Congrats to Rena!

Rena will be starting her Master's program this Fall. She originally abandoned the idea when she was wait listed, but with two weeks until the semester starts, they want her in their program. I know she will be awesome!

Meanwhile, after 2 days I have undone what summer school did to my classroom, and even managed to throw out a bunch of junk. Most importantly, I found the file that has all the names and numbers for this year's NHS council, so I can send out invites for our BBQ retreat next Thursday.

Afraid of melting?

BooBear tends to wake up and immediately point outside because he wants to play at the park across the street. Sometimes he brings us our shoes while we are still in bed or in pajamas. We are having a wetter summer than normal this year. So, I find it entertaining when it's nice and overcast how PACKED the park will be until it starts to precipitate. A little sprinkle and the park clears out. That's what happened today. Lots of kids running around, and then 'poof' we're alone in the drizzling rain. I also discovered a new gauge of how much I love my son. Love is being willing to go down a wet slide after the rain, thereby drying the slide for my child to enjoy. At one point a family joined us in the park, but I think the father took a look at my son with his wet bum from sliding in the rain and a slightly runny nose, and thought I was some kind of neglectful parent, because it wasn't long before he hurriedly ushered his wife and kids out of the big toy area away from us. Or maybe it was the big wet spot on MY bum from drying the slides, not really sure. I vacillate being concerned about BooBear getting enough socialization with other kids and being relieved when we have the big toy to ourselves because BooBear can play on whatever he wants without being run over by big kids or having rude children snatch things away from him when he can't speak enough to defend himself.

Ddonn if you do make it to Utah, try to schedule enough time for the girls to enjoy the park - including the water park and water slides.

Y@htzee!

Werty and I first started playing Y@htzee together when we were newlyweds - it was the only board game we could find that you could play with 2 players. Tonight we introduced the game to BooBear.

He rattled dice around in a cup and dumped them out - felt almost as good as throwing something. He loved it. But he got annoyed when we wanted to re-roll a few of the dice on our own. He started dumping them out with his other hand poised to grab them before we could read the numbers on them. "Ooh, ooh," or "Wait, wait" he said as he snatched them up. But we were still trying to take some of them away and re-roll them. So he took the cup, dice and box lid away to the other side of the room to play without us! We weren't playing by his rules. Eventually, he got bored and let us have them back. I won. :P

Level 2!

It took me, hmmm, 7 years of working in public school to finally get my level 2 license, but I got it. No more having to renew every 3 years, now I have 5 years to build up enough credits for renewal. Who knows if I will be working full time in 5 years...or if I will be working on a masters degree and have plenty of credits. But the important thing right now is that I have time to decide. Another important fact is that I am still qualified to keep my job, in case none of these jobs Werty is applying to work out. We can still have a roof over our heads, and that's a good thing.

I was a little late getting the process started on upgrading my license. Disclaimer: the following you are about to read is a whole bunch of excuses. See, there are fees involved. Fees for the background check, fees for the upgrade, they pretty much ding you at each step. And when you are buying a house, and trying to not spend ANYTHING or put ANYTHING on a credit card because you want the nice bank to give you a happy mortgage loan, paying a bunch of fees gets put on the back burner. Then you move, but the printer isn't connected yet, and then the printer seems to be damaged from the move and makes a horrible sound instead of doing what it's supposed to, and Werty and his OCD self doesn't want you to use your computer and printer at work to pay the fees because that connection is tracked by the district office, and therefore not really secure. (See, you can't just pay the fees, you have to print out a receipt and take it to the fingerprinting place - which is our district - and there are lots of warnings that you can only print it when you pay, and you will have to pay again if you mess up or wait too long to get fingerprinted. Blah, blah, blah, excuses to get frustrated and procrastinate.) Then it's the end of the year, there's the testing, the seniors, the NHS stuff, my co-workers are leaving so we have to clean out classrooms and closets, and crud, I still haven't done it.

Here's how it went down: Attempt #1 The district office only does fingerprinting during certain days and hours, but when I arrived, they weren't open during those hours the last week of school. Attempt #2 I got fingerprinted, and the deadline was still a month away, so the two weeks it takes for the background check is close, but okay. Attempt #3 The deadline was now two weeks away, and I was getting nervous. I got an email telling me there was a problem with my background check - some of the fingerprinting data was missing or corrupted, so I need to be fingerprinted again. Within the hour, I was back at the district getting fingerprinted a second time. 3 days before the deadline, I get notification that I have cleared my background check, but the state still says there is a problem and I can't proceed. I called up the state office and asked. Oh, there is a form that has to be filled out by your district. Would this be the form and recommendation that I specifically asked my supervising administrator about over a month ago when I was having my final observation and interview and was told no, there was no such form? I drive down to the district to find out...yes, there is such a form, and yes, I need it signed by both the district and my principal... (Too bad, we just got a new principal that I haven't met yet...) and the secretary who knows where the forms are had just left on an errand. And then suddenly, the heavens parted and my prayers were answered. The district person in charge of professional development is a wonderful, kind-hearted man. He said, 'Let me see if I have a copy of the file on my computer' and then he printed the form for me. Since he knew that my upgrade has be posted by end of business day the next day, he said he would sign my form for me so that I didn't have to try to track down my old principal. (Once the secretary came back and put my information from the form into the state server, I was good to go. I waited a few hours, and hallelujah, the system let me in. I completed the paperwork, paid another fee and I was done! I felt like I was in a Christine Lavin song - and the guy with the bow tie had just paid for my groceries. Five years from now, I hope I will not procrastinate again.

Updates are better with pictures!

First of all, Werty had a job interview this morning. (Yay!) They said they had a short list of candidates being interviewed, so that's good to hear. He thought it went well, but we aren't getting our hopes up too much yet. He thinks it's a 50/50 chance.

This week Werty repaired the evaporator cooler. He had to reconnect the floater to the water line and tweak it because it leaks. The ceiling around the internal vent will need to be repaired later. As it is, he rotated the vent fins (really heavy - it's steel, not plastic) 90 degrees so that he could anchor it and keep it from falling down. The negative to that is less air blows into the bedrooms now. Ah! But the plus side is now more cool air hits the kitchen! And that makes cooking more pleasant. You can see from this pic how big the vent is, the side is almost as wide as a standard door.

We go to the hardware store almost every day - it's become a family event. We buy 2-3 different versions of what is needed, see which fits best, and take the rest of it back. I'm told this is normal.

Werty finished the major plumbing yesterday - so we shouldn't need to turn off the water for 6 hours at a time anymore. Hooray! Here's what it looks like now:


Here are some close up shots of new things that Werty has added (isn't he wonderful?):

He had to move the gas line, and install new hot and cold water lines for the washer.

Here's the ice maker shut off valve and the electrical box for the new outlets, one for the washer, one for the dryer.


The new drain. It took some creativity to get it to fit in with the existing drain (white pipes) while still being hidden in the wall. This used to be a second kitchen with a cabinet along the wall built on to the exterior wall with all the pipes exposed. We have it framed for insulation and dry wall. That meant Werty also had to extend out the connectors to the old sink, this time with their own shut off valves (the old sink was only partially attached and easily overflowed). The photo below is a piece of the sink pipe up above in the ceiling that Werty replaced because there was evidence that it used to leak, although rust had plugged the leak. Turns out it leaked because the threads on the pipe were stripped on one end, making it impossible to seal. Good catch, honey!



There was a window here a few days ago - with a wooden sill that the inspector told us to remove as it could attract termites. Werty had to pry out the wood in sections, as it was wedged into the concrete of the carport, and then fill the hole with concrete. The window is being cannibalized for the installation of a dryer vent.


And, if you were patient enough to read all that boring stuff above, here's your reward: pics of BooBear!


This one's for Ddonn and her girls who once asked if he had fallen asleep during dinner yet.



This last one shows his new haircut. One week after cutting his hair for the Idaho family reunion, I buzzed it because it was too hot outside. I almost cried. Oh, and if one of his aunts thinks the ball looks familiar, yup, it's yours. He found it at Grandma and Grandpa's. It's so big that sometimes it knocks him over.

Progress on the Remodel

Werty has framed the laundry room and finished most of the plumbing. Yesterday, we (I helped this time) installed the hose for the ice maker. Yay, ice whenever we want...which is something we just aren't used to having, so we will have to remember to use it. Next is the electrical and the dryer vent installation.

As for me, I am still trying to get my license renewed. I already had to be fingerprinted twice because of technological errors. I was planning on working on organizing my classrooms and files over the summer, but they are using my room for summer school, and the assistant principal cleared all my piles of files I had pulled out along with the leftover junk from the school year that needed to be sorted all together in to a big mess. So, I haven't been working at school after all. We did however, find someone to hire for the part time Aide position for next year who I think will be great. Not Gloria, but nobody is Gloria except for Gloria. Closest we could find.

Sunbeam Humor

Werty and I teach the Sunbeams class in Primary, that is, the Sunday School class for 3 and 4 year olds. Today during sharing time, the Primary President held something cupped in her hands and asked the children to guess what it was. After several guesses, she gave them the clues that it was something that starts out small and grows really big and really likes water. "A water balloon," "a hot air balloon," followed by "a camel" (someone must have recently learned that camels carry water in their humps...but I'm not sure how a camel was supposed to fit inside her hands). It was a seed in her hand, of course, because she was giving a lesson on how faith is like a seed. The teacher used Joseph Smith and the First Vision as an example of exercising faith, because they have been studying it all year. "Do you know what happened when Joseph Smith went in to the woods?" "He died" said one kid. "Yeah, he died," piped up another (not exactly the answer the teacher was looking for).