February 16, 2005


The secret to weight loss Posted by Hello

February 11, 2005


These are some baby goats that visited our classroom! Posted by Hello

February 10, 2005

The picture below is of our friend Jeff and Alysun's daughter, Emmaleigh!

Keep a lookout for this outlaw. She may be in your area soon. Known as the "Toothless Bandit", she is frightened of old women and most animals. Although she is ruthless, you have nothing to fear if you can walk or run, since she cannot. A million slobber kisses from the criminal is your reward for capture.
 Posted by Hello

February 08, 2005

"Teacher, I'm gonna cut your pinky off."
-kindergartener
Do I have a dangerous job or what? I't 3:35, I'm going home!!! If you don't live with me, you don't know that this is not normal. I'm going to watch Oprah for once and make taco salad for dinner!
"I was a hold ringer in a wedding one time."

Kindergartener

February 06, 2005

Grandma's Potholder Posted by Hello
Old Milk Bottles Posted by Hello
Frosty Morning Posted by Hello
I don't claim him. (Christmas 2004) Posted by Hello
I know. I just hate it when people don't keep up on their blogs. And here it's been a month since I've written one word. I could make up excuses, but I won't. Paul and I are home on a very rainy Sunday being lazy before the long week ahead and conspiring plans to save money, buy a house, and otherwise become independantly wealthy. Work has been good and Paul loves school. We have DVD's from the library (another money saving scheme) to watch and chocolate cake to eat. We have started attending a church regularly after church "shopping for many months. We seem to be finally settling in to life here. I promise to be a faithful blogger...I promise to be a faithful blogger...I promise to be a faithful blogger.

January 06, 2005

Well, I'm waiting for it to snow. As a kid I never thought teachers were really PRO-snow day. I kind of pictured them sitting at home watching the snow come down, scowling. "Foiled again!" they would say. Some of my colleagues are ANTI-snow day. "We'll have to make it up at the end of the year when the weather is nice," they say. I guess I'm just one of those live-for-the-moment people who thinks that snow IS nice weather. Paul and I got a super-duper sled for Christmas and we are looking forward to testing it out on the hill behind our house. Today we were two hours late, but that's just because there was ice. Hope you're having a happy winter!!!

January 05, 2005

I always tell the kids that "if I didn't love them" I would let them do whatever they wanted. For exapmle, if someone is not following directions sometimes I say, "If I didn't love you, I might let you get away with that," or, "Aren't you glad I love you too much to let you do that?"
Today I overheard a conversation between two kids:

"If teacher didn't love us, well, that would be a lot of fun."
My Mom came into my classroom to deliver me something.

KINDERGARTENER: How embarassing.
ME: What do you mean?
KINDERGARTENER: I mean, if my mom came to my class I would be so embarassed.

January 01, 2005

Happy New Year 2005!!!

"Lead us, Father, along the paths You choose for us, whatever they may be. Help us to realize every day that You do not ever slumber or sleep and that You will not let our feet slip. We thank you for Your wisdom in leading us."
-Corrie Ten Boom-

December 21, 2004

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.”

December 18, 2004

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 Posted by Hello

December 14, 2004

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?