Cute little graduates

Aren't these little preschool graduates cute enough to just eat 'em up? And tomorrow I get to play with the one in the middle. Yipee!!

Ahhhh, summer vacation

Ahhhhhh. I slept till almost 6:30 AM, I'm getting my weekly bookwork and laundry done on a Friday instead of Saturday (a successful white load, by the way!!)..... Yes, it feels really nice to be home in the morning.

The last hurrah

This morning we had our final staff meeting for the year, then we did our annual lunch at the Olive Garden. We were there for two hours and it was just a bit noisy at times! Thankfully they gave us a room at the back.

We were delighted to include Edna, our fifth grade teacher who was on medical leave this entire year. She has been battling multiple myeloma for the past three years and has been participating in a trial treatment at Johns Hopkins. They not only did a bone marrow transplant this year, but a stem cell transplant. Of the 15 who participated in this trial, 2 are now cancer free, and Edna is one of them!! Praise God!! She will be back teaching 5th grade again next year.

Our table ordered several desserts to share. At one point in the passing around of the desserts, they all ended up with Deb, our secretary. Looks like she's just chowing down those sweets!

We had to say our last goodbyes to Ren, our Cambodian volunteer. What a sweet guy. I felt like he was one of my boys and I'm going to miss him. Thankgoodness for the internet.

This afternoon I had my six-week hair appointment, only it was seven weeks this time. Somebody counted wrong when they made this appointment, I guess. I was starting to feel like Raggedy Ann - no wonder.

So tomorrow I'll be all about getting everything around here ready for me to be gone, and then getting myself ready to be gone.

Happy and sad

School is finished for this year! The students had half a day. I didn't have any classes, so I was able to get my room completely "undone", packed away, reorganized, etc by the end of the day. Tomorrow morning we have staff meeting, then we go to Olive Garden for a final fling.

I am eager for my upcoming trip to see our kids in Florida (Saturday to Wednesday), I am glad for the chance to get caught up here at home and do some much needed projects, I welcome the chance to go to bed without setting my alarm for 5 AM. So why did I feel almost depressed as I worked in my room today?

Because I love my job! I love the people I work with. We have so much fun all the time and I will really, really miss them. Maybe when I get bored this summer I'll just have them all over for a good time.

Eighth Grade Graduation

This evening we held eighth grade graduation at our school. As usual, I played Pomp and Circumstance and helped them with their class song, which was Nicole C. Mullin's Redeemer. Eleven kids - and they sang it in four-part harmony. They are pictured above with the middle school teachers.

The speaker this year was our first grade teacher. When she started teaching at our school these kids were her first class of first graders. She shared a lot of fun memories and great advice on seeking after God's kind of success.

The class speaker was Derrick Kreider. What an incredible guy. He spoke with the confidence and wisdom of an adult. He also received the academic award.

I will SO miss this class. I absolutely cannot believe that they are finished.

Look what I missed

Look at the good time I was missing down at Lisa's this weekend. Oh well, my turn is coming!

Ray and Thyda took Destiny to the park again today, and I got all my papers graded and report card grades calculated and recorded and ready to give to the classroom teachers. Woohoo!!!!

Now Ray and Thyda are headed back to Virginia Beach (and by the way, I was very thankful to be spending this Memorial Day with them), Dick is on his way back to PA, and I will soon be taking Destiny home. I had hoped to go to State College today to hear Anthony's band, but he said there were heavy storms predicted for that area this afternoon and there might not even be a show (it was to be outdoors). Besides after reading my Saturday night blog post he thought I should stay home and relax for some reason!! I felt disappointed, because I miss them so much, but it really was nice to have such a laid back, unstressful day.

A much better day

Well, after that Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night, we had a really great day. But first - some pictures from yesterday.

This was the good part of yesterday. Late in the afternoon Destiny and I went to Salvation Army and spent at least two hours. While I looked for clothes for her, she had fun looking through all the toys nearby. And when I looked for clothes for myself she looked through a lot of books, which were nearby. I found a LOT of cute things for her and some pretty nice capris and shirts for myself.

But here's when things started going south. As you can see, Ray was already in the midst of shaving when he started trying to stop that leak. Here he was removing a door under the sink in order to access the shower pipes, in hopes of finding a valve to turn off. There wasn't one. How stupid is that?

But on to today. This morning my school worship team had one last engagement. There were four out of seventeen kids missing, which was to be expected for a holiday weekend, but they easily substituted solos and sign language for the ones missing, and rearranged some of the choreography. I will truly miss being with these kids, especially the seven eighth graders who will be leaving our school. Most of them have been on the worship team since sixth grade.

Ray and Thyda went somewhere this afternoon to get their pictures taken, but of course, I had to make them pose for me before they left.

But wait!! Why is this son of mine, all dressed up in his suit for a picture, kneeling like this on my deck?

Because we were finished using water for a while, and I wanted it turned off so the shower leak would not run all the rest of the day. So Ray came up with this bright idea - why not have the littlest person in the house get down into that crawl space and turn the main water off? He patiently showed Destiny how to do it, and she thought it was quite an adventure. It actually was quite convenient that she knew how to do it, because later (after my wonderful nap) when I wanted to run the dishwasher and another load of laundry, I simply had her turn it back on for me, and off again when everything was finished.

This evening Destiny and I had our first outing at the local park. There were lots of families there with little ones. I'm sure everyone has just been waiting and waiting for a warm evening like this.

One of our "finds" at Salvation Army yesterday was roller blades for Destiny. The park was a great place to try them out. I sat at a table and began the laborious task of finishing up paper grading and doing report card grades. Last time for this year - yipee!!

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night

I just might be having one of the worst nights of my life. I had a most pleasant day (Saturday) with Destiny and Ray and Thyda. But this evening things began to deteriorate.

First off, after Ray took a shower the faucet continued to drip. He decided to fix it, but actually made it worse. Instead of a drip it was a steady stream that landed loudly and splashily. I was thankful it was the cold and not the hot water, closed the shower doors, and quit worrying about it. Ray and Thyda left for an engagement party for some of their friends.

I had had a phone call from one of my worship team girls that she had left her worship team tee shirt at school and what was she to do about it? (We have a program in the morning.) I told her I would go to school and get it. So around 10 PM Destiny and I headed over to school. While there I discovered some lights that had been left on that shouldn't be on, so we trekked through the school taking care of them.

When we got home I started worrying about the shower problem. I put a cleaning bucket under the stream hoping to cut down on the splashiness of it. To my amazement the bucket filled up in five or ten minutes. This whole community gets its water from a well. How long would it take for continuously running water to run it dry??? I called Dick and Ray, with very little help from either one.

At the same time Destiny was having a fit because her belly hurt and she just couldn't go to sleep. (I was going to let her sleep in my big bed with me since Dick's not here.) And then, oh joy, oh delight, she came into the guest bathroom and informed me that she had thrown up in my bed, upon which announcement she promptly threw up into the bathroom sink. I mean she REALLY threw up. What I found in my bed was not a pretty sight either. How do you empty chunky vomit out of a king size sheet? That was not a pretty sight either. I managed to strip the bed, put a full size flat sheet down on it. She was feeling all better after that and was soon asleep. (My stomach has felt absolutely yucky ever since.)

I kept trying to figure out different ways to fix the shower problem. Then Ray called and said he and Thyda were on their way home and that Dick had called him and told him where to turn the main water off under the house.

So I decided to take wash out of the dryer. Now you're going to think I have completely lost all common sense. Remember the crayon-in-the-dryer fiasco from last weekend? After having tried all the suggestions for getting stains out of a few items of clothes, to no avail, I just let the rest of that ruined load in a pile on the laundry floor all week. I just could not come to terms with throwing all those clothes away. (I did wear some undies off that pile this week, praying I would not be in a car accident and have paramedics wondering why I had multi-colored bra and panties on.) WELL, would you believe that this evening when I started my white load I thought, "Why not put some of the stuff from last week's load in with it, and maybe washing it in really hot water and lots of detergent and Clorox II would cause some of the crayon stains to disappear." WRONG!! Just the opposite. Now everything in this week's white load that wasn't ruined last week has been ruined this week, even my pillow cases.

Just since I started writing this post, Ray and Thyda came home, and I went outside with him while on the phone with Dick, relaying instructions for turning the main water off. It was definitely a camera moment, but no camera. Me out there in my housecoat and slippers at 12:30 AM, Ray lowering himself into a crawl space that gave him the heebie jeebies. I said, "Come on, Ray, you're a sailor, you can do anything, right?" He wasn't so sure.

And just imagine - when I get up in a few hours to take my shower, I'll have to go wake him up to turn the water on again for me. What a good son. I had just washed those thrown-up-upon sheets right before he turned the water off, now there's no water to rinse them. I guess it won't hurt them to have detergent and bleach in them all night long. All the better to disinfect them, hopefully.

Well, it is now after 1 AM, and I need to get up by 6, so I guess I'd better try to get some sleep before anything else happens.

And now I am adding one more thing at 7:15 AM. I had mercy on Ray and decided to try some alternate methods. I heated drinking water on the stove and managed to wash my hair and bathe myself at the bathroom sink. Not fun, but it did the job. I think after church I'll go fill up all the drinking water jugs we have and just use that for our water needs till Dick gets back home Monday night. It could be worse - at least we have electricity.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

It is GORGEOUS in PA today! It's been a long time coming and all the more delightful!

On most Saturday mornings Dick makes his special eggs for Destiny and me. However, this morning he left at 5 AM for the airport and flew to Tampa to be with our Florida kids for the long weekend. But never fear, a cook is here! Ray and Thyda arrived from Virginia Beach sometime during the night and there was a note on the table that Ray wants to cook breakfast. As usual, he made a huge production out of it, complete with lots of noise and humor.

I wanted a picture of him making the eggs, but he turned and looked at me like this just when I snapped the picture.

I said, "RAY!! I wanted a picture of you tending your eggs." So this is what I got next.

Finally, the pose I had in mind.

Dick called at 10:55, right on schedule to say that his flight had just landed at the Tampa Airport. So by now he is probably with Lisa and Sophie. Lucky Grandpa!

Coming and going

First thing this morning we had an all-school assembly in the gym with my worship team leading the rest of the students and teachers in praise and worship. Most of the songs we do are ones I've already taught the entire school, so it was great having such an enthusiastic little audience helping us to sing. I got one of the teachers to take pictures with my camera, BUT something seems to by going haywire with my Picasa program. When I load pictures this week they don't load in the order I took them. One time they loaded twice and when I tried to delete the one folder, it deleted both. This time when I tried to load them they completely disappeared. COMPLETELY!! I have searched every nook and cranny of this computer for them. I can find the folder title "MCDS Worship Team Assembly", but there are no pictures in it. Hopefully I can get some from someone else. I especially wanted to show you pictures of the little ones singing along.

The rest of the day was track and field day, for which I had absolutely no responsibilities. It was WONDERFUL. I closed my door and worked on things uninterrupted as I listened to classical music.

After school today Destiny was taken to her other Grandma's house in Lancaster, so later this evening Dick and I went there to get her. I was thankful to not have to make another trip to Reading, after having made two last evening for her doctor appointment.

Dick is snoring away. He will be leaving here at 5 AM for the Baltimore Airport. He's going down to be with our Florida kids this holiday weekend. I know, I know - it seems we never travel together. But we have to do what works for us. He used up most of his vacation days for the year when he went to Sweden in March, so we decided if he went over this holiday weekend he could get an extra day with them "for free". And I couldn't go this weekend because I have one more Sunday with my school worship team and we have a few more days of school left next week. I'll be going down next Saturday and staying till the following Wednesday. Dick will get to see Jeremy tomorrow night in his performance in Gypsy, and I'll get to see him next weekend.

Ray and Thyda are on their way here tonight. I suppose they and Dick will completely miss each other!

The loooong Winter, oops, I mean Spring

I am not kidding when I say that for at least two weeks now, most of our days have been rainy all or part of the day, and the daytime temps have been in the 50's and 60's.

I reminded some of the teachers today that last fall when we had unusually warm temps through October we were saying that we were getting tired of wearing our summer clothes. But it's a good thing we got to wear them then, because we certainly are not getting to wear them now!

I had a proud message on my voice mail today. It was Ray saying that he just got the results of the big test he took in March. He has now been promoted from Sailor to Petty Officer Gonzalez. You go, Ray!!

Old videos

This week we have been watching portions of the video from our Spring Program in each class. Today I had all middle school classes. Instead of watching it I started pulling out old videos of programs when they were younger. The kids just LOVE seeing themselves when they were little. It was so much fun.

This afternoon I had no classes because grades 3 - 5 were on a field trip. I got all the costumes and props put away and even spent a lot of time organizing the storage room. It is now more organized than it's been for YEARS. Wow, that feels really, really good.

This evening I went to the retirement center in Lancaster for our church's monthly singing. On the way home I saw regular gas was $3.85. Makes me wanna cry. I already put almost $60 in my car this week, and tomorrow I need to go to Reading for Destiny for her ADHD follow-up appointment, and I know I'm going to have to fill up again.

From event to event

This morning I took the kids who had gone to the Jr. High Festival on May 2nd, along with several middle school teachers, for an all-you-can-eat breakfast in the banquet room of a local restaurant. The restaurant changed hands and was remodelled. We were pleasantly surprised at how much more elegant it seemed. We weren't exactly dressed elegantly, but we had a good time and the kids were complimented by the restaurant staff for their good behavior.

A former student brought seven puppies to school for the kindergarten and pre-K class to play with. I forget what kind they were, but they were absolutely adorable!

After school I returned our rented mics, then went directly to the funeral of Brittany whom I mentioned in yesterday's post. It was heart-wrenching to see the grief her family is experiencing, but the service was so sweet as they celebrated her life. There were tears and laughter both.

From there I went directly back to school for a dinner theatre that the eighth grade and our Bible teacher were putting on for the teachers and eighth grade parents. The kids wrote and performed the drama about Christ's death and resurrection, then served our simple meal of soup, bread, cheese, vegetables, fruit, and dessert. The setting was very intimate and absolutely delightful.