Flashback to Summer

A few nights ago, I was rooting around in the dark corners of my laptop's hard drive looking for some wayward track photos. While I did (eventually) find the shots the yearbook kidlets needed, I also found a few unposted photos from my summer adventures. Those photos brought back some warm memories on a chilly evening.

I know I should be a little embarrassed that I took so many photos of snow cones but, in my defense, they were the most amazing snow cones on the face of the earth. And even though I wasn't as brave as Jenny, who tried flavors like rose, basil, or roasted pepper, I still dream about the cucumber and Juneberry.

And since my dear sweet older sister managed to procure some extra peach and lime syrups for me when Yuki closed for the summer, I will get to relive some of those delicious moments a few more times.

And from mouth-watering sweets, we go a sweetie with a very watery mouth: Alton.

I don't know how I made it though the whole summer without posting about his serious drooling issues. If Jenny would have let him play outside during the summer, Utah's drought problems would have been solved in a week.

I also found some fun reminders of a trip to the big city rodeo with my Idaho niblets. Kenna and Kylie are big rodeo fans...

... and Bubba loves rodeo nachos!

I even found evidence of some summertime craftiness: Max had a summer homework assignment to make a puppet he could use to introduce himself on the first week of school. He requested my help to make a Doctor Who themed puppet, and this is what I came up with: A dalek!

Who says summer homework is a horrible idea?

And how did I never get around to posting this year's fair winnings?

And then there was my fair and rodeo, which my two newest sisters-in-law were able to attend for the first time. They didn't mind the big, smelly animals at all...

...which shouldn't have been such a surprise considering they willingly married them.

And then there was this photo...which probably should have stayed buried in the dark corners of my laptop's hard drive.

Even though it was fun spend a little time basking in the glow of summer memories, I am very contented to settle into fall... Because this fall, Alton stopped drooling long enough to learn to make THIS FACE:

The changing of the seasons is a wonderful thing.

I can't wait to see what tricks Al learns this winter. 

Bad Wolf

Did you know that there are Doctor Who holidays?

In April, some of the kidlets helped celebrate Silence Day...

My start-of-summer visit to the Utah niblets happened to coincide with yet another Doctor Who holiday...

The niblets and I spent the morning writing "Bad Wolf" all over their neighborhood.

 They seemed pretty into it.

Then I made a quick run to Target, where I saw that someone else had been Bad-Wolf-ing that day. I took a few photos and then showed them to the kids when I got back to the house.

Then they got really excited and insisted on Bad-Wolf-ing the rest of the neighborhood and another nearby store.

It was at this point that Jenny pointed out that the niblets must have thought they were just humoring their crazy aunt all morning. Poor kids.

When they found out that it was, in fact, a "Real Thing", I think I earned a few more Awesome Aunt points.

Of course, if Maxwell's poetry book is any indication, I think I might have a surplus of Cool Aunt Points built up already...

Summer is off to a good start!

Don't Blink!

After school today, I walked down to our little faculty work room to check my mail box and found this...

                                                               ... a weeping angel mask.

 FYI, weeping angels are some of the baddest of the baddies on Doctor Who (Alas, poor Amy and Rory. I'll never forget you! Sniffle, Sniffle, Sob). I don't know if it was my new fez-centric style, or the TARDIS cookie jar on my desk, or perhaps having Raxacoricofallapatorius as a class spelling word this week that gave me away, but apparently the rest of the staff have noticed that I have become a Doctor Who fan.

At least I hope the weeping angel mask was a Doctor Who reference.

Because, if it wasn't a Doctor Who reference, I am having trouble thinking of another scenario where having THAT taped to my mailbox might end well for me.

In other news, I spent all of Tuesday grading direct writing assessment essays and have put together a fun little post with some snippets that made me smile. Of course, when I say "little post", what I actually mean is "a post that will only take you about 10 minutes to read instead of the 20 minutes my freakishly long posts usually take."

The DWA post will be up tomorrow night... if the Weeping Angels (or a disgruntled co-worker who inadvertently referenced Doctor Who while defacing my mailbox) don't get me first.

Valentine's Days of Their (Junior High) Lives

In a junior high, the Valentine's drama starts a few days before the actual holiday. The kidlets, desperate to give and receive Valentine gifts, start searching for that special someone with whom they can "go out" long enough to exchange candy, flowers, stuffed animals, balloons, or a combination thereof.

When I was in junior high, this was accomplished by passing THOSE notes. You remember THOSE notes, don't you? The ones with the "check yes or no" boxes? Well, THOSE notes have been replaced by text messages and Facebook posts, but even with the technology up-grades, the result is the same: a lot of note passing/texting, five to ten minutes of hand-holding during lunch on Feb. 13th, and then the Valentine morning exchange of gifts.

Valentine morning at a junior high is magical.

Then Valentine afternoon hits. Gifts exchanged, the need for a significant other disappears faster than the candy that came with their dollar store teddy bears. The break-ups start as the school day ends.

Thanks to texts and status updates, most of the break-up drama will be over before the kidlets walk into my classroom tomorrow morning. With any luck, there won't be enough tears to warrant an extra box of tissues from the custodial closet.

Despite the hormones and the drama and the sugar highs that negate any attempts to teach the children anything at all, I do enjoy Valentine's Day at the junior high.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, the cheesy Valentines provide a wealth of examples of puns in action.

Second, it is the one day of the year when breaking out my red pen to mark up their papers seems festive instead of punitive.

In other Valentine news, I may have had to give up the H Family Fantasy Football trophy (post forthcoming) but I managed to score a decisive victory in the competition for World's Nerdiest Aunt. My victory came courtesy of these Doctor Who Valentines.

And speaking of Doctor Who, my birthday this year has had a very Whovian theme. I will do a full post about my birthday, as soon as I finish celebrating my birthday.

In the meantime, may I just say...

It's a fez.

I wear a fez now.

Fezzes are cool.

Useless? I Think Not.

 I have a tendency to procure items that may seem a bit, well, useless.

 

A wicked witch of the west throw that doesn't match anything in my home.

 

Sirius Black's wand from the Harry Potter movies.

 

And about one hundred Kinder Egg toys, just to name a few.

 

But even though those types of things may seem useless, I always seem to find a way to use them.

 

The wicked witch blanket? It lives at school and keeps me ward during fire drills.

 

Sirius's wand makes a wonderful pointer during Power Point presentations.

 

And the Kinder Egg toys make great game pieces for the board games I put together when I substitute in Primary classes.

 

 This Christmas, my little brother (with a little help from my big sister) gifted me with a Doctor Who cookie jar... a really cool TARDIS cookie jar with flashing lights and sound effects.

 

It is one of those awesome items that could have ended up on a shelf somewhere, only pulled out to play with when my Whovian nephews come to visit.

 

Instead, it ended up on my desk at school, filled with the fortune cookies that are the highlight of my creative writing fortune cookie lesson. Thus the cookie jar fulfilled  the measure of its creation by holding and dispensing cookies and, by becoming an object of fascination to the kidlets, won a permanent home on my desk.

 

Last week, it held the creative writing kidlet's fortune cookies.

 

This week it will hold the English kidlet's pre-final-test-mints.

 

And the week after that, my lovely TARDIS will house dum-dums for the sub to use to bribe the communication kidlets to behave while I am at district leadership team meeting.

 

So what lessons can we learn from this post?

 

Well, first of all we learn that TARDIS cookie jars are cool.

 

And, perhaps more importantly, I should really own a fez.

Since All of the Recent REAL News From the REAL World is Annoying...

...Here are some updates on the things going on in MY world.

In local news, the heater above my classroom is installed! And hooked up! And it heats... but a little too well. Apparently the new heater is a little too powerful for the old vent/duct system, but as soon as they replace the vent/duct system my classroom will have heat! Probably!

But untill such a time as the heater can be used, I can always watch this video made by and staring past occupants of my classroom. The flames of their burning school spirit can probably keep me warm until spring...

In life-imitating-an-episode-of-NCIS-news, the bank my brother runs was robbed. Nobody was hurt, but the folks inside, including Warren, ended up in the vault... JUST LIKE ON TV. Not fun for Wo, but I sure am proud of how cool he was under pressure. If this whole teaching thing doesn't work out for me, maybe I could write a pilot for a new TV drama about a crime-fighting credit union manager.

You can read more about Wo's adventures here... Local News 8: Robber Puts Credit Union Employees in Safe

In entertainment news, I recently spent a weekend with my Utah niblets wherein we threw ourselves one heck of a Doctor Who party. We made my cell phone talk like a dalek, visited the Halloween House with our sonic screwdrivers, and poured over the Time Traveler's Almanac. The highlight of the weekend was our Doctor Who Dinner. The menu included foods the Doctor eats and/or uses to save the universe, including jammy dodgers, chips, satsumas, jelly babies, and fish fingers dipped in custard.

 

 

Why fish fingers dipped in custard? So that they could pretend they were the newly regenerated Doctor breaking in a new mouth...

The only thing that could have made the weekend better would have been if our fez-quest had been successful. Apparently Utah is going through a serious fez shortage, which is a shame because...

And finally, in family news, this spring I will have a new niblet to nick-name and feed fish sticks and custard. Maybe I could combine the two and nickname the kid Fish Sticks, or Custard. It's a good thing I have a few months before Jenny and John's new arrival arrives. It is going to take me a while to figure out a good nickname... and find an infant-sized fez.