I miss coffee.

My relationship with coffee began senior year of high school. Caileen and I would stop at Starbucks on the way to school for frappes and mochas. It continued throughout college and when I first began teaching. However, when I started having problems with my tummy, I learned that coffee was hard on your stomach so I stopped drinking it. I switched to green tea but then came to find out caffeine in general was doing me no favors. It has been almost a year and a half since I last had coffee or tea with caffeine in it.

Most days I don't mind. Some days I even like it because its nice to be able to wake up and go, not worrying about making coffee or stopping somewhere to blow $3+ on a coffee. However, today- when I was at school around 6:30 am, and I will be back at school at 7 tonight (I lied last night when I said 8, it was 8 last year but this year I am on at 7, yay! we switch every year the K-2 teachers do one time and the 3 & 4 teachers do another time- this way no one has to be late every year). Still, 7 is not early for me and last night when I was half falling asleep on my couch at 7:30 I was thinking- wow I'll be talking in front of a group of parents at this time tomorrow night whoa hoo. My goal is to get home before 9 tonight. Even with the earlier night this year I'm sure I'll still be exhausted the rest of the week. However, it has to be better than last year where my principal actually had to kick one of my parents out of the building because she would not stop talking to me and my principal was literally CLOSING the building. Ridiculous. Anyway, I miss coffee today. Also it's hot and humid out, my hair is SO frizzy and I don't have time to shower (and dry hair) before going back so...here's to a frizzy haired teacher...Mrs. Frizzle haha.

Anyway, this week at school is PACK week and I thought you guys would be interested. During PACK week, the kids are encouraged to pack fruits and vegetables of different colors all week. The point is to get them to try new foods and consider bringing new foods to school so they can have healthy snacks and lunches. Monday was purple day so some kids brought grapes, raisins, dried cherries, blueberries etc. You could also eat eggplant on purple day, but nobody brought it :) Yesterday was white day so I had to open about 15 bananas at snack, but I will say at least that is a healthy snack I don't mind opening! One girl even brought cauliflower.

Today was red day, so there were LOTS of apples (I brought an apple I admit it), some cherries, and even red peppers. Tomorrow is orange and yellow day so I am going to bring some of my cooked carrots, but most squashes would fall into these categories too and I eat a good amount of summer squash and butternut squash around this time of year. Friday is the easiest as far as veggies are concerned because it is Green Day!

I am very impressed with how into it my kids and parents have gotten this year. One of my friends from work and I are teaching an extra curric class started in October this year called "Fit and Fun." We wanted to do an active activity and provide a healthy snack, but snacks are not allowed because of food allergies. The parents didn't want us to give up the idea of healthy snacks completely so we are still going to provide ideas for parents. We are hoping to go with the different colors like we did during pack week but add some whole snack ideas such as ants on a log (celery with peanut butter and raisins on top) and other fun kid favorites to make snack time more fun and healthy. If you have any fun and healthy kids snack ideas, send them my way! I promise to post all the ideas we come up with. They will be great if you have kids and even if you don't, lets be honest, we can all eat some kid foods now and then!