My neighborhood

Tomato Update

Week 2 Please note blossoms on two of the three plants!

Why you should be in Oskaloosa for Memorial Day

What a beautiful place to be on Memorial Day. It didn't start to sprinkle until we were moving things back to City Hall after the ceremony.

6 more

days of school and one of them is "fun" day and doesn't count and another is the last half day with students and that never counts! I'm looking forward to a break with just band and whatever else I choose to do. I'm not teaching this summer or taking classes, although I will participate in a book study.
Today the manager of HyVee treated the teachers to Chinese food for lunch. During teacher appreciation week they delivered sack lunches but the elementary didn't get theirs until 12:15 when two lunch sections were already done and back in class. The manager felt so badly he treated us today!
Now I want a nap!

Out of Routine

Here's the last of the pictures from graduation that I'm going to post - now in other news - yesterday I announced the annual 5th grade track meet. The track meet is held as a physical education event, so run by the pe department. The teachers work very hard to find volunteers to work at all the field events and to work the finish line for the running events. Every year it seems to get more difficult. Some teachers are released to help, usually special area teachers such as the TAG teachers, guidance counselors, etc. I was not supposed to go. I see kids from other grades in the afternoon, so I would have to not see students in order to go. My administrator struggled with this but after much begging from the pe department, gave in. Its not a hard job if you know what you're doing, and I've done it for a long time. This is a first experience for many of the kids in the area of track and field. Some of them should be runners when they reach middle and high school, there was some talent there!

more pictures

Here are more pictures from the graduation party. The graduates, great grandma and two great aunts; the graduates and their grandparents Elijah, Caitlin and her bags from Aunt Shirlee and her quilt from Grandma Sharon.

topsy turvy

My sister wondered if this thing could possibly work, so I agreed to post pictures every week of my tomatoes- first - the control tomato; other two are my hanging tomatoes. I bought plants that were pretty far along, so we'll see. This is week 1!

wonderful weekend

We had a great weekend! It had been a while since we'd gotten away (last time we stayed at a motel was a year ago at Ashley's graduation). We stayed in CR, went to Mom's for supper Friday night and visited and laughed through AFHV with Sue and Cheryl and Jim, then came back to Clarence for the graduation party. We tried to generally make ourselves useful. It was good to see Sue and Ben and Caitlin and Ellen and Larry and sisters and brothers-in-law and other relatives even though I could only name three or four other guests. We did some pictures which I will add a couple at a time for the next few days. Saturday night we went back to CR in time to watch Star Trek at the theater. I recommend this movie! First picture - Ben, Great Granma and Caitlin; second picture -Ben with the quilt Grandma Sharon made for him.

mid week fun

I'm so excited (not). We get to work with test data all day tomorrow while the kids get the day off. I suppose this is how we celebrate teacher appreciation week. My job is to analyze how many special ed students missed each question on the reading comprehension part of ITBS and then try to decide why they missed the questions. Can you think of anything more exciting?

I'm still struggling with a spider bite I got on Saturday. Yesterday it itched so badly that I went stocking footed at school and I had to repeat that today. As long as nothing touches it, its not too bad. I took benedryl last night but had to go to bed by 6:30, so I can't take that at work. My foot is slightly swollen, but not inflamed. The spider was hiding in the wheel of my office chair in the studio.