Spring Break Haikus

hai⋅ku   /ˈhaɪku/ [hahy-koo]
1. a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and employing highly evocative allusions and comparisons, often on the subject of nature or one of the seasons.
2. a poem written in this form.


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Neurotic, needy
Bat-eared, treat-gobbling canine
Steals hearts with one look

Chipmunk cheeks, doe eyes
Loves Mom, Grandpa, and fruit snacks
Hates that Chloe dog

Me! I can do it!
Two year old rodeo fan
Busy little girl

First grade genius child
Kicked my trash in space knowledge
Rematch on Thursday

Tough guy brainiac
Just don’t tell him what to do
Big heart but short fuse

Currently a dog
Barks and growls at passers-by
Next week: a cheetah

Warrior Princess
Brothers fear her fiery wrath
Loves shoes and sword fights


The yearbook is done
The end of panic attacks
…until next year (sigh)


Sweet light at the end
Of the dark yearbook tunnel
Canada tastes good.

A Weakening Week

Last fall, the yearbook kids started calling me Yoda. I took it as a complement because Yoda is wise, calm, and has some sweet Jedi moves. Way back then, I felt that I truly embodied the spirit of Yoda.

Today I just look like him. It has been that kind of a week.


What kind of a week could cause me to shrivel up, turn green, and grow claws? Well, the kind of week wherein I had all of my normal responsibilities like teaching Sunday school, teaching kidlets, and teaching institute, plus the added time-sucking black holes of parent teacher conferences and the final yearbook deadline.

Expect for the whole "time sucking" part (correcting papers and tests, entering grades, verifying grades, printing grade sheets, and sitting in a very uncomfortable desk for seven hours) parent teacher conferences went really well. Not a single kid tried to set me up with their father/brother/uncle/cousin/mailman, and I somehow managed to make it through the whole experience without my slip falling off in front of a crowd even once! I did, however, have several parents make reference to my still-crunched-tailbone and even more offer their hopes that I won't fall down any more stairs over spring break. ( Note To Self : Remind the kidlets that repeating every single thing I say back to their parents does not qualify them for extra credit points. )
The "final yearbook deadline" part didn't go quite so well. The deadline is Monday, so I wanted to have everything finished, completed, finalized, and submitted by the time I left school on Friday. I am now sitting in my apartment on Friday evening and there are still four blank index pages sitting on the yearbook company Internet server, mocking me with their naked, empty, whiteness.

We (Here, "We" should be translated as "I" due to the fact that the kidlets have been blissfully enjoying their spring break since 3:14 p.m. Thursday) are waiting on the yearbook company people to fix some things on Monday so that we can finish and submit those index pages. But the rest of the book (the other 69 full-color pages) has been finished and submitted thanks to the diligent efforts of the young, force-wielding-Jedi's who made up this year's yearbook staff. They worked during school and at home during the week, and then back at school during Saturday workdays to get the book finished. Just look at them diligently designing pages in the computer lab during a....wait a minute! Where the heck did my yearbook-Jedi's go?
They have been working so hard, maybe they had to pull themselves away from the computers long enough to eat something...you know, to keep up their strength.

Nope... No sign of them near the food either. I wonder where they could be...

Of course! I should have guessed that missing computer lab roller chairs meant that the kidlets were turning the ramp into their own personal roller coaster!

I mean, why wouldn't the yearbook staff be performing high-speed roller stunts in the middle of the empty school on a Saturday? What else would they be doing? Working on yearbook pages? The real Yoda would be astonished and disappointed by my level of naivete.

But despite being sidetracked by the roller-ramp-of-death, the kids did get their pages built, indexed, and proofed, which only left me with a few minor edits and touch-ups.

I had planned to have the whole book finished and submitted before I left to enjoy my spring break, so I am a little disappointed that it is going to take a few more days before I can proclaim the book completed (and trust me, when that finally happens, there will be a heck of a lot of proclaiming going on) . Much of that disappointment stems from the fact that I had been saving my last Wunderbar (my favorite Canadian candy bar that my NY brother and his wife drove across international boarders to acquire for me as the second best birthday present ever...my Obama mug and Sirius Black shirt being tied for first). I have been saving the last bar for my own personal "I survived my first year as Yearbook Advisor!" celebration. Now I guess I will have to pack it up with the rest of my Spring Break gear so that I can enjoy it Monday when the index finally stops mocking me.

And I should probably count my blessings. Of all the naked, empty, white things that could be mocking me over spring break, I could do a lot worse than index pages.

Viva La Spring Break!

Building a Better Brancher

One of the main goals of our cute little branch is to make sure that all of the young single adults in our stake end up going the right way on the right road. That "right road" being, of course, the strait and narrow path that leads to things like higher education, provident living, eternal covenants, a righteous posterity, and the abilities to trap shoot and bowl (not necessarily at the same time...although a bowling/trap shooting activity would probably help score us an attendance record. How could people resist the opportunity to fire a shot gun while wearing communal shoes? -- Note to self...bring this up at the next activities committee meeting) .
Our branch activities, everything from temple trips to family home evenings to ski trips, are designed to increase our testimonies, knowledge banks, skill reserves, and social circles.

Sometimes that works too well. For example, Elder's Quorum President Derek did some macho-man weight lifting as part of a FHE lesson visual aid...then went and joined the National Guard. Forget "Army Strong". The branch makes people "Army of Helaman" strong.

And a recent enrichment activity gave the sisters in the branch an opportunity to learn the important skill of "cutting guys' hair". Lacie enjoyed it so much she considered ditching her nursing degree and enrolling in cosmetology school. I didn't volunteer to practice on our live model because my scissor skills (or lack thereof) would have required both a cosmetology degree and an emergency medical technician certificate... and an oxygen mask because I tend to lose consciousness at the sight of blood.

This Saturday (after driving the right way on the right road to Twin) our branch activity gave us more self-improvement opportunities.

First, we gained a greater appreciation for dairy products and practiced our all-important ice cream ordering skills at Cold Stone.

Then we went to the local college campus to tour the museum and watch a show at the planetarium.
And besides all of the great sciencey stuff we learned there, we also picked up some life-skills type info...like to how self-tattoo...

...how to catch your coins after enjoying watching them spin around in the donation thingy so you can spin them again and again without actually donating them...

... and what mammoth poop looks like. That was probably the highlight.

And the quest to build a better brancher continued last night at FHE where the Woodhouses made a special post-release-guest-appearance to give us a refresher course on etiquette. The guys learned how to help a girl into a car and to order for their date at a restaurant. The girls learned how to sit and stand in the most lady-like way possible, and everyone learned how incredibly cute it is for missionary couples to wear matching outfits (yet another reason why we LOVE Elder and Sister Woodhouses) .

Then we put all of that good manners learnin' to good use by bellying up to the chow line for our monthly Feed the Flock dinner. It was delicious and I am proud to say that I managed to sit and stand in an impressively lady-like manner. And after so many activities with boundless opportunities to stretch our intellects and broaden our horizons, what was the most memorable moment? What did we future-world-and-Church-leaders remember the clearest? What choicest bit of information did we discuss over dinner the longest and in the greatest detail?
I'm thinking our activities schedule for the next few months should be lighter on the "sciencey stuff" and heavier on the etiquette.

Here's hoping the next generation of branchers, the PAB-ers version 2.0, can see past the fake mammoth poop and focus on what is really important in life....

...and then they can fill me in on what that might be, because all I can think about right now is, "How can I fit the picture of the fake mammoth poop into tomorrow's grammar lesson?" The 7th graders are going to Looooooooove it!

The Puppet Master

This has been an eventful week at school. It started out with a power outage that lasted just long enough to raise the kidlet's hopes of an early release, only to smash those hopes to smither-reens when the lights came back on fifteen minutes later.

But while the restoration of the power caused great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the young'ins, it inspired me to do a little happy dance across the front of my classroom. Why? Well, besides the basic math of the situation (No Power = No Kidlets = No Fun), I was in no way excited about the prospect of trying to grade summary books in the dark.

What are summary books, you might ask? Well, they are a wonderful way for the kidlets to show their comprehension of the novel we were reading in class by writing a one page journal entry (as the main character, Charlotte, which may have caused some gender confusion issues for some of the boys in class...but we will let the counselors over at the high school worry about that in a couple of years) that summarizes the plot of each chapter and then drawing a picture that relates to one of the main details from that chapter.

As I said, they are a wonderful way for the kidlets to show their comprehension...the only problem is that I, the teacher, have to grade all of the summary books. The 22-chapters summary books. The 22-chapters summary books belonging to, roughly, 130 kidlets. And just in case you were wondering about that math...130 summary books x 22 chapters each = A teacher who can't tell if her eyes are watering from the strain of reading that much 7th grade handwriting or if she is crying because her will to live has finally been sloppily extinguished...like the birthday candle on a cake for a two year old with overactive saliva glands.

So, to counteract the slobbery, spirit-crushing effects of having to read and grade so many summary books, I made the kidlets dance like little trained monkeys for my amusement.

OK, so they didn't dance and it wasn't for my amusement...well, not entirely for my amusement.

The kidlets needed to review for a test over the novel and I thought that they might have more fun doing that by recreating scenes from the story via puppets instead of doing a study guides.

And guess what? I was right!

I divided each class into groups and then assigned each group a chapter to review. The groups got together and planned out a script, and then built their puppets. The kidlets worked very hard on their puppets...and then found great joy in killing them off in various ways. Some of the kids stuck with the plot (The bad guy did end up on the bottom of the ocean) and others decided to sacrifice accuracy points for entertainment's sake (I have read this book about 16 times now, and I don't recall Charlotte ever turning cannibal and trying to eat the sailors...)

I managed to finish grading summary books while the kidlets were busy with script-writing and puppet-building, so today I was able to sit back and enjoy the puppet shows.

And even though the scripts were well written and the puppets were well made, my favorite part was seeing the tops of their cute little heads poking out from behind the "stage".

The puppet shows ended up being a bigger production than I had anticipated. We were lucky that the seating chart was set up to allow for stadium seating...
...and a few of the groups even went so far as to arrange some special effects. For example, the group in the photo below used my strobe light and some strategically tossed baby powder to create the proper ambiance for a flash-back to events in previous chapters. Pretty creative, eh?

And speaking of creative... one group chose to end their well-scripted show with a "Charlotte Doyle Chapter 9 Wrap-Up Rap"

Yo, yo, yo! People of the ocean

Come on over here and listen to this notion!

Captain J has got some guns,

Everybody hide! Everybody run!

If you don't heed,

He just might kill you and throw you in the sea!

So come over here and listen to what I'm sayin'!

I ain't even playin'.

Word!

I love my job. Where else could I listen to farm kids rap about a novel written by a guy named Avi, or learn life changing information like, a puppets level of coolness is directly proportional to the amount of chest hair that is visible to the audience. As you can see, most of the puppets in our shows were VERY cool.

Including a few of the "Charlotte" puppets...who might want to look into electrolysis or laser hair removal before trying to make it big on Broadway.

No judgements, just a suggestion.

Dear Jones Family,

We missed you at Family Home Evening tonight. I gave the lesson on this talk while wearing my wicked witch of the west socks. I found it interesting that, while every junior high kidlet in the building commented on my socks today, no one at FHE did. Instead my fellow branchers looked...and then tried not to look. Basically the same way polite people respond when the person talking to them (or giving the FHE lesson) has something in their teeth or hanging out of their nose. I'm sure Kristy would have complemented me on my socks...which made me miss her even more!

After the lesson, we played hockey. Everyone was extra excited because the Hobsons finally made bail and were back running the show at FHE.

Some people exercised their free agency and chose to watch the hockey game rather than play. If only they had known that sitting on the sidelines was twice as dangerous as actually playing, tragedy might have been averted. But the ambulance drivers assured us that a good plastic surgeon will be able to make these lovely sisters look just as beautiful as they did before a hockey puck (and three Elder's Quorum members) crashed into them.

Cassie chose not to sit on the sidelines and turned out to be one of the red team's star players. We were all pretty surprised when she high-sticked Hyatt and then sent Todd careening into the wall, but she was really sweet about helping both guys pick their teeth up off the floor after the game.

Lacie also got a little violent over the course of the evening, but her rage wasn't hockey related. She was upset because I wasn't going to put her picture on this blog post. I tried to explain to her that she was on the last post twice and needed to give someone else a turn but, as you can see from the photo below, she demanded to have her photo taken and I finally obliged.

Jess came and played for a while too, but mostly just so she could show off her new ring... tone. :)

Toward the end of the night, Sister Hobson went toe-to-toe with Sister Barker in an epic battle for the puck that will live on in infamy in the history of the PAB. Seriously, poets will write sonnets about the clash of their sticks and wandering town minstrels will compose songs about the way they both dived for the puck.

When the game was over, the winning team shook hands with the not-winning team... while the not-winning team wiped their noses on their hands and then shook hands with the winning team. Bad sports or just victims of a post nasal drip...you be the judge.

Although the game did get a little rough, I am pleased to say (or type, as the case may be) that there were very few casualties:

The red team's goalie, who spent more time on the ground than on his feet, tried blocking the goal with some sort of ballet move and ended up ripping a hole in his pants. I was going to post some pictures of that, but then I remembered that Kristy would be reading this and I didn't want her to have to carry that image around with her for the rest of her life. She can thank me when she gets home.

The second casualty was one of the hockey sticks (borrowed by Liza from her mother's school) .

Our fearless Elder's Quorum president got a little bit carried away and ended up using some of his newly acquired National Guard training to beat the stick into submission.

Poor Liza got the same treatment as her hockey stick during the game when Derek mistook her for an enemy combatant...six or seven times.

We hope you are having a great time in the snowy and/or slushy south. We miss you all, but are doing just fine.

Except Liza.

But we have every hope that she will make a complete recovery...in three or four months.

Have a safe drive home!

Love and handshakes,

The Parke Avenue Branch