Handmade Teacher Gifts!

Chocolates and Pouches for the teachers, bus driver, and bus attendant.

Earlier this week I was sewing with my friend Mary Lois, and I whipped up two of my go-to size bags. These are essentially the Pontoms Pouch but using the starting measurements of 10.5" x 6.75" pieces (and the boxed corners are cut using a 1.25" square). They finish at about... 7" x 3" x 3". Perfection. One for Allie's teacher and one for the teacher's aid. 

Then tonight Allie and I had some fun and made this super simple peppermint bark. I found the recipe on pinterest - it's fool proof. We used the crushed Andes mints from the baking isle since I couldn't find any of the peppermint/chocolate baking chips. I'm pretty sure the Andes chocolates are better. :) Oh and we used crunched up pretzels instead of nuts - I hate nuts and didn't want to mess with them. 

Finally while packaging them up I needed a super cute tag which I found courtesy of Rachel @ Imagine Gnats - follow the link for a super cute free printable! 

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Tomorrow Today will be a bittersweet day for us. It'll be Allie's last day in the Hearing Loss classroom for pre-school. This is really really exciting because she has tested at or above her hearing peers in all areas. But it's sad because we really love her teachers and her classmates. These are her first friendships outside of family. It's precious and heartbreaking. She misses them over the weekends - it's hard trying to explain that she'll be at a different school when we come back after break (there was no hearing loss pre-k class at her home school, so we've been at a different school a bit farther. Her current school doesn't have room for another kid in the regular pre-k class). 

Allie playing animal doctor - on a school field trip.

We've been fairly sure that Allie would be mainstreamed once she got to kindergarten. Her speech is great, and with her hearing aids she has access to almost everything. She was placed in this classroom because she aged out of the state's "Early Intervention" (birth - 3), and wouldn't have any speech guidance otherwise since all the pre-k classes are so packed we couldn't get her into a regular class. 

It makes me think back to when she was just a couple months old and we had only just learned that she had a hearing loss. It was all a whirlwind and we just didn't know what to expect. I've been thinking about that time period a lot recently; a distant cousin of ours recently had a baby who also has hearing loss (the situations are probably not related since she has other issues as well). Our cousin has been stressed out with the same questions, will she hear my voice, will I ever hear her say "I love you"? I'm really grateful for the support we've had throughout the years - for all those sweet people who helped us to teach our baby how to hear and speak! We'll be adding two new teachers to that list after today. Allie's first school teachers who have had so much patience with her! Thanks ladies, for all that you've done to help us!