One of the really awesome parts of living in San Antonio, is the fact that we have a two week Fiesta to celebrate The Battle of Flowers. The original Battle of Flowers parade began 134 years ago to celebrate the heroes of the Alamo. Because of that, there are always fun events in town and at school – and we always have a day off of school to celebrate. In honor of Fiesta, I decided to bring chips and salsa for the staff. (We also spend a week or so dressing up in our Fiesta finest – of which I need more 😉.)

We always have a parade at school, where the students can build shoebox floats and bring them. Last year, Brianna (one of my 4th grade teammates) had the idea for them to do a float for Social Studies, and since I was already planning a “Famous Texan” unit, we decided to make that our theme. I carried it over to this year, and those kids did an amazing job creating a float for their person. We had everyone from Beyoncé to Bessie Coleman, Michael Dell to Stephen H. Austin, Mary Kay to Nolan Ryan, Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush and his father, and so many more. It was awesome!!

On the week of the actual Battle of Flowers, we had our school parade, which included floats of our school teacher of the year, Laura Majors, our para of the year, Miss V., and of course, our GOAT volunteer, Mrs. Flores. We also had our principal and a past principal on floats. It was so fun!

My favorite was seeing all the kids’ floats. One of my students even had lights and music to go with her Beyoncé float, and she was glowing with happiness.

On the next day, we had our amazing and traditional assembly with Anna Piña and her spectacular dancers. She was a teacher at our school for years (and was even my amazing sub to cover the first month of school in the fall), but stopped teaching full time to teach and perform more. She is truly amazing.

And I don’t know about you, but there haven’t been any assemblies at all the other schools I have visited or taught at that had Mariachi play for them. So fantastic! The only downside to the whole thing, was that I had to confiscate toys from like ten different 4th graders – so lame, and they totally know better. Some of them had those creepy squishies, one of which popped, and let me tell you that those went straight into the trash. (And I thoroughly washed my hands afterward.)

Later that day was our Fiesta party. We used to have these in our rooms, but they started doing a whole grade level party. Not really a fan, but it was fine. The kids loved it when Laura and I joined the dance party. Good times!

It was a fun day, but very exhausting, and so we were all grateful for the three day weekend. Lily even helped me with some baking that I had been dying to do, but felt too rotten to do myself. We made banana chocolate chip muffins to replenish our stash in the freezer, but the star of the show was the cinnamon burst bread we made. So delicious!! We also took advantage of the extra time to play games and watch movies, which was awesome.

Speaking of movies, the kids snuck out on Tuesday evening to watch the newest Mario movie, “Super Mario Galaxy.” They all loved it!

And on Friday morning, I got to see one of my dear friends from when we lived in Savannah, Jen Damato. She was in town for a wedding, and so I snuck over to the temple to give her a hug and say hi before we both had to rush off to other appointments. I also spent a few hours at my friend Laura’s new house, and it was so fun to relax and talk, and not about school stuff. Ha ha! As if that wasn’t enough socializing, on Saturday afternoon, my fabulous college roommate, Christine, was in town for a YSA Temple trip. She came over and we talked and laughed for a few hours. It was definitely such a blessing and just what I needed to fill my soul.