Sunday, March 16, 2014

talent show, President Alex, and an early spring

Not as slow this week as it has been.

March Madness is almost here...we don't follow sports, but we love making up brackets at ESPN and playing against Glen's family. Can't wait to see how it goes this year. It's time for someone to dethrone Maddie as the winner! Though if I can't win, I think it'd be great if she won again...

Eric says he's currently working on mostly Hindu mythological creatures now--remember how his assignment was to input info into a program so it can later keep people from downloading false genealogies into familysearch? He's moved into a different culture now. It sounds like he is continuing to do well.

Ryan likes his new companion and things are fine down in Louisiana. Ryan got to go to the Baton Rouge temple the previous week--first time since the MTC last May. His birthday is coming up on April 6th, so if you want to send him a card, his address is to the right.

Hannah, Geoff, and their friend Paolo performed at the talent show held at the high school on Friday. I thought they did an excellent job, though they didn't place. Paola and Hannah sang while Geoff accompanied them on a guitar. The song was "Living Dead" by Have Mercy.


 And today, Alex was set apart as the Deacon's quorum (12 and 13 year old boys) President at church. His cousin Ben just turned 12 this past week, so Ben is now a Deacon along with 3 other boys. Good luck Alex. I know you'll do a great job leading your group.

Spring has sprung early. Because Andrew's birthday is April 2nd, I always have a marker for when the trees start turning green...and it's usually not until after Andrew's birthday. Well, here it is a few weeks before and we've got some green going on in the trees (not all--the apple and elms are still bare). We'll take it. I just wonder if there's still another frost or two that will be coming our way.

one of our trees

Carey's yard, across the street, is much prettier--and more colorful--than ours
Found out that the teacher I'm subbing for won't be back to school until April 21st instead of April 7th, like we originally thought. Perfect timing as that's the week Andrew graduates from BYU (!), so Scott would need another sub if he were still going to be out. I had an OK week subbing. I'm a week ahead on my lesson plans, so I'm feeling pretty good now.

My bad toothache turned out to be a dead tooth with an infection--root canal and a crown will be in the near future for me. I'm just glad the pain is mostly gone.

With church, scouts, and school, Glen continues to keep very busy. He's heading down to Vegas this week with a few of his students who placed in the regional Theatre competition and are going to be completing at the state level. Good luck everyone!

So, that about does it for this week. Until later. Chao y que tengan una buena semana.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

no, it's not my birthday

Friday during school, the above vase of flowers was delivered to me in my classroom. Someone from the office wanted to know if they were for my birthday. No, it's not my birthday. It's just the teacher I'm subbing for saying "thank you" to me for being his sub. Wow. Glen saw them and made a comment about how he never gets me flowers. My answer was that it's OK for Scott to give me flowers and not Glen, because if Glen were to give me flowers the money for them would come out of my checking account. 

Anyway, it was very nice of Scott to do that. The flowers are gorgeous.

Things are a bit better in my classroom, and now that I've learned that reminders to be quiet don't work, but kicking kids out of the classroom for disrupting the learning really helps, things should be even better.

Alex's scout camp out in the snow this weekend, the Klondike, got cancelled. I think he was happy about that.

Hannah participated on the dodgeball team Lincoln's Army as part of a fundraiser for NHS. Her team was eliminated in the first round but they won the best costume award--they had fake beards and stove-pipe hats.
One of Hannah and Geoff's projects yesterday involved cutting off the top of a soda bottle (Leninade) and smoothing the edge and planting a plant in it. It was kind of a pinterest fail...first they tried the pinterest method of soaking yarn in fingernail polish remover, wrapping it around the top of the bottle, lighting the yarn on fire, then putting the bottle in ice cold water. They wound up using my glass cutter. That method wasn't easy, but they managed to get one done.

Ryan's companion was transferred and made his Zone Leader this week. We don't know anything about his new companion yet. This is the first time Ryan's been the one to stay behind in an area and show his companion around.

Eric was stuck in his apartment most of the week with a sick companion. He was going a bit stir-crazy.

Yep. That about does it for us this week. We're busy, but there's nothing exciting to report. I guess that's a good thing.