Back to Work Reality & New Year's Nails

Today was back to reality for me, and I loved every minute of it!! My vacation was relaxing and restful so I was totally ready to head back. And I missed my kids a wicked lot! I have oodles of children in computer lab (40 in all across 4 grades) so I gave them a fun/affordable Christmas present: two tickets.

The first was a One Day Only - Choose Your Own Seat!

The second was One Day Only - Get out of Computer Lab Free! This one required a lot of explaining - "No you won't actually leave the lab, you will just get to play a different game/site of your choice from our class website!" (Insert thousands of questions here...)

Knowing that I would probably never see these tickets ever again I wisely made a checklist with all my students names and the dates they used their ticket. I showed them this list ahead of time, lest they get the idea of trying to trick me!

Today, as expected, I had about half of my kids use their "tickets" (I shall put it in quotes they mostly lost them over vacation! So it was more of a verbal ticket.) They had a blast and it worked out well as it kind of eased them back into the swing of school. Overall I would say it was a huge success, and definitely something I will do again in the future.

Side note, it was hard to keep a straight face when at the end of Intervention I had several children come up to me and say "The ticket works again right?" Me (showing ticket): "No, sorry it's One Day Only." Student: "Aww man...why didn't I save it!" I figured this would happen, but I thought the One Day Only at the top might fix that...and the fact that I mentioned that 1,000,000 times! 

Lastly we have my New Year's nails...I wanted to do a fancy 2013 on them...but I was not feeling that ambitious last night. I used Zoya's Ornate Collection's Storm, I love the sparkles in the black! I also used Nicole by OPI's Miss Independent. Please disregard the sad state of my skin around my nails - we are in a bit of an arctic chill here in New England and my hands are suffering!

For those of you who went back today - how was your day? As for you lucky still-on-vacationers, I hope you had a relaxing day!