Japanese Candy II

     Happy Halloween! We just got home from trick or treating and I decided to do a few more candy trials so I didn't steal candy from my kids. lol.
      Big Thunder II:

     The cookie pieces inside reminded me of a mix between Oreos and the "chocolate crunch" pieces in Dairy Queen's ice cream cakes.

      Frankenstein Candy- no English on the package.

    Excuse my oldest son in the background. Apparently the dog costume and seeing himself on a screen was too much to handle.

Sweet moments of the week- and Halloween question

    - I began working on my Thanksgiving tree project. My sister-in-law, Sarah, just sent me a bunch of leaf cut outs that I can decorate. Thanks, Sarah!
   - I wrote a few parents to tell them how much I enjoy having their children in my class. I received some great responses, even though they didn't need to write back.
    - A 5th grade girl made me a cute little ghost cupcake. Kind of like these, but the ghost was a folded piece of fondant, covered in more fondant. This little girl is one of the nicest kids. (She wore this costume:  to school today with a little painted pink nose and whiskers.)
     - I also saw a baby (inflatable) sumo wrestler costume, Justin Bieber, a bumble bee, a cowgirl, lots of superheroes, Waldo, etc. There were no super gross or sexy costumes. It was refreshing.
     -Helped a good friend who is going through a hard time
     - Played a few duets with Timmy while he was practicing trumpet. (I played recorder. It was torture for my music teacher ears, but it was fun. Timmy is doing great.)
      - Played some board games with David
      -Helped Tim on a book report
     - Watched Amazing Race with the kids tonight. Now they both want to try bungee jumping.
     -Talked to the boys about some new activities that neither of them have tried before. It will be interesting to see if they like them or not.
       -Matt made these Rolo Cheesecake Bars:
 Oh my gosh. This is the picture and recipe from Just a Pinch Recipes. Holy cow are they tasty!

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Tomorrow is Halloween. My students asked me today which countries currently celebrate Halloween. If you are reading from outside of the US, can you tell me if Halloween in celebrated in your country? If so, what do people do on Halloween?  For our family it's a time to dress up, go trick or treating and eat candy, but that's pretty much it.
     I'd love to talk to them about it on Monday.

Hello November!

     The start of November means the end of the 31 Days series and me trying to decide what to write about again :)  I thought today that I would just take a few minutes to catch up.

Halloween

     Last night we "celebrated" Halloween. When I was growing up, my town had no trick or treating. I'm not sure of the reason the town didn't have trick or treating. Every year our school put on a Halloween party called Operation Goblin. It was like a school dance with costumes and candy. I was never really into Halloween, but as an adult I enjoy getting out in my town, meeting new people and trick or treating with the boys. I also enjoy seeing my students have a little fun and dress up.  This year Timmy was Harry Potter and David was a ninja. If you can't tell, Timmy's hair is colored black. I rather like it. He actually could pass as my son now. :)

     This year we invited Timmy's new friend from England to come with us. I have become friends with his friend's mom and I really enjoy spending time with the whole family. We also stopped by a former colleague's house, which is an annual tradition for us. It was a beautiful autumn night and we had a lot of fun.

Decluttering
      The beginning of last week our 5th graders had a field trip, which gave me an extra prep period. I had wonderful intentions for this time, but when it came I literally found myself sitting in front of the computer, completely zoning out. A former student who now subs at the school came by to say hello and scared me half to death when he came in.  At this moment, I realized I was really stressed out and that my head was stuffed full of to do lists, ideas, reminders, and emotions. I saw that I was really overwhelmed and that I was unable to focus properly. This doesn't happen to me often, but when it does it's pretty serious.  So, on Wednesday, I stayed after school to correct 45 projects that had come in the day before, clean a little of my classroom and organize some papers that had been hanging around for way too long. You really have no idea how much havoc 200 students randomly touching things in a classroom over the course of 1 day can do. I didn't get it immaculate, but I got it clean enough to not be distracting to me.
      It is a cold, damp, rainy day in Massachusetts today. The sun is not out. It is starting to feel a bit raw. I decided to do some more decluttering at home. Do you have a room in your house (apartment in our case) that becomes the panic dumping room when you need to clean the rest of the house quickly? Yeah, well, unfortunately that room is our bedroom. It has been for a long time. I would post a picture if I was REALLY brave (and not afraid of being reported to Hoarders.) We have too much stuff. Sometimes it is obvious that we abundantly blessed and other times it is a reminder that we are not as responsible with money as we should be. Again, this room is a huge work in progress but I feel good about the work I did today. Perhaps my November project will be to try to turn this room into a sanctuary rather than stressor. In order to get this done I have to 1) remind myself that it didn't become a mess overnight, 2) part with materials/resources/stuff that at one point I felt I really needed and 3) remind myself that many times my outside clutter turns into emotional clutter for me. Any of my friends, feel free to ask me how this project is going throughout the month so I stay accountable.

Goodreads giveaways
    Did you know that Goodreads does giveaways?  I enter them a lot and have won quite a few books. I love this because it has given me a chance to try some new genres of literature and to have been exposed to some new authors. In addition to this, I have actually chatted with a few of the authors online. Most recently, there were a few books I tried to win, but didn't. A few authors contacted me and offered to give me a copy of their e-book instead if I was interested. I thought it was really generous. (The 4 authors that have done this are Levi Stack, Grady Miller, Holly Michael, and Bill Harrison.) I'm going to start the Card Game Series by Mr. Stack tonight.

     If you are on Goodreads, looking for the giveaways, you can find them by looking at the pull down menu next to "explore." Good luck and I hope you win some fun stuff! While we're on the subjects of books, what are you currently reading?