I had so much fun recently rereading my LJ entries during last Christmas season, that I’ve decided to try and get as much stuff about this holiday down so that I can remember it as well as I remember last year’s.

Yesterday was our last day of school before Christmas break. As we’ve done for a number of years, we have Spirit of Giving Day. After students make donations to the Pleasant Hill Food Pantry (canned goods or $1) they can sign up for fun things to do during the school day. There are many activities and in my room, it’s Euchre & Card Games. As I love Euchre & other card games, I love hosting this for the high school kids. The first session was mostly seniors & juniors exchanging presents with each other. That was fun to watch. But the other sessions did have games going on. I played Sequence for the first time (a student brought it and Uno) and liked it. Must get that. Played a game of Uno with a group of sophomore & junior (and one senior) boys that looked as though it would never end. It did, right as the session ended. Watched folks play Phase 10 (which is similar to Shanghai Rum). Played spoons with a large group of sophomore girls (and one boy). Finally got to play some euchre, and finished off with a couple of Sequence games. Fun stuff, even if I usually didn’t win. 🙂

Lunch was Papa John’s pizza in the gym (along with some Chex Mix that the FCCLA made for me). And the day was finished with a Pep Assembly that wasn’t too horrible. Well, except for when the cheerleaders pitted 6 male teachers with 6 female teachers to do Pom Pom letters. The men were to spell out NHS with their pom poms. We women were to spell out RED. I kept explaining this to the other 5 women on our team. And they kept trying to make up some new cheer or other. And ended up with some “classic” called Watermelon. I just stood there looking frustrated (well, a bit of overacting for the audience – but yeah, it did annoy the anal retentive person within me) while they did what they weren’t supposed to, but ended up winning anyhoo. I thought the guys did a good job on their NHS, however. 🙂 One of the lady teachers later said “You know, if we’d been graded on a rubric instead of on style, we’d’ve lost.” Heh.

At 1pm, students were dismissed and it wasn’t long after that that our respective principals let us go too. Six of us teachers had plans for shopping and the early dismissal worked nicely into those plans. (The original plan had been to do this the previous Thursday, but the weather had other plans for us.) We all headed off to the Little Professor book store in Troy. I spent lots of money on my little cousins and got a hunk of my Christmas shopping done. Yay! Then onto a little boutique shop on the way to the square. I didn’t get anything there, but it was fun to look around. Once in downtown Troy we stopped in several shops. In the Amish furniture shop, I got more stuff to finish off everyone except Leo. Yay! The Bake House was also one of our stops, so I got a loaf of sourdough bread (sliced on their bread slicer – the coolest thing since, erm, sliced bread). Oh, and some filled croissants for breakfast. Yay!

We finished off our lovely evening at La Piazza, a nice Italian restaurant also in downtown Troy. The food, as always, was excellent. And the conversation with my 5 co-workers (or cow-orkers- a term I introduced to them much to their amusement) was very lively and funny. I really love the people I work with. There were only six of us who went this time, though we’d originally had more planned to go for the Thursday event. Perhaps we’ll get more together in another trip.

So my last day of work in 2005 was a grand day. Full of fun, friendships, and food. And that’s just the start to the holiday. Amy & Rachel are safely home as of 11:45am today. We’ve already had one family gathering and we’ve got more to come. I think I’ll have as much fun this year as last. 🙂