Everyday Live Happy

My daughter in law Ashley is expecting her and my son's first child - and our first grandchild. We are pretty excited and of course they are too! They have lots to do though and only a couple of weeks to get it all done. Luckily my cute sister in law, Becca, through her a baby shower. Once they had the shower they would know which items they still needed to get. What to buy? Kind of hard because I'd already given her my standard baby gift. Goodnight moon and a blanket or pajamas. I'd given her that months ago. I knew that I wanted to make a gift for them. I had a neighbor that had made her expectant daughter some adorable burp cloths. That's a funny thing to say "adorable burp cloths." But they really are. She used fat quarters and terry cloth. I was able to find really fun fat quarters. They were printed with the cutest boy patterns that I've ever seen. Animals and monsters. The theme of the shower was safari so of course the animals were perfect. Monst...

I love to bake. I get it from my mom who also loves to bake and let me help her when I was a little girl. One of my favorite things to make is homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now these can be tricky. There are lots of different recipes, but I truly think that I have the best one. I have made these cookies since my oldest kids were just little ones and my youngest two weren't even born yet. In other words I have made these cookies literally hundreds of times. Truth be told we love cookies at out house so that number could really be thousands of times! Not many things beat a cookie fresh from the oven. Still warm with gooey chocolate chips to enjoy. Yum-my! This is a recipe that I do not mess with at all. The only things that I will do differently is what I add in place of the chocolate chips. I have added peanut butter chips, Reese's Pieces', Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (cut into smaller pieces) as well as other chips. Walk down the baking aisle at the store and see ...

I'm a lucky person. I'm lucky because I love my job! I am an instructional assistant (IA) at an elementary school near my home. As an IA I get to go to three different class rooms everyday. I help them with their workshop time when they split the kids up into small groups. I get to teach in a kindergarten class, a first grade class and a second grade class. For my first and second grade classes I help with their reading workshops. In each I teach a mini lesson to four small groups. So I teach the same thing in each class four different times. In kindergarten I do the same four lessons, but I might do their math lesson with them or work with rhyming or another skill not just reading. (I do teach a lot of reading lessons to the kindergartners though too.) I love what I do and I am beyond impressed with the teachers that I get to work with in their classrooms everyday. That's what brings me to my thoughts today. I work with a kindergartner teacher who I know by experience is...