Thanksgiving at HFLS

We had a big Thanksgiving feast at school and we celebrated with Thanksgiving Bingo, A turkey craft, and "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" It was a lot of fun!

Thanksgiving in Chicago

Well, this year we were not able to make it home to PA for Thanksgiving. So instead we did a BIG Turkey dinner with the Logans. 

It all started 2 days before the actual day, when I started the brine for the Turkey (Martha Stewart recipe).  It was a great recipe, but some of the spices were tricky to find.  I ended up finding everything (at various stores) but the juniper berries.  Any ideas where to find them? Oh well, the turkey seemed to turn out well anyways. It was very moist and tasty too.

We had a wonderful time of fellowship with Scott and Lindsay.  We are so thankful to the Lord for their friendship!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too! What did everyone do this year?

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

I decided to make small loaves of pumpkin cranberry bread for my fellow employees at HFLS this year for Thanksgiving.  It was quite the challenge, as I had to make 16 mini loaves to make.  But it really was fun. I turned on some Christmas music and started baking! About three or four hours later I was  finished.  Here is the final product!

A free date night!

Friday night there was a benefit dinner for Holy Family Lutheran School, where I work. It was a very posh event to raise money for the school. The night would have cost us $65 a person - had we been required to pay. Yup that's right! Teacher's got to go for free! There was an open and free bar for the cocktail hour from 6-7:30pm and then dinner started with this delectable salad below:


This is just a picture of the gorgeous butter flower :o)
Below is a the main course: Herb-Crusted chicken, with roasted asparagus, and garlic mashed potatoes. Absolutely amazing!
I didn't get a picture of the dessert, because I was helping with the live auction. The dessert was a fried bread pudding with brandy icecream. It usually don't like bread pudding, but it was good!

Below are some pics of the baskets that people put together for the silent auction. There was also a live auction that auctioned things off like vacation homes for a week, dinners for 8, and boat cruises.

This is the banquet hall that everything took place in. Very nice! The kids from Holy Family gave a presentation -singing, speaking, etc. They did a great job!
The benefit raised over 100,000 dollars for the school. What a blessing: especially since we are building new school that will be finished this May!

Overall, it was a fabulous night... and how can you beat FREE, right?

Pros and Cons of Living in an Apartment

Ok, so I have lived in an apartment and have also lived in a townhouse. So I have a pretty good take on each. I have decided to compile a list of pros and cons to living in each.

Pros to living in an Apartment:

1. You don't have to mow the lawn
2. You don't have to remember what day is trash day (not to mention that in our apartment we just found out that we have a garbage chute on our floor!) How awesome is that?
3. It takes about half the time to clean your place
4. No gutters to clean
5. No snow removal ( a BIG deal here in Chicago)
6. You know where EVERYTHING is
7. It's easier to speak to your significant other from room to room (only 2 of them!)

Cons to Living in an Apartment:

1. You can't always paint the walls
2. You are a little more crowded - harder to have guests
3. It's not your home- you can't do whatever you want to the space you live in.
4. You can hear your neighbors... whatever they are doing!
5. It's hard to get to know your neighbors well.
6. You can look out your window into someone else's window.
7. Smelly and dirty hallways


Do you have any to add to either of my lists?

A Fun Week in the 3rd Grade Classroom

This week was a fun week at school. As you know Wednesday was Halloween, so we decorated bags for the kids to take out trick or treating. Then I handed out candy to them in little individual pumpkin bags. They were so grateful! I also gave them each a Fall pencil. You would have thought that I had given them a sack of gold! The were so excited! It was very sweet!

Then today we had a little "Reward celebration" I promised that I would bake them brownies if they showed 10 acts of kindness. They have really been struggling with kindness and so we were trying to work towards that goal as we reviewed Ephesians 4:32 "Be Kind and Compassionate one to another. Forgiving one another, even as God forgave you in Christ." So they reached their goal yesterday. So last night I baked them brownies. Again, they thought I was the BEST for baking something (even though it came from a box)

We also took a little trip to a local park. We have no playground of our own. So this was something special! They earned this treat by getting at least a C or above as a class on 10 tests. It was hard and took a while, but they finally got there. It was so fun to reward them with those special treats today. Some may call this bribing, but i like to call it creating incentive!