Freedom Ride and a Rock Star

I needed to take a break from Special for a while so I decided to share part of my Saturday with you. I woke up about 6am which is entirely too early for a Saturday to start. I finally decided to just get up when my mind kept racing with things that needed to get done, so I got up, showered and dressed, and left the house by 7:15. Can you guess who went with me?

NO ONE!

I CAN STILL HARDLY BELIEVE IT! Empty car seats. WHAT?

Everyone was still asleep when I left, including The Chef, so I struck out on my own. It was unbelievably quiet in my "swagger wagon." I could even hear my own thoughts! AND I got to listen to whatever music I wanted to listen to!

So I listened to nothing at all because keeping company with my own thoughts was so enjoyable that I couldn't bear to give it up.

After a quick trip for an egg mcmuffin, I was on my way. Might I add its ridiculously cheap to order fast food for only one person and when ordering for just one, you don't have to pull ahead and wait for your gigantic order to be completed! Double bonus!!

The next stop on my freedom ride was gonna be to get some large storage containers to pack away extra comforters, flannel sheets and thermal blankets for the summer, but as I approached the bypass I remembered that it was Saturday. There's only one place to go on a very early Saturday morning, especially when you already have cash in your purse. So my next stop was here!

We make at least 2, usually 3 trips a week to the Farmer's Market during the summer. We're able to buy locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables to eat all summer long and to also put away for the winter. The Chef and I love to make trips to the Farmer's Market in the early mornings and bring home vegetables to eat for lunch that very day. My favorite is fresh fried okra! The Chef and Peanut have spent many hours together, shelling peas and butterbeans and snapping green beans while watching baseball. It tickles me pink to see them working together, building memories. As a child, I was spoiled rotten when it came to fresh vegetables. My Mimi and Pop had a huge garden that kept the whole family supplied with enough fresh vegetables for the entire summer and winter. Many of my fondest and most vivid childhood memories were the hours I spent working in the garden with them at "the lake." I remember them teaching me how to choose very carefully which carrot I wanted to pull and which potato plant I wanted to dig. I got such joy out of sticking that shovel in the soil and turning the plant over to see how many and what size potatoes were attached. We would eat those potatoes for supper that night as well as whatever corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and beans we'd picked. The process of carefully choosing which vegetables to pick, cleaning them, preparing them to be cooked, cooking them, and then enjoying them at dinnertime with family taught me so much. The Chef and his sister had a very similar experience. Grandmother and Grandaddy had an unbelievable garden. The Chef has shared memories of mowing their lawn on Saturday mornings and then enjoying a huge vegetable lunch that Grandmother had prepared. We hope to be able to have our own large garden one day and to share those experiences with our grandchildren.

This is Mr. Mitchell. His booth is at the entrance. He is a character. A very colorful character to say the least and it's probably best that I leave it at that! He saw me taking a picture of the Farmer's Market sign and hollered at me that I was taking a picture of the wrong thing. He said I needed to come take a picture of him because "Honey, ain't nothing else 'round here better looking than me!" So here he is. You be the judge!

I took a quick tour through to see what was there. It's so early in the summer season that there wasn't much yet but I was so happy to find our favorite Tomato Lady. This sweet lady and her sweet husband grow the very best tomatoes I've ever had, (second only to my Mimi and Pop's, of course!) Several years ago I was at the Farmer's Market looking for tomatoes. At the time every vendor had a metric ton of tomatoes to offer. It gets overwhelming when trying to make choices sometimes so in order to make my decision I decided to go with a completely and totally judgemental and stereotypical manner of making my decision. I decided that only a grandma/grandpa type of either caucasian or African-American race would do. Nothing against other nationalities or age ranges but I had to narrow it down some way and I had to draw from my own experiences. Turns out I've only ever had vegetables grown by folks that fit that description! Tomato Lady was the only one that fit my extremely discriminatory criteria that day and she and her husband did not disappoint. They are the only folks we buy tomatoes from and we shop for any other vegetables from them first. Yesterday I got zucchini and leaf lettuce from her. She said that she expects their tomatoes to start coming in by June 15th.

Isn't she cute? I just love her.

After I left the Farmer's Market and picked up my daughter from a slumber party, (I should say non-slumber party) we went to get our large containers and I spent the rest of the morning packing up winter stuff, shuffling clothes around and clearing up clutter.

During the afternoon, we started sanding the floors in the dining room and living room. After the Flood of 2010 we had the rest of the carpet removed upstairs to free the beautiful unfinished oak from its padded prison. It's a lot of floor space, but The Chef thinks that only light sanding will need to be done.

See this man? Can you believe that only a few short months ago he was bed-ridden in a nursing home after a hospital stay? He came to help sand the floors yesterday.

This is Jr., my amazing father-in-law. He has Parkinson's and dementia. He was hospitalized twice starting the week of Christmas and spent a few months in the nursing home. He was so weak that we feared he'd never return home. My brilliant mother-in-law finally decided that enough was enough. No way he'd ever get better or stronger stuck in a place where he wasn't able to practice walking often enough to regain his strength and balance. The nursing home was great, but he needed more than what they were able to offer so she hired some helpers, signed him out, and brought him home. Hallelujah! If you'd told any of us in mid-January that Jr. would be helping to sand our floors today, none of us would've believed you. He wasn't able to sand for nearly as long as he would've liked, but the fact that he could sand anything at all is a total victory! This man is tough as nails, a true gentleman in every sense of the word, and a total ROCK STAR in his grandchildrens' eyes. Especially his youngest two granddaughters. I had to send them off with our La-La in order to give him enough peace to work. They think he exists only to entertain them.

So that's my Saturday. What about you?


(I apologize for the poor quality of these photos. I really need to quit taking pictures with my Blackberry and start taking pictures with our little digital camera! They wouldn't be great, but they'd be a whole lot better than the ones I've been posting so far! I'm so UNtechnologically savvy its ridiculous. In fact, its miraculous that I've figured out how to post pictures of any sort at all!)

Special, Part 2 "The first 20 minutes"

So Special is crouched under the table and I'm trying not to crawl under one myself! Because I don't know exactly what the issue is, I have to choose my approach to her carefully. Is she gonna bolt? My classroom has a door that opens to the parking lot and she is positioned directly between the door to the hall and the door to the parking lot, so she's got options on her side. Is she gonna attack another child? She's at least 3 times as big as anyone else so she could seriously hurt someone. I'm trying to read the play of emotions on her face to predict what she may do. There's terror, then hatred, then the briefest glare that lets me know she's testing me. For me, one of the keys to dealing with children like this is to never, ever, ever get in a power struggle with the child. As soon as that happens, you're sunk because the child knows he's won. As I'm studying her face, I'm also trying to determine if she is fully present. Children with severe emotional problems can flip out and not be conscious of their actions. She was seemingly unprovoked, yet she looks to be in a fright or flight state. I stand and slowly begin to walk across the room. If this kid is having some kind of emotional crisis, then small movements and a very quiet, small voice are needed on my part.


Special, why are you under the table? I whisper.


No answer.



Special? Why are you under the table? Can Mrs. Grandma Sandy help you with something?


She glances up at me very quickly, looks away, then thrusts her face towards mine and says with hatred,


I thought you gone slap the mess out my face


Hmm, no. Special, I say thoughtfully, Mrs. Grandma Sandy doesn't usually ever slap the mess out of people's faces. Why would you think that?



'Cause I seen yo face and it looked mad at me.


No, Mrs. Grandma Sandy isn't mad at Special. Maybe I was thinking really hard when I was doing my work or something and that's what you saw because I'm certainly not mad at you. And I can promise you this: Mrs. Grandma Sandy never, ever, ever slaps anybody in the face. Even if I'm the maddest I could ever be, Mrs. Grandma Sandy will never, ever slap you or anybody else. Why don't you stay under the table until you feel better and then you can come out, ok? Let me know if you need any help. I'll be right over there in my super very special teacher chair where we sing and read and do fun stuff. The rest of us are gonna get ready to go to the carpet and start our day.



Welcome to the first 20 minutes of my relationship with Special!



The rest of the class and I went to the rug and started singing our good morning songs. My back was to Special, which I did on purpose. I knew I was taking a chance by doing that, but I figured if she was gonna bolt, she'd have already taken off. I didn't want her to think she was gonna get any more attention whatsoever by staying under the table. We started singing and I glanced over my shoulder with a bright smile and said cheerfully, "Whenever you want to come sing with us, Special, just come on out!" I started reading our book for the day and out of the corner of my eye, I could see her starting to crawl out. She inched closer and closer every few minutes until she was also on the rug, which I didn't acknowledge at all. It was a big step for her to back down from her challenge to me and to choose to join us. I was afraid if I praised her in that moment, she would see it as me winning and her losing. Instead, I wanted her to think she made that choice on her own terms and to own it. Children that live in chaotic situations can be so desperate to have control over something in their lives that they sabotage themselves. They also have to learn how to make healthy decisions because it's rarely been modeled for them. Some teachers would say that I let her have her way but I couldn't disagree more. I wanted her out from under the table and I got what I wanted. I didn't have to chase her down the hall, drag her out by her feet, kicking and screaming, and I didn't have to buzz the office for help. I also gave her the opportunity to make the right choice on her own.


Later that day I did pull her aside, and in my quiet, tiny voice, I asked her if she knew that she did something today that only smart Kindergarteners do. She looked at me suspiciously, so I told her how glad I was that she came out from under the table when maybe she didn't really want to, but thank goodness she did because I thought that I was going to start crying if my new student didn't love me and that would be so embarrassing for the teacher to cry in front of everyone so thank goodness she came out at just the right time and so can I please have a hug? ha!! She kinda looked at me like I was crazy and was this a joke? The teacher was gonna start crying? But then I sniffed real loud and dabbed at my eye. She must have believed me because she gave me a big hug. When she turned to walk away, I said "Oh, wait, I need 1 more hug!" and sniffed real loud again and made my voice crack. She gave me another hug and patted me on the back. I'm so serious I did this. I'm not even lying. Having a little fun at your special's expense is only fair in my eyes, after the hell they put us through, heh heh. Plus, it was one of the steps in getting her to attach to me.


So I began formulating a strategy for dealing with this child. I had been given no information whatsoever on her background, but it was clear that she had major issues. I knew that the first step was to gain this child's love and trust and that would be a tall order. Kids like this are extremely suspicious of everything and trust no one. They are also street smart and not easily fooled. But in order for me to have any success with her at all, I was gonna have to work really hard to get her to attach to me. It was crucial that she trust me and to feel safe in our classroom environment. I needed her to want to be with me and her classmates so badly, that she was willing to comply and do whatever was necessary to stay with us and it was gonna take major strategy, patience, and creativity on my part to get that done. But her willingness to hug me and to hug me twice was a very good sign.



Whew! That was only the first 20 minutes!!




To be continued......

Special, Part I

I have just officially finished my 19th year of teaching, but my first year teaching Kindergarten. It was so much fun! We spent all fall singing songs, learning how to graph all different kinds of things, having show and tell for our letter of the week, cooking on Fridays and having Fun Friday centers. It was fun, fun, fun. Until Thanksgiving. The first day back after Thanksgiving, I came to realize very quickly that I should've been oh, so much more grateful, because my life was about to change drastically.



It started with a knock at the door. The guidance counselor was at the door with two new students and their mother. The acquisition of a new student always causes an adjustment in the flow of things. There is a certain rhythm to the management of a roomful of youngsters and the introduction of a new personality to the mix always changes things, no matter what that new little personality is like. I think I can safely speak for most teachers when I say that upon the realization that the "knock at the door" is accompanied by a new student, there's always a split second of "aw, shoot" in the back of the teacher's mind. Once that split second passes, then the teacher puts on a bright smile, reassures the parent, and exclaims loudly to the rest of the class that "we are soooooo lucky to have a new friend!" My heart always hurts a little for the parent and child. New beginnings are tough and its never easy to be the one interrupting the flow.



Knock, knock, knock. I open the door to discover a mom and her two children, a boy and a girl. The girl looked to be a 3rd or 4th grader so my focus immediately shifts to the boy, who was about the size of a 1st grader. Aw, shoot. A new student. Bright smile! Hmmm...he's kinda tall...must be a repeater....got my work cut out for me.


"Good morning, Mrs. Grandma Sandy, we've got a new student for you. Her name is......." At that point my brain quit processing the counselor's words. It stopped at the word her.


Her, her, did she say her?? There must be some kind of mix-up. Isn't he my new student? There is no possible way that she is in Kindergarten.


"She'll be riding the bus this afternoon. Thank you, Mrs. Grandma Sandy."


And through the door she walks.



The kid was almost as tall as me. I'm not even kidding. I immediately checked her birthdate on her paperwork. Yep. She's five years old, due to turn 6 in just a few weeks. How is that possible??? (I later discovered that she is the exact same height as my 9 year old daughter who is in the 4th grade.) Hmm.....ok. It is what it is. I settle her into her chair and introduce her to her tablemates who are eating breakfast and doing their morning work. I go back to my desk to finish taking attendance, check homework folders, etc. From across the room, I notice a small flurry of activity out of the corner of my eye. I glance up to see a few students staring under their table with looks of shock and confusion on their faces. I tilt my head to see who must have spilled their milk when I notice my new student crouched under the table in a tight ball, arms wrapped around her knees. Let it be noted that this was an impressive feat in and of itself. The kid is freaking huge but somehow she managed to crawl under the tiny Kindergarten table without turning it over. Let it also be noted that when a new student has been in your classroom for less than 10 minutes and is suddenly crouched in a ball under a table with a look of utter terror on her face, you're dealing with a heck of a lot more than 1st day jitters. I knew at that moment that I was dealing with something "special."


Over the past 19 years I've taught 1st, 2nd and now K in several different school districts in 3 different states. I've taught inner city children who have been victims of generational poverty, a 1st grader who had been sexually abused by her uncle and a 2nd grader who had been sexually abused by his father's friend. The father actually held the bathroom door closed while his friend raped his son. I taught a 1st grader in a rural area whose hair stayed infested with lice, whose arms were scarred from lit cigarettes, and who was starved on most weekends. I've had students who have never met their fathers or whose parents are in jail (both a given in many areas), and students who would walk three miles to school if they missed the bus because school was such a better place to be than home. I've had students that were OCD, oppositional defiant, and bipolar. I had one 2nd grader who I recently learned was hospitalized this school year (as a 7th grader) for drinking an entire bottle of Germ-X and for being a self-mutilater. As a 2nd grader she would pick the skin on her arms until she caused sores that would bleed. I'm in tears as I type this, reflecting on the children I've known over the years and the violence, hurt and chaos they've had to experience in their young lives.


These children are usually not easy to deal with in the classroom and not always easy to love. They are often defensive, combative, aggressive, and defiant. The enormous emotional stress that these kids deal with from the hours of 3:30pm when they leave school until 8am when they return is staggering. They will act out at school because school is a safe place to release the anger and hurt they are too young to process or to name. And sometimes they are so broken, so emotionally splintered even at the age of 6 or 7, that they sit and stare. It can be very frustrating to deal with these students because in the heat of the moment, when they are being so rude and disrespectful to you or their classmates, it can be really hard to look past the behavior and to recognize their hurt. But the hurt has to be recognized and validated or the behavior will never improve and its not an easy process. It takes a looooong time to improve behavior even a little.


So as I sat there, staring at Special who is crouched under the table looking terrified but also shooting glares of hatred toward me, my first thought is well shoot. (actually thats not exactly what I was thinking, but close enough, ha ha) I force myself to stop mid-thought and switch gears.

Ok, here we go. Better dig in my heels and take a deep breath cuz I've got my work cut out for me on this one.

Lord Jesus, this is your child, help me to see her as a child with a story instead of one with a problem. Help me to love her the way You would have me to and to love her mother, too. And thank You, thank You, thank You that its November and not August!!!!!

To be continued.........

Chicken and dumplins and a whole lotta laundry

Yesterday I accomplished two main objectives. They each required a huge amount of time.

I made chicken and dumplins from scratch!

And I folded a massive amount of laundry. It took over 3 hours to fold it all. This picture doesn't represent the total amount, just part of the laundry about halfway through the process. The best part of the laundry endeavor was packing away school uniforms for the summer! That, and the fact that I now have clean underwear which is always a good thing.

When I say I made chicken and dumplins from scratch, I seriously mean from scratch. I'm not the chef of the family by any means. I can cook, I just usually don't because I don't have to. My husband is an incredible cook, and anyone who's ever tasted his food will agree. He's seriously such a good cook that I never want to go out to eat on a rare date night because I'd have to go to Commander's Palace in N.O. or somewhere similar in order to not be disappointed and trust me...there is nowhere like that around here. I'd rather eat his food any day of the week! Nonetheless, last winter I embarked on a mission to find the perfect chicken and dumplins recipe. As a child, I remember my great Aunt Rucie's chicken and dumplins. I also remember the adults in my family saying that nobody could make chicken and dumplins like Rucie. So one cold day last winter I was craving chicken and dumplins and decided that I would start searching for C&D recipes that I could play around with until I came up with one on my own. The end result was a combination of a crockpot recipe, my friend Nancy's recipe, and a dumplins recipe from my friend Page who makes the best "grandma food" ever! It's very time-consuming but worth the effort. I will now offer photographic evidence as proof that I really did cook yesterday because anyone who knows me should otherwise rightfully doubt that I did. ha ha ha

Most recipes call for cream of something soup but that stuff has so much sodium I don't really like using it. When I found a crockpot recipe that also had a recipe for a cream of chicken substitute, I copied it and that's what I use.

This is the flour mixture just before I added the ice cold water to form it into dough. I mostly wanted to take this picture because I'm impressed with myself for making anything that required using the pastry wire thingy. :-)

Here are the dumplins just before I dropped them into the boiling chicken...um...stuff. I like symmetry so much that the fact that these dumplins are not all exactly the same size would ordinarily disturb me. Actually, it does bother me a little but because I was trying to do this during the little girls' nap time I wasn't willing to invest any extra time. Plus it's just a little too OCD to worry that your dumplins aren't all the same size.

The pot of boiling chicken and dumplins. It smelled really good!

When you have five kids its rare for everyone to like whats for supper and to eat it all. These are the empty bowls from the oldest 3 and I'm proud to say that they all had seconds.

I didn't attempt to serve this to Dogos. That would've been a disaster waiting to happen. She's currently going through a stage where she likes to put bowls of food upside down on top of her head like a hat so she ate a banana instead. The Boss (the 4 yr old who named me grandma sandy) liked it too and so did my husband, The Chef. After spending all that time I didn't really feel like eating any so I ate leftover birthday food from Peanut's party on Monday night. Does anybody else do that? Spend time cooking something and then you don't want to eat it?

May 24, Ten years ago

Ten years ago today I became a mother for the 2nd time.

Ten years ago today we were blessed with the arrival of our beautiful daughter, Peanut.

At 36 weeks it was discovered that I was already 3 cm dilated. Thus began the accelerated anticipation of her arrival. I made it to the 39th week and an induction was scheduled. I'm a bit of a control freak so it was important to me to know the date. I wanted my mother present and my older son to be with his favorite former neighbor/pseudo grandmother "Miss Jan." I also wanted MY OB to be the attending physician. The pregnancy had been an easy one, medically speaking, but a very difficult one for me emotionally, due to reasons having nothing to do with the pregnancy. I knew my OB personally through mutual friends and I was very attached to her. She made it clear with every OB visit that she was just as invested in my emotional well-being as she was the state of my pregnancy. I wanted her and only her to deliver our daughter. So the date was set.

We followed the Dr's instructions for arriving at the hospital just after midnight and got settled in. The night nurse took care of all the blood work and other things required before beginning an induction. Around daybreak they gave me a tiny pill to put under my tongue to jumpstart any contractions before the pitocin was started in my IV. Missy, my OB, arrived around 7:30am to break my water.

Around 8am my husband's childhood friend and also our pediatrician stopped by. He sat down to chat with us for a while. My labor nurse poked her head in around 8:20am to check on me. She still hadn't started the pitocin but I was already having some pretty hard contractions that I could feel even with an epidural. We were having fun visiting with Dr. John so my nurse slipped quietly out of the room. About 8:40am she poked her head back in. When she saw that Dr. John was still there, she disappeared again. About 10 minutes later she opens the door again and had a rather urgent look on her face. At that point, Dr. John realizes that he needs to step out and make his rounds so my nurse could tend to whatever she needed to do. On his way out the door, he says to my nurse and the others at the nurses' station outside my door, "Ok, ladies. Y'all be sure to take good care of these folks in here. The daddy was my best man in my wedding and they are all like family to me." chuckle, chuckle, "You got it, Dr. John! You know they're in good hands!"

The door closes as my nurse asks me, "How have your contractions been? You've been having some pretty good ones. Are you feeling any pressure?" To which I reply, "I know. They've really been hurting, even with an epidural. And yes, I'm feeling pressure." By this time, she's checking my cervix and her eyes bug out.
"Um, ok folks, we are having a baby right now!" she says.
"Right now?!?" we all gasp. "Oh, yes. NOW." It's only 9am and the pitocin was never even started.

Suddenly, the room explodes with activity. Thankfully, Missy's office is just down the hall. She sweeps in and the nurses robe her up with all of her attractive delivery attire. It's about 9:07am at this point. We're all still in shock that we're already about to have a baby. What happened to the waiting-around-all-day-for-baby-to-make-her-appearance?!? Regis and Kathie Lee was on tv and I remember saying to Missy, "I can't believe I'm already having a baby. Host chat isn't even over!" To which she replied, "Yeah, do you mind if we mute that?" ha ha Still makes me laugh to this day.
Two pushes and my beautiful daughter was born at 9:13am. Just like that. (within the next half hour Dr. John stopped back by after finishing his rounds and was totally shocked to meet his newest patient)

Ten years later, she's still just as beautiful, but so much more than that. She's smart, thoughtful, responsible, extremely helpful. She's also bossy, sassy, and headstrong. I'm hoping those are traits that will enable her to stand up for her own convictions as she grows older. But those are my words. I thought it would be interesting to see what the rest of her family says about her:

oldest brother: you can always count on her to get the job done, no matter what
it is that we're supposed to do
younger brother: she looks beautiful with her braces and she's so fast I can hardly
ever catch up with her
little sister: she plays with me: teacher, house, dog (I'm scared to ask what that
particular game is about)
Dogos: she gets me up and changes my diaper and give me breakfast when Mom
is too lazy to get up yet (ok so she really didn't say that but I'm sure that's what
she's thinking)
Dad: she's my Peanut

I can't believe it's been ten years. Thank you, Peanut, for making me the proud mother of my first of 3 daughters. This post in orange, your favorite color, is just for you!

First day of summer

I was planning to start my post about Special today, but quite honestly, I need a little more time before I start reliving the whole six month experience. It was pretty intense. Today, on my very first day of summer vacation, I decided to do a whole lot of nothing. Well, thats not entirely true. I've done a lot. It just so happens that none of what I've accomplished is on my summer list, but thats ok by me. There's always tomorrow to get started on that, right? Or maybe Monday.

So far on my first day of summer, this is what I've done.

A lot of this....

and this....

Stalked some of my favorite blogs....

canapesun.blogspot.com pastormargaret.blogspot.com

Finished watching the reunion show of this.....

Finished watching the finale of this.....

and talked to my bestie.

What I did not do was this.....

or this......

and certainly not this.....

Soooo.......for the rest of today I'll probably watch a little of this....

and do some more of this......

and call it a day!!

What about you? What did you do today?

Moments

Just a couple of hours ago I put my youngest to bed. We rocked and snuggled for a bit as I smelled her sweet, clean hair and then I slowly walked her towards her room. Its my way of giving her time to separate from me and to prepare herself to settle down to sleep. I was in a bit of a rush to get the night-time routine with all of the kids taken care of because its been an incredibly long and chaotic day. But I slowly walked her towards her room. She was awake and her arms were wrapped loosely around my neck and I just had to pause. I was about to lift her up and snuggle her into her crib but I just had to wait. Her face was snuggled beneath my chin and I could smell her sweet breath. I stood there for a few moments, treasuring the sweetness of her. I could have stood there for an hour, feeling the lightness of her, cradling her small toddler frame, smelling the mix of shampoo and sweet baby breath.

My baby.

My baby is really not a baby anymore. She is 2 1/2 years old. But she's still my baby, and the last one I'll have. My very wise mama has a theory that most mamas probably wish they could "have just one more." We have 5 children but if age and money had been on my side I would've had more children. With each of our children I have treasured so many moments. Even the crazy ones because I know that one day I'll miss all of those moments.

Tonight I held her for just those few extra moments. I loved every second.

Blessings and curses

"What the heck is that?" you ask?
Why, that is both a blessing and a curse. That is the reason my house flooded. Well, that and the three days of torrential rains we experienced recently. The same torrential rains that flooded a nearby large city. Yes, we were the recipients of that lovely storm first.

The storm that flooded streets within a few short hours.

The storm that washed out roads and bridges all over the county.

The storm that caused sinkholes large enough to swallow cars. (I mean, seriously?)

I had no idea what that was until a few weekends ago. That is apparently a sump pump and not only had I never seen one before, I certainly didn't know that we had one under the house. The hubby did. What we didn't know was that it broke right when we needed it the most. We didn't think to check it. We live on a hill and seriously....it has never, ever, ever, ever, ever flooded here. Ever ever. Until now.

We found out pretty quickly that it was broken when water started seeping under the walls across the entire far downstairs wall, which stretches across the entire back of the house. It was a hellish and exhausting few days afterwards (mostly for my hubby, bless him) but we got through it. That was obviously the curse part of that. So here is the blessing part of that.

This horrific nasty mess has been removed, never to be vacuumed again!

The "storeroom" was purged and is now actually a storeroom!

School was closed for TWO days!!!!!

New flooring is waiting downstairs to become part of our home!!!

The remaining horrific carpet upstairs has been removed!!!

My furniture was spared!

There is still much to be done but we are very fortunate. There are so many who have suffered/are still suffering so much worse. In the wake of what this storm has meant to others across this state, our experience is merely an inconvenience. Well, ok, a major inconvenience, but not a catastrophe. My house is still turned upside down while we wait for the moisture reading downstairs to drop low enough for the new flooring to be installed. I created an excessive amount of work for myself by having the upstairs carpet removed but I figured I owed it to the beautiful unfinished oak that was lying underneath. I mean seriously. Hardwood floors should be held captive by centuries old ratty carpet for only so long before something must be done. And that time is now! I'm trying to overlook the fact that 3 main living areas in my house have been rendered temporarily useless. I am kinda tired of bumping into the bookcase that is currently in the hall but after another week of this chaos, maybe I'll remember its there. Thankfully its the beginning of the summer so I have plenty of time to put things back together after all the flooring situations have been resolved.

So thanks, Mr. Sump Pump! When you broke in the middle of the largest series of storms this area has ever seen and failed to pump hundreds of gallons of water out from under my house, you weren't nearly the curse I thought you were at the time. And curse you, I did. No, you really turned out to be a blessing in disguise. You forced us into some home improvements that have desperately needed to be made. When its all said and done, I hope to have a reorganized home with beautiful, clean flooring throughout. Even though you cost us well over $3000, I hope to see a return on that investment one day with added value to my home. I feel like I should have you bronzed or something. Ok, maybe thats taking things a little too far but you really did do me a big favor by forcing us into labor and expense we were too lazy and poor to commit to until you forced our hand. Thanks, Mr. Sump Pump!

(It's more than a little disconcerting to me that as I prepare to hit the publish post button, there is currently a flash flood warning with 3-5 inches of rain over the next few hours predicted and the sound of thunder and rain is pretty impressive. The new sump pump had better be working or you will all hear me scream as I fling myself from the balcony. What is up with this weather???)

And then there were 6

I am one of 8 Kindergarten teachers at my school. We will say goodbye to two of my coworkers this week. One is retiring and the other is moving. Tonight we are having a girls' night at a fun local restaurant to say goodbye to the one that is moving. Our retirement celebration is later this week. I will really miss both of these gals next year. It has been a fun year and we all work extremely well together.

This has been my first out of 19 years teaching, to teach Kindergarten. The first half of the year was fantastic. The 2nd half, not so much, but thats a whole 'nother blog post altogether. You'll know it when you see it. It will be entitled Special. One of the reasons why this year has been so fun is because of the teachers with whom I work. They are the cutest, happiest, bounciest people you'll ever come across which would be incredibly annoying if they didn't also have the ability to be decidedly snarky, which I love. I call our hall Happy Happy Kindergarten Land. Imagine lots of confetti, glitter, and all things sparkly surrounding those words and you get the picture.

We really are a world unto ourselves. I seriously hardly ever see any other teachers, which is pretty remarkable considering the fact that we have enough teachers in our building to manage 800+ students. Our lunch schedule begins at 10:30 so I'm done with lunch and already gone before any teachers from any other grades show up in the lounge to eat. So the 8 of us K teachers eat together, plan instructional units together, steal extra minutes on the playground together, cover each other's classrooms if someone is late, complain about our students that literally make us want to rip out our hair, and talk about other people who aren't nearly as fun as us. (remember the snarky part?)

So this week we say goodbye to two of us. Its just as well, since next year there will only be a need for 6 K classrooms and we'd rather have to say goodbye on our own terms instead of someone else's. It's been a fun year.

Except the Special part.

T's birthday

The birthday celebration was fun. I totally pulled off the homemade lasagna. As in, I couldn't even believe that I made it! Which is pretty shocking considering the fact that I almost screwed it up at least 3 times.
The recipe is supposed to make 2 trays. I got 2 trays, but the 2nd was really skimpy on the sauce part. I froze the 2nd for an emergency pull-out-of-the-freezer meal for the kids. I labeled it "T's birthday lasagna...the screwed up tray." No way I'll be able to confuse it with something else with that label. I'm a genius. Now if I could only figure out how to make german chocolate cake like my mother-in-law.

This is the last week of school. I cannot wait to be home for the summer with my children! One of the main reasons I became a teacher was so I could have the same hours as my children. 4 days and counting...

I have a lot of things I want to accomplish this summer. I've been so conditioned the past 6 years with having to keep a strict schedule at school that I know I'll function better at home and be more productive if I set some kind of loose schedule for myself.
On the to-do-list are the following:

• finish organizing house
• get back on the treadmill immediately
• smock
• possibly learn how to pleat and construct a bishop
• visit the Farmer's Market a lot and freeze vegetables for winter
• cook/freeze casseroles
• learn how to use the monogram feature on my sewing machine
• learn how to applique
• win the powerball
• stop listing things now because I'm already running out of summer just thinking about it

THE END for now

Why am I Grandma Sandy?

If only I knew the answer to that question. I am not a grandma and I hope I won't be for a very long time! Grandma Sandy is a play name that my very imaginative 4 year old daughter gave me. When we went to my parents house for spring break in March of 2009, M suddenly started calling me Grandma Sandy out of the clear blue. She was 3 at the time, and made up play names for all of us. Grandma Sandy kind of stuck as well as Dogos, the name she gave my 2 yr old daughter (who was 16 months old at the time.) M only calls me Grandma Sandy when she's playing pretend, but Dogos is a (very strange) permanent nickname for E!

I'm home from church this morning with Dogos, who has had a stomach virus this weekend. It's rare that I get to spend alone time with my youngest so I'm enjoying the morning with her. With a house full of 5 children, it's shocking that no one else has started puking yet. I won't consider us to be out of the woods until at least tomorrow morning. I'm praying no one else gets sick. This is the last week of school and it's important for us to all be there!

Today is my sweet husband's birthday. I'm making my mother-in-law's recipe of homemade lasagna. I made the sauce last night because it had to cook for nearly 3 hours, so I'm going to build the lasagna this morning. I don't know if I'm courageous or incredibly stupid for making this dish and then serving it to my husband and my in-laws, because my mother-in-law is an incredible cook. NO WAY can my lasagna ever measure up!! My husband is a fantastic cook as well, but I'm not too worried about disappointing him with my dish. I think he's so glad to have me cook something for him for a change, he'd eat a bowl of cereal if thats what I put in front of him. I'm looking forward to celebrating his birthday tonight with our family. I'll take a picture of the lasagna after its done and post it. Well, maybe. It depends on how it turns out! And whether or not I can figure out how to post a photo!

I have no idea what this blog will be or why I even started it. Just seemed like a fun thing to do, so we'll see.

Have a great Sunday!

Here goes nothing....

I think I just created a blog. I was actually trying to click on something else in the creation process but suddenly it congratulated me on having created a blog! Hmmm.....Wokd