Strawwwwberries

One of my wonderful teacher friends pulled out a Tupperware container at lunch yesterday that was filled with delicious-looking strawberries and blueberries. She was sharing with me how both were on sale at Food Lion this week and how tasty they were for February strawberries. I told her we had actually bought some (at Walmart on Saturday...we just can't stay away from that place, sadly) and we started discussing Valentine's week and fruit. I've never thought about it, but it is pretty strange that fresh fruit goes in to hiding all winter and magically appears just for Valentine's Day. Conspiracy? Probably. :)

Conspiracy or not, we have a beautiful container of strawberries and Jared mentioned how much he loves strawberry cake...it's one of his favorites! My best friend Pinterest and I searched for strawberry cake recipes, and we teamed up with Paula Deen to make a tasty strawberry cake, and the icing to go on it!

We had a short time frame to bake the cake. I got home from school and the grocery store, and we were headed out to dinner and praise band practice in the next hour and a half or so. Jared helped by cracking the eggs (confession: egg-cracking scares me) and measuring out a lot of the ingredients to make it go quicker.

My kids asked what I did after school yesterday and I said, "we baked a cake!" They asked if Jared helped and I said he did help, by doing most of the measuring. A girl said, "What? But you taught us how to measure - you're a teacher!" True story. I did. :)

We stuck the icing in the refrigerator and I iced the cake after practice. We had a healthy (I mean...it's fruit, right?) 9:00 strawberry cake snack. And it was awesome.

Find the recipe here!

Strawberry cream cheese icing goodness :)
Pictured in back, Yoplait yogurt is on sale at Food Lion right now - I bought orange cream for the first time ever.  Life-changing.

The cooling cake!

The recipe wanted you to buy everything sugar free, such as the jam and the gelatin. I couldn't find any sugar free anything (read: I didn't look very hard for sugar free ingredients) so we loaded it up with sugary ingredients. It wasn't that bad...until the 24 pounds of powdered sugar we put in the icing. All in good taste, of course!

The Sucker-dog Saga

What is a sucker-dog, you ask?

Something that only a very creative fourth grade class would invent!

We have a set of magnetic bars and balls that my kids like to play with during free time in our classroom. Way back in the fall, one of the girls put together several of these magnets in a shape that somewhat resembles a dog, and "sucker-dog" was born. Sucker-dog's nose is a magnet and he often finds himself in precarious predicaments involving magnetic objects, thus the species' name.

We had our indoor recess today after lunch and Sucker-dog made his usual appearance. She brought him over to my desk as I was working on papers and started telling me a story. It was so cute, I had to document it!

Sucker-dog wasn't really trying to come to my desk, but my binder caught him, naturally.

He left my binder, tragically losing his head in the process, but all was made right again and sucker dog made his way across the front of my desk, where he found my teacher's Bible manual.

Other student - "Wait, let me add a backdrop!"

Note the beautiful background scenery.

Sucker-dog survived the Bible book and needed some dog treats, of course!

And then he found my ID badge and key.

And then mean Mrs. Blair said, "Your half an hour is over!" and we did science. Us teachers - such kill-joys. 

My class this year cracks me up. We did science and then had a practice spelling bee. As we were getting ready to start the spelling bee, a student asked what I was doing after school. I said, "Zumba!" and that started us on the topic of Zumba stretches. We spent a good five minutes flailing about, "stretching," as one student all but rolled on the floor laughing. 

A teacher after school today was bragging on my class. She said, "you're so blessed to have such a wonderful class for your first year here!" So true - God is good!