Now that Christmas is over

I've had some time to get things done.

Christmas gifts for neighbors. I don't think I've ever gotten these out before Christmas. I'm just so darn busy before Christmas, I never have time to do anything nice...not to mention I'm not in the mood to do anything nice, either. I try to get them done before New Year's. It's kind of like the Christmas newsletter, right? No one really expects you to get that out before Christmas anyway.

At any rate, I made bread again this year. The bread turned out really well, and this is the first year of me baking bread for the neighbors that we actually had some left over for us. I don't know why I don't make bread more often. It's not that hard, and it's so yummy! Here's the strange part to that--I made bread for myself (and never bought any) my entire freshmen year of college. I can't believe I did that! Since then, I've just bought Great Harvest or Old Grist Mill bread out of convenience, and maybe a little bit of laziness, too. Huh.

I've also had time to break out my tatting again. Last summer, Ryan and I were in a bookstore and found a couple of tatting books. One of them had patterns for snowflakes. Ryan suggested I make snowflakes for the family for Christmas. I suggested that we think of a different gift, because I had a snowflake's chance in ... of getting that done by Christmas. I bought the books though, and have found that making snowflakes is strangely addicting. I've done lace before, and that's a project the never ends. Tatting is very slow, and takes about 10 times the time it would take to crochet a similar item. With a snowflake though, it's pretty easy to get it done relatively quickly and feel like you've accomplished something. Maybe next year's Christmas...

I have also found a tasty way to use leftover turkey. This is a turkey salad with a dressing made from cranberry salsa and olive oil. It's basically blue corn chips, chopped Romaine, turkey, avocado pieces (unless you are Ryan), black beans, grated mozzarella and the dressing. Tasty!

Just a side note: Ever wondered how to clean chicken poop off the back patio in the winter when the outside water is turned off? Wait for it to snow, and then it scoops right off. We've thought about sanding down the patio and using a push-broom, but it's always snowed before we've actually gotten that far. Good thing it's snowed lately.

The 50% Rule

You would think I'd have figured out by now that the 50% rule always wins when it comes to figuring out how many people are actually going to show up to an event. Case in point: yesterday's Silent Lunch.

In an effort to help my students get opportunities to use their sweet signing skills at times other than just classroom stuff, I've tried to organize after school activities. I decided to give Silent Lunch a shot, passed around a sign-up sheet and had about 30 kids (minus the student who wrote in three other students' names) sign up to come. I ordered pizza, and wanted to make sure I had enough for everyone, especially since I was charging them $2 for lunch. What was I thinking? Anyway, when all was said and done, I had two pizzas left over, and ended up spending more than I collected from the 16 kids who came to lunch. My student aid during 8th period didn't mind a bit though... "Hey, can I have some pizza?" Me: "Knock yourself out. Want another slice?" Him: "Do you mean it?" Repeat 4 times.

Things got off to a rough start when the pizza delivery man came with a different total than the one I had been given over the phone. I had the check made out yesterday, and had to run back to my room for an extra $2. Came back huffing and puffing (stairs) gave him the $2, and watched as the secretary pulled another $5 out of her wallet to give him for a tip. Oops! Forgot about that. Ran back upstairs, two bags of drinks, chips and salad in hand (I had two slaves...I mean students...with me to carry the pizza), and had about 1 minute before lunch started to get things set up. At this opportune moment, Girl Who Never Comes to Class and Doesn't Pay Attention When She Does Come wanted to find out what we've done in class all week. I'm out of breath after running to the office twice, and have my arms full of lunch. After I tell her what we did this week, she wants to know why she has an F. At this point, I tell her, "This is a really bad time to talk about this. Come back later." What I really feel like telling her is, "Do you honestly wonder why you have an F when you don't complete any assignments when you ARE here? Oh, and you stare at the ground when I'm SHOWING you how to sign the vocabulary I have listed on the board. Unless you have eyes on the top of your head, there's no way on earth you will pick up anything we are learning if you don't look."

Back to lunch. I didn't want this to be a "silent lunch" in the way we had "silent lunch" as a kid--punishment for being too noisy in the lunch room. My goal was to have the students come in and, well, chat in ASL during lunch. I had a student who was in charge of organizing an activity for lunch. Her activity consisted of going around the table, say your name and something you want for Christmas. This was accomplished in about 2 minutes, and then they sat and stared at each other in silence while they ate for another 15 minutes. Not quite what I had in mind. Sigh.

Thanksgiving fun

Ryan and I went to Denver to spend some time with my parents. We had a good time! Here are some highlights from our trip:

The Thanksgiving Parade
Upon our arrival, each of us received a hand-written invitation from Rebekah to watch a Thanksgiving parade the next morning.



One of the mornings, I found Ryan with an audience. They kept him there for a good hour, reading story after story.

Andrew:
The delightful, bald baby we saw last June has gotten more charm (if possible), and a little more hair. He has discovered that pounding on things is fun. One night, Dad got out a drum to see what Andrew thought.

It did it all by itself!

So a couple of days ago, I had a student straggle in late for class. She was shaking and holding a bloody kleenex on her lip.

"What happened, are you okay?" I ask.

"I got shoved and this wire went through my lip," she said. Actually, I think that's what she said because at this point, she wasn't making a whole lot of sense. She didn't have any braces on, so I couldn't figure out the wire thing. I took the next logical course of action and sent her down to the sick room.

After school, I got the rest of the incomplete story, such as it was. She told the attendance secretary that she was holding this piece of wire, and then all of a sudden it just went through her lip. Hmmm. Just like that. I'm guessing she was trying to pierce her lip, and wasn't ready for it to hurt like crazy and start bleeding all over the place. Blech!

Ryan's latest venture

Ryan's always been a word game fan. I have spent many happy hours of our married life being totally whomped by him any word game we play. We don't play Boggle anymore, because I just got too depressed after he would DOUBLE my score each stinking time. I'm not bitter, I promise. We still play Upwords, but I have a one game per night tolerance level. For the last little while after a round of Upwords, Ryan would play around with the letter tiles experimenting with a new word game idea.

A couple of months ago, a neighbor of ours mentioned to Ryan that he wanted to make apps for the iPhone and needed a graphic artist. Our neighbor's idea for a game was more complicated than he wanted to start with, so they decided to make the word game Ryan has been working on into an iPhone app. It's been exciting to see it become a real game!

The application process to Apple seemed to take forever. At long last, the game is now approved, and available in Apple's app store. It's pretty cool! Ryan has a website with a link to the app store. You don't need an iPhone to see it in the app store. If you do have an iPhone, it's a pretty darn cool game for $1.99...if I do say so myself.

The Coop

I've heard people say that the true test of a marriage is if you can build a house together and still like each other by the time it's all done. I think the same could be said for building a chicken coop--at least on a smaller scale.

This chicken coop has consumed every weekend for the last month. It has been quite the project! Ryan spent a lot of time figuring out how he wanted to design the coop. We've learned a number of things with this coop...some of them a bit after the fact. All in all, it's come together quite nicely.An inside view of the coop, complete with roosts for the girls.

The chickens thought the process was interesting. Daisy (the big white one) would hop up inside the unfinished coop while we were pounding nails and gluing things down. At one point, she ended up with glue stuck to her feathers because she was so dang curious. Daisy has made friends with Linda, my mother in-law, who came to keep us company when Ryan's dad came over to help. Linda sat on a chair to the side, and had her phone out taking pictures of the girls. I heard her say to the chickens, "Now say 'cluck-cluck'." ('Now say cheese' in Chicken.) She took a picture, and then held it out for them to see. Daisy actually came over and craned her head around to see the camera. It was the funniest thing to watch.


Ryan was the primary designer. I built the doors, and served as slave laborer, painter, nail driver, staple-pounder and screw-gun master.

The girls seem to have adjusted quite well to the new digs. We built the new coop for them because the coop that we started with was just not big enough for them to fit comfortably. We didn't know enough about coops when we first got our chickens to realize it was going to be a problem. The banties didn't mind the small area to roost at night, but the two full-sized chickens would perch on the coop roof every night until I went out, pulled them off and put them inside. I don't miss the nightly tucking in. It was starting to get ridiculous. It is so nice to be able to just go out, shut the chicken door and be done with it.

The other reason we decided to build a bigger coop, is because we would like to expand our flock a little. Tomorrow, we will be picking up two black star hens. We are hoping they will adjust and make friends fairly quickly. We still have the old coop so we can keep them separated from our girls until they can play nicely together.

Some like it hot

I've heard people talk about Bikram yoga, and have held the opinion that a person would have to be stark raving mad to subject themselves to an hour and a half of 90 degrees + yoga. I've taught in classrooms at school that have hovered around 90 degrees, and never felt a compelling need to spend time in a room that hot by choice.

However...I've had chronic neck pain for quite a while, and have been seeing a chiropractor. He suggested that I give Bikram yoga a shot--if for nothing else, to chalk something up on my "life experience" list. So, after putting it off for a while, I finally went tonight. I have to say, it wasn't bad. I might even consider doing it again. I actually felt energized after dripping sweat for 90 minutes.

Ramblings for a Sunday Morning

I love technology...

Our school has been on this big technology kick. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we are being accredited this year. It looks pretty dang fancy when everyone has a mounted projector, power point presentations, document cameras, clickers and Smart boards. I have a projector (which I LOVE), but beyond that, not a whole lot. The other day, one of the administrators passed me in the hall and said, "Hey, I put your name on the list to get a document camera. I know you can use it!" Thanks, I think. Much as I respect him, that particular administrator has never seen me teach, and has no idea if I would actually use it or not. It's nice of them to give me a document camera, and I'm sure I can find a way to use it, but I would much rather have the chairs I've been asking for over the last 6 months than a document camera. More about chairs in a minute.

Some of the new stuff that is out there technology-wise is pretty cool, but some of it (at least how it is used) seems like it's kind of pointless. Last week, my research class that I'm taking at WSU met in the library so the librarian could show us how their system works. It was time well spent, and I learned a lot from it. The beginning of class though, was just kind of odd. We all sat down at little computers stations (straight from the 21st century, I'm sure) which were sunk in the desks with glass tops. If you kind of squinted and pressed your nose to the glass, it made it so the glare wasn't too bad and you could see the screen. The librarian had us use a "response system" to get our input on questions she was asking us--general things like, "Have you ever used a library catalog system before?" The question would pop up on the screen, and we would click "yes" or "no". I've seen a demonstration of a similar system where each member of the class has a little remote control that they use to beam in their answer. I can see how in some cases that could be used in a really gainful way. In this case, it just seemed kind of silly. Why didn't she just ask us, and have us raise our hands? Would a little human interaction kill anyone? At the end, we were able to type in specific questions we had. A few people typed them in, we waited for a few minutes for the program to pop up a screen with what they asked, then waited for the librarian to adjust the scroll-bar on the screen so we could actually read what they wrote. Why not just save some effort and say, "Who has a question?" If your goal is anonymity, pass out slips of paper for people to write their questions on.

About chairs: I've been wanting chairs. Since last year. The german teacher next door has all chairs, and no desks. He uses folding tables if the occasion arises that the students need to have a hard surface to work on. I've been jealous of his room all last year, and so at the end of the year, I requested chairs instead of desks. I used the "my classes are so big next year, that I need chairs to fit all 40 munchkins comfortably in my room" argument. One of the Big 4 said, "Sure, you can have chairs." I think he was saying whatever it took to make me stop freaking out about the huge number of students on my rolls. A different member of the Big 4 (the one who is actually in charge of building needs), said "What!? Forty chairs? We have no money for that." Alas. No chairs for me. Until I found out the district was having a warehouse sale. Along with a bunch of other stuff, they were getting rid of student chairs. As soon as I saw that, I hustled to the office. After a few rounds of: "You want to get chairs? I don't know, why don't you ask _____?", a few phone calls, and a mad dash to the warehouse on my part, I was able to score 40 olive green chairs for my room. I am so excited!

Juice of 3 lambs*

Actually, make that 10 quarts of tomato puree. You know how one step of a recipe can take an hour and a half? Well, this one INGREDIENT took an hour and a half.

I decided to try my hand at tomato sauce. Good thing I had all afternoon, because I pulled the last jar out of the canner at 10:00 pm. Granted I wasn't slaving at the stove all afternoon, but it still was a very long process. Part of that time was spent sorting out good tomatoes from nasty, black and hairy tomatoes, and scrubbing the tomato carnage from the fruit room floor.

A few months ago, the CSA I subscribe to sent out an email saying that they were making bushels of tomatoes and peaches available to their members. A few months ago, processing a bushel of tomatoes and a bushel of peaches sounded like a good idea, so I ordered one of each. I didn't know exactly when they would arrive, but I assumed that they would come on different weeks. I had also assumed that I would have time to do something with them when they got here.

Last Tuesday, I went to pick up my CSA share at Beehive Cheese. I had a big cooler in the car with ice packs, because my box of produce was going to be sitting in my car for 3 hours while I went to my night class at WSU. I walked in to pick up my food box and discovered not 1, but 3 boxes with my name on them. On closer inspection, I found I had a box of produce, a box of peaches and a box of tomatoes. After a moment of panic, the nice folks at Beehive Cheese told me they were planning on staying late that night to make cheese, and that it would be okay for me to keep the boxes in their fridge until my class got out. They didn't have to do that--they even gave me a cell phone number so I could call someone to open the door for me when I got there.

I've bought bushels of produce from other places, and typically, the peaches are rock hard for a few days until they ripen in the basement. These peaches and tomatoes were ready. On Tuesday. I wasn't. I parked them in the fruit room downstairs and crossed my fingers. Apparently, I didn't cross them hard enough. I had quite the mess I had to clean up yesterday. Dang! I was able to salvage a good part of it, but I always feel bad when food gets wasted like that.

So--it's Sunday morning and I have a nice little set of jars of tomato sauce sitting out. I would have taken a picture, except the battery in my camera died. I might try tomato sauce again. We'll see.

Ryan is trying his hand at constructing a bigger and better chicken coop. I went outside after I finished with the tomatoes to see his handiwork. It is going to be a very tall coop. Should be interesting to see what it looks like when it's done. =)

*My sister in-law coined the phrase "juice of three lambs" to refer to things called for in a recipe that no normal person would actually have in her kitchen. Lots of recipes from Martha Stewart fall into this category.

I stand corrected--that was my mother in-law who coined the phrase. Sorry, Linda! =)

How to burn a few perfectly good hours out of your day:

Each school has their own silly traditions that make life...interesting. Here's one that I wouldn't ming losing--on the first Friday of school, we have an opening assembly. Each department has to come up with a skit for the assembly. The first week of school is already stressful enough with having to come up with something. We have a 3-man department, and one of our department members splits schools and is only here every other day, which makes it even more difficult.

So...we did our best. We came up with a few ideas, and I spent an evening trying to figure out how to make the dang thing work. All for a one-minute skit. At least it's done, and I don't have to worry about it until next year!

1 down, 179 more to go

That first day back always wipes me out. I met my students today. All 223 of them. Actually, I've lost count because they keep on adding them to my classes.

Overall, things went pretty well. Here's my day, in summary:

good thing: My Sign II and III kids knew exactly what to do. They came in expecting to sign, and I didn't have to tell anyone to stop talking and sign.
bad thing: The bell rang 5 minutes early for first period. I don't mind having shorter classes, but I like to know about it first.
good thing: By the end of the day, I figured out that they were ringing ALL of the bells 5 minutes early, and had adjusted for it. Either that, or my clock is fast--which I doubt. Sometimes they have a hard time getting the bells timed correctly on weird days like today. I KNEW there was a reason we shouldn't have had an 8 period day.
good thing: All of my students came today.
bad thing: All of them showed up--even in the class that has 41 kids on the roster.
good thing: I didn't use my voice once during Sign I, but the students seemed (for the most part) to get what was going on.
good thing: I heard after school got out that I've scared some of my Sign I kids because I didn't use English. (I did have some pretty cool visuals though, and didn't leave them helpless.) Maybe my class with 41 students won't be a big on Wednesday...
good thing: A student in my Sign I class was able to communicate to me (in Sign!) that the "V" and "W" handshapes on my wall were in the wrong order. Sure enough, in my haste last week to get my room set up (after being threatened to be kicked out of the building in 20 minutes--I could rant on how lame it is to kick teachers out of a school building when you've cut three days from the preparation time before school starts, but I'll refrain), I had switched the letters "V" and "W" by mistake. Clever kid! Doesn't mean I've had time to climb up on a stool and fix it.

It's always interesting to see how students react to things on the first day. I've learned not to write off anyone as a flake, because I've been pleasantly surprised on a few occasions. However, the "Hermione Granger" students can be spotted on day one, and generally stay that way for the duration. Example: I'm frantically updating my school website with my disclosure statement after school, thinking that I will have enough time to get my website updated before the kids get home from school and try to access and print it. Hermione comes in my room about 5 minutes after the bell has rung to ask my why the 2007-2008 disclosure is still up, and not the current one. Bless her overachieving soul.

Summer Projects

Owning a home is basically a life-time guarantee for having projects to work on for the rest of your life. And, if you ever get done with the projects at your house, don't worry--one of your kids will surely have a number of things they need done at their house. My dad falls into the second category, minus the no more projects left at his own place part. He's a pretty handy man, and we appreciate his knowledge and collection of power tools.

Here's what we decided to do when Dad came to visit. I don't have a proper "before" picture, but this is as close as you're going to get. Imagine the whole shower covered in the pink tiles, along with a sliding door that has about 20 years worth of crust in corners that never came completely clean. Notice the 1-inch tile on the floor, and the sad shape the grout is in. The whole thing needed to come out. Ripping a shower out is a piece of cake when you have a roto-hammer at your disposal. (And a couple of people hauling buckets full of broken tile bits down two flights of stairs and out to the truck waiting in the garage.)


There goes the floor! Actually, it was a little more involved than it looks. There was some chicken wire mesh in places that made it kind of hard to yank everything out. When we filled up the truck with all of the remains and took it to the dump, the truck weighed in with an extra 1,020 pounds. (Side note: Did you know that if you go to the Weber County Transfer station on a Tuesday, you might want to pack a lunch to tide you over while you wait for the train? Good grief!! The train tracks run right in front of the transfer station. We sat there and waited a good 30 minutes for the train to slowly go forward, stop, back up, go forward, stop, back up, etc. We had the truck unloaded in less time than we sat there pondering the meaning of life watching the train go back and forth.)

Once the shower was all gone, there was the question of what to do with the drain. The pipe in the floor and the hole in the base we bought were in two different places. No problem! All you have to do is cut out the floor, make a few new holes in the floor joists to make room for the new pipes, and fit the thing up so it fits.

Here's the base, fitted into place. I was at Lowes when it was going in, so I missed all of the excitement there.

Up go the walls, the dura-crete and bam! Shower. (The "bam" part took the good portion of a day and then some.)

Here's Mom cutting tile on the nifty tile-cutter Dad has. This is an industrial-grade hunk of equipment, and made life much easier.

After all tile tile went up (but before the residue from the grout got wiped off), we had our shower. So nice!

And, as if one bathroom wasn't enough, Dad was gracious enough to help us tackle bathroom #2. I don't have as many pictures of this part, because quite frankly, I was too tired to pick up the camera. This bathroom had a tub but no shower. (Deep question of the day: Why would you go to the trouble of building a house and putting in a tub, without adding the extra 5 feet of copper pipe to make it a shower as well?) Problem solved now. After we put in the plumbing for the shower, we tiled it all the way to the ceiling, like the other bathroom.

I don't have any pictures yet of the finished, polished product because the bathrooms aren't finished, polished and sparkly clean yet. Give me another week on that one. I also have to make a disclaimer here. You don't see any pictures of me in these shots, because I was the one behind the camera. I did work though, and wasn't just sitting off on the porch eating bon-bons during the process. It's actually probably a good thing that I'm not in any of the pictures, because I was a sight to behold!

Many thanks to Dad and Mom for spending their week with us. I think it actually should count as two weeks, because there were an awful lot of late nights. Lowes would like to thank us for spending lots of money on multiple occasions that week.

All done!

My class is over. Yeay!!! I'm going to buy a bushel of apricots to celebrate. Actually, I'm going to try my virgin apricot juicing skills and see if I can make a batch of apricot nectar.

Summer is starting to run out. I was curious to see how my numbers are looking for next year, so I got online and pulled up my class rosters. Isn't technology grand? It gave me a heart-attack. I have two classes at 45, and one at 43. I e-mailed the principal and told him this wasn't going to work. He said he'd work on it, and asked me to call him. When I talked to him on the phone, he assured me that he would work with the registrar to take care of the numbers in my classes. In the course of our conversation, he also casually mentioned that he had made me the department head, and did he tell me that last spring? No, he didn't, but I had kind of figured it would happen, just by the process of elimination. We lost our department head and wonderful Spanish teacher to a different high school in the district last spring. (Sigh! Grrr! That whole situation made me so mad! And sad!) I'm the only full-time foreign language teacher left who has been in the school for at least a year. The German teacher we share with Bonneville is the department head at Bonneville, and I'm sure he doesn't want double-duty. Ah, the joys of a small department.

Anyway, I'm off to tackle the apricots!

I'm drowning in a bowl of cherry-flavored jello of syrupy sweetness and despair.

Week one of my Master's of Education classes:

I have to say that so far, I am not very impressed. I'm really hoping that I just got stuck with a bum class. It's more than a bum class. It's shocking beyond belief, is what it is.

I'm a little limited in my choices of what I can take this summer. I got a late start getting the registration and admittance process going and as a result, wasn't able to get into the class I wanted to this summer. There was a class called "Understanding Reading" that was available. I already have my reading endorsement so I didn't really need to take it, but I thought it might be some good review. Heck, I might learn something I could apply to the content areas that I teach. It was advertised as a grade 6-12 class, so I thought it would kind of fit. Did I mention that was the only class that available? (...with the exception of the other class I signed up for that should be starting next week, but got cancelled.)

I got to class, and the professor started talking about a reading "program" we will be learning. Okay, I guess. Sometimes one specific program doesn't meet all of my needs, but I was willing to keep an open mind. By the end of Day 2, I realized that any time she used the word "program", what she really meant was "a script that you will be memorizing verbatim to teach rote memorization of vocabulary".

On Wednesday, the teacher informed us she would be showing us the "program" for teaching vocabulary. She then proceeded to drill and kill the word "helping" to us by breaking it into parts, having us write and spell each part, read, sound out and spell each part ad nauseam. By the time she was done, I thought she had gone a little whacky. It also gave me the urge to do things and say things I would probably regret later. (Teacher: Think of a phrase that uses the word "helping". Me: "Bob was helping Tom bury the body of the dead man in his backyard.) A few minutes later, it dawned on me that we would be memorizing that same asinine script. The line on the syllabus under assignments that reads: Teach a word lesson" means "Memorize my script that I wrote for you."

Aside from the annoyance of memorizing a script, the other thing that totally bugs me is that teaching vocabulary has its place, but if we pre-teach every word that might be difficult for the students, how will they learn the strategies they need to figure out what words mean on their own? Do you really go running for a dictionary every time you come across a word that is unfamiliar? I would hate to read if I had to do that. I could rant on this one more, but I'll refrain.

I'm really hoping this isn't what the rest of the program is going to be like. This might be naive, but I thought that in a master's program, I would be doing things like, I don't know...thinking and solving problems? Reading current research and discussing it with others? I want to pull my hair out and scream. This is NOT what I signed up for.

On the brighter side of things, we finally painted our deck. Remember the project that my dad came out last fall to help us do? The rest of it is finally done!

Before

After

And, lest you think I have run out of time-consuming things to do with the deck, I want to pull all of the weeds out of this part, add top soil to the whole area around the deck, and put in an herb garden. Oh, and don't forget the gutter I need to put in on the end of the deck so the ground below it doesn't get pounded to smithereens.

And as long as I'm giving a tour of the yard, the tree that we planted four years ago for Carrie has grown quite a bit. When we first planted it, it was just a little taller than Ryan. It's become a real tree since then, and actually creates a little shade now. I think the only problem with planting that tree is that I would be devastated if anything happened to it.

Carrie, I miss you. May our memories of the happiness you brought to our lives live on in the kindness we show to each other.

Old habits are hard to change,

especially when you are a chicken. This picture may not seem remarkable, until you realize that Merry got into this part of the chicken coop...

...through this tiny hole. Daisy, (the larger white chicken) made it through that same hole the following evening.
So why are we so cruel to block off the ONE spot in the chicken coop that all of the chickens are so anxiously trying to get into? Both ends of the coop are set up so they can be nesting boxes. We blocked the nesting box on one end, because from what we've read, it's best if the chickens don't have access to it until they are ready to lay.

When I blocked off the nesting box, I didn't take into consideration that the one we would want them to use for eggs would be best if it was on the side closest to the house, and didn't require walking around to the other side--especially in the winter. That was a month ago when we first moved them outside. A few days ago, I made the switch. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal to open the side I had blocked off, and change it to the other end. Same square footage, right? The chickens respectfully disagree. There is something inherently better about the spot (identical to the one on the other side that is now accessible) that I just blocked off. Every night when they go into the coop, it's a game to see if they can get into the other side. We've filled it up with other stuff so they can't get in, so they all pile up against the board so they can at least be closest to their favorite spot. Crazy birds!

Granola Goodness

I found a recipe for granola that I tinkered with a bit. It's pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself!

Granola

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. You will need two large baking sheets.

Mix together dry ingredients:
8 cups of rolled oats
1 1/2 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 cup oat bran
1 cup chopped almonds
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup chopped walnuts

Optional add-ins/substitutions:
1 cup of uncooked millet
1 cup of chopped cashews or whatever other nuts you happen to have on hand

In a pan on medium heat, stir together:
2/3 cup oil
1/3 cup peanut butter (I just plop it in my measuring glass with the oil to make it easier to scrape it out and measure)
2/3 cup honey
1/3 cup molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Allow the ingredients in your pan to come to a simmer. Once it starts to boil, remove from heat and stir into your dry ingredients. Pour the mixture into your two baking sheets, spreading so it's evenly distributed.

Bake at 300 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. Halfway through the cooking time, take the pans out, stir the granola and switch shelves in the oven. Keep an eye on it--especially close to the end so it doesn't get burnt.

When the granola is nice and toasty looking (it will harden a little more as it cools), pull it out of the oven. There are a few various add-ons you can do at this point:

Optional Add-ons:
1. Stir in raisins or craisins or both.
2. Stir in a handful of chocolate chips and let the melted chocolate-granola bits cool into lumps of chocolaty goodness.
3. Sprinkle a bit of flaxseed meal over the granola and stir it in. Flaxseed has a lot of nutritional benefits that don't necessarily make it through a lot of heat.

Let the granola cool completely, then put it in an airtight container. I don't know how long it is good for, because it never lasts long enough to find out. I like it with plain yogurt. If you live near me and would like a yogurt start that is super easy to use, I would be happy to share. All you need to make it is whole milk an a quart jar.

On an unrelated note, I was at the store today, and saw this lady with the most amazing hair I have ever seen. She seriously could have passed for the Bride of Frankenstein's sister. I couldn't stop looking at it, and wondering how on earth she got it to look like that. How does someone pick that particular doo? Do you just wake up one morning and think: Huh, maybe I will make my hair look like the Bride of Frankenstein? She was a very elegant looking woman in every other respect. It was just...odd.

Ponderings

After an eventful week in California (many thanks, Heidi, for organizing this) I'm at home now, browsing my pictures and pondering Life's Important Questions from the week.

Why is it that all of the Disneyland employees are adults? In any other amusement park, high school kids are the people manning the rides, telling people to get in line, etc.

Do the park employees ever wake up screaming in the middle of the night because they can't get "It's a Small World After All" out of their heads?

What continent do they serve donuts and fruit loops on? Would my nieces and nephews have been any more wound up that first morning if chocolate milk had been offered along with the donuts and fruit loops?

If Thomas got a 1 minute head start, and ran at 3 miles an hour, how long would it take Sabrina to catch up with him? If he started at the entrance, at which location in the park would Sabrina eventually find him?

What was the reaction of the lucky fellows in the Pixar parade when they found out that they got to wear shiny little wings as part of the "Bug's Life" float?

Would the ride "California Screaming" be any more interesting if I were to ride it again with my eyes open?

Corny jokes aside, here are a few pics from the week:

Can you tell things got a little out of control at breakfast? Thomas is all set to go with his leash (and he had it on for good reason). His cousins thought it was mighty fun, and turned it into a little train. Free entertainment for everyone in the hotel for breakfast.


You can rely on Jonathan to make sure the kids really are wired and fired. What are uncles for, anyway?

Ryan made us these cool yellow shirts that matched. If you are wondering why you would want to wear a yellow shirt when you go to Disneyland...

...it's because it makes it easier to spot other people from you group, like this. Hey, I recognize those people!

And them, too!



This is Kevin. It's kind of hard to tell the difference between him and kids...

My first chance to meet Andrew. Isn't he a treat?


Jonathan is always ready to strike a pose.

As part of the trip, we also went to the beach to play. It was a blast!

Bedtime Woes

The last few weeks, our chickens have been enjoying being all big and grown up in their outside coop. We have enjoyed having the guest room back, and the "girls" have enjoyed their new digs. It's taken them a few weeks to figure out how to get up the ramp into the enclosed portion of the coop at night. Stupid, darling birds! The first night, we went out to check on them before going to bed, and they were all huddled up in a pile freezing to death. I ended up crawling through the chicken poo to fish them up one by one and put them in the safety of the coop for the night. I had about 2 feet of clearance between the ground and the ceiling of the run, so it was a tight squeeze.

The last few nights, the "big girls" (our Easter Eggers) figured it out, and walked up the ramp all by themselves. As soon as they would go upstairs, the other two chickens (the smaller and stupider Frizzles) would run around in the chicken run squawking and crying for the Easter Eggers. They just couldn't figure out where the others had gone, and how to get where they were. Every night we have gone out, picked them up and (gently) shoved them up the ramp so they could get the idea of how the whole night-time process works. As soon as they get up there with the other two, they cuddle up. It's super funny to watch. The Frizzles will actually crawl under the Easter Eggers, like they are the mamas and the Frizzles are the babies, even though they are just a few days apart in age.

And tonight...success! We went out to see how they were doing, and ALL 4 chickens made it upstairs all by their very own selves. Proud moment for us. Maybe we need to get a life. Seriously though, I was starting to get kind of worried about how they will cope when we go to Disneyland. I'm okay with asking the neighbors to feed them, but helping them find their way upstairs every night is pushing the envelope on what I feel comfortable asking others to do.

Girls day out

We took the girls out for a stretch in the sun a week or two ago. They had a lot of fun pecking around, eating grass, scratching and just being chickens. I can't believe how big they have gotten! They have grown really fast, and are going through their food in exponentially growing amounts. They have developed a taste for ham and parsley. Pippin, the smallest chicken, is still...a big chicken, for lack of a better word. When I took her outside, she thought she was going to die! After much wing-flapping and protestations on her part, I managed to get her safely outside. She had a good time once she made it, but doesn't really like being picked up much. The other three are quite friendly. Daisy, the big white chick, get jealous any time the other chicks get attention. If Ryan or I am holding one of the other chicks, she will jump out of the box, and stand on the other arm--or stand on the chick being held.


Audrey, at 2 weeks.

The girls, about 4 weeks.


Merry and Pippin (note the hairy feet--hence the names).

Daisy (the big one) and Pippin (the runt). This picture was taken today, and they are about 6 weeks old.

We have discovered that Merry and Pippin are not the Rhode Island Reds we thought we were buying. Once their feathers started coming in, they started curling. This seemed kind of odd, so Ryan posted a picture of them on the backyard chicken forum. A few different people identified them as Cochin Bantam Frizzles. When he told me they were "Frizzles", I thought he was making it up. He was telling the truth--it's a real word, and refers to the fact that their feathers look like they got caught in a wind storm. Some days, I feel like a Frizzle myself.

Watch it, ya jerk!

That's what I thought to myself as the light turned green, and I carefully entered an intersection this morning. My caution was worth it--a car ran the red light, and I very easily could have been hit.

I'm not much of a honker, so it took me a minute to figure out where to push to beep my horn in disgust. I figured that a honk, even if it's delayed by a few seconds, would get the point across. Beep, beep! Grrrr. I proceeded on my way to IHOP, where a handful of my students along with a herd of students from another district high school were meeting for a silent breakfast. (How the heck DOES that teacher get so many kids to come out for activities like this?)

As I was driving along, I noticed that I was right behind the car that cut me off a few minutes ago. Stupid jerk! Hey, will you look at that--he's pulling into IHOP...I wonder if he thinks I'm following him...

I was curious now. I pulled in and waited for a minute until the driver got out and walked in. Turns out, he was one of my students--a kid I know and love. I still think he was driving like an idiot this morning, but I'm glad all I did was honk. I don't know if he realized I was the car he almost hit or not. I think I'll keep that little piece of information to myself.

5 ways to know that the end is near

5. We got our closing packets at faculty meeting last week. Wahoo! And then I took a closer look at the schedules they have made for the last two weeks... I have come to the conclusion that whoever made the schedules has not darkened the door of a classroom for a long time. Why do we need an 8 period the week before school gets out for senior check-out? Why is the 8-period day an early out at 12:15 to boot? We basically end up with two extra A-days according to plan--and they are much longer than the B days they alternate with because of short days for graduation, the BIG assembly, etc. Sigh. I shouldn't complain. It just makes it hard to play school when you are out half the time and in the other half.

4. I drive to school in daylight. There's something about seeing the sun in the morning that is just good for the soul.

3. My ETA to school in the morning has slipped from 7:00 to 7:15 to 7:20 to, well, never mind. I have 1st period prep on both days, and it's getting harder and harder to drag my sorry bum out of bed in the mornings.

2. I can count the remaining Mondays on one hand, and that includes Memorial day.

1. Questions like, "What's my grade?" have become much more frequent and urgent.

It's getting close! Can't wait!

Hey lady, get your kids off the playing field!

In an effort to come up with a "real" application of something we learned in class, I've been looking for an opportunity for my Sign II students to sign the national anthem. The version we learn from the Signing Naturally curriculum is very good, and has come in quite handy for me on a number of formal interpreting occasions when I've had to do it for my job.

It's been a little more difficult than I thought. At the school I taught previously, we performed it one year at the start of one of (the many) assemblies. When I asked at my new school, I got a "No, we don't do that here, sorry!" Meh. Whatever. Which explains why last week when I was policing the halls during an assembly I heard someone in the auditorium signing the national anthem. I guess I didn't batt my eyes enough.

Anyway, I scheduled with the athletic director to have my kids perform at a baseball game. We were originally scheduled for last week, but the location was changed and the game got rained out. So, after much double-checking with the director on the time, I had my kids meet me at 3:10 so we could perform at 3:20. Game was scheduled for 3:30. Athletic director assured me at 3:15 that we would be on in five minutes. I had my kids all lined up ("I have to babysit at 3:30, so this better get over fast." "I have a lacrosse game at 3:30, just so you know." ) and five minutes later we were strolling out onto the field.

"Hey," the baseball couch yells, "whaddaya think you're doing?"

Umm, getting ready for the national anthem...?

"Game doesn't start for 15 minutes! Get your kids off the field!"

Grrr. Obviously not on the same page as the athletic director who told me the time. About 25 minutes later, we were finally allowed onto the field, did our piece and were done. I had a few students who were getting super antsy because they had places to be, but for the most part it went pretty well. I'm sure they will all thank me when they become interpreters and have to interpret the national anthem. Yeah, right. Wishful thinking.

On a different note, I mowed the lawn. It was just mowed Saturday, although you would never guess that. It's supposed to be a rainy few days starting tomorrow, so I figured I better get it while I can.

SBO Entertainment

I always get a chuckle out of the SBO (student body officer) posters that get put up around the school at this time of year. I don't remember the campaigns ever being that elaborate when I was going to school. They have a special assembly where they perform skits for the student body, and I guess from that the students are able to see who has the best leadership abilities...? I'm always amazed at the things they come up with. The kid bathing in nacho cheese a few years ago takes the cake for odd skits.

I have to hand it to these kids for having the guts to plaster their faces all over the school. I don't think I had that kind of nerve when I was in high school. With the advances in technology and access to fancy printers and such, there are some kids who have larger than life sized images of themselves hanging up.

On some level, I think the SBO elections have a lot in common with real elections--people vote for the guy with the best-looking and most entertaining posters, even though they may not know a thing about what political positions he or she has, and what the duties of the office they are running for entails. The only difference is you probably won't see a slogan that reads: "He puts the STUD back in STUDent government" on someone's sign, although who knows?

Taking the plunge

I applied to WSU on Friday so I can begin work on my master's degree. I need to be accepted by WSU, and then apply to the Master's of Education program. I'm hoping I can get all of this going quickly, because I would like to get started on it this summer. I didn't realize it, but I've missed some deadlines and the first class that I need to take is full at the moment. I forget that colleges are on a different schedule than the public schools are (my cute little brother informed me yesterday that he is almost done with school--just one more week left).

Getting a master's degree has always been one of my goals, but it's been one that I've put off for a while. Part of the reason I've put it off for a while, is that there isn't a program that has what I'm looking for that's close to home. I know some people go to great lengths to find just the right program (including moving), but I'm not ready to uproot my very comfortable life and job that I love in pursuit of THE perfect degree and school. I'm not really wild about the idea of long commutes, either. One reason for starting now and going to WSU, is that because I'm teaching my high school classes as concurrent enrollment classes, I get 6 free credit of tuition a year. Can't beat being able to go to school for free. As a result, I will be doing the generic MEd program. I might do something more specialized later, but for all intents and purposes, and MEd will suit just fine.

So, here we go! I'm excited to go back to school. I love going to school. Hopefully I'll still love it when I'm done.

Catching up

It's been a busy month! Here are some of the things that have kept me occupied recently...

First and foremost being our baby chicks. What cute little balls of fluff! They are growing very quickly, and the biggest and bossiest (Audrey fforbes-Hamilton) has tail feathers coming in now, in addition to her very large wings. We are hoping that her remarkable growth is not due to the fact that she is a rooster. We ordered 2 Easter Eggers and 2 Red Star chicks from mypetchicken.com. Unfortunately, the Red Stars didn't make it past day 2, so we had to buy replacements from the local feed store. They didn't have any Red Stars, so we ended up with Rhode Island Reds instead. They have furry feet, so we named the two reds Pippin and Merry. Pippin is the smallest--we figured that Pippin could also be short for "pip-squeak". The other Easter Egger is named Daisy.

Daisy is the one taking a drink, Audrey is the big dark chick, Merry is right under Audrey, and Pippin is off to the right.

So far, Merry is the only one who has really taken to hopping on the perch.

We bought a coop for our girls. They won't be big enough to live in it for another month or so, but we are ready. It's pretty slick--with panels that can be removed on the sides, and a handy little egg door on the end next to the nesting box. Ryan has already come up with about a dozen different ideas for improving on it. We'll see how they do in it.


School has been keeping me pretty busy as well. I'm not sure why, but I never seem to get caught up. There are always the random things that come up at school that make it entertaining. Yesterday, I was cleaning up all the shrapnel that had piled up on my desk after a round of EDvisory (basically study hall on steroids...) in addition to a normal day's worth of classes. One of my kids comes in, totally out of breath. Turns out he is on the tennis team, and they were doing laps inside instead of fighting the wind outside. Did he feel a burning urge to get caught up on things for my class? No, I'm afraid his visit was a "Hey, I'm popping in because I'm supposed to be running and want a break." After I laughed at him, I sent him back out the door to finish his run.

I also read one of the lamest books I've read since I picked up Twilight. Skip this paragraph if you liked The Thirteenth Tale. (Ryan: So why are you continuing to read this book if it's so dumb? Me: Because it's so stupid, I have to see if the end is any better than the beginning.) Fact: The end is STUPIDER than the beginning. Good grief! Maybe the problem lies in the fact that when Ryan looked it up on Wikipedia, it was termed a "gothic" novel. I think "gothic novel" in this case means the most ridiculously absurd twists of plot in a tale involving people who need to get over themselves. In some ways, it was reminiscent of some of the stories my sister and I would make up together when we were kids. Our stories had all kinds of plot twists, one of the most common being that the really evil person would magically end up not being evil--she just had an evil twin sister. In the case of this book, not only did we have a set of twins (one of them being evil), we also had a half sister show up 20 pages from the end who looked EXACTLY like the twins. I dunno. It just stretched my suspension of reality a tad too far. Not to mention the weirdness of the incestuous love affair between two of the characters in the book. Eww. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend this book.

Last weekend, we had some last-minute visitors. My brother and his family stayed overnight on their way to a funeral in Idaho. It was wonderful to see them--we don't get the chance to see them as often as we would like. We had a blast playing with their kids. My house is also cleaner than it has been in a few months...nothing like guests coming to inspire a round of late-night housecleaning. We should have guests over more often.


And...I've also been playing with different recipes. I found a pretty good granola recipe on Allrecipes.com, and tweaked it a bit to match what I had in my kitchen. I'll post it--it was really good.