Friday Fragments

Linking up with Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin' Time!
~  Last week (or maybe the week before), Joyce asked about having guests over the holidays.  I didn't think we were going to have any, but MS brought home a guest:

So much for my "no rodents in the house" rule.  Pepper checks the room about 10 times/day to see if it's still there.

~  Sunday, the company CH works for had their Christmas Party.  They rotate between an adult party and a family party; this year was the family party.  We had lunch at a restaurant on the river, then a train ride in a coal train.  There was a painted bear right before we boarded, and there were decorations in all of the little nooks & crannies:

~  On Monday & Tuesday, my students made these cute little candy canes while they were working on their targets:

I can't take the credit for the idea, although I can't believe I didn't think of this myself!

~  Wednesday, I saw this as I was walking into school:

Cute, huh?  One of my students came to Speech with this:

~  One of my students told me that I was the best Speech Teacher in the whole world.  He should know...he's had 3 of them and he's only in 1st grade!  I told him that was the best Christmas Present I could ever ask for.

~ Yesterday was the blood drive for our SRO who is undergoing treatments for leukemia.  We have a lot of rejects at one of my schools, thankfully I wasn't one of them!  And, as an added bonus, we were given a choice to decline the t-shirt and donate 9 meals to Second Harvest Food Bank instead!  So, the SRO and the community wins!

~Today's prompt for Susan's Photo Challenge is "Hippopotamus".  Let me just say this:  I have an awesome group of teachers that I work with.  Teachers who don't question why your asking if they have hippos, they just give you not one, but three: 

Mission accomplished!