N is for new baby!
Is this what you are thinking right now?mostly boys who love balls, cars, legoes and super heroes read this blog?"
the mother of Zach, Brody and Luke
the mother of Eddy and Lindsay Lu
the mother of Wade and Owen
and the mother of Jack, Ryan and . . .
Who is hiding behind the letter "E"? 
Feet are fabulous things to have even if they look as freaky as these feet of an unnamed person. You can use your feet to run and walk . . . skip and kick . . . jump and stand for hours on end. I'm not sure I can think of something from A to Z to do with feet but here are two possibilities:
Footprint ghosts
Today I'm going to tell you a ghost story. As everyone knows, ghosts are white, and to stay white ghosts can only eat things that are white. They can drink milk and eat vanilla ice cream, marshmallows, cauliflower and coconut. One day five little ghosts went to visit their Grandma and horror of horrors, she had no milk, no vanilla ice cream, no marshmallows, absolutely nothing white to eat. She needed to go to the store pronto. Before she left, she told her little ghost grandsons not to eat anything while she was gone or something DREADFUL might happen. Then Grandma hurried off to the nearest grocery store.
After Grandma found all of the colorful ghosts, she wondered what on earth should she do to help them turn white before Halloween. So she called Grandpa. He suggested they eat lots and lots of caulifower. UGH! But Grandma and the little ghosts knew Grandpa can get pretty grouchy if ghostly grandsons aren't clean and white at his house. So guess what? Eddy, Brody, Ryan (or Wade), Jack and Zach ate big bowlfuls of cauliflower and this is what Grandpa saw when he came home from work!
Hands come in handy for hundreds of things . . .
Digging in dirt (or sand)
Eating finger Food (or fingers!?)
Gripping the game controller
Hanging on
Holding Hands . . . signing "I love you" . . .
Linking Legoes . . . Making Messes . . .
Tossing leaves
Unwrapping presents . . . Waving goodbye . . .
Okay, kids . . . you call Kleenex tissues and I call tissues Kleenex. It's quite a conundrum (which also does not begin with the letter "Kk") . . . so let's forget all that and say:
Thus, I became a "kindergarten" teacher and every morning for one school year my student and I read books, sang songs, and created craft projects around themes like animals, colors,counting, the alphabet, etc. . . Apparently I was such a good kindergarten teacher that my little student grew up to become a real kindergarten teacher! Can you guess which one of your aunts/mommies my student was? While you're thinking about it, here are a couple kindergarten books you might like to check out:
"The Twelve Days of Kindergarten"
"Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten"
by Joseph Slate
about a kindergarten teacher who has 26 students . . . one for each letter of the alphabet!
Happy Kindergarten Days!
Love, Grandma
M&Ms are mmmm mmmm good! At least I assume that's why 8 of my grandsons make at least one trip upstairs every single time they visit to turn the handle on this machine and get a tasty treat. Did you know that my Mom (Great-Grandma Hawkes) gave our family this machine a long time ago when your mommies still lived at our house? And did you know that your mommies probably did the very same thing you do now when they visited Grandma's house in Idaho? And last, but not least, did you know it is really called a gumball machine although neither my Mom or I have ever put put gumballs in it. I guess we like M&Ms better, too.
Well, now is your chance to win a whole lot of M&Ms without having to turn the handle a million times . . . or have Grandpa gripe about your chocolately hands and faces ! Just guess how many M&Ms you think are in this beatiful glass bottle and the closest guesser (or speediest guesser) will win the whole bottle.
I use notebooks for lots of things. I have a green Christmas notebook almost completely full of pictures and projects and lists. I have a yellow cooking notebook stuffed with recipes to try. I have another yellow notebook divided into alphabet sections kind of like your Alpha-Books. I use notebooks to make "Number Notebooks" for little boys. I use notebooks to just doodle or write to-do lists. But my favorite thing to do with notebooks is make them into journals.
Once upon a time when your Mommies were little girls I gave them each a notebook/journal. Every Sunday afternoon (or whenever) we would sit around the kitchen table and write in them. When they were too little to write, they would tell me what to write and then they would draw a picture on the same page. As they got bigger, they would write some of the words and I would write the rest. Soon they were big enough to write in them all by themselves. (In case you're wondering, Shelly isn't writing in her journal in this picture. She is playing "office" and writing in some kind of notebook!)
1. With a plain or colored pencil write the entire alphabet on any page in your Alpha-book. Write the date, too. Then at the end of the school year, write the alphabet again and see how much your handwriting has changed!
2. Make pencil toppers!
I also spied four other things that begin with letters of the alphabet I have somehow skipped during my backwards alphabet blogging this year. Here are some pictures and clues:
1. What is something to blow noses with 
