Christmas at VHS

The week before Winter Break was a great week at work!  It seemed like everyone was very much into the holiday spirit, and everyone was just in a great mood all week!

Each day had a different theme, and we could dress up to go with the theme. I tried to take a picture of my outfit everyday (because I knew I would eventually blog about it..haha), but I forgot on Friday!! If you cared or wanted to know, I wore my Christmas Story "you'll shoot your eye out!" shirt, haha.  After looking at these pictures....I just don't know what to think.  a) I have too many options for Christmas outfits (that's not really a problem, though); b) I need to clean our mirror; c) WHY do I automatically put my hand on my hip?! haha

We also had a door decorating contest!  There ended up being an even bigger competition between the Main Office and School Counseling!  It was so funny, all of us going back and forth over who was going to win!  Plus, our doors ended up as scenes because we kept wanting to expand! haha.  I mentioned that for next year, we just all need to combine and work together, and connect the doors in the main hallway by making a big candy cane forest! haha

The Main Office scene was as if you were sitting in your living room, enjoying the warmth of the fireplace, and looking outside at the falling snow.  We love how it turned out!!

 How awesome is this mantle Andrea put together?  And that's our secretary photo from our Christmas lunch and gift exchange!

Everyone in the Main Office also had their own snowflake to write a Christmas greeting or quote on it and sign it.  Of course, I wrote my favorite quote from the Santa Clause movies:

 

25 Days of Christmas: Day 16

At Christmas, all of the secretaries at work do a Secret Santa gift exchange.  It's always so fun to see who has drawn whose name and what gifts are given. 

This year, we had a big potluck lunch today, too!  There was SO much food and dessert!

(There's only but so much I can say about all the great food we had and the fun we had during the gift exchange, so I'm not going to try and drag it out to make a longer post, haha.)

Tonight, I did some more Christmasy things.  I finalized some things for Student Advisory--pictures will come tomorrow if I can remember to take them!  We're also watching Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas on NBC.  I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it.  The very first song of the show annoyed me, but I wasn't going to change the channel just yet.  They stick to the Elf storyline for the most part, but some things are different.  Of course, they have to be; this is only an hour long special (really probably about 45-50 minutes, if you count commercials) whereas the regular movie is about an hour and a half, so they can't include it all.

Our lunch all set up!  We have a great bunch of office staff, counseling staff, administrators, security officer and resource officers who contributed!!

And I got this awesome ornament during our gift exchange!!  First thing I did when I got home was hang up this ornament, and another ornament I received from a wonderful teacher at school :)

 

Flashback Friday: Homecomings of the Past

Since it's Homecoming week at Varina, I thought it would be fun to share some old Homecoming pictures from my last 2 years at Varina, and then Matt's last Homecoming that we went to.  I'm so glad I've always liked to take pictures, to always have the memories from football games, pep rallies, dances, or even before or after class! It's fun looking back on these old pictures!

Christmas Parades

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the parade day in Varina!!

It starts off with a parade down the road in the early afternoon, and ends with a boat parade in the evening! You'll see some pictures below of the regular parade, but I didn't take any pictures of the boat parade (I would never have been close enough to get good shots, plus, by that time, I was too cold to have my camera out! haha). However, to give you an idea, later that night, everyone lines up on the river and waits for the boats to come by.  People decorate their boats in TONS of Christmas lights, and they drive by for everyone to see.  Some get a lot more into it than others, but they're all still fun to see!

This year, we hung out at the parades with the Noltes and the Burkes! Luckily, we couldn't have asked for better weather for the day!!