacher land it appears that most people celebrated the 100th Day of school sometime this past week!  Ours was delayed by 5 days due to the 5 days we had out of school in October because of the 1000 year flood that hit SC.  The kids had a blast and so did I!

These are just some of the fun things we did with links to the FREEBIE products that we used!

 Many of our AWESOME staff dressed up as well!  This is one of our assistants who even passed out mints! :)

 

And then there was this old gem...one of my teaching besties!  You can't really tell but she is about 100 weeks pregnant!  We have always called her the baby because she is indeed the baby of our team but today we called her Sarah!  As in Moses' wife! :)  Please notice the tissue tucked in the sleeve of her sweater!

We made these super cute 100 Days Smarter crowns.

They came from this fabulous TPT store!

And all of the kiddos, 3year olds through kindergartners worked on this fun graphing paper!

Another freebie from this site that was new to me.

Of course you can't celebrate the 100th Day without the 100th Day snack!

We used this one because I had the most of these items on hand! :)  There are a few other really cute things included with this paper!

 And our day ended with a sharing of our 100 things.  This was the best method ever!  I sent home a one pager that they got last Friday so they had all weekend to collect!  They brought their items in a plastic water bottle!  That kept everything in one place, projects were small and everyone got to share! 

All in all it was an outstanding day!

Like I said earlier, the last few weeks have tried me beyond belief.  I'm a Christian and its a good thing because my God has covered me with his grace and mercy and gives me these little gems every once in a while to remind me that I am His Daughter and He's got this!

And as if that wasn't enough, I came home from school Wednesday and this was hanging in a cute gift bag on my front door.

I mean REALLY!  I cried.  Real. Live. Tears.  It can be overwhelming when you have friends this awesome!

I may have mentioned a time or two that I go to a most amazing church.  It's one church many campuses...12 to be exact in SC.  Seacoast is the name and it's my home away from home.  I walked in 5 years ago and never looked back.  Once a year we have an outstanding Women's Conference called Chosen.  About 1500 women attend and in 24 hours we are renewed, energized, centered and brought to our knees by the power and presence of God!  This year was no exception.

We heard from amazing speakers, worshiped like nobodies business and were reminded to be Fearless!  We are amazing, strong and courageous creations.  Gifts from God to the world.  Daughters of the King.  It was a message the I really needed to be reminded of.  God is so, so good.

This is one my girls from church!  We rode together and stayed together and drank wine together and loved some Jesus together!

I went for a pretty speedy run the next morning.  It was 42* and I was not prepared to run outside but I needed to put down some miles so ran around the shopping mall across the street.  Freezing but felt great!

Another of my church bestie joined us down there and we shared a hotel room with her!  Such fun!

We even took a quick minute to run to IOP and say hello to the water!

Can hardly wait for it to happen again!

I am lucky enough to have my youngest punk attend school where i teach.  He is also in the mOntessori program and is in his last 80 days of 5th grade!  His teacher has this white board outside the classroom door.  The kids are in charge of changing the message.  

That's good stuff right there!

I'll get back to more school stuff next week but just wanted to share a little of the personal stuff this week!

Have an amazing week!

Five for Friday...YES to Friday!

Whew, it's been a long one but if you're reading this it means you made it to Friday!  GO YOU!!!  Why does the week back after winter break almost seem longer than the first week of school!?!  No worries, I'm all snuggled on the coach with a beverage and my fuzzy Star Wars pajama pants on because the bikini weather finally left SC and it's actually cold here!  So, without further ado, let's get Five for Friday under way!

 Flipped the page to January in my self made planner and this was what hit me in the face!  Great way to start the new year!  Now if I can just keep it in mind day in and out!

Back on track with regular runs and feeling really good!  My speed is increasing (when I least expect it...cuz I suck at pacing myself!) and I even am getting my distance back.  I am running the Walk for Life 10K in the morning and am pretty excited about it because it's my first race since surgery!  Wish me luck!

My peeps came for a late Christmas celebration!  We had good times and my sis & bro-in-law gave us this awesome game!  Sequence.  My BIL even made it which made it pretty fabulous!  Look it up! It is a super fun game!

And yes, that is a hammock hanging in the sun room!  The hubs thought that would be cool.  Two actually hang in there and the boys both have them in their bedrooms as well!

Shhh, I'm really glad that school is back!  I miss my babies when school is out!

These are my after school kiddos.

We missed our Dorothy girl a lot!

This ham bone even read to us his favorite smelly book!

It was a good, good week!

My small punk and I have started reading this together before bed.  It's one of my favorites and I have been begging him for a while now to let me read it to him.  He finally gave in and he loves it!  Its a great book about a 5th grade girl who has been labeled and she simply doesn't like it.  It's a great lesson for kids, a great reminder for teachers and a wonderful life story.

Stay tuned next week...or maybe during this coming week for some really fun Sight Word stuff I've been working on with my kiddos.  They love it and I think you will too!

Have a great week and relax a little this weekend!

Hop back to Doodle Bugs Teaching to check out other posts.

Five for Friday...Carolina Style

Well, it's been a crazy week to say the least!  If you turn on your tv or look at any social media than you know that my poor state has been through it and back again over the last 6 days.  The rain started last Friday and came in record amounts.  They are actually calling it the 1,000 year flood.  We have been out of school all week as flood and devastation has ravaged our state and we are slowly bouncing back.  So this Five for Friday is all about what happens when South Carolinians get hit and I mean hard!

This is what our radar looked like for 3 days in a row.

 These were the estimates that our cute meteorologist Ben Tanner shared with us day in and day out.

This picture kept getting shared with the news that we got enough water in 3 days to fill a 20oz water bottle for every person on earth every day for 179 years.  WHAT!?!?

It was a lot of freakin rain!

Even though I had knee surgery last Thursday, I got cleared to put weight on it Tuesday and today I went out and coordinated a water station!  YIPPEE!  Our National Guard & Richland County Sheriffs Department have helped volunteers man water distribution sites all over South Carolina.

It really felt good to get out and do something!

Many of our schools in our hardest hit areas opened up their gymnasiums as shelters.  

As shelters opened, those of us not directly hit began pouring in with donations that in many cases have started to get turned away because people have opened their hearts in such huge ways that there is an overabundance of STUFF!  This is a good problem to have as we have gone in and gathered things to share in other ministries to people in need!

South Carolinians' care about each other.  We've been through a lot in the last year but we stand strong!

 Our nationally known Riverbanks Zoo opened up with free admission to all local county residents Thursday and Friday.  I grabbed the neighbor kids and put word out on social media to my school and away we went to enjoy a beautiful day at the zoo!

On a side note...this crew makes my heart happy.  We have lived next door to these sweet kiddos for 8 years and they are the only reason we don't move!  Good neighbors are hard to find and my punks have grown up with these punks.  It's a good thing!

I have to be honest.  I have struggled a bit with our laser beam focus and overabundance of giving to the numerous flood victims across SC.  Not that they don't need help.  I am all for that but when I work so closely with our huge homeless population and see their need day in and day out it's tough to see people give so freely to people who are struggling for a moment in time but be so stingy on a daily basis to people who have nothing.  All. the. time.

We set up tents, line up the food and start making plates.  Our crowd was small today because we had another torrential downpour this morning.  Homeless people will generally stay put in a rain storm so as not to drench themselves.  On a regular day we serve about 150.  Today we served about 50 but they all got seconds and thirds and a smile and kind word so it was well worth it!

Find some way you can help your fellow man!  It makes life richer!

Hop back over to Doodlebugs Teaching and see what the rest of the teaching world is up to!