Productive Weekend- Day 26

Good morning!

It's been a few days :) On Thursday night we celebrated Eric's mom's birthday...



Too bad her oldest son is a bit of a brat... he got his mom trick candles :)





And notice how happy Eric is about it. Haha. Don't worry though, we did get her the Captain Zoom Cheryl song, so she didn't have to miss out on her favorite birthday song :)



This weekend began with some delicious apple crisp...



and continued to with beautiful Christmas decorations everywhere we went...















Last night for dinner we went to Dante, which is a delicious Italian restaurant in the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge. I love hotel Christmas decorations...















If you live in the Boston area and haven't been to Dante you should. The food is amazing and the view into Boston over the Charles River really cannot be beat. Unfortunately I did try to take a picture but it didn't really work with all the lights and the glass :)



Anyway, the rest of the weekend so far was spent Christmas shopping. Yesterday I got Eric's present, some books for the boy I tutor, presents for my classroom assistants and I ordered the "event gift" for my family. Eric and I also did some serious wrapping last night. Most of what I have left to do is finish organizing our present for Eric's family, stocking stuffers for Eric and that's about it. I started early this year and the event gifts thing definitely makes things easier. I don't think it was necessarily a money saver, but it takes a lot less time (time is money right?) and I think they will remember the present for longer because it's going to be a memory instead of another thing. I hope so anyways!



Speaking of family, day 26 of the blog challenge is supposed to be a picture of my family... this may sound simple but apparently it's more complicated than I thought. On Friday I was starting my Family Traditions journal with my kiddos and on the first page the kids were supposed to draw a picture of their family. I wanted to show them a model but I also wanted it to go quick because they had already been sitting for awhile and with kindergartners, the less sitting the better. So I drew a really fast picture of me and Eric and I said, "ok that's my family!" Silly me I thought I could get away with drawing what is now just my immediate family. Wrong! All of a sudden my child with autism starts yelling, "JAKE! JAKE! WHAT ABOUT JAKE! DON'T FORGET JAKE!" haha, so I had to add my mom, dad, sister and brother before he would be satisfied. Fortunately he did not think of Eric's family that is also my family or we would've been there all day with me trying to draw everyone in the tiny box! So, my student approved family pictures:

Family 1:





Family 2:





Family 3:





Hopefully I didn't forget anyone or I will face the wrath of the 6 year old :)



Now I must go clean my house and then head to yoga & lunch with the birthday girl (actually her birthday was technically yesterday but why not get a whole weekend of fun?)



As I ask my students every Monday morning, what was the BEST thing you did this weekend?