December Daily Album, Days 11-15

Here are the next five pages in my December Daily album. (To view pages 1-5, click here and to see pages 6-10, click here.)






Day 11 Journaling: Christmas cards (check), wrapped gifts for "adopted" family (check), graded writing and checkpoints (check), talked to McKayla on the phone (check)




Day 12 Journaling: Nevada City is just 30 minutes from our home, so we attended the Victorian Christmas this year for the first time. We browsed the booths, enjoyed the music, and ducked into my favorite shop, Country Collectibles. (The picture in the bottom left corner was taken in Country Collectibles.)






Day 13 Journaling: Eleven students in grades 3-6 competed in our school spelling bee today. I served as coordinator and pronouncer, while Mr. West, Mrs. Joy, and Mrs. Alton were the judges. The bee consisted of 6 rounds, which included 34 words. Some of the words were: gnash, whittle, intensity, quarterback, castle, satchel and yippee. Hazel Rak, a third grader from Mrs. Larson's class, won the bee when she correctly spelled the word "sensibility." My favorite moment of the bee was when Mr. West said, "That is correct!" and the audience went crazy, cheering and clapping and celebrating. I was super nervous to "MC" this event, but it went well. Glad I acknowledged the fear, but didn't give into it, and instead did it anyway. And hopefully, next year we'll have two microphones, so I don't have to get up and sit down and get back up again. :-)






Day 14 Journaling: When I was in fourth grade, I made a green wreath ornament with my picture on it. It is hanging from my tree today. My fourth graders made their own wreaths, complete with red berries, a picture and the date.




Day 15 Journaling: I found a great tutorial online for how to take an out-of-focus lights shot. When it was dark outside, I put my 50mm 1.4 lens on my camera, set the aperture low (2.2), and flipped the focus to manual. Then, all I had to do was turn the manual focus ring until the picture was out of focus. The more I turned the ring, the larger the colored circles became. I kept snapping away as I adjusted the focusing ring. Love, love, love the pretty bokeh in this photograph. Come to think of it, this is similar to what the tree looks like when I take my glasses off! :-)

Pages 16-20 are coming up soon!

J