ConAg Expo 2011

Bill's work sent him to the annual ConAg Expo in Vegas.  He didn't have to go, but he decided to take Will with him and make it a guy's weekend.  I didn't want to go (ugh.  Boring expo!).  Besides, someone needed to be home for Helena and her Prom.  They were gone for three days, but I think they only spent the first day at the expo.  They sure brought home lots of loot from it, though.  Will ended up with several shirts, about 13 lanyards, a hat, and who knows what else.

On the second day, they went out and 'toured' Hoover dam and the new bridge!  Isn't it beautiful?  They actually walked across it!  I was surprised to see video that Bill took of Will actually leaning over the railing and even joking about jumping off of it.

You see, when Will was little, he was afraid of heights.  Even open risers or metal stairs would freak him out back in the day.

I will also admit, I am glad I wasn't there because it would have freaked me out seeing him goof around on something so high.  I have an overactive imagination when it comes to horrible ways my kids could be hurt or killed.

Which reminds me.  On their last day out, they stopped and watched a dune buggy (?) race.  They were standing maybe 20 feet away (with no guard rail) from these dune buggies that would go barreling by at high speed.  Bill shot some video of that, too.  In one of the videos, a dune buggy sprayed him with gravel and you can hear him react ("Ouch!").

Yeah.  Definitely sounds like a guy's weekend.

Prom 2011

We ordered a dress about a week before anyone asked her.  We ordered it too late.

Prom was last Saturday and the dress still hasn't arrived.

That's okay, though.  She still looked beautiful in the dress she wore to Preference and I am certain that she will have an opportunity to wear the new dress next year.  Maybe for Homecoming or Preference.

She was asked to Prom by a boy in her math class named Seve Trevino.  That is actually a nickname, short for Sevestian and it is pronounced "Sevie".

Their 'day date' was breakfast at Kneaders and the Holi Festival of Colors at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork.  It is a celebration of Spring where participants throw colorful chalk (replacing the ground flower petals of 5,000 years ago) at each other.  This is a big deal locally, and more than 30,000 people attended this year.  Helena came home from it VERY colorful and seemed to have a good time.

I met Seve when he picked Helena up for the day date.  He seemed very stiff and didn't smile even once (I never did see him smile).  I felt like he was extremely nervous and wondered if it was his first time meeting his date's parent(s).  When he came back to pick Helena up for the evening, I did the standard mom taking pictures routine.  No smile again.

 
They were in a Prom group with Seve's friends, whom Helena did not really know.  They went to dinner at Olive Garden.  The prom this year was held at the Sleepy Ridge Golf Course club house.

It's beautiful, isn't it?  I always felt bad for the school gym sort of prom.  It sort of makes dressing up in a fancy ball gown pointless if you are just going to be dancing on the 3 point line under a bunch of crepe paper streamers and the home team scoreboard.  A building like the golf clubhouse looks like just the sort of place to wear a fancy dress!

Helena said she had a nice time, though apparently Seve talked a bit too much about video games and not enough about things that interest Helena.  This was their first date, and according to Helena, their last.  She still thinks he is a nice kid, if a bit weird.  Today she told me that he asked her if she would be his 'girlfriend'.  She tells me she let him down gently (my words, not hers) by telling him she didn't have time for that sort of thing since she really needs to focus on school right now.  His response was to ask her if they were still friends, though?

Ahh!  High school!  Does it ever really change?

In the meantime, if you are reading this and you have young boys to raise...

Will you make sure, when the time is right, that you teach them how to meet and greet the parents and how to hold lively conversations with their Prom date?!?

Financial Setback

The district has built two new schools out near mine.  The closest of the two will be filled only with students taken from my school.  We are at a student population of 1,200 this year; as we have been for the past 5 years.  Next year, our student population will be 700.  Our faculty is being cut in half.  No one is being 'fired', they just have to be relocated to another faculty.  Probably one of the two new schools.

There has never been any worry that I would lose my position.  So, even though I felt for the other teachers who have to find a position at another school, I felt kind of smug that I was secure.

However, I learned yesterday that the district has cut our Principal's budget on 'specialists' contract hours.  So, while I still have a job, my hours are being reduced.  I have always been on a .75 contract.  Next year I am being cut to a .6 contract.

I have been in a funk about it since I found out.  I ran the figures and between a cut in pay and an increase in insurance premiums I will be making $500 less next year...PER MONTH!  Overall, it is a $6,600 cut in salary for me.

So, what to do?  It feels like a slap in the face.

I could look for another position elsewhere in the district, however...

1. I was one  of the few elementary level art teachers in the district NOT already cut to the .6 contract, so there aren't any other elementary art positions out there to go to.
2. I can't just switch to a grade level classroom at my school because anyone with a full contract has priority over me, even though I have seniority.
3. While I could transfer to a grade level classroom elsewhere in the district, do I really want to?  I have been happy teaching art... much happier than when I taught sixth grade!  Also, who wants to be low man on the totem pole?  Not me!

I have thought about maybe looking for a 7th-8th grade art position.  I think that would be a blast!  Those are quite rare, though, and I will need to be patient for that opportunity.

In the meantime, I am trying to see the positive in this.  Most likely, a .6 contract will mean only working Tuesday-Friday... no Mondays.  I could definitely live with a four day work week!  I will just be even more broke than I am already.

Sigh.

Japan

It seems absolutely heartless of me that I can write about my own small doings and frustrations without even once mentioning the tragedy happening in Japan.  I have watched, with the rest of the world, in grief over the catastrophic death toll.  There is no recrimination about lack of preparedness, because really, how could you possibly prepare for such a force of nature?  All there can be is shock, horror, and prayers... for the living and the dead.

I hope to someday print this blog in a bound book, since it has become my journal.  For that reason, I will elaborate that I am referring to the 8.9 magnitude earthquake followed by more than 4 tsunamis that cut a merciless path of destruction and death through northwestern Japan on March 11th.  Though literally thousands have lost their lives (4,126 is the current death toll... with more than 12,000 still unaccounted for!), and millions are now homeless, there are amazing stories of survival...

Like the 4 month old baby ripped out of her mother's arms in the torrent of black, deadly water found alive and well in a pile of debris; reunited with her parents who both, miraculously, also survived!

Then there is the 70 year old woman found alive and determined to survive after also being swept away.

How about the 65 year old man found and rescued off the tattered remains of the roof of his home, drifting 10 miles out to sea?

Then, there is the fact that all LDS missionaries in the district most heavily hit were all conveniently at a zone conference that morning, 35 miles inland and out of harm's way.  I hate to say that God's hand was in that, after all, where was God's hand for the thousands who perished?  Still, it was an un-looked for blessing.

And now, to add insult to injury, the tsunami knocked out the power to a nuclear power plant shutting down the cooling tanks and leading to an imminent core melt down with radiation spilling out over the decimated landscape.

Things are grim in Japan.  It makes me feel guilty for my safety and security even as it makes me grateful for all that I have, especially my family!

The Downside to Clay

I have been spending the past two weeks on fourth grade clay projects in the art room.  Usually, each grade level from third to sixth gets to do one clay project per year.  This year, however, the fourth grade lucked out and got two projects.  This is thanks to Mr. Larson.

Mr. Larson is new to our school this year, but not new to the district.  He was the fourth grade science teacher at my children's elementary school.  Helena and Will both had him back in the day.  He got enticed out to our school this year since (I think) it is closer to his home.  I think there was another reason he told me about, but I can't remember and it really doesn't matter anyways.  Kind of a bummer that he'll be forced to relocate at the end of this year, along with half of the staff since we'll be losing more than half our student population.  That is a topic for another day, though.

Well, Mr. Larson happens to be an excellent teacher.  I have know that for years, so when he came to me with a request, I was happy to grant it.  He wondered if I would be willing to make Fremont figurines with his class as a follow up on some of their social studies.

Great!  I did it with the whole fourth grade and we had a ton of fun!

Then, of course, I still wanted to do my traditional coil construction pottery with the kids, so I decided to wrap that lesson up in Anasazi pottery to keep with the social studies theme and they LOVED it!

Here is the perpetual problem with clay projects...

What do you do with the student who was absent for the making of the project?  Whether due to illness, or a family trip to Disneyland (that one happens a LOT), how do you handle that?  Everyone else has one to glaze, but not him/her.

Or how about the kid who started one, but was absent when the rest of the class finished?

What about the kid who breaks their clay project before it can be fired?  Or broke it on their way home and now mommy is on the phone with you wanting you to help her precious child make a new one so he/she will stop crying about it?

These are all frustrating problems that I deal with on every art project, but it is magnified by the clay projects because the kids care about the clay project about a thousand times more than any other project, and it is next to impossible to get them 'caught up'.  I refuse to run the full (high electric bill) kiln for ONE little clay piece!  I also don't like giving up my lunches day after day to children who just spent the past week in Disneyland instead of class!  Or for students who wrecked the first one, and are just going to wreck the second one because that is their nature or talent.

Alright.  Enough grumping.

Good night.

Ragnar Relay - Wasatch Back 2011

So, I am in the middle of training for the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon on April 30th.  I am still planning to enter the Utah Valley Half Marathon on June 11th.

And now I am the 12th and final member of a Ragnar Relay team running the Wasatch Back Ragnar on June 17-18th!  It is a crazy day and night 188 mile relay race from Logan to Park City with each member of the team doing 3 legs of the relay.

I am still me.  I am still me.  I am still me.

If I keep saying that over and over again I can get through this training.

I have never attempted anything like this before in my life.  I have been a successful couch potato for many, many years.  This feels like a whole new way of living...  One sore legs day to the next!

Bill's niece, Liz, started building this team months ago when she registered for the now sold out event.  She recruited Bill for her team and he told her I was in training for the half marathons and that I'd probably be willing to be the final team member that she was trying to find.  She has us all scheduled to go to a running clinic down at the BYU track and field building in a couple of weeks to have our gait analyzed and who knows what else.

In the meantime, I have discovered a new training tool!  It is called Map My Run.  It is a free website (there are paid prescriptions, but the free version works great) that allows you to map out your running routes and it will calculate the distances for you.  It will also calculate your rate/speed if you tell it how long it took you to run your route.  You can also search for other routes that other people have made in your area.  For instance, the rec. center has built two 7 mi. routes that start and end right at the rec. center a block from my house.

This is exactly what I was looking for!  I have been jogging my longer mileage workouts on the track, because I wanted to make sure I got the full distance in, but the track is FLAT.  I need to train on ups and downs.  Now I have found out that my two standard runs outside are 3.9 miles and 5.25 miles.  I have created an 8.5 mile, a 10 mile, and a 13.1 mile route that I can follow easily!  Woot, woot!

All does, indeed, seem lost.

Aurgh.  My iPod is still on the blink.  For just a short little window while I was writing my last blog post, it seemed to have recovered just fine and I was reinstalling apps and rearranging them.

Then, it froze again.

And it hasn't recovered since.  It is still spinning its proverbial wheels as I type this.

I CAN'T JOG WITHOUT MUSIC!  Phooey.

I asked Helena if I could borrow her iPod yesterday and she was happy to loan it.  While I am grateful to her for the loaner, her music threw me off.  Let's just say it is not to my tastes.  This is less a generational thing than the fact that Helena has quirky tastes in music.  Her exercise playlist has a Quidditch song and a bunch of French rap mixed in with more familiar tunes.

So, today I will borrow Will's iPod.  I looked over his music list (which is surprisingly small, btw) and found that I knew most, if not all the songs on it.  He is also happy to loan it to me.

Still, I have to find a solution to my frozen iPod.  I think I am going to have to break down and buy AppleCare and take it in to be looked at.

Harumph.