Our gifts to each other

Robin and I didn't want to spend a lot of money this year so we both told each other that we didn't need to get each other gifts for Valentine's Day. I knew that I wanted to get Robin something to at least show her that I was thinking about her. Before leaving for school I decided that I would make her some paper hearts with love notes on them and buy her a couple of healthy snacks and leave them in her van while she was at work. I grabbed the extra set of keys so I could unlock the van while she was teaching and put the stuff inside.
At about 10 o'clock I told my principal that I was going to leave for a few minutes to put the surprises in Robin's van. As I opened my door to get into my car, what do I find? A bag of surprises from Robin! I had to laugh out loud. I guess either we both know each other way too well, or great minds think alike!

Our Valentine's Morning

For breakfast we had strawberry shortcake.

Olivia is all ready to go to preschool with her box.

Happy Valentine's Day

Olivia has been very excited about Valentines Day. She has been making cards and talking about it for over a week. This morning as we were getting ready for work, Olivia pauses for a second and then asks Robin, "Mommy, are you happy?" Robin says, "Yes. Why?" Olivia matter-of-factly informs Robin that "You have to be happy today because it's Valentines Day and the cards say 'Happy Valentines Day'." We think she is so funny. I'll post some pictures in a few minutes.

Picky Eater

Garrett is such a picky eater. He won't hardly eat anything. You wouldn't think that he would weigh over 30 lbs. I am now buying him 3T clothes. Yesterday I found something that he liked. I made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. I gave him some. I always try to give him food we eat but he never wants it. He usually spits it and says, "Yuck" He actually ate the whole sandwich. We cheered the entire time he ate his dinner.
Here is what he likes to eat.
Pizza
Crackers and pretzels
Cereal
Apples
Bananas
Yogurt
French Fries
Anything Sweet like ice cream or candy
He loves to drink milk.

*Any suggestions on how to get him to eat more types of food?

Who?

Who likes to wear necklaces?
Who likes to sleep with a baby?
Who likes to get toenails painted?
Who likes to play with doll houses?

Need more clues?

Who likes to read books?
Who likes cars?
Who likes balls?
Who likes puppies?

Garrett-That's Who!!
(The joys of having an older sister who loves all these things too.)

Little Scrapbooker

Olivia got a disposal camera for her birthday. She took all the pictures in one day. In January we started to scrapbook together once a week. Olivia and I do "projects" together. I take my pictures and she takes her pictures and any pictures that I give her from my stack and we work together. We do this while Jere is still at work and Garrett is down for his nap. I have even let her do a couple of pages that I put in my albums. She actually does a pretty good job. She is so creative. Plus this gives me time to work on my scrapbooks which I wasn't finding time to do before and it gives us some good mommy-daugther time together. I may need to go and do some scrapbook shopping so she can have her own stickers and papers.
Yesterday she called me the best mommy in the world because we do "ojects" together and she loves "ojects". She can't say the pr sound very well.

Snack Attack

Robin had the yummy idea to make cookies for a family home evening treat. Of course the kids had to help. I was helpful too -- notice how I'm taking pictures. :)


Robin makes the best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. For our sakes, Robin gave a lot of them away to her visiting teaching families.

Trying to Move On

We heard from the other positon that Jeremy applied for. We got a letter in the mail and it said that Jeremy was not considered for an interview for this job. : ( We don't really understand but I guess it was not for meant for him to be a principal in this district next year. We are now activitely looking for a job outside of our district and our state. Nathan and Emily have both given us leads.
We are trying to stay postitive and not be so negative. This is a hard thing to do but it doesn't really do us much good to have self-pity parties and get angry. IT doesn't accomplish anything and just makes us feel more lousy.

So if anyone else has any leads we would love to hear them!!!

Disappointment

We finally heard that Jeremy will not be getting a call back interview. It has been a hard couple of days and we are really disappointed, a little sad, and a little angry and little discouraged. (Needless to say we haven't done well on our diets these past couple of days) We really thought that he had a chance. He still has an application in for an assistant principal in a junior high that they haven't done interviews for yet. Maybe something will come of that. We are trying not to get our hopes up to high like last time. Now we just need to decide what to do next. We are even considering applying out of Utah but that probably won't happen until next year. We will wait and see!

Build-A-Bear

Olivia went to a birthday part this week. For the party the mom took them to Build-A-Bear. This is a store that allowes you to create your own bear, pick out it's clothes, and give it a name. Olivia thought that this was a great party. She loved making the bear and has talked about nothing else for the rest of the week. I haven't been to this store before but it sure sounds like they had a lot of fun. The mom liked it because she didn't have to plan party games and get party favors because each girl got to take home their own bear. Do you want to know what she named her bear? She named it Emily, after my sister. : ) I thought that was really cute. Now she doesn't want to go anywhere without her bear.

Don't eat the yellow snow

We were having a faculty meeting after school today. Teachers were sitting in groups at tables. They were all busy talking about their students. One teacher looked out the window and exclaimed, "What is that kid doing?!" About 15 feet away was one of our students (who must have been waiting for his ride) relieving his bladder on a pile of snow. It was quite the show!

Update

We had fun playing in the snow this morning. The weather was perfect and the kids sure had fun. I lost my wedding ring somewhere while we were out there.
Also, I haven't heard any official news about my job interview. Some "unofficial" people have told me that I won't be getting a callback interview, but we're still waiting for official news. We'll keep you posted.

Garrett's Birthday

We had a small party today for Garrett. We had invited a couple of friends over, but Olivia's had a 102 degree fever so we told everyone they probably better not come. We had pizza then we opened presents. After Garrett played with his toys for a while we had a train cake. We decided to eat the ice cream later.

Garrett got a bunch of drawings from Olivia as well as a bag of pretzels and animal crackers, and a shake and go race car. We got Garrett a Little People car garage. Vickie sent us $20 that we will spend well. Violet got Garrett a Fisher Price fire truck that he really likes. Our neighbor Kindra got him a box of graham cracker sticks and a new car. Emily sent a McDonald's gift card.

We also want to thank Robin's parents, Emily, and my parents for the thoughtful birthday cards. We appreciate you all.

Here are some pictures:

Exciting news

For those of you who aren't checking the forum (forums.brunnerfamily.org), you may not know that I had an interview today. I applied for an Elementary Principal position in my current district. I guess over 30 people applied and I was one of the 15 who got called in for an interview. The rumor also says they're trying to fill 10 positions. That's a crazy high number so we're not buying much into the rumor.

I'm not sure how the interview went. I was totally surprised by most of the questions. I gave decent answers, but wasn't as confident as I was hoping I would be. The cool thing was that one of the people on the selection committee is the main secretary from my school and she has commented in the past that I will make a great principal and that I have made this school year run much better than years past. I hope she'll be pulling for me. I'll talk to her again on Tuesday and should hear from the district for sure sometime next week. Keep me in your prayers. Thanks!

Kylene-The New Sitter

I had to get a new sitter. I feel very blessed that I was able to find Kylene. She is the PTA president at my school and she was looking to babysit a few more kids. With my two there it is a total of six but that is just on Wednesdays and 4 the other days. She is the nicest lady. She has a good routine set. They come and first thing watch a little bit of T.V. Then they go downstairs to play with toys. Afterwards they come up and do puzzles and stories. Then she fixes them lunch. After lunch they can play with toys or draw. I drop them off at 8:20 and pick them up at 12:30. I like that she is so close to the school so now they are at the sitter less time. Garrett seems so happy there. As soon as we get there, Kylene immediatel starts to talk to him and Olivia and gets toys to distract him so he isn't sad when I leave. He hasn't cried once when I left. He is so happy when I pick him up and Olivia loves being the oldest one there to be the "helper." When I arrive they both run to the door and to give me a hug. This of course makes my day. I love my kids very much and it gives me peace of mind to know that they are somewhere safe and that they are happy. The funny thing on Wednesday's she keeps my neighbor's kids. I didn't even know this when I asked her to do this for me. Everyone I talk to about her only has the nicest things to say.