::spooky voice:: OOoOOoOoooH, Friday the 13th! ::knockonwood:: nothing goes wrong today! I don’t really believe in superstitions, though. I hope the students are well-behaved today! Here are 5 highlights from this week:

1. Author Visit – First, my best news – we are honored to have a visit from Trudy Krisher! She will be visiting our school in just 10 days. We are so excited! I can’t believe how lucky we are! More to come on that later!

2. Would you? Our students are doing their own self-designed Science Experiments, which is a fantastic, student-centered, inquiry-based lesson. So a student came up to me and handed me 2 cups of water, asking, “Would you please take a sip from both of these and tell me which one is tap water and which one is bottled water?” I can’t believe it, but I did it. I had so many questions (Are these new cups? How did you get the tap water? Did you DO anything to this water?!?), but I took a leap of faith and gave it a shot. Turns out, I was wrong! I thought the more metallic tasting water would have been tap water, but it was actually the bottled water. Hmm!

3. Coloring Book – I’m working on my next coloring book on – you guessed it – dinosaurs! It will be a gift for all of my little nieces and nephews as well as a new product up on TpT. If you are interested in any of my other coloring books, they are Zoo Animals, Rainforest Animals, and My Animal Coloring Book.

4. Cooking – I got back into cooking this weekend. I had really fallen off the wagon this winter, eating lots of soups, fried eggs, and pasta, because I had been hit with one virus after another and I went for the easy/quick fix foods. Well I had forgotten how meditative, relaxing, and fulfilling it is to make your own foods from scratch. This weekend I made Bacon-Topped Spinach Meatloaf and Broccoli Egg Bake, two of my favorites. Lots of protein and vegetables for the win!

5. Stir Crazy – Okay, we are all going a little nuts around here. Me, my students, even my dogs. Winters are HARD! I feel so bad for this toy monkey, but then I realize he is pretty much a metaphor for my life. We are in the heart of winter and in for at least another 2 and a half weeks of freezing temperatures. I miss sun! At least I have little dogs who can get a lot of exercise just playing inside. For my students, on the other hand, indoor recess isn’t cutting it. We need an outlet for all our energy! Maybe a roller skating field trip?

This weekend, Ryan and I visited some friends who own a Lake House in Wisconsin. I hate winter, you know, and I find absolutely no redeeming qualities that make winter even slightly palatable. Basically, winter is what we put up with while we wait for, oh, ANY OTHER SEASON. Except then we do something new like hang out on a frozen lake with great friends, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, we had…. fun. It was beautiful! I mean, just look at these photographs. It was quiet, peaceful, pure white and lovely.

We walked around on the frozen lake, making snow angels, having snowball fights, trying not to slip and fall on the ice (but laughing when we actually do), and realizing just how cool it was that we were standing on FROZEN water! It was a new experience and new perspective, to view the sky and shore from the treacherous center of a frozen lake.

After an hour or so of sledding and playing in the snow, your reward is of course hot apple cider or hot cocoa and a long sit in front of the fireplace to enjoy warming up your toes. We ate dinner and played board games well into the night. It was a lovely weekend, and I only hate winter at about 90% capacity now 🙂

It was 30 degrees today, which is a wonderful break from the bitter temperatures of the last few weeks. I took a long walk in the afternoon sunlight – the first in a long, long time. It felt glorious!