Nutcracker craft

At the elementary school's silent auction I bid on and won a special craft date with Leo's teacher. Yesterday, the kids got to do the craft after school.

The teacher often has former students hang out in her room until their parents get around to picking them up, so for the first hour, it was just play time.

The craft was turning a Pringles can into a Nutcracker.  Of course, that meant there were plenty of Pringles chips to snack on.  

Then they got down to busniess.  First they made a label for the bottom with their names and the year.

Then they worked on gluing the felt on the can.

Here's the can starting to get covered.

The kids liked having the teacher's special attention.

Here's Leo's end result.

Serafina couldn't just have the normal fur hat; she wanted a crown.  The teacher accomidated her by creating the tin foil crown and letting her add some sparkles.

Happy kids!

The whole process took quite a bit longer than I was expecting, but it was worth it.  When we got home, a special Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar was waiting for us, thanks to Nana.  It is a huge hit.

It was a busy day, but I had quite the evening too.  I attended a City Council meeting to speak out against a proposed agreement with an incoming private school and the city park.  The school will be taking over some buildings at our local park and they want priority use of some of the fields - about 1/3 of the park.  This will definitely impact the local soccer leagues and little league baseball.  Plus, it just doesn't seem fair.

I carpooled there with a couple neighborhood friends and filled out a "speaker card" to have my turn to address the Council.  The Mayor switched the order of agenda items, so we were stuck waiting through a pretty dry debate over a huge business development in north Sunnyvale.  The council took over two hours to get to our agenda items, but the neighbors who had come out in force didn't give up.  We were all there to show the council we were unhappy.  I finally had my chance to speak close to 10pm.  I was nervous and stumbled a little on my words, but I let them know I found the agreement unfair and encouraged them to vote against it.  Well, another hour and a half later, the final vote came down and it was in favor of the agreement.  Sigh.  It was a long, disappointing night.  But it was also eye opening and a good glimpse into our local government, so I'm glad I went.  As Maurice Sendak said in my favorite book of his, Pierre, "The moral of Pierre: CARE".  

My friend Aida snapped my big moment.