A few glimpses of my week

The grass roots of chopper gangs.

Tired out after a long day of work.

Hey, they are watching us.

ESL Students practice the Long Jump for field day.

The great pumpkin experiment begins.

Having been branded mentally by Gary Larson's comic "The Far Side" during the '80's, there is a streak of quirky humor that never really leaves my thinking in all that I see. Here are some moments of non-sense that gave me a laugh.

It all started with coming home and seeing three scooters on the lawn. 


In all seriousness, I told these kids jump as far as they could. Why the girl on the left decided to tumble and the girl on the right decided to faceplant is beyond me. I took the picture expecting them to be flying in the air.

PTA Extravaganza

Every year we have a big PTA fundraiser blowout carnival at our school. This year we decided to pair it up with a "Go Green" parade about recycling our trash. So last Friday we had one hour to put together our float. I didn't know what we were going to do. So I went online to look up some suggestions about making floats. They said I needed a theme. I began to rack my brain about the theme. Suddenly it hit me: "Crayfish."

Our intermediate class has been studying crayfish as life structures. We bought 10 of them for 93 cents. They are feisty little guys. The class did their culminating presentation on what they learned, and gave us a nifty invitation to come attend. So I took the invitation, photocopied it, and made a plan. I broke our two classes up into 8 groups, and assigned each a part of the crayfish to build out of recyclable materials. 8 legs, one head, a tail, two mandibles, and one torso, pincers, etc. It was so exciting. We had to spill out into the hallway to navigate all the trash. We had groups of kids making posters: "March of the Crayfish!", "Keep my river clean" and "Pick up trash!" Then yesterday, as a precursor to the carnival, we did a parade. I gave instruments to my class to make as much celebratory noise as possible. Loads of fun.
At the carnival I set up a bowlers booth. We had a non-stop line, and close to 500 people show up at the school. It was really great. It was hot however, and praise God for shorts.

Everything was going along just fine until the sky started to change. It was the wrong color. So I found Heidi and looked at the radar. Behold, a 43,000 foot storm front! I set out to find our principal, and he actually came looking for me to find out what was going on. We found each other, then sped up the program to end within 30 minutes.

Crazy Sky: Cottage Cheese Clouds
This is what I call these clouds. When you see this cloud formation, you can bet comotion is not far away. Then the lightning started and people made their way home. Fortunately, the bulk of the storm passed just south of us.

Sam At Bat

I just had to throw this picture in with Sam at the plate. It is so fun seeing my 9 year old facing off the challenges at the plate.

The Home Stretch

This last month has been a whirlwind of testing, baseball, family fun, and work. One month left to go for teaching school this year. I don't count the days, but I am excited for summer.

Got bit by a spider last Saturday. It might have been a brown recluse, but I really don't know. What I do know was that by Monday, my whole elbow was throbbing, and very hot. Every time I touched it it felt like fire. I grew concerned, because I never had a bite do this before.  The infection was about two inches in diameter, and I decided to go to the doctor. I had an infection, and they gave me the treatment. Now it is doing much better. 

After worship this morning, I took Sam and Abigail out to practice casting lures and feel the strong wind. Sometimes I just love to be outside. I enjoy feeling the line and flicking the rod. Just give me joy to be out and creating opportunities for surprise. We didn't catch anything, but we did improve our skills.

When I got home, I startled Heidi who was searching the garage for gardening gloves. She's been inspired by Ariana's blog on gardening in England, so she finally decided to put her hand to the proverbial plow. I thought I'd get out there and help resurrect the gardening bed.

We decided to tare off the old bird/dog barricade. Last year after we planted the garden, old Dolce got in the garden and made herself a sweet bed. She did get a spank for that one. Then later, all the birds came and at our tomatoes. So we built this barricade with wood and chicken wire. Well, now it has come down.

There were at least two fire ant mounds in the garden. Heidi braved the weed pulling in her flip flops with out a bite amazingly.  I pulled out a giant radish that survived the winter.  I want to test it to see if it is as hot as the others we tasted. We also found a brace of onions from one I threw in there last year. They smelled tasty.

Well, bless you all. May you have a wonderful week.