December 18th

This last Friday was our last day of school before Christmas break. It's a day that is becoming more and more funny as time goes on.

I had two of my students, M and K, come to the house after our half day of school to watch the kids so I could return to school for staff development meetings and to clean up before break.

When I came home from my long afternoon away, both kids (Kate and Ethan) were sitting happily in their respective chairs, enjoying some very chocolatey cookies. M was washing dishes and K had straightened up the entire house. They had made cookies (although there appeared to be no recipe, and I'm not sure where they got the chocolate chips).

I insisted the girls let me finish washing the dishes, and I marveled out loud at how impressive it was that they were able to clean up the entire house AND bake cookies while the kids took their naps.

When the girls left, I attempted to finish washing the dishes, only to find the pan that they used sitting on the bottom of the dirty dishwater covered with half an inch of baked cookie dough (really stuck). I laughed about it and saved it to show Tim later on.

Since then, I discovered that the girls were also able to reorganize my pantry, and yesterday when I was baking egg casserole for dinner, realized that their cookies must have spilled over in the oven, because there was a funny smell and some smoke. It all came back to me that K and M had mentioned that they had opened a window and lit a candle while I was gone, but I had blocked that out in my amazement at all the wonderful things they had accomplished in my absence.

No worries on the oven thing; it only smoked for 20 minutes or so and then the cookie dough must have baked off. Darn wasted cookie dough.

It's Christmas Break now!