So Thankful!

The older I get the more I understand the importance of gratitude. I am thankful for so many things! To say it in a sentence, I am thankful that my life right now is exactly the way I always wanted it to be.

Yesterday, like many other families, we celebrated Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my holiday to host and I love it! For one thing, I'm pretty picky about food. To me, it's all about the traditions and I want the food to be exactly the same every year. No funky stuffing please, Stove Top will do just fine!

While I do the majority of the cooking, everyone brings something. We had turkey, ham, stuffing, corn casserole, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and the best mashed potatoes EVER! For dessert we had apple pie, pumpkin pie and two kinds of cookies. Everything was delicious!

In my opinion, one of the best things about the holidays is getting to be around people and forming life long traditions for my kids. My sister, brother and I each have two kids. Growing up there were six grandchildren. It's so great to see our kids running around playing with their cousins like we did.

All in all it was a great Thanksgiving. The only downfall was that Janelle wasn't feeling too great. Thanksgiving and diabetes don't mix! I think I waaaaay under dosed her dinner (either that or she had more cranberry sauce than I thought she did). About two hours after dinner she was over 400! Luckily she was easily corrected and down to 123 at bedtime.

I hope everyone had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving and here's to kicking off the holiday season!

My sister and I with Janelle

Some of the girls

A Smile a Day

This is my eighth year teaching 1st grade. Each year you get a whole new mix of kids. While you never know exactly what you are going to get, you can pretty much bet there will be a few "challenging" kiddos.

This year as expected, I have some challenges. I have one student in particular (I'll call him "M") who tries my patience daily. After the first meeting with this boy's father I realized that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

When the kids get out of school at the end of the day, sometimes someone is there to pick him up, but not always. On the days that no one is there to pick up M I take him to the office and try to call his dad. I usually can't get a hold of him and when I actually do get a hold of M's dad he doesn't care that he is late. He'll get there when he gets there. Some days picking up his son on time just isn't convenient.

M is very open and loves to tell stories about his family. I hear all about his father's gambling addiction and the fights between him and his girlfriend. I know more about that family than I want to know!

Even though M is a tough kid you can't help but to love him. He can't help the environment he is raised in or the fact that he knows and has seen things no 6 year old should. He is smart and I have seen the good in him many times!

This morning I picked my students up from the playground like I do every day. As we were walking to our classroom M came running up to me. He had a balloon animal (a green poodle to be exact) in his hand and he was grinning from ear to ear. He handed it to me and said "this is for you! My brother helped me make it." I loved it! And it must have been obvious to him because I don't think I've ever seen that boy smile so big. He just looked so happy.

It's moments like this that remind me of why I became a teacher. I love the moments that make me just stop and smile.

Carb Crazy!

Janelle was always a really picky eater. She'd eat the same things every day. This used to make life with diabetes pretty simple for us.

In preschool and kindergarten Janelle would eat a pre-measured baggie of cereal for breakfast and the same lunch every single day. Once she hit first grade she decided to be a little more adventurous and try a few of the cafeteria's hot lunches.

Now that Janelle is in second grade she wants nothing else but to be with her friends and to do what the other kids do. Which means eating breakfast in the cafeteria every day and only taking her lunch box a few times a week.

I have always tried to make sure that diabetes doesn't make Janelle feel different. At least any more different than necessary. I am so happy she is becoming more adventurous and willing to try different things, but boy does it make carb counting more difficult!

I have such a great situation in that I am a teacher at the school Janelle goes to. However, I am not able to be with her all the time and unfortunately do not see every bite of food she puts in her mouth. To make matters worse, she doesn't even always know what the food she ate is called, let alone how much of it she ate!

It's never long after breakfast or lunch when I catch up with her to find out what she ate and to give her a bolus. Sometimes when I ask her what she had I can't help but laugh at the response I get.

For example, how many carbs would you say are in "half of that round brown thing that's really good"? And how much would you count for "two bites of that brown stuff you make sometimes"? Every thing she eats is always "half" of something.

So I have to guess. A lot! Usually I do pretty good if I do say so myself. But other times I am way off. Oh well. I guess you take the good with the bad right?

Bad D Day

We have had diabetes in our life for almost 5 years now. While I certainly don't like it, I have learned to live with it and to deal with all of it's ups and downs because what else can I do? It's not going anywhere.

Today Janelle woke up with a blood sugar of 463 and was clearly not feeling well. Great. This day has "potential disaster" written all over it.

I spent the entire day trying to bring down her blood sugar. It took until 2:30 pm to get it below 200 (179 to be exact).

At this point I was finally able to do a site change since my students were gone and my classroom was empty. In my rush to get the new site in, I must have forgotten to pull back the inset because when I placed it on her little tushie she screamed! More than the usual scream.

Yep. I had stuck the needle right in there. I'm such a bad D Mommy. I felt horrible, to say the least. So our spare site change was ruined. Had to disconnect until we got home. Blood sugar upon arrival at home = 269.

I hate diabetes today.

Noah's Ark

Of all the things I have crocheted in my life, the Noah's Ark blanket is probably one of my favorites!

One day while on ravelry.com (one of my favorite websites of all time), I saw this blanket. I loved it! Who wouldn't? It's adorable!

I found out where to get the pattern and ordered it, not knowing if I would even be able to make the darn thing! It looked pretty complicated.

The pattern came and it sat there for months until I finally got up the courage to give it a try. It was actually pretty easy!

The first one I made I gave to a friend for her baby shower. She was actually doing a Noah's Ark theme so it came in pretty handy! Then a couple weeks ago a friend of mine asked if she could buy one for her sister in law who is having a baby. So I got to make another one!

The blanket is actually pretty easy to make. It took me about a day and a half to do the blanket and about another 7 hours to make the animals and sew them on (the most tedious part of the whole thing).

So here is yet another blanket under my belt!

Almost there!

It's all done!

Last Ditch Effort

Having this blog out there in blogger land and knowing that I'm doing nothing with it is driving me a little crazy!

I can't seem to keep up with it, yet I also can't seem to let it go!

Here are my reasons for not writing on a regular basis.

1. I have no time.

2. I suck at writing.

3. Do I really have anything interesting to say or stories to tell?

4. Is there really a point? Is anyone really reading it anyway (besides Wendy ;-P)?

So before I abandon ship I thought I'd give it one more try. But instead of trying to keep up this blog AND my other blog, which is dedicated to all things yarny, I am just going to manage this one and let the other one go.

This blog will consist of anything and everything I am passionate about. My family, my friends, crocheting, cooking and teaching.

So if you have been following my blog, thanks and stay tuned!