Relay for Life

Wow! What an amazing experience. Alyssa and her fellow honor society members were excellent representatives of Arlington High School at the Relay for Life this weekend. They helped other teams set up tents, they were enthusiastic, they helped clean up trash and recyclables, they cried when they saw very young children among the group of cancer survivors who started the relay Friday night, and they were solemn and respectful while lighting the luminaria. I am very proud to say that I was one of their chaperones. The team raised nearly $1300. Most of us slept very little, I think I slept from 2:00 to 3:30 am. A few of the girls didn't sleep at all. We tried to get them to sleep, but they set the goal of 100 laps (25 miles) and they couldn't be dissuaded. I came home Saturday morning and iced my knees and took a nap before going to Noah's baseball game. Alyssa slept all afternoon. We were both in bed by 8:30 last night. Next year Arlington will have its own relay and the honor society kids have been asked to take a leadership role.

Another Great Visit

After a slow and uncertain start this turned out to be a great weekend. Alyssa came home sick on Friday, and we were afraid she had the norovirus as she had babysat for kids who go to the infected school earlier in the week. She slept for nearly 4 hours Friday afternoon, got up for a couple of hours, and then slept for 11 more. After that she was symptom free.

Mom and Dad came up so we belatedly celebrated Mother's Day and Noah's birthday. The weather cooperated, and we didn't have to shiver through Noah's game (they won 12-0). Then we had a late lunch/early dinner of barbecue treats at Famous Dave's in Everett. We'll definitely be going there again. We ate about 3:30, and I was so full I didn't eat again till breakfast. Breakfast was at a new place on Camano Island, the Diamond Knot (a satellite of the Diamond Knot Brewery in Mukilteo). Great food again! Forrest and I are looking forward to sitting on the porch at this new hotspot this summer sampling microbrews.

Cars were washed and waxed, Forrest crafted his own version of the Topsy Turvy tomato planter, and we celebrated the neighbor girl's 16th birthday Sunday night. Forrest and Alyssa are both sporting sunburns this morning. The forecast for Memorial Weekend looks good too. Forrest and I will be at the game Saturday night, two rows up from the ball girl on the 3rd baseline. You might catch a glimpse of us on TV if you're watching.

Thanks for the great photos Dad! Noah looks huge! I still can't get over how much I love Alyssa's new hairdo.

Norovirus follow-up

Attendance at the infected school is about 10 kids present per class, or about 40% at school today.

Norovirus

Every major news station sent vans to Arlington to cover an outbreak of norovirus at one of our elementary schools. Yesterday 100+ kids were absent with violent vomiting and diarrhea.  And more went home during the day with the same symptoms.  Six teachers were out too.  Usually if a school has more than 10% of the kids out sick they close the school.  I'm not sure why that school is open today.  Extra custodians apparently scrubbed the school from top to bottom last night.  But kids are contagious the day before they exhibit symptoms and then for three more  days after that.  This is one of the elementary schools that feeds into Noah's middle school.  So most of the kids at Noah's school have siblings that attend the infested school. And then there are also the siblings at the high school.  I think we should have shut down the district today and tomorrow, had maintenance do a thorough cleaning of every building, and then come back and start again next week.  I'm stuck in an all day science curriculum meeting with all of the fourth grade teachers in the district, however,  all four of the 4th grade teachers from the infected school are missing. I wonder if the substitutes that were assigned to cover their classes cancelled because they didn't want to take a chance on being sick.

You're probably wondering how I'm able to blog during this meeting, but it's horribly disorganized and pointless since half of the district's fourth grade teachers are being laid off.  So six people who are being involuntarily transferred to fourth grade don't know yet that they're going to be teaching this material.  It's only half an hour into this long day and I'm already ready to pull my hair out.  Maybe I'll post more later if I continue to be bored to tears.

Mother's Day Weekend

As usual our weekend was busy. Noah had three friends over for a slumber party Friday night to celebrate his 13th birthday. They went to see "X-Men Wolverines," had a water balloon fight, watched "Die Hard" movies, plowed through a ton of food, and slept just a little. We returned all the boys to their parents at football sign-ups Saturday morning.

Noah's baseball team won another nailbiter game Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny evening. They won 8-7. Noah hit two, two RBI singles, including the game winning hit in the top of the 6th inning.

Alyssa is sporting a new spring haircut. She took her Advance Placement U.S. History test on Friday. She feels really good about the essay section. Now we just have to wait for the results in July.

My wonderful family got me a Wii Fit for Mother's Day. We had a great time hanging out in our pajamas exercising till 11 this morning. They also took me to Jimmy's for Italian food for dinner, and then we went to Cama Beach State Park to see the newly opened cabins. We've decided we want to rent one when the weather gets nicer.

Work is a trial. Budget cuts, staff cuts, and kids with serious spring fever make each week seem longer than the last. Six of our district's 13 fourth grade teachers got their RIF notices this past week. We all have a day-long science meeting on Thursday. That should be a laugh a minute. The one bright spot at work is the incubator full of duck eggs in my classroom. Hopefully we'll be welcoming a dozen ducklings in a couple of weeks.

Spring at Last

I hope we're through with frost as I took a chance and put some pretty annuals in the ground. I also copied a container vegetable garden from Sunset magazine. It's a 4' x 4' bed with tomatoes, basil, cucumber, and dill. Sunset's version had chives instead of dill, but the store I went to didn't have any chives so I decided to use dill rather than drive around searching for chives. As usual my favorite bleeding heart is in full bloom under my front window. We had pajama day at school yesterday and an extra recess to celebrate the end of our state testing period, meeting our attendance goals, and surpassing our math goals for the end of the year 6 weeks early. I wore a long t-shirt, flipflops, and capri pant sweats. It was 75 degrees and sunny. I even needed my sunglasses to play volleyball with the kids. We officially have 31 days of school left hurray!