Tag: family

Overlooked Teacher Gadgets You Need for Setting Up Your Classroom
teaching

Overlooked Teacher Gadgets You Need for Setting Up Your Classroom

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You’re getting ready to set up your classroom. You’ll be sure to have a stapler, bulletin board border, and all of those cute and obvious items you need. As a veteran teacher, I want to share with you a few small overlooked items that make a huge difference! They make your life EASIER! I am also linking to my Instagram Stories so you can see them in action!

  1. This magnetic staple remover. It is so much better than the claw type. The claw version will tear up your border, paper and cute items! This removes the staple with minimal damage.
  2. Magnet wand. Have you ever found yourself on your hands and knees picking up stray staples? Have you ever swiped a bunch of staples into your hand only to be stuck by one? If you have, your wheels are already turning wondering why this item isn’t already in your life. This magnet wand is just what you need for picking up all those staples you remove from your bulletin boards.
  3. Putty knife. Need to scrape vinyl letters off your white board? This tool is your best friend. It makes quick work of the job so you can move on to something else. I use it for dozens of other small jobs around my room as well. Must have!
  4. Magnetic level. If you need to apply vinyl letters to a white board or any other magnetic item, this is priceless. They will go on straight, effortlessly.

Check out my Instagram Stories (“Teaching 2” Highlight) to see these gadgets in action in my own classroom. Follow me for more ideas!

These tools can make your job easier and help you be more efficient. If you appreciated this post, follow me on WordPress. You’ll be sure to get an email notification for future posts that way. Also check out my post, Master To Do List for Teachers Before Going Back to School. I am an Amazon Affiliate and can receive compensation for the items included in this post.

Saying Goodbye to a Car You Love
relatable

Saying Goodbye to a Car You Love

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The past few weeks I have tried imagining our life without my beloved Santa Fe, and I never imagined I would be this sad about giving up a vehicle.

I asked my family and close friends to help me understand why I was so depressed about giving up this car. I have even cried about it on more than one occasion. Instead of teasing me, they were so sympathetic and empathetic. They helped me see I wasn’t crazy or irrational. It leads me to believe that this may be more common than I had realized, perhaps even universal. There are several reasons for this, I think.

We live our life in our cars. My husband reminded me how many memories we’ve made and how many road trips we’ve been on. Our children have grown up in this car. They were age 4 and 8 when we got it, and we’ve had it for 7 years! I looked back at old photos of our kids and this car, and invoked even more tears.

My favorite memories are the vacations and beach trips we’ve taken. We’ve been to Charleston, Tybee Island, Florida, and Gulfport. We believe in enjoying the journey as much as the destination so seeing that rocket at the Tennessee Alabama state line, going to Bucee’s and grabbing a peach milkshake at Peach Park will long live in our memory banks.

The day to day errands and running the girls to all the things are equally memorable. We’ve been on Girl Scout camping trips, to Space Camp, soccer games, gymnastics, swim team, horse riding lessons, piano, guitar, and all of the other activities the girls have explored. We’ve taken car rides with the girls’ friends with the sunroof open singing Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen at the top of our lungs. The time spent in our cars with family and friends means so much, but so does the time we drive solo.

We spend so much time by ourselves in our cars. It has been a safe haven and a quiet space for me when life has been hard, but also such a place of joy as I have spent these 7 years exploring exactly who I want to be going forward in life. Going for a drive can be an escape. It can be therapeutic and even healing. I’ve had many a good cry, gotten frustrated with Siri for botching my voice-to-texts, and yelled at many a bad driver – if only they could hear what I’m saying!! Taking a drive by ourselves in the car can also just be downright fun. So much glorious daydreaming and the best music, cranked up loud.

I love all of the bougie features of my Santa Fe. I love my heated seats and steering wheel. I love my power everything, large and numerous cupholders, and I love the third row with the option to fold it down. Above all, I love my pano sunroof the most.

As days passed coming to terms with saying farewell to my beloved car, and I continued to feel sorrowful, I felt the need to write this in order to process all the feelings. I am reminded of the quote that goes “don’t cry because it’s over, be smile because it happened.”

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parenting

What are the Jones’s Getting for Christmas?

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Christmas carries so many amazing memories and traditions. In the past, it has been the most joyous time of year, especially when the girls were little and they could be delighted and content with the smallest and affordable items.

As they are getting older, bringing them the same amount of joy comes with a pretty high price tag – it just does. On a tight budget, I struggle with staying with in our means, and doing what I really want to do from the deepest part of my being: give them the things I know will make their hearts soar.

I went through a period where I felt I was unique this way. It seemed as though my friends and parents of my girls’ friends were not only providing their children with the things mine were asking for, but much more. Recently, as I’ve talked to other parents, they feel the same way I do!

I hear of children making Canva presentations of everything they want, hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of gift requests. And just yesterday, a friend posted on social that she had already bought for her child, and he presented her with a Santa letter listing totally different requests, none of which she had already purchased. One of the things he asked for was $1000! Social media seems to normalize overspending at Christmas.

I think where a lot of parents with younger children struggle is trying to keep the idea of Santa alive. I know I did. We wonder if our kids don’t get all they’ve asked for, especially in a Santa letter, will the magic stay alive? Will they still believe? And also the practical side of our brains that screams not only “no,” but “hell no!”

When I look back at gifts my girls have received over the years, and compare my excitement about their potential reaction to opening them to how they actually react, it’s almost always a letdown. Especially 2-3 days later. Gifts that I spent months planning and hundreds of dollars we didn’t have to spend – money that we sacrificed to hopefully put a smile on their face? Now they are items discarded in the corner ALREADY, not touched at all. Or opened and used but taken for granted.

Over time, I’ve tried to find a solution that keeps me in alignment with what I feel is right and reasonable, but bringing joy to my children at the holidays at the same time. Experiences as gifts is a good solution! Tangible items as gifts are kind of like buying a car. They lose value the second you pull out of the lot. Tangible gifts lose their joyfulness and importance with each day we possess the item. Experiences have sentimental value and give us memories that we treasure for a lifetime.

That is why this Christmas I don’t want a Santa letter or a Canva presentation. I’m not even looking at those. They can make them and use them as a list of items for them to save their money and purchase themselves. It’s good to have things that you want and hope for!

I will definitely be listening for ideas and looking for little items that I know will surprise and delight them! I love shopping for their stockings and it’s interesting that the small affordable stocking items always seem to bring bigger smiles than the high dollar gifts.

I will no longer be a parent who is a slave to the pressure of what the Joneses have or what the Joneses are getting for Christmas this year. I will no longer feel pressured to get all the things on my child’s wishlist in efforts to rescue them from a depression or to buy happiness. This never works anyways. My child very well may be literally the only one at her school who didn’t get the viral Nikes or Lululemon whatever, and you know what? She will be just fine.

Things to do in Fall in Middle Tennessee
adventures with kids · Tennessee · travel

Things to do in Fall in Middle Tennessee

Essentially Better Living1 Comment

One of the best things about living in Middle Tennessee is the beautiful fall foliage and all of the fall activities that we have to offer. I’ve put together a list of my very favorite things we love to do in the fall in the Tennessee-Kentucky area. We live in Clarksville,Tennessee, and we have a true color change if leaves that is beautiful and not to be missed so you can be sure that a lot of the items on the list are outdoors! Living less than an hour away from Nashville, many of our favorite fall activities are located there as well as some of the surrounding areas. We are also just a half hour away from the Kentucky state line so you’ll find some Kentucky locations made my list. I love living in Middle Tennessee in the fall! If we ever move, fall will be high on my list of things that I miss.

  • Go to a pumpkin patch! There are so many great ones. Gentry Farm, Lucky Ladd Farm, and Walden Farm are all wonderful.
  • Go to Cheekwood. The mums are breathtaking and the pumpkin displays are amazing. The pumpkin houses are so cute and make a great photo op.
  • Go on a hike. In Clarksville we love to go to Rotary Park, Dunbar Cave and Billy Dunlop Park. There are some cute trails near downtown Clarksville as well. In Nashville we love to hike at Radnor Lake.
  • Outside of Nashville there are so many great waterfall hikes such as Machine Falls and Burgess Falls. Late October and early November offer the best chance to see fall leaves.
  • Honeysuckle Hill Farm. This is a family favorite and a tradition that has so much to offer. There are hayrides, a “pumpkin patch,” mining for gemstones, awesome playground, in-ground bouncy trampoline, zipline, and so much more.
  • Boo at the Zoo. The Nashville Zoo is so much fun on a regular day, but they also do such an amazing job at creating this wonderful experience during the Halloween season.
  • Take a drive along Natchez Trace near Franklin, TN. The views of the fall foliage are stunning!
  • Go on a trail ride with Circle T Ranch! Located near Hopkinsville, KY, they offer a couple near Halloween that include a haunted hayride, and making s’mores and roasting hot dogs over the fire afterward.
  • Todd County Bale Trail. Some of the best things in life are free, and this is one of them. The bale trial is basically amazingly decorated hay bales that can be found throughout Todd County and has the feel of a scavenger hunt. Just print the hay bale map and enter the addresses into your GPS and away you go! This year there was an Inside Out them for several of the bales and they were adorable! While you’re in Todd County, make a day of it by checking out The Country Pantry and Schlabach’s, Guthrie’s Amish grocery and bakery! Or in downtown Elkton where many of the bales can be found, check out the soda shop or Hampton’s for the best burger and shake!

These are just a few of my favorite things to do Clarksville and surrounding areas! We are so blessed to live where we do with so many rich offerings of things to do and places to explore.

Why Are You Taking the Same Vacation Every Year?
travel with kids

Why Are You Taking the Same Vacation Every Year?

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Do you take the same vacation every year? If you answered yes, we did too, and probably for all of the same reasons we did: we loved going there. We also knew our way around, and knew exactly what to expect. We knew we would have a great time, and it was our happy place.

One beautiful spring day, I was sitting outside a coffee shop, enjoying my latte and working on a blog post. At the table next to me were two girls talking about the summer vacations they were planning. One was like me, planning her same favorite beach vacay, and the other said something I will never forget, and the title of this post, “why are you taking the same vacation every year?”

She went on to explain that she intentionally plans a different trip every year, and that there is a whole world to see. She asked her friend if she thought about exposing herself and her family to different places. She talked about how much fun it is to explore new places and to plan for each trip. She said how meaningful and enriching it was for her children to actually visit the places they had read about in their history books. She had fallen in love with adventure and trying new things. She then shared trip experience after trip experience, at which point she had me convinced.

I went home that day and announced to my family that we should start planning a trip somewhere new and different. I thought I would be met with resistance, but to my surprise they were excited. Since then we haven’t repeated a trip since except for one, where we visited our old faithful beach locale for nostalgia’s sake.

I’m not saying to never visit any place twice. And I also realize to some who already love to travel to new places, that all of this may sound obvious. But where I live, I assure you so many families travel to the same place every year, and I wonder if they will look back and feel they missed out. Will you? In a lifetime that is so fleeting, we want to live in a way that we have no regrets, and that we can feel we have lived it to the fullest.

If you take the same vacation every year, consider branching out and trying somewhere different. Ask yourself what you love about that place, and why it is so important you to go there specifically. For us it was partly for financial reasons. Where we loved going was affordable! But I have been pleasantly surprised to discover places all over the map that we now love just as much that are just as affordable and in some cases they even cost less.

My intention for writing this is not to convince anyone that going on the same vacation is wrong. I hope to go to our old favorite again soon, and wish we had the financial means to do both each year: to go somewhere new and to to our beloved beach town. My hope is that someone who has never considered going somewhere new would have their eyes opened to the possibility that they might love another place as much as their old standby.

After reading this, if you feel as convinced and compelled to go somewhere new as I did that day at the coffee shop, I would love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments where you decide to go.