Happiness is.....

Homemade rolls. Not just ANY homemade rolls. Mom's homemade rolls. There is very little in this world that is more delicious than mom's homemade carmel rolls. I remember waking up on Saturday mornings, lured to the kitchen with the mouthwatering scent of dough rising in the kitchen. Mom, of course, who had been up since 6:30 in the morning was slaving away, punching down the dough in the great big yellow bowl, cutting out a chunk, patting down flour on the table, rolling it out..... What followed next was a very "complex" process of buttering the dough just right, sprinkling just the perfect amount of sugar and cinnamon in the middle and rolling up that long piece of dough, cutting off the ends and evenly slicing it into 8 equal pieces. If you were patient enough to get to this point, the ugly end pieces that didn't fit in with the perfectly cut ones were yours to eat. If you were REALLY lucky, you got your own piece to roll out, butter and sprinkle for yourself. This memory will forever be stored in my bank as one of my childhood favorites. Thinking about it now, I don't even have the recipe in my own kitchen. I suppose that will be changing soon. It's high time we pass on this tradition to the Wolfswinkel Littles.
       For now however, we will welcome surprise pans of rolls in our van that required no slaving of our own. :)

So good. Sharing is not an option.

Spring Forecasts
Snow in November-Yes. Snow in December- better be. Snow in January-Duh. Snow in February-I can handle it. Snow in March- UNACCEPTABLE. As I'm typing this, I'm sitting inside my warm house on a Sunday morning looking out my window at the blizzard of sorts that is overtaking Hospers, IA.

 We are snowed in, and even though it's completely depressing that the snow is falling now as opposed to, I don't know, December when it should have fallen, I am enjoying the opportunity to sit with my clan of 5 in my big comfy chair, watching Beezus and Ramona, blogging, sipping my cup of coffee and watching my little men play cars and listening to them make up their own songs when they think no one is paying attention. That part is just heavenly. And I suppose bearable because this is in the forecast for next week.

Take that snow!

Lunch dates with special 2nd graders.
One of the things that second graders are expected to do at my school is read 10 books a month outside of school. We call it their yellow book, and the point is to encourage reading beyond the classroom setting as they get older. For some students, they take the challenge seriously, and not wanting their hard work to go unnoticed, I bargained that if any of my students read at least 30 books in any given month, I would take them out for lunch. One girl in particular, took the challenge and read 30 books in the month of February of all months. That's more than a book a night and in the shortest month of the year. Needless to say, I was one proud teacher. She chose a lunch date at Subway and it sure beat popcorn chicken and mashed potatoes in the school cafeteria. Way to go girlie!

Weekday Mornings
Our mornings are CRAZY here. We all love our sleep a little too much, and would rather sleep an extra couple of minutes than eat breakfast or apparently, stay sane, so our mornings are always rush, rush, rush. I know I've said it before, but those first three minutes are absolutely the best part of my morning. When my baby comes and cuddles with me, my heart just melts. It makes the rest of the morning of chaos well worth the effort.

Talk Time
We started a new tradition at bedtime in the Wolfswinkel household. It's called "Talk Time". I try to do it with each of my kids at least once a week, and they absolutely love it. We take 10 minutes and let them ask any questions they want. The questions have been about us when we were little and them when they were little. We want to encourage them to talk to us about things that are happening at school or things that they enjoy or things that bother them. I'm hoping to encourage an open relationship with my kids by doing this, and so far it's been a success. We added this to our bedtime arsenal of shadow puppets and heart checks. Bedtime is quickly becoming my favorite part of the day!

In other news, it's been a nice weekend over here. Friday night the guys had poker and so half of our lady clan sat around the house and watched two NW Iowa teams win their championship games. We followed it with One Tree Hill and lots of conversation and laughter while the kids played loudly in the basement. Saturday was busy, but good. It started off with Body Flow with a good friend, a baby shower, and finished off with evening at the Schelling household eating Taco Pie, making dream boards, playing cards and watching SNL.

I'm signing off. Comfy chairs and little people are calling my name! Happy Sunday!