Teacher Appreciation Day 4

Today's gift is a yogurt parfait from McDonalds!

I love these little treats.

 They are healthy and will give the teachers a nice little protein boost when they begin to wear out as the week comes to an end. 

I will drop them off in the front office in the morning to be delivered to their classrooms.

Teacher Appreciation Day 3

 Today's gift: a set of chalkboard looking thank you cards!

 

I found these 8 packs of cards and pink envelopes in the dollar spot at Target...but they only had 3 and I needed 5 sets.

SO...I opened them and broke them down into personal sets with ribbon.

 Then I added a Wendy's Frosty key tag to them.

 For $1, you can purchase a frosty key tag and receive a free junior frosty with any purchase between now and the end of the year. Plus, all the proceeds go to The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption which is one of our favorite organizations...helping hard to place foster kids find forever families.

There you have it...another adorable gift for a teacher for less than $2 a gift, plus you are helping out a wonderful charity!

And might I suggest Wendy's apple chicken pecan salad while you are there, cause that thing ROCKS!

Teacher Appreciation Day 2

 Today's gift is a chocolate bar.
 I happened to first see this FREE wrapper off of this blog:

The Celebrationshoppe.com is one of my favorite bloggers!

She created this PDF that you can download and personalize with your teachers and child's name for free!!!

Aren't they the cutest thing ever?

"Thank you for raising the bar!"

 I love it!

SO I printed mine all out...although I was disappointed that the colors were not as vibrant and pretty on my printer. For Vivi's teachers (ten in the whole preschool), I will send the PDF to Office Max and have them print them and they will look much better.

Anyway...so then I was at Walgreens and they happened to have Hershey bars 4 for $1.

That is 25 cents a piece, people!!

I asked the cashier why the bars were so cheap and she said they had ordered an abundance of boxes and needed to move them. I said, that works great for me, cause I need sixteen bars!

 

So today I sent in the boys bars to their teachers as our Day 2 of Teacher Appreciation Week gift.

I don't think they will mind the weird colors as much as I do!

Teacher Appreciation Week

 

This is Teacher Appreciation Week at the boys' school.

Jayden has two teachers and two aides.

Isaac has one teacher.

Everyday the teachers will receive from us a gift, and I will share them here!

Today's gift is this personal popcorn bucket.

 I found the buckets and mini Air Heads candy in the dollar spot at Target.

Then I bought mini cans of Coke (on sale), an 8 pack of Reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of individual serving size microwave popcorn (also on sale).

 I already had yellow crinkles from Dollar Tree to look like popcorn coming out.

 I added a tulle ribbon, and after completing 6 popcorn gifts...

(I had extra stuff so I went back and picked up another bucket for a teacher friend of ours)

My total came to only $3 a teacher gift!!

It even surprised ME how low that was.

Stay tuned this week for 4 more gift ideas. :)

Random

 Last week we had some visitors! I love how Oscar has his paw on Jarrett's lap...like,

 "look who's here, Mom!!!"

 Paige and Jarrett pulled up in Paige's new digs, and we surprised Isaac by picking him up at noon at school and taking him with us to the Olive Garden.

 Yes, that is her ACTUAL license number. Love it!

Although she said it does attract creepers who drive up to stare at her.

I can imagine it would...LOL...

 They have gotten SO big. When I first became their Nanny, they were 4 years and 3 months old!

And by the end of this year they will be 16 and 12. Yikes.

 

Here is a pretty little picture of Vivi before school one morning.

I did her hair in an updo with sparkly barrettes and she wore a very girly dress her Aunt sent her for her birthday.

And finally...

Billy and I celebrated our 9 year anniversary on May 3rd.

Tonight we will go out for Fondue which is something we only do every few years.

 Billy gave me red roses as he always does...

the flowers I carried in my bouquet down the aisle.

And in the BIGGEST news yet...we got our tax return which included TWO adoptions last year both of which we were awarded the full deduction. SO you can imagine how nice of a check Uncle Sam forked over for us! We were able to pay off the $10,000 loan we took out for Jasmine's adoption fees and ALL credit card debt after 9 years which is amazing because in full disclosure...ya'll have read my budgeting posts before so we are friends, right?...well, at one time we had close to $25,000 in credit card debt. Most of which happened when I quit working and we had 2 kids and then lost our house sale and had to pay a 2 bedroom apartment rental fee and mortgage for a whole summer. Wow that set us back. But NO more! God has been faithful to us and our discipline to stay on budget for 5 years now. We will be able to purchase some much needed things over the coming weeks and months along with giving to several areas that I have been praying about AND go to our favorite summer spot, Pensacola Beach! Praise God that our many years of sacrificing have paid off to have us 9 years happily married with FOUR children and still making stay at home motherhood a priority.

Thank you, Jesus. :)

Sooner or later I will feel up to blogging again, right? I mean this thing is my BABY!! 

Right now I am treading water and trying to keep my head up for oxygen.
I haven't even been taking pictures much! *GASP!*

But I will have a couple of things to share this weekend.

And next week is Teacher Appreciation Week at the boys school, so I will be sharing all my ideas for that starting Monday. That gives us all something to look forward to, right?

Thank you loyal followers for hanging with me during this difficult time.