December 23 is Root Day. Be sure to eat your healthy root vegetables!

This is a newspaper article from our local newspaper that I thought some might find funny. Though I'm sure much of it is in jest, it shows the kind of community that we are now a part of, much different than Portland. The author of this article is Brian Mitge of The Chronicle.


"Turns out catching a chicken is easier than knowing what to do with it.After a chase under copper pipes and behind washing machines, a Centralia police officer managed to remove a chicken from the laundry room of the Econo Lodge motel Monday.Unfortunately, because of a communications mix-up and the fact that the city’s animal control officer was on vacation, officer Gary Byrnes released the chicken back to the wilds of the motel parking lot — exactly where it had been wandering before motel workers chased it into the laundry room that morning.Econo Lodge manager Kim Cho said the motel staff had wanted to keep the bird safe until someone could take it to the county animal shelter.The chicken had shown up that morning in front of the motel lobby, just a few yards from busy traffic on Harrison Avenue.“We said, ‘Put it someplace safe until we get someone to take him,’ ” Cho said.Workers called the Lewis County Animal Shelter — which has adopted out chickens, turkeys, hamsters, even iguanas — where staff members told them to call the police. They did, asking officers to hurry so the chicken wouldn’t mess up the linens.The call from Central Dispatch that went out to officers, however, ended up as a simple (if unusual) request to remove a chicken from a laundry room.Byrnes drove straight to the scene and had a motel maid unlock the door for him. The bird took flight and refuge behind some pipes, but Byrnes managed to catch it in just under 10 minutes — although he got a small cut on his head in the process.He held the squalling bird by one leg as he took it to some tall red bushes behind the motel, near a chain link- fence separating the parking lot from Fuller’s Twin City Skate Park in Rotary Riverside Park.After being released, the bird walked west with a stately strut, apparently no worse for the wear. Byrnes also took the humorous situation in stride.“Protect and serve, and all that good stuff,” he said with a smile after releasing the bird.Cho said she wishes things would have gone differently. She’s still worried about the clucker, which, she said, seemed like a house chicken, not a wild one.“If I have a home, I would have just taken it,” she said. “We didn’t know they would let him free like that.”Centralia Police Sgt. Kurt Reichert said police couldn’t have taken the bird to safety even if they had known the manager had made that request.Officers wouldn’t put poultry in their patrol cars, and the animal control officer wasn’t available with his specially equipped vehicle.Reichert compared the situation to playing “telephone,” the childhood game of passed messages and compounded misunderstanding.“What I understood, the call was to remove the chicken from the laundry room, it was stuck in there or had wandered in there,” Reichert said.The question of where the bird came from is still unresolved, although the likely source is the the Country Cousin restaurant five blocks away.The down home-themed eatery has a coop of chickens maintained by Chehalis farmer Penny Mauel and her daughter, former Lewis County Dairy Princess Brandy Mauel.One of their birds escaped in September — probably the same one that wandered by the motel, Penny Mauel said.She said the birds they display at Country Cousin have distinctive speckles from their mixed lineage, the result of their family’s hen mixing with the neighbor’s stock.“My kid soon figured out why the chicken crosses the road,” Penny Mauel said. Her daughter supplied the long-sought answer: “There’s a rooster on the other side.”

My mom was featured in a story for our local newspaper. She's the one on the far right. For the whole story go to: http://www.chronline.com/main.asp?SectionID=49&SubSectionID=109&articleID=17623 

UPDATE: (if this doesn't make sense read the previous blog)
"One generation will overwinter or hibernate. This is called diapause. Diapause allows the cocoon to wait out a cold winter when few if any leaves would be available for caterpillars to eat. Diapause cocoons stay in this hibernation state until the warmth of spring and longer periods of daylight will trigger the moth to complete its development and to hatch."

We have a cocoon in our classroom. This cocoon was given to us at the beginning of the school year (like the first day of school almost) by another school employee. At one point I was absolutely sure it was dead. I wrote about this in another entry a few months ago. Well, the jar is on our science table and the children are allowed to pick up the jar, shake it, and use a magnifying glass to look at it as much as they want. You can hear it and feel it scritching and scratching on the outside of the cocoon if you shake the jar a little (or a lot). I must do some research on cocoons because I have a hard time believing that it is still alive after all this time even though I know it is because I can feel it scratching. Is it afraid to come out? Is it hibernating? Does it have brain damage from all the shaking? When it does hatch and we put it outside in fifty degree weather will it not surely die? I feel like quoting a kindergartener who recently put her mouth over the lid of the jar and in a very stern and firm voice said, "waaaakkkeee uuuupppp!"
Another thing, I recently tried the classic experiment in my classroom with a potato and a jar of water. You know the one were it grows roots in the jar? Well, the potato was there for a full three week and nothing happened. I think I teach in the Bermuda triangle of classrooms. A strange place where moths are trapped in their cocoons and potatoes are sterile. What does it all mean?

"Teacher, we're gonna sell ya to the Indians."

Kindergartener

Rainbow Puddle

It's been raining like crazy around here and our cafeteria / gym is separate from our classrooms so every day on the way to lunch we wind around in a maze and try to find our way through the puddles. Today there was some gas or oil in a puddle and the kids noticed that there were colors in the water. One of them said, "Oh, I get it. That's where rainbows come from!" All the other students nodded in agreement. "It's a rainbow puddle."

You Might Be From a Small Town If:
You can name everyone you graduated with.
You get a whiff of manure and think of home.
You know what 4-H is.
You ever went cow-tipping.
School gets cancelled for state sporting events.
You have ever gone home for Homecoming.
You fix up to go buy milk lest anyone starts the rumor that you have gained weight or quit taking care of youself.
No place sells gas on Sunday.
You have to drive an hour to buy a pair of socks.
It was cool to date someone from the neighboring town.
You ordered your waredrobe out of a catalog.
You had senior skip day.
The whole school went to the same party after graduation.
You don't give directions by street names or house numbers, but you give directions by references (turn by Marty's house, go two blocks past Sanderson', and it's four houses left of the track field).

How I know I live in the country:

"Teacher, what's a mall?"

Isn't she beautiful? 

Paul puts our Christmas Tree up.  

Horses on a frosty morning from our bedroom window 

Thanksgiving meal 

Thanksgiving weekend hiking trip 

Kindergartener: I'm really, really tired. I stayed up really late last night.
ME: Oh really? How late?
Kindergartener: Sixteen o'clock.

It's pretty blurry, I know, but this is what happened to our school bus the other day. 

Welcome Emmaleigh Danielle!!! Congratulations Jeff and Alysun!!! 

Today when I was driving to the gym I noticed that our town Christmas decorations are up - giant candy canes and wreaths. Christmas is here!!!

"Gettin' shots is the worstest thing that could happen to ya."
-Kindergartener

My brother Dan is in Mexico for a whole year working with teams building houses. 

Pacific Madron, Point Defiance Park 

Museum of Glass  

Museum of Glass, Tacoma WA 

Today we were learning the song "America the Beautiful" because we are singing it with the rest of the school for a Veteran's Day Assembly. I was explaining the words as best I could (try that one) and I got to the part about "alabaster cities gleam":

ME: Now say the word "alabaster" with me.
KINDERGARTENER: But teacher, my mom doesn't allow me to say that word.

KINDERGARTENER: "When I grow up, I'm going to be a scientist and make antedotes."

These are the deviled "spiders" that I made for our staff halloween potluck. Don't ever try this. It takes much longer than you would think. 

This is the class pumpkin we picked out. We carved it later but I forgot to take a picture of that. 

This is the pumpkin patch where we took a field trip this week. Each child got to pick out thier own pumpkin. 

My kindergarteners have been skipping school to go hunting.

Part of a conversation with a third grader today:

..."I know my watch is the right time because I set it by the TV and the TV is right because, well, it's the TV"...

"I should be able to tie my shoes soon. Probly by when i'm thirteen."
KINDERGARTENER

Kindergartener: (looking through a magnifying glass at me) Teacher your body looks sooooo big!

Fall colors 

Paul and Annie take a walk in the fall. We were a little wary. It's hunting season here and that means that wifes often get a welcome respite from thier husbands. It also means there are alot of men in camo with guns walking through the forest.  

Quote of the Day:

from a young life leader who moved here from puyallup to be in ministy:

"This isn't a place you move to, it's a place you move away from."

"Gues what teacher, Alice popped my neck and (throws her head back so she is looking behind her) now I can see all the way back there!"

KINDERGARTENER: Does mop have a 'k' in it?
ME: No. m-o-p
KINDERGARTENER: (throws down his paper and throws back his head) OOOOHHHH that makes me so mad!

Fall and baby caterpillars

Fall is here and as the title of one of the books in my classrooms says, "Fall is Not Easy". Lately the little ones have been coming back in from recess with cold noses and cold hands. We have a cocoon in our classroom that was given to us by another teacher the first week of school. It's in this little jar with some leaves and grass. After a while it started making scritching and scratching noises inside the coccon like it was trying to get out. But then it stoped making noises at all. I thought, "we have killed this creature, how am I going to tell the children?" So I made a big speech about how sometimes baby caperpillars die. There were solem faces and droopy eyes. So then I said, "how about we break open the coocoon and see what's inside?" (which I really had been dying to do). This seemed to cheer them up a little. So I reached down inside of the jar to get the cocoon from the leaf. And that's when I heard a little ... faint ... weak ... "scritch, scritch" from the inside of the cocoon. I think moths know when they are about to throw in the towel. Either that or God was trying to save me from a major educational nightmare. I can just imagine me opening the cooccon and the little creature writhing inside, plainly alive, for all five year olds to see. I would have become a murderer of baby caterpillars in thier eyes. A torturer of the weak and small. Thank you God (and baby caterpillar)!

Tenino resident Jack LaRue darts away from more than 1,750 pounds of falling pumpkin Saturday afternoon after releasing the gourds from a crane situated about 70 feet above a Ford Taurus. The drop took place as part of a weekend of autumn-themed festivities at Pioneer West nursery in Centralia.
 

A black bear runs across East Main Street between Green Street and Barner Drive toward Centralia?s Seminary Hill Natural Area Tuesday evening.
 

ME: "Let's take it easy today?"
KINDERGARTENER: "What's a neasy?"

We have a science book on our classroom with a picture of a gray haired scientist on it. My students are all convinced that he is God.

Kindergartener: "If you say you'll marry me I'll be on your baseball team."

I got my hair cut! 

While in Olympia we took some time out to visit our favorite place, the walmart supercenter. Just kidding, here is Paul at starbucks in downtown Olympia. 

Our quest for an alternative grocery store stops here, a mere fourty minutes away from our house. The Bayview Thriftway is like walking into a Trader Joes and Wild Oats rolled into one perfect grocery store. We had been able to find some natural foods at an odd store called Shop N Kart, but the experience was marred by the twenty foot "yard bird" gracing thier entrance. Otherwise, we are doomed to the Walmart Supercenter with it's long lines, screaming children and appalling lack of soy ice cream. 

Our place: From this side it looks more like a house than a barn. 

Mt. St. Helens: We have not been able to see it for a few days. Just as we were coming home today we caught a glimpse of a SNOW covered Mt. St. Helens, something we have not seen all summer until now. 

You had probably guessed that Paul's fascination with mountains has not suffered since we moved north. Last week he drove to Mt. St. Helens in the hopes of being caught in the path of death and destruction. Sadly, he missed the mountains latest hiccup by an hour. You can see the last of the steam plume hanging in the crater and the news media in the foreground.