January in a Nutshell

We came back from Grammy and Pop's house on New Year's Eve and made it home just in time to enjoy some fireworks. We didn't do very many fireworks at our house, but we were able to enjoy a huge fireworks show down at our neighbor's house! It was crazy big and I felt like we were watching a professional show. 

Our winter garden was incredibly plentiful this year and we were able to enjoy lots of yummy spinach and mustard greens. Unfortunately, our cabbage took FOREVER to grow so we didn't get enjoy one from our garden for New Year's. We've already made plans to plant them earlier next year. 

I picked mustard greens about once a week and really enjoyed cooking them and putting them away in our freezer. They taste so much better than the ones you get out of a can from the grocery store. I take so much pride knowing that our food comes from our garden and I control all the ingredients that go in it. 

Grandpa E ordered Eli a really cool robotics kit for Christmas and it arrived a couple of weeks into January. He and I stayed up late one night building different models. It's going to be lots of fun for him because he loves building things and the kid can follow instructions like a pro.

The cold weather made trips to the local coffee shop to get hot chocolate a must. Eli and I enjoyed a hot chocolate date there one cold January afternoon. We played checkers and had lots of fun spending time together.

Eli is really good at checkers and this was the face I got after he triple jumped me. I'd love to say that I "let him win" but he definitely was paying better attention than me and earned that triple jump fair and square. It's a good thing he's cute :)

Our school days were filled with lots of fun activities. One of my students asked Santa for a corn snake for Christmas and Santa delivered. She begged me to let her bring him to school and I agreed. It was fun getting to see her tell my other students all about her corn snake. We took turns holding him and even got to watch him eat poor baby mice. Circle of Life, right? After school was over, Eli came to my room and he was so excited to be able to hold a real live snake. We had a big talk about how he was not allowed to do this with any snake he happened to see at home. 

Our whole school celebrated the 100th Day of School and Sarah and I documented that we had survived 100 days in fourth grade. Neither one of us could have planned how we ended up together again but we are both so incredibly thankful. This year in the fourth grade has been such a wonderful blessing! 

When Eli got to my room that afternoon after celebrating the 100th Day of School he was sporting some really cool glasses. It's hard to believe that this cute little boy will be in the 1st grade next year! 

That was our January in a nutshell. 2015 was getting off to a great start and we couldn't wait to make more memories! (Just in case you were wondering, I created our usual "End of the Year slideshow" for 2014, but iMovie isn't cooperating with me at the moment so I haven't been able to upload it...hopefully soon!)