Ready or not... Christmas is coming.

This year lets open peace for Christmas.

This year lets be gentler to those around us.

This Christmas lets remember those we lost and realize everyday that another Christmas isn't a guarantee.

This Christmas lets put down some of our new electronics and break out a board game.

This year lets make a vow to treat others the way we would like to be treated. Lets he more gracious. Lets be more forgiving. Lets be more understanding.

This Christmas lets make friends and forget wrong doings lets elementary students.

This year lets be the friend we'd like to have.

This year lets teach our kids that violence is never the answer.

This year lets open some peace.

Whether we are friends IRL or just the blogspere, my wish for you is that the blessings of Christmas last throughout the year.

Be a blessing.

Good can over come evil.

Merry Christmas, my friends.

Let me start this post by saying that there isn't a school employee anywhere that didn't have a difficult time going back to work this week.

That being said, elementary kids are capable of making you focus on all that is good. All that is positive.

Here's what I learned this week.

Making cookies will cheer you up. We have a kindergarten class who is buddies with a third grade class and this week they had a Christmas cookie baking party. They learned things like how to break eggs and read recipes. I had the pleasure of baking them. Some of those little kids never made a cookie before and they saw the pure magic in such a simple thing. It was awesome.

Even the garbage disposal looks pretty at Christmas. With all the fresh fruits and vegetables that we are required to serve we often end up with beautiful trash.

It's possible to have never seen Rudolph. A kindergartener animatedly told our janitor about the movie he was watching in class and how he just couldn't wait to find out tommorrow what happened to the "willy scary snowman".

Where is the chocolate milk? The cafeteria ran out of chocolate milk on Friday which actually resulted in giant tears from some if its customers. This never ceases to amaze me and I believe is a direct result of being shielded from all of life's little disappointments. There was white milk...there was juice... There was even fruit Slushies. But life remains unfair because there is no chocolate milk. Sigh.

Merry thanksgiving! We were showered with tons of holiday greetings on Friday from Happy Holidays to Merry Kissmass. But my favorite was a kindergartener who wished us a Merry Thanksgiving to which we replied have a great Fourth of July!!

The lunch ladies are now on a much deserved holiday break.

Wishing you a Merry Thanksgiving Kissmass and a Happy New Year!!

Dear spammers and other assholes,

For some reason, my blog has been attracting alot of annoynomous comments lately all with links to porn sites.

Awesome (insert sarcasm font)

I'm trying to figure out why. Is it because I made a joke about mixing peas with corn and calling it porn?

Um... Maybe it was all that talk about God in the last post.

Probably not.

If there's a Lunchlady market on that I am soooo not interested in learning more about.

In short, because of spammers and assholes I had to turn on my word verification AGAIN.

Can't we all just treat each other the way we would like to be treated??

Everyday, at school, I listen to our elementary kids recite what we call the ilearn pledge. It goes something like this:

In order to learn...

I will follow directions the first time they are given.

I will accept the differences in others and treat others as I want to be treated.

I will do my part to keep my school orderly, safe, and clean.

I will be responsible for myself. No one else is responsible for my actions.

We should all strive to be more like elementary kids.

For the handful of you that comment, sorry about the verification. I know it's a pain.

When tragic events happen at our schools, people start grasping hopelessly for answers. The religious blame the non-religious and the law abiding gun owners blame the crazies.

You hear the same rhetoric over and over and over again. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." "Dear God, why didn't you save our school children?" His reply,"I'm not allowed in schools."

That couldn't be farther from the truth.

I see God everyday.

I see him in the faces of the kindergarteners the first week they are there when everything is amazing and such a grand adventure.

I hear him reading for the first time in a childlike voice.

I see him when I watch as a group of students stop to help another student pick up each individual pea they dropped when they accidentally dumped their tray.

I feel him in every hug I get from little arms telling me they "wuv" it when I serve breakfast for lunch.

I see him when I watch an aide walking hand in hand with a child who has scraped his knee and won't feel better until he has a bandaid.

I see him in the teacher's face as she comforts a student who has stained a loss, be that a grandparent, a parent or a pet.

I see him in my principal when she accompanies a scared child who just had a seizure to the hospital in an ambulance.

I know he's there when a watch a gaggle of little girls getting off the bus and coming to breakfast holding hands.

And he was most definitely there when Dawn Hochsprung, the principal at Sandy Hook attempted to stop the heartless gun man who invaded HER school. If she is anything at all like my principal, she didn't stop trying until she took her last breath.

He was there with that little boy who offered to lead his class and his teacher to safety because he knew karate.

He was there with all of those students and teachers, the ones who died and the ones who survived.

He was there with the janitor, who risked his own life to warn others.

He was there with the "good guys", the men and women who had to see that destruction first hand. Who had the foresight to tell those little ones to close their eyes as they led them to safety.

Why he didn't stop it completely, I do not know.

If I'm being truthful, the entire event makes me question him. It makes me doubt he truly has a plan. It makes me wonder if he's real. And it makes me ANGRY!

And that's okay. It's okay to be angry with God.

But it is not okay to spew the same arguments back and forth. We must take action. We must admit to ourselves that owning assault weapons is not exactly what our forefathers meant when they said we had a right to bear arms.

We must come to the realization that guns do, indeed, kill. That Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock was right when he said, "Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it."

There are more gun dealers in American than there are McDonalds basically ensuring that crazy can get a gun if crazy wants one.

How do we stop it?

How do we keep our children safe?

I wish I knew.

First let me just say that my heart is still breaking due to the events that occurred in Connecticut yesterday. As an elementary school employee, I am shaken to the core that someone could be so heartless.

That being said, I want to remember the kiddos that made me laugh this week. The kiddos that remind me every day to try and find the good.

Here's a little bit of the good.

You can't bring your dead fish to breakfast no matter how much you love him. I'd like to believe that I'm somewhat hard to surprise. When students ask me if I wanna see what they have in their pockets, I'm game. However, when a third grader brought in a dead fish on Monday, I have to admit I was a little taken back. Because we aren't found of making people throw out their "friends", we let him "store" his fish in a tightly sealed bag in the nurse's fridge.

What do you mean there's no holiday treat? I learned this week that asking the day before the holiday meal what the holiday treat is may result in learning you were supposed to order one. Craptastic! Thankful, ice cream can still be ordered one day before! That was lucky.

Hey Miss Wendy! There's a squirrel in my pants! After the fish, I was a little scared to look. Thankfully, he just had a bad case of the wiggles.

You can't walk around without your pants no matter how hot you get. When the nurse noticed a student in a pair of tights and a tshirt she stopped her and said, "Aren't you supposed to be wearing pants?" Student: "I was gettin' hot so I put them in my backpack." Nurse: "You're gonna need to put them back on. Lets go get them." Goodness I just love kindergarteners.

Have you seen my pink hat? Every day for the last week as we lunch ladies are finishing up our lunch with the custodian and the principal, a little girl approaches and reminds us that she still has not found her pink hat. "Is it light pink or dark pink?" I asked. "It's more of a magenta," she replies. Oy vey. Well played, my friend. Well played.

Just sharing a silly Christmas stamp I just got. Love, love, love that he's wearing an ugly Christmas sweater.

I wish I had more time but alas... I don't.

I have to be honest. This week was LooooooooNnnnggggg. I didn't think it would ever end.

Here's what I learned.

FRENCH TOAST LOOKS LIKE CAKE. Confused by the three French toast sticks on his tray one of my favorite little first graders asked my coworker, "Awe we hafin' cake?"

FIFTEEN IS NOT EIGHTEEN. We had one of those math errors this week that makes you go "awe nuts" and causes you to run out of cheese stick Dunkers. It's a good thing elementary kids are pretty easy going and not THIS guy who lost his mind over a piece of cheese.

THERE'S CORN IN YOUR MASH POTATOE BOWL Would you like a cup of veggies? I'll have corn. Um...that's not a choice. Would you like veggies. Nah. I'll have corn.

VOMIT IN THE MORNING. It's not uncommon to have a puker come to breakfast. However it might surprise you to learn that kids are mostly indifferent to this. As adults, if the person we are dining with vomits on their plate, we would likely move away while politely asking if they are okay. Kids?? They just keep eating. Sometimes I actually have to tell them to move down away from the vomit.

STRAWBERRY MILK HAS RETURNED. For unknown reasons, the strawberry milk has been "missing" from my order for the last two weeks. The milkman didn't wanna talk about it. Today it returned to a few loud cheers from the students.

Maybe it just needed a vacation...

What did you learn this week??

Dear underwear designers,

What are you thinking???

I was looking for some new underwear for my 11 year old and let me just tell I AM NOT IMPRESSED?

What are your design meeting like?

Do you sit around and just think of Disney cartoons you can sell out too? What is wrong with (gasp) plain old white? Striped? Polka dots??

Let's just go over a few things that are inappropriate.

Hello Kitty.

Simply inappropriate. Especially if you put the words Hello Kitty on there anywhere. If your kid is older than 5 they shouldn't have kitties on their undies.

Lightsabers!!!

Just plain old lightsabers??? I mean why not weiner dogs, hot dogs and sausages???

These are children's underwear???

Can't we just go back to plaid? Heck, I'd settle for a solid color. I mean why do they have designs at age 11 anyway? It's not like my child is refusing to wear they have One Direction on them.

How about some simply polka dots???

What say you?

When it comes to Christmas presents, in my 40 years I have had some serious duds but we aren't talking about those today. Today we are talking about the most unusual.

For me, this question is simple. The answer is a set of cookbooks.

I know what you're thinking. How is that unusual? Let me finish. I recieved a set of three cookbooks from a dead person.

I was at the funeral of a longtime member of our church. While she was older, her death was still rather sudden and brought about quickly by the onset of thyroid cancer. Her family traveled from overseas to be there. Her ten year old grandson gave one of the most memorable eulogies I ever heard.

He spoke of a grandmother that he seldom saw but whom he knew loved him dearly. He shared many small things that she did that he would never forget from taking the time to mail him the smallest trinket to compiling and entire book of his writings.

His love for her filled the entire church.

I'm pretty sure everyone was crying.

After the funeral meal, as I was heading to the car, a tall slender woman said my name in the form of a question.

"Yes," I replied.

"I'm Caroline's daughter," she said, "My mom was your secret sister. I think she knew she wouldn't see the holiday. A gift from her, to you," she said handing me a wrapped package. "Happy Christmas."

It's been many years since Caroline's death and I still have those cookbooks.

A simple gesture from a dying woman.

What was the most unusual present you've ever recieved?

I'm trying to post some Christmas Crafts this month and a coworker graciously offered to do a guest post.

According to her, this is one simple craft. She is doing it with her entire class and the example features her own son's pic.

Basically, you need a plastic ornament, a picture mounted on some holiday paper and some of that fake crystal snow or glitter. Pour some snow in, plop the picture in and ta da...

What did you make this weekend?