You know how it’s so funny when your son brings home a Father’s Day card from school and you notice that he’s drawn a bottle of wine on the shoulder of your husband’s shirt?
The room mother sent around a note a couple of weeks ago about us each pitching in for the gift for my son’s teachers. She suggested cash or Target gift cards. A fine idea, but it struck me as sort of impersonal and * I don’t know * lazy. So, I decided not to contribute to the class collection and instead do our own thing.
I wanted the teacher gifts to be fun and interesting and signify – in some small way – how great they’ve been. My son has loved his first year of elementary school. He’s loved (er, worshiped is more like it) his teachers. I don’t think I’ve heard him utter a single negative thing about them the entire year. And I can’t believe how much he’s learned from them. It actually kind of blows my mind. I can’t thank these two wonderful women enough for dedicating their lives to teaching kids, including my kid. The best I can do to show my appreciation is to spend more than 5 seconds thinking of what to get them for a job well done. You with me?
Anyway, this is what I came up with:
I found the fun notebooks and the timers at Anthropologie the other day (see here for the notebooks, which came in a package of three but that I split up for purposes of the teacher gifts). I can’t seem to find the timers online but they were available in at least 4 different colors – orange, mint, white, yellow – for about $12 each). The cost of each gift amounted to around $16. I have one notebook left over that I think I’m just going to adopt as my own because it’s so cute and fun. Note sure what I’m going to do with it other than ogle it and be happy.
I temporarily taped the timer to the front of the notebook (for transport and delivery), along with little note that I printed out and glued to a piece of cardboard card stock I already had.
I hope both of my son’s teachers will enjoy them. The notebooks are cute and hopefully functional. (Teachers need notebooks, right?) The timers are adorable and I hope that they can either use them in the classroom or that they’ll look fantastic in their kitchen at home on the refrigerator or something.
I went ahead and got gifts for my daughter’s two main preschool teachers, too. There wasn’t the same sort of need because one of the teachers is actually moving up to the pre-kindergarten class with my daughter so she’ll continue to be her teacher. But, my daughter was all sorts of worked up that my son’s teachers were getting a present and her teachers weren’t, so I ended up putting together something for her teachers, too.
I found the little globes at Target for $10 each in this new little section they have over by the gift wrap. I don’t know what it’s called but, if you haven’t checked it out, do. They have all sorts of neat things over there, including these cool little globes. They seem pretty sturdy, so I hope they don’t fall apart the minute they take them out of the box. I typed up notes to them and then glued them on some hot pink card stock.
Thank you, teachers. You rock.
I’m realizing that I never shared photos from my son’s 6th birthday – which was a couple of weeks ago. So, today, a birthday photo bonanza.
My boy turned six. Amazing, but true.
We decorated his room with balloons, just like we did with my daughter the year before (see here). I had planned on doing something new and original, but the whole cupcake toy search (see here) messed with me and I didn’t have an ounce of originality left. So, balloons it was.
At least I found some balloons specific to the occasion. There’s got to be an extra point or two for that, eh?
He was up and running around, excited by the balloons and the fact the OMG PEOPLE IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, at the crack of dawn. He joined me down in the kitchen for the things that I do before anyone else is generally awake (make coffee, feed cats, make lunch, fill the dog’s water bowl, wander around aimlessly wishing I was still asleep, etc.) and ended up pulling out his markers and writing a little note to his friend which, by the way, I think is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Then it was off to school. I did the obligatory leave-work-in-the-middle-of-the-day-to-bring-cupcakes-to-school show at lunchtime. I failed to get any photos. Ooops. Bad Mom.
After school/work, we went out to dinner at the restaurant of his choice. We laughed. We cried (not really). It was great.
Then it was home to open presents in our pajamas. (NOTE: I think it’s hilarious that his little belly and belly button are showing through his shirt. These pj’s are way to small for him, but he just can’t quit them.) I’ll try to share a list of the winners and losers in the present department in the coming days… we had some big hits this year and definitely a few duds.
By the way, I love how – in most of the present-opening photos above – you can see that he has chocolate on his cheek from his decadent chocolate brownie dessert-y thing at the restaurant. Because apparently we don’t have time – or the motivation – to wash chocolate off our faces on birthdays. C’est la vie.