Our Garden

Our garden is still growing! We've definitely had some set backs (rot in the lettuce, only one pumpkin plant, which is not good, and our cantaloupe and carrots never showed up) Its not a perfect garden, but we will improve each year.

There are quite a bit of weeds, but not near the smaller plants that can be choked out. I don't think there is a weed that can take out our corn. It's huge! The tomatoes are not caged because I was gone the weekend that they needed it and Doug said, I quote, "Tomatoes grew just fine before there were cages. Don't worry about it!"

Tomatoes!

Note to self for next year: Lettuce needs more space.

This is the tasseling stage, I believe.

Wha la!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Last Day of School

We had our last day of school on Friday, but I accidentally forgot my small camera at school so I had to wait to post these till today. Usually on the last day of school, we are cleaning and organizing our classroom. One of those cleaning activities involves covering the desks with shaving cream to clean them off.

I started around the classroom squirted shaving cream on the desks in little smilee faces. I started having a little too much fun and I wanted to rile the kids up a bit, so I put the little extra on their noses after I covered their desks. One student had been "teasing me" the other day and by this point I was having a lot of fun, so I spayed a big pile on top of his head. (He had short hair...)

Well, I probably was having too much fun so in turn my class decided to have too much fun. WAY too much fun... My classroom advanced to a state of choas rather rapidly. I had decided I would let it go a little because is WAS the last day of school. Here are the results of my "letting things slide a little..."






My students told me that this is the most fun that they've ever had at school. By the way, it's pretty hard to get shaving cream out of hair.. and clothing.. and ears.. and well everywhere. To top it off, we ran out of paper towels and the custodian was too busy to bring us more, so I needed to send the more public friendly students (all 3 of them) to the restroom to bring back paper towels.

Oh yeah, and the principal decided at this very moment to visit our classroom. There was definitely an eyebrow raise.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Sumo Doug and Jenny

Our next door neighbors are party fiends. They have three kids and whenever they have a birthday party it is major business. Two weeks ago, their son turned 7 and they had a huge party which included an inflatable obstacle course, customized tool aprons for all of the kids, a cotton candy machine, and more. We had a blast, but I never went back home to grab my camera, so we don't have pictures.

Doug helped by running the cotton candy machine. He was quite the hit at the party. There were lines of kids asking for cotton candy. One of them even asked Doug if he worked for the circus! :)

So last night, their daughter turned 14. They rented the inflatable sumo suits with the wrestling ring. Doug and I went ahead a tried them out. I could barely move in the thing. Whenever Doug knocked me down it took two people to get me back up and standing.

We're glad we have such interesting neighbors!

The corn is so tall!

Doug and I looking tough!

Before I kicked Doug's butt.

Our neighbor Gustavo helped me out a bit by tackling Doug as I laid helplessly on the ground.

Doug spinning me around till I fell.

Getting out of the fat suits.

WOAH!

So, I just had to show a picture of this. I know it's been a little while, but I had this picture sitting on my camera and decided to share it. I have some crazy sports fans in my classroom. This particular student LOVES every team that comes out of Pennsyvania and especially loves hockey. He missed two days of school to go to game 7 with the Penguins and came back looking like this.


I think it says GO PENG. The other side has a 71. The funny thing is that he is a quiet student. I was surprised. His mom volunteers in my classroom on Mondays, so I was able to talk to her about it. Turns out he was all over the news and people were asking to take pictures with him.

He also was on morning news the day after he got back. His picture was broadcast across the school. The best part was the look on the principal's face when she turned to introduce the news anchors. PRICELESS!

Summer is coming...

I know I haven't posted in like a week, but I am still alive. It's the last week of school... finally! I'm working my students till the end and even taking grades the second to last day of school. I have tons of journals to grade, my Achille's heel in teaching.

I've been spending every other weekend with Doug in Annapolis. It almost feels like a mini vacation every other weekend. This weekend, Doug attempted to go crabbing, but it didn't work out. Maybe next time... I don't think we were in a good location for it. I didn't really do any of the work, I just sat of the dock and fell asleep with my feet in the water and took pictures of me squishing far away things with my fingers. It was nice.



We also went to this AMAZING Amish market in Annapolis. I had never been to one before and it was really neat. I'm actually interested enough that I'm going to do a little research into the Amish. We got the most amazing strawberry rhubarb and berry pies. We also bought some jam for family members. Some 8-9 year old little girls rang us up for the jam. They were really nice and very responsible for such a young age! Its actually called the "Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market" and its in the corner of this picture with the big lighthouse.


I miss seeing him every day, but it is starting to get a little easier, well kind of. It still sucks. We'll be living this way until his class is over in November and maybe afterwards because the commute is so bad. Right now moving is not an option with the market the way it is.


Summer is coming up and I still don't have a job. I'm looking into doing part time tutoring, but I need to find tutorees first. It's kind of nice, but I don't like my time to be wasted so I'm trying to figure out useful things to do during the summer. Possibly painting a room in my house each week or something like that. I've been working on organizing Doug's stuff in the basement and have actually gotten rid of the terrible pile.

We have our tickets to Utah. It was pricey, but we're going. We'll be there from July 3 - July 12. All we need to do now is find someone to babysit the aquarium and the cats while we are gone.

OUCH! Airline Tickets

I'm in the process of getting airline tickets to a family reunion this summer in Utah. Right now it's looking like its going to be over $880 for the two of us from BWI to SLC. OUCH! Is this the normal airfare "deal" or is it higher than usual?

Any tips on finding a cheap way to fly?

Visiting Doug

I was excited to support my little brother for his graduation, but it was really killing me that I wasn't going to be able to see Doug that weekend. It just wasn't logical to drive all the way down for only one day. I called him up after graduation and he seemed pretty lonely, so I jumped it the car and made it in record time to his apartment. I got there pretty late Saturday night, but I got to spend all of Sunday with him. The people that he is renting from have a private beach/dock for their community, so they gave us a pass so we could go and enjoy the beautiful weather. We sat out on the dock for almost 2 hours and talked. It was great! This is the only picture I took the whole weekend. It was a beautiful day! The people that we are renting from are amazing people. They invited us over for dinner and we had it right on the front porch of their beautiful historic house. He's not just a renter. They really do treat him like family. Molly had the table set so pretty, I told Doug that I would've taken a picture if I had my camera on me. I ended up staying late, but I was thankful for every minute I was able to spend with Doug.

Congratulations Chris!

My little brother Chris graduated from high school this last Saturday. I was behind the camera the whole time, so I didn't even think to have someone take a picture of us together. He towers over me majorly... he's so tall! I think this is number 7 to graduate from Jefferson. I wonder if we have a school record or something like that.


He's going to work until he's 19 to save up for his mission and then he plans to go to BYU after his mission and major in aeronautical engineering or something like that.


He's always been a good kid and I'm very proud of him! I'm sure it was tough being a boy with all of the girls in our family. He's been put in dresses, judged countless barbie pageants, and still turned out surprisingly normal!