Yello!

Happy St. Patricks Day! We celebrated by wearing green, eating sesame chicken, and going to see a movie. OK…so that doesn’t sound like so much of an “Irish” thing to do, but we had fun.

We saw the movie “Premonition” with Sandra Bullock. The previews looked interesting and the movie did not disappoint as it was suspenseful to the point that the ending surprised me. It was one of those movies that involved going back in time a bit and reminded me of some of my favorite movies like Frequency and Butterfly Effect. I guess some of my other all-time favorite movies like Field of Dreams, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure , and Back to the Future all involve time travel. Another new movie that I saw last week-end in Lincoln was “Wild Hogs” with Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and John Travolta. It was a cute movie with some funny moments. Hey, any movie with motorcycles on the open road has to be at least sort of good!

I know it’s been few and far between for blog postings lately…I guess it’s been busy! So I’ll borrow a technique from Jesse and update you all on the past month or so with a bulleted summary:

• *Late January found us at funerals in Bonesteel, SD (Earl Whidden – age 100) and Oshkosh, NE (Margaret Clark – late 80s) for wonderful people who each were first cousins of our parents.
• *January and February is the calving season on the farm – we’ve been blessed with several newborn calves, many that have been born in the middle of the night in temperatures below zero!
• *Daughter #1 surprised us all with a diamond engagement ring on Valentine’s day… or I should say her boyfriend surprised HER with the ring. So wedding plans are being made for late summer… so much to do, so little time! 🙂
• *Daughter #2 has been busy with work, speech meets, scholarship applications and dance team. Here’s a picture of the dance team at the basketball game tonight doing a new move called the worm!
• *#1 son and I made a trip out to Rapid City this past week-end. Among other things, we found time to venture on to Terry Peak Sunday afternoon where the kids went skiing while I graded papers in the lodge. It was warm so the snow was kind of melting and slippery, but they had a lot of fun. We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of ski runs and and size of the hill.
• *We’re still continuing to enjoy the high school basketball season as our first subdistrict game was tonight. The Beavers won easily by a 30+ point margin and will advance to the subdistrict championship round on Thursday with a 20-1 record. It’s been a fun season to watch a very talented group of players.
• *The hubby is sporting a shiner which has led to lots of jokes and accusations that I had something to do with it! In reality, it had to do with feeding his cattle on a cold, wintry day last week when a chunk of frozen silage fell on his head and caused him to slam into the loader. A bump the size of an egg immediately swelled up on the side of his forehead. Since then the bruise has just sort of moved down a bit each day morphing into a tremendously black eye and, now, a black and blue cheek. He claims that it never really hurt although he looks like a tough guy who got the worst end of a fight! I guess the frozen hunk of silage won. Actually, he feels fortunate that he wasn’t knocked out.

One of my extracurricular duties is to run the school concession stand at every football, volleyball and basketball game.  Of course, students also work at the concession stand as does my husband, who is mostly in charge of the popcorn popper.  I was very surprised when the following review came out in Lincoln Arneal’s sports column yesterday in the Columbus Telegram as one of the Items of the Week: “Working Halftime: St. Edward concession stand.  One way to make an average concession stand into a great one is to have one crock pot of chili and another of nacho cheese and adding those toppings onto hot dogs and nachos.  Props to the St. Edward stand for offering those selections plus some great popcorn.”  Can you guess where I was when I heard about the press coverage last night?  You guessed it, of course… the concession stand!!!  🙂

Having a bit of free time over Christmas vacation has given me the opportunity to see a couple of good movies. One is We Are Marshall, the story of the airplane crash in the early 70’s that took the lives of 75 football players, coaches and fans from a small college in West Virginia. What a good movie! You could feel the pain of the town as they struggled to rebuild the football team and their lives following such a devastating loss. Another good movie is The Holiday about two women who traded houses for the holidays finding themselves and love in the process. Yes, it’s definitely a chick-flick, but probably a movie that men might like as well. I especially liked the setting in the English countryside and loved the four main talented actors/actresses. A couple of other movies on my “hope to see list” include In Pursuit of Happyness and A Night At the Museum. I got The DaVinci Code for Christmas and can hardly wait to see it too! Does anyone have any opinions about these movies or others?

It’s been quite a while since I posted on here and I guess my excuse is, well, I’ve been busy! This past week was filled with football mania at school since we hosted a semi-final game in the state playoffs. Unfortunately, our team lost the game after coming back from a regular season 3-5 record and then getting three wins in the state playoffs making it to the semifinal round. Hosting the game meant that I got to prepare for and run the concession stand that served approximately 1,000 people! It made for a long and tiring night! The other part of my week involved taking kids to the State Student Council Convention in McCook on Friday. The meeting was fun and we heard some great speakers. We had a somewhat sobering experience on the way home though, when we were one of the first vehicles to come upon a head-on crash between a car and a pick-up. I spent 14 minutes on the cell phone with the 911 operator until help arrived. The front ends of both vehicles were pretty much gone and there was debris all over the road. The investigating officer called me last night to get any more information that I could give him about what I saw. He told me that the man in the car was dead at the scene and the woman driving the pick-up was arrested for second-offense DWI and possible involuntary manslaughter. Wow – what a tragedy for the man who was just driving down the road, like I was, and suddenly his life was ended by a person who chose to drive drunk! His life is over. I arrived at the scene just a minute or so later and…my life goes on.

This past week was Homecoming Week at school. It was a busy week that was hectic but lots of fun for the kids. I’m the Student Council sponsor, so I helped the kids plan the week – but in all honesty, they did most of the work in getting everything organized. Everyday was a different dress-up day for the students and teachers alike – we had a toga day, ninja day, celebrity day, pair day and moroon and white spirit day. Friday was the high point of the entire week with a parade, downtown pep rally, football game, royalty coronation, and finally the homecoming dance. It was a fun week and everything went off as planned, but I was sort of glad to see Homecoming Week winding down!

Saturday brought a bit of down time for me…but not too much. Jesse and Shawn were both here on Friday night for the Homecoming game and both stayed over until Saturday. Shawn’s parents brought his sister up for us to take Senior pictures on Saturday afternoon. We got the pictures done and they turned out pretty well, even though there were about, oh, a hundred million hungry mosquitos outdoors on Saturday. We had a bit of a hard time taking pictures because we had to keep shooing the mosquitos off of Calyn’s face so we could snap the picture!

This morning Kalie and I set out for Omaha around 7am. A few weeks ago Kalie tried out for the NASC (Nebraska Association of Student Councils) state staff and was selected. So today was her first of many training sessions for the new staffers – this time held at the Creighton University campus in Omaha. Since I was missing church at home, I decided to make a quick call to our friends and former pastor, Mike and Kathy Jo, in Omaha to see what time their church started. Well, the timing was perfect and I was able to attend services at the Living Faith Methodist Church in Omaha where Mike is the current pastor. What a joy it was! Kathy Jo has such a warmth about her and Mike has the ability to speak to the congregation as if he were conversing with each and every person one-on-one. He speaks from the heart and relates his sermon to real-life experiences. I enjoyed his sermon and the contemporary music so much. Annie was away at college, but it was good to see Jill, David and Nate. Even though I had never been in their church before, I felt like I had come home!!! What a great ending to my “Homecoming Week!”

The scripture reading was pretty amazing too. At least it really spoke to me. For those of you who like to look things up in the Bible, it was Romans 12:1-2, 9-12. It was about forgiveness, turning the other cheek and repaying evil with kindness. “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. Don’t let evil get the best of you, but conquer evil by doing good.” A good reminder for all of us! Mike joked in his sermon that as a minister, people expect him to do good things because he actually gets paid for being good. The rest of us are good for nothing. (get it??) 🙂

Just had to mention our love affair with the Nebraska State Fair.  This year marked the thirty-sixth anniversary of the day Francis and I met at the State Fair 4-H Friendship Dance in Lincoln.  The story goes like this…I was just starting my junior year in high school and my 4-H club was at the fair for the Song Contest.  We  talked my mom (our 4-H leader) into letting us go to the Friendship Dance at the old east campus union.  As I walked into the dance, I saw a guy from St. Edward that I had met on a youth trip to Washington, DC a month earlier.  I went over to say hello to him and a really tall guy with the St. Edward FFA group asked me to dance.  I said sure and walked out to the middle of the dance floor.  When I turned around, there was a shorter guy standing next to me!  Apparently, the taller guy nudged Francis and told him to go dance with me – and the rest of the story is history!  I asked Francis if he was a high school senior  – he said no.  I thought maybe a junior then???  Again the answer was no.  Surely not a sophomore or (horrors) a freshman??   Francis said – yes – he was a freshman , but at the University of Nebraska – not high school.  Wow – was I impressed!   We have attended the state fair every year since then, usually attending two or three times during the ten-day fair.  We even took Jesse as a newborn when he was less than a week old!  It’s always been special  to us and our kids.  Last Saturday, August 26, we were all there again.  Over the years some of my favorite moments at the fair have been checking out our photography exhibits; the model trains; cattle, pigs, horses, and llamas; concerts, Kid’s Day FCCLA booths; and the Peruvian music.  We love it all! Here’s a picture of the kids – yep, you guessed it – at the fair!

Kalie just started her new job last week when the new Runza place opened in Albion. She will work both at the drive-through window and at the counter. Of course Francis, Jenna and I couldn’t resist surprising her on opening day by going through the drive-through. We ordered just one chocolate chip cookie and then snapped her picture when we pulled around the corner and up to the window. After all that, we parked the car and went in and ordered our real meal. The Runza’s were great and it was fun to see Kalie at work on her first day in the fast-food business. She worked every day this week and with her senior year of school starting next week, she’s going to be a busy girl! If there is anyone out there reading this from outside of Nebraska, I may need to explain that a runza sandwich is ground beef and cabbage baked inside of a yeast bread roll. Runza is a Nebraska-based food chain that puts out some good food.

Yesterday I heard on the news that a 12 year old kid died soon after riding a roller coaster at Disneyworld in Orlando. What an awful tragedy that was for the family and everyone involved. The ride that was described was the very same one at MGM Studios that Kalie and I rode several years ago (summer of 2000) when we were there for national FCCLA and it was one of my favorites! With rock music blaring, you enter a room where you hear the voices of Aerosmith band members talking about going to their rock concert and inviting you to get into their limo (a.k.a. roller coaster car that looked somewhat like a limo) to join them for the ride. When everyone is all securely locked in, the car literally blasts forward for an awesome ride that probably lasted less than one or two minutes. It was one of my all-time favorite rides anywhere. I’m not sure what caused the child’s death yesterday, but I can only guess that perhaps he had a preexisting medical condition. After watching my parents and parents-in-law suffer for days, weeks, months and even years with terminal illnesses, I think that if I could choose a way to die (at an old age) I would want to be on a motorcycle, riding a roller coaster, or traveling to some cool place when it happened. At least my last moments on this earth would be spent having fun and doing some things that I love!

Today marks the reduction of the number of school districts in Nebraska due to the enactment of LB 126 which requires Class 1 (elementary only) and Class 6 (secondary only) school districts to merge with K-12 districts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the small country schools still in operating will close, but rather that they will operate as part of the larger K-12 district – although some of the remaining one-room schools will, in fact, close. People can make good arguments on both sides of the issue – the benefits of the mergers vs the benefits of the small schools and local control. I can see merit in both sides of the discussion.

At the risk of sounding like an old-timer (OK – well, maybe I am!), I can’t help but thinking of my own experience as a kid in the one-room school a couple of miles away from my house. If I remember right, we had as many as ten students and as few as six or so during the seven years that I attended school there. I had one other student in my grade, a boy named Robin. One of the best things about attending a country school included the interaction I had with students of all ages. As a Kindergartener, I played the same games at recess that the eighth-graders did and also had parts in the school Christmas program and county music contest. I listened to lessons in math, english, history and science that all of the older kids were learning since we were all in one room. Since I learned to read at an early age, I even got to give the older kids their spelling tests sometimes to help the teacher out. (I suppose now that would be considered brown-nosing, but to me it was just fun!) I can’t help but think that all of that exposure we had to the curriculum of all grades, K-8, not only accelerated learning but also reinforced what had been learned in previous years. That’s not something that is so readily available with the structure of our schools today. Of course, on the flip side, we probably gave up some things like more indepth instruction in areas like music, PE, art and other curriculum areas since we only had one teacher for all things and all grades! Our little school closed at the end of my sixth grade year and we all headed off to town school – we felt like little fish in a bigger pond for awhile, but we all did OK for ourselves and learned to adjust to a new situation.

So I have mixed feelings about the state forcing mergers of school districts. Keeping in mind that bigger does not always necessarily mean better, I also know that change can be tough. With all of the pending litigation surrounding LB 126, we be hearing more discussion on this issue for years to come.