Memorial Day Weekend!

I needed a 3-day weekend!  Here are the highlights:

• I was finished with my report cards!
• The scouts delivered a big flag and posted it in our yard at sun-up.  It reminded me to get our other flag out too.  I think the yard looks so much better with a flag, but I always forget.
• The weather was pretty.
• Lots of rest.

I wanted to go with Terry and take his mom to the cemetery and put flowers on his dad's grave. We didn't make it.  We'll have to take a drive up there on Father's Day maybe.

St. Patrick's Day

My principal is Irish with relatives still living in Ireland.  She goes a little crazy on St. Patrick's Day, and it's a lot of fun.  We start the day with Irish soda bread, clotted cream (like whipped cream) and jam.  Everyone, who's feeling lucky, puts their name in a pot of gold and a little leprechaun pulls names for prizes such as lottery tickets, green bead necklaces, and boxes of Lucky Charms.  We have a potluck lunch of Irish stew, corned beef, cabbage salads, more soda bread, and green frosted shamrock cookies.  Everyone's spirits were lifted. Green is my favorite color, and it was fun being Judy O'Swainy for the day. 

V-Day

It's always fun to celebrate Valentine's Day with elementary kids.  For a week they have been sending each other Friendship Grams.  It's a fund raiser for 4th grade.  It only costs 25 cents to have a pink slip of paper delivered to a friend with a piece of penny candy taped to the back.  A lot of sixth graders spend a couple dollars a day sending friendship grams to themselves.

I blew my healthy eating habits for the day.  Fifth grade celebrates with an Italian luncheon.  I had a whole plate of pasta and two giant frosted sugar cookies.  That was an hour before our class party which was just a lot of sugar and noise.  I finally got them settled down and watching a Berenstein Bear Valentines Day video.  Sixth graders are pretty funny.  You never know what will work.  Last year's group had an impromptu dance party.  This year a video for 5 year olds worked.

The most impressive part of this year's celebration was the homemade valentines.  My class learned how to do origami birds for a big mobile that they're making for Art Night.  That led them to origami videos online, which led to several individually made origami valentines.  I was impressed. 

Merry Christmas

It was a very different Christmas this year, and I liked it.  I was up at 7:00, a decent hour, but not one that shows much enthusiasm.  I had time to read, bathe, get dressed, and get breakfast ready.  Then I had time to read the newspaper, put on Christmas music, and have a hot chocolate.  Terry joined me quite early.  Brent came in around 9:30, and we woke Ty up at 10:00.  We ate breakfast before we opened presents!  It didn't even bug me.  It was different, and relaxed.  The four of us had a great time.

 

Ty spent most of Christmas break rolling out his muscles.

Brent finishing breakfast before present opening.

Ty got up last and didn't have time to get dressed and do his hair.

Ty still rolling...Brent still sitting.

Terry finishing breakfast.  Notice unopened gifts and the computer going.

 Early in the afternoon, Terry and I ventured out to Meridian to see if Santa had visited the grandkids.  He had.

Amee with two little monkeys.


Early evening we ended up at Mom and Dad's with a lot of the rest of the family.  The ham that wasn't used Christmas Eve, was devoured, along with shrimp dip, pork and seeds, and lots of goodies.  It wasn't bunco, but we had a good visit.

 That evening a little snow storm left a skiff of white for Christmas.  It was a different Christmas this year, and I liked it.

Christmas Eve Day

So excited to pick Ty up from the airport at 9:00 AM.  He had to be at the Eugene airport 4:30 so he arrived in Boise looking rumpled, scruffy, tired, and good!  We took him straight to Blue Sky Bagels for breakfast.  Then we made the rounds dropping off gifts and shopping.  By 3:00 PM we had finished shopping, had taken care of some returns, seen grandparents, had shown Ty Stacey and Mike's new house, bought him new clothes and set him up with some big tubes to roll out his muscles on.  It was wonderful having him captive with us for 6 whole hours.  What fun!

Ty changed into some of his new clothes, and looked so good.  Then he was off to catch-up with friends.  You'd think families would want to be together on Christmas Eve, but he was out until about 2:00 in the morning with other families that love him.

This is the first Christmas Eve in many years that we didn't have the Cowley Bunco Christmas Party to attend.  We were really quite stunned by the cancelling of it due to everyone being sick.  Terry and I found ourselves alone in a quiet house on Christmas Eve.  We had thought about taking in a movie or going bowling.  We also considered going out for Chinese food.  In the end, we went to Hastings and rented White Christmas.  I love that movie and all the music.  It's long too.  We watched the movie with popcorn and hot chocolate.  Everything was wrapped and ready, so we retired to bed at about 10:00.  It turned out to be a happy Christmas Eve all day long.

Just What I Needed

Christmas is crazy.  All of December is crazy.  As much as I love all the music and lights and treats and giving and decorations, it's still crazy.  So yesterday when I still had a bunch of shopping, wrapping, and cleaning, and cooking to do, I called my friend and arranged to meet at Barnes and Noble for a treat and a little break.  It was late in the afternoon and I had only completed half of my errands, but it was soooo good to sit down with a good friend, a hot chocolate, and a scone.  I love being in a book store, and it's especially fun at Christmas time.  We sat near the gift wrap counter and watched everyone else bustle and hunt and shop and wait in line and spend their money.  We just relaxed, visited, laughed, and exchanged little gifts.  It's been my favorite holiday moment so far.  Thanks, Lydia, for spending a time-out with me.

Trick or Treat

Just so that I remember next year, I'm putting it down here.  We only had 2 teenage girls come trick-or-treating.  We didn't need the 3 bags of candy that we bought. 

Fourth of July Celebration

We didn't celebrate much.  It was great having a holiday, but all we did was fly our flag, barbecue hot dogs, eat watermelon and light a few fireworks for Hudson at about 7:00.  It wasn't even close to dark. 

Looks a little pathetic, doesn't it?

Safety First - a small bucket of water for our small display.

It's funny that on the night when all the firecrackers were going off and the dogs were howling, we slept soundly.  It was the first night that we needed to have the air conditioner on all night.  The sound from that noisy unit drowned out everything else.

May Day

This is a holiday with a lot of potential, but maybe it just didn't translate into our modern times.  I don't remember ever finding flowers left on our doorstep, but once at school a class made paper baskets of flowers that they hung over the doorknobs of each classroom.  There was a cheery note, a bright bouquet, and a pleasant surprise.  It changed the mood that day.

Another time at school a group of second graders performed a May pole dance.  They had fastened wide ribbons to the top of the tether ball poles.  There was happy music, girls in full skirts, boys in button-up shirts, and as they wound in and out, the pole was braided with the ribbon.  I was very impressed. 

So today there were no bouquets delivered, and I'll probably never see another May pole dance performed, but after a very cold April, the sun came out and the sky was blue.  I celebrated by painting my toenails and wearing sandals for the first time this season.  Happy May Day!

Easter Service

If you only go to church twice a year, you wouldn't want to pick Easter at our church - not this year.  It's different having Stake Conference on Easter, especially when it's a broadcast from Salt Lake.  We had some technical difficulties at our building, so we ended up having to stay after conference to take care of the stake sustainings and business.  The talks were good, but the studio where they were broadcasting from was pretty barren.  I thought they could have set out an Easter lily maybe.  I also would have liked a musical number.  I think President Uchtdorf would have too.  He ended up with so much time, he had to come up with a lot of filler.  I was entertained by the two boys next to me.  They spent about 30 minutes playing blackjack.  It's the first time I've seen kids play cards during church.  It kept them very quiet.

You've Been Egged

Yesterday my family met and egged my nieces house.  Her little family was away at the time, and we came with bags of candy filled plastic eggs.  When they had been hidden all over the yard, we gave them a call.  My nephew's little family arrived from Twin Falls at the exact same time.  We only had four kids to do all the egg hunting, and one of them helped hide the eggs too.  It was a fun for all!

We had plenty of adults, beautiful weather, and everyone's favorite potluck lunch.  Mom made cupcakes, Dad brought the ham and made his own deviled eggs.  Kim made potato salad and brought a jar of dilly beans.  Nan brought rolls, veggies and the Kaiserman dill dip.  I made the frog eye salad.  There were chips, sodas, and plenty of Easter candy.  It was a great way to start a new picnic season.

Spring Break Report Card

Moccasins for Huds

Barely passing.  I came down with a sore throat on the first day of Spring Break.  I've been sick the whole week.  Today I finally feel better, not good, but pretty okay.  When I look at my plans, I see how much didn't get done.  I have hours of work today before my report cards are finished.  The Primary newsletter hasn't been started, but this week is conference so I have a reprieve.  My house did not get a good spring cleaning, more just a lick and promise.  I didn't get a blanket made, but I finished a skirt that I had started last fall, and it fits better now.  I spent one day sewing a top, which in the end was a disaster.  I tried 3 new recipes and 2 of them I'll use again.  I finished 5 books!  I had started all of them sometime last winter.  I also made one cute pair of slippers.  Hopefully they'll fit Huds.  I didn't get to see family or friends, no lunches, movies, or a little get-away.  But I did make it to Blue Cow for a medicinal frozen yogurt, and I didn't have to write any lesson plans for a sub, so I think I'll just accept a "C" for Spring Break and count how many days until summer.

Irish Eyes are Shining

My principal is Irish with fair skin and great green eyes.  Her grandparents live in Dublin and called her on Skype during school.  Today she treated the staff to Irish soda bread with clotted cream and jam, Irish cream for the coffee drinkers, and Irish oatmeal (steel-cut oats) with all the fixings-walnuts, raisins, and brown sugar.  Then in the afternoon frosted shamrock sugar cookies and tea appeared.  All during the day she was drawing names from a hat and handing out prizes.  I won a $10 Subway sandwich card.  Kids would get to choose a gold wrapped chocolate from her leprechaun pot when their names were drawn.  I took pictures of all the kids in green.  One of my girls has a green cast on her arm and green nail polish.  We also had drawings in my class for anything green I could find in the prize box.  After school many of us met our principal at the local pub for a little Irish cheer.  Mine was a cheery diet Pepsi.

Rally!

How did I spend Presidents Day?  In the park across from the state capital at a pro-education rally in opposition to the anti-education bills put forth by our state superintendent.  They had intelligent speakers who spoke the truth.  It was good to hear.  Speakers included a long time member of Boise's school board, parents, Boise Education Association officers, and the one who stole the show, a Timberline student.  He must be in debate.  He must have had some good teachers.  It raised my spirits enough to keep on fighting. 

Mike looks like this except with a tall hat.

Just a side note, my teaching partner was at the rally in his Abraham Lincoln outfit.  Each year he grows a beard, dresses up, recites the Gettysburg Address, hands out pennies, and talks to all the younger classes at our school.  He said he was a embarrassed to show up like that, but it was Presidents Day.  It just called for it. 

Grade School Valentines

There is nothing better than Valentine sacks or boxes stuffed with cards and candy.  Something about this day makes kids sweet.  They're thoughtful, they're giving, they want to express just the right message, and the picture has to fit the friend.  They remember the custodian, last year's teacher, the lunch ladies, and there's always one kid that gets something extra special for a 'crush' which causes a ripple of excitement and giggles. 

There is nothing better than a good, soft, frosted sugar cookie, and I love conversation hearts (soft are best, but old hard ones are good too).  I also love the cinnamon gumdrop hearts.  In my more grown-up moments I like good chocolates from Lee's or See's - dark chocolate orange or coconut cream.  Mmmmmm!  Today I was dieting and didn't indulge in any of it, but it will all be the same next year.  I'll probably have another decade or so of grade school Valentine's Days and I'm glad.  There's nothing better.