It’s the 100th day of school for Laura! To celebrate 100 days of school, Unit A at Ridgeway will be doing special activities all day. Each student had to bring in a collection of 100 things. Laura chose to take pencils that her class will then be able to keep. She is very excited!
Valentine’s Day Cards
We bought the Valentine’s Day cards for Laura’s class on Friday. She picked out a package of cards, small heart-shaped notepads for the girls, erasers for the boys, and large notepads with chocolate hearts for her teachers. She was so excited about it and really wanted to get them all made up. So, we sat down and got them done this afternoon. She was so careful in writing the names of her classmates. It was really fun to watch her do this.
At school, the kids will make bags for all the cards, so we didn’t have to make a mailbox for the cards. Laura will take the cards to school with her next week for delivery. She said that she can’t wait to see what she gets from her classmates!
Book It!
Pizza Hut runs a reading incentive program called “Book It!” Children in Kindergarten through Six Grade can earn a free personal pan pizza every month if they read and rate ten books in one month’s time. Reading ten books a month is nothing for Laura as we read more than that every month. However, we finally remembered in the beginning of January to fill out one of the forms and have Laura rate the books. She was so proud of her first Book It!
Tonight, we ate at Pizza Hut and she got her personal pan pizza. She was so excited to be able to eat her own pizza that she earned by reading the books. We’ll have to make sure we remember to fill out the form for February.
Movie Night!
The Arsenal
We have a camera arsenal now… It’s hard to believe a year ago, we had one camera and I hardly ever took pictures with it.
The black one is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel given to us by my Dad. We just got this one at Christmastime and are still “playing” with it. The larger silver one is a Canon PowerShot S2 IS that used to belong to my sister, Tracy. It works as long as you don’t need to zoom. It sometimes gets the dreaded E18 error and the lens won’t retract. The smaller silver one is a Canon PowerShot SD800, currently on loan from my work. It’s my “test” pocket camera for my purse. I love it and hope that work just wants to throw it out. I’ll be digging it out of the trash should that happen. Lastly, I have the camera on my phone. Ironically, I had to use my phone camera, which does not take the best-quality photos, to take the picture of the arsenal. Oh, what a difference a year makes…
The Giggle
We have family portraits hanging in the hallway leading to our downstairs. The frames have been there since John was about 18 months old. I tend to change out the pictures when we have a new set taken. Currently, the pictures are from our August photo session and our Christmas photo session. This morning, John noticed one of the pictures from August of Laura and him and he got all excited. Andy and I told him that there were more on the other side. He turned and saw the Christmas pictures. He let out a “Beavis and Butthead” type giggle and said, “Awesome!” I immediately cracked up laughing. When I told Andy what he said, Andy just got a big grin on his face and shook his head.
Recipe Database
I love to cook and I love to try new recipes. Menu planning allows me to build in a couple of new recipes every month. If I like the new recipes, I need some place to put them. Some of them I store in my “recipe box” on the various websites that I use. However, that doesn’t work for all my favorite recipes that I have in various cookbooks and written by hand. For this purpose, Andy found someone who made an online recipe database. Andy sent him an email and he shared the code so that Andy could set it up for me on our family website. I LOVE this thing and I’m always adding new recipes. The recipe database contains recipes that I’ve used for years, new recipes, and recipes that other people have added. The recipe database is most of the reason why we have a computer in our kitchen. Check it out! Add recipes if you want. I would love that! The website is http://www.kasselfamily.org/recipes/. The username is cook and the password is food.








