New Pals and New Pencils!

Hey Friends!
First of all, THANK YOU for all the kind words about my mojo! You all are just too funny, sweet and kind, especially you, Louise for lighting a candle for me!! As a good Catholic girl, I've lit many candles in my day and just to know that someone thinks enough of me to light a candle? Well, that about melted my heart. And good news: my mojo seems to be back! Keep reading past my rambling travel log below for my last freebie of 2011! 2012's first freebie is also in the works ;0)

So, I've just returned from a few days away with the hubs. First we traveled up to Orlando to see Ice at the Gaylord Palms. If you ever have the chance to see it, don't pass it up. Carvers turn huge blocks of colored ice into amazing scenery and sculptures. They keep it at nine degrees inside, which for this flip-flop girl was a bit too much to take by the the end. I couldn't even bring myself to take my hands out of my pockets to take a picture!  It was all Shrek-tacular this year. It was awesome as usual, but I think I liked the regular Christmasy themes better. This year it seemed like every room was pretty similar, still glad we saw it though. That hotel beautiful, really. Everything was so perfect...until the morning of check-out when there was NO WATER! To the entire hotel!! So, no water = no flushing, tooth brushing, hand washing, showering, coffee making, pill taking. I didn't realize what a major inconvenience being without water would be for two stinkin little hours! The worst part was that it delayed checkout as we kept thinking the water would be back on any minute, then we spent some time listening to other people bitching at talking to the concierge before we had our turn. What can you do though? It's not like they planned for it to happen. Still, it put us a little behind on our drive to Ft. Meyers for our big date with Charity Preston and Tamara Chilver! Surely, you know these ladies. Charity is the author of The Organized Classroom Blog and Tamara is the founder of Teaching Blog Addict! It was so cool to meet them in person! Charity is just as funny and real as I knew she'd be and Tamara was just so sweet, warm and genuine. It really, really made me wish we all lived closer. We were also met by three other fans who made the trip to hang with us. Here we are - my hubs took the pic for us:

After we said good-bye at the restaurant, I got to hang with Charity for a bit longer at the SWEET beach house she rented and party for just a big longer. Such a great night that stretched out into an impromptu hotel stay halfway through the two hour drive home. Better safe than sorry. It worked out well - we ended up spending most of today exploring parts of Fort Meyers we hadn't seen before. Can you tell I love winter break? Love my job and all, but enjoying time off like this makes me the well-rounded, rested and energized teacher my kids deserve...right?

And now, your reward for reading all that ~ a cute lil' freebie for you! There is hardly anything my kids love more than a sharp, new pencil. It could be the way that I guard the sharpener like it was made of gold and encrusted with diamonds. You should see the way my head whips around if I hear the sharpener buzz. Heaven help the poor child who "accidentally" uses the sharpener. What can I say? I'm tired of spending money on those dang sharpeners. This sharpener is the best one I've found by far, and as long as I'm the sole pencil patrolman it will last twice as long as usual. Man, am I rambly today or what? So, here's what the flags look like attached to a shiny new pencil. Just cut them apart and glue-stick up the back, wrap it around the pencil, stick it together and you'll have these lovely little welcome back pencils to help your nuggets get off to a fresh start in 2012:

Click {HERE} to download your flags from Google Docs.

In case I don't post again before the big ball drop - have a great, safe and very, very happy New Year!