Yay, Ella!!

Ella's Women's Professional Soccer team team, The Chicago Red Stars, folded this year and Ella is now playing for magicJack out of Florida alongside Abby Wambach and several other Olympic and National Team members.

Last night was magicJack's inaugural game, and who scored the team's only goal? Hint: if you said Abby or any of the other USWNT members, you're wrong...

Check out the picture of Ella (in green) and the article from the WPS site. Oh, and check out the picture after the article. Can you guess who Ella had Easter brunch with today? Look closely!

magicJack Defeat Boston Breakers in Home Opener

Boston Breakers

04/23/2011 - 07:43 p.m.

John Dorton | isiphotos.com PURCHASE THIS PHOTO

Allston, MA (April 22, 2011) - Coming off a 2-1 loss to the Western New York Flash, the Boston Breakers couldn't get back into the win column Saturday night on the campus of Florida Atlantic University. The Breakers lost, 1-0, to magicJack.

Ella Masar scored in the 26th minute for magicJack, who dominated possession early in the first half. Abby Wambach set up Masar's goal, playing the ball across the box before Masar beat Breakers keeper Alyssa Naeher. The Breakers (1-2-0, 3 points) had a number of opportunities after Masar's goal, but all were turned away by magicJack keeper Jillian Loyden (12 saves).

Ella is to the right of Donald Trump's shoulder. She truly is playing in the big league now!

Letter from a Parent

I got this letter in the mail from Will C's mother. Will, their only son, committed suicide in December of 2009. Kathy and Marty are, naturally, devastated. I had sent them a card on what would've been Will's birthday and had included some fond memories of their son from our time together (I had Will two years as a 4th and 5th grader.) I received the following letter in response. It is near and dear to my heart.

Lynn,


Thanks so much for your note. I can't believe you remembered his birthday! We had a party with his friends - nearly all of them were able to come. Amidst all of our overwhelming sadness, it is always nice to see his friends. Their memories and caring keep us going.


It was funny to read your comments about Will as a student. A few months ago I found a paper with Will's thoughts on being in your class. I would sometimes write down things he said and tuck them away. I don't think I shared this with you - if so, I am sure you'll enjoy reading it again.


Will on Mrs. I (4th Grade)


"She's just like... she gives you options, plans out the day in detail, so you can see what goes where. It might not be exactly on time, but you know what to expect. I like being in her class so much I can't believe it's the weekend and I'd like it if I had school. I actually look forward to Monday because she makes school so good. She trusts us to do our work, to read when we're supposed to, to be able to chew gum, trusts us to handle responsibility. You couldn't have given me a better teacher."


He's right. Thanks for being a wonderful part of Will's life.

Love,
Kathy


Will was the first student I ever lost to death (and remains so, thank goodness.) I was at school when I found out from Breana Lamb, a girl who had been in my class with Will. I sat and cried at my desk; even now I am having a hard time writing this. Such a young life, tragically cut short.

It's Easter this morning, and I have been thinking of what that means, especially  to Will and his parents. I am so thankful that Will still lives, that his parents will be reunited with him again.  There is life after this one; of that I have no doubt. And I pray that Kathy and Marty will someday be at peace over their son's death, and find comfort through the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Looky What I Can Do!

Woke up this morning to a warm, sunny day, very little wind, and I heard the call of the saddle.

GULP.

I had ridden a stationary bike in physical therapy, and had put Onyx up on a trainer in the living room until I bent the trainer and rendered it useless. However, I had had the seat waaaay high up to minimize the bend in my knee, and actually shifted my body to the left every time my right knee came up on the pedal so it would not flex too far. It's been at least a month since I actually tried either method of indoor riding.

Could I actually put my helmet on and ride Onyx on the road? The weather was perfect; I had flexible plans for the day. Yes, now was the time.

Of course, both Onyx's tires were FLAT and had to be pumped before I could ride. And my helmet was missing. I found it on the floor with my bike gloves behind the water softener tank - somehow it had gotten knocked off the shelf.

Once those tires were pumped and the cobwebs knocked out of the helmet (and the helmet inspected for any spiders...), I had to quit delaying and just get on and try it.

 I did it!! Look at the flex in that new knee (and the smile on my face!)

 Coming around for another pass.

(Poor Sri and Madhu's fire-damaged home in the background.)

Venturing further out as I felt stronger. I did a couple of circuits around the neighborhood and a pass on the bike path next to the lake.

Feeling great and happy to be riding again.

Whoa, look at that mileage - 2.07 miles. Normally I ride 5 miles my first ride of the season as well as spin much faster (I didn't break 10 mph), building to 8-12 miles daily at 15-17 mph. Still have some work to do, but I AM back in the saddle again!

Eggs Hunts the GT Way

Jessica Albrecht, the teacher of the 1st grade class with whom we are reading buddies, asked me if I would do an egg hunt with her children when we got our classes together Friday afternoon. She bought the plastic eggs and candy to put inside, and we filled the eggs and hid them around our classroom.

My students had a BLAST doing this, and true to form, they hid some of them in very creative ways!

 Tucked in the stopwatches.

 Nestled in the hallway passes.

 Peeking out from the supply tub. (I love how they left the drawer slightly open to help their buddies spot the prize!)

 Among our Language Arts books. Look closely at the top shelf. See the camouflaged eggs?

 In the teeth of one of the dental molds that Jessica made me when she was in school to become a hygienist. (My favorite hiding place.)

 My kiddos tried to put the stethoscope on the "ears" of one egg and have it listening to the "heartbeat" of another, but the stethoscope wouldn't stay on. (Might help if the egg had ears...)

Attached to the tail of one of the equivalent fraction kites we have flying in our room.

An egg hunt with 51 excited students and three teachers.

Amazingly, no one was running, screaming, or shouting in excitement. I was very proud of the children.

Just about done!

The classroom egg hunt made me miss having young children at home and having the Easter Bunny come the Saturday of Easter weekend. (Hey, Curt still lives in town and is coming to Easter dinner tomorrow - maybe I will dye a few eggs, tuck them around the house, and see what happens...)

Cranes, Ham, Thingy, and Glitter, Oh, My!

Fridays I give the students a vocabulary test on their Greek and Latin root words and then a spelling test over the same words. Lexie likes to write me a note at the bottom of her test every week. Here is today's note:

 Today I was surprised to find one from Sophie, also wishing me well for the weekend:

 And then Kathleen snuck in an extra spelling word at the bottom of her test along with an illustration:

Cranes are a BIG joke in our classroom. If I could stop the joke, I would because I honestly am sooooo tired of it. It has been going on for three years! It all began in 2008 when we folded 1200+ paper peace cranes as part of a Social Studies unit on conflict.

The children never quit folding them, and to this day, I find several cranes tossed on my desk surreptitiously daily. (I have a pretty good idea that Erik and Blake are my chief origamists.) Even my fourth graders, who will do the crane project NEXT year, fold them and think it is funny to draw them on papers, hide them around the room, etc. I haven't the heart to tell the children I really, really, REALLY am tired of cranes. And so it continues.

"Ham" is also a class joke. When it began, it also was funny. Two years ago, Michael started writing the word on the board. Why? Beats me! That, too, snowballed, and I find it written everywhere - lift a magnet off the board, and you will find "ham" in teeny tiny letters under it. Notice Lexie's letter above - she wrote the word and illustrated it, too.  I would love to retire that joke.

A new class joke this year is the use of the word "thingy." I had gotten tired of hearing them use it when they could not think of a word, we had a solemn discussion about ALWAYS USING GOOD VOCABULARY, and then what did I do? Use the word without thinking when I couldn't think of the word I wanted! The kids rolled on the floor, they laughed so hard, and it truly was funny. But... like the cranes and ham, I'm ready to be over it!

Another new class joke is the misconception that I detest glitter. Actually, I do not. My aide last year, Jackie Anderson, absolutely hated it, and grumbled whenever I would use it. She's no longer in my room, and somehow the 5th graders remembered it as ME who disliked glitter. And so they tease me about using it, write the word on their papers for me to discover, etc.

One of these days I am going to find an origami crane with the words "ham" and "thingy" written on its wings and decorated with glitter sitting on my desk. And when that happens, I may just finally say, "ENOUGH!!"  (On the other hand, if this is the biggest irritant I have in my classroom, then I am a lucky teacher.)

Happy Birthday, Ashley!

Happy Birthday to a terrific daughter-in-love!

This is one of my favorite pictures of Ashley - very much like religious paintings of madonna and child. (I borrowed it from her blog.)

Fire!!

My sister, Leslie, emailed me this morning and said she'd just heard on the news that a home on our street was on fire. And then a teacher stopped me in the hallway and asked me where I lived, afraid it was my home that was burning.

Luckily for me it wasn't; unluckily for our neighbors, Sri and Mattu, it was theirs. Mattu was home but got out safely. Lightning struck the home, traveled through their electrical system and the west side of their home, from the roof to the basement, was afire.

The family will be living in a motel until the damage is fixed. Judging by the photo, taken when I got home later in the day, that has already begun.

The Favorite

If you guessed that my favorite color of horses for collecting was black, then you are correct. So, which piece out of my collection of 400-500 horses is my favorite? This one:

Frosty

I saved my babysitting money to buy him in 6th grade. That was 1968-1969! Back then, I earned 50 cents an hour regardless of how many children I babysat at once. (The Maglones with their five boys got a bargain using me!) Frosty's cost was $5, so it took me TEN hours of babysitting to earn him.

Why do I love him so? I honestly don't know. His color is gorgeous - this photo does not do him justice. He's a high glossy charcoal color with white points (not a realistic horse color.)

Maybe it's because I earned him, and the anticipation of working, counting my money, and saving up to purchase a new horse for my collection is what makes him so special. (Notice I don't call Frosty "it.")

I clearly remember the day I bought him. My friend, Bobbie, and I took the bus downtown to Hertz' Pet Shop. They carried Breyer horses among the parakeets and other pets. I always loved to go in there and gaze at the horses for sale, wishing I could buy them all. And Mr. Hertz had made an eight-horse hitch with the dapple gray Clydesdale (the same mold as Hercules in the last post), and had that on display. Bobbie and I would drool over them and wish we had the talent to make a harness hitch and do the same thing.

That particular day, I walked in with my hard-earned babysitting money knowing I would be able to buy one of those horses I was always wishing for. And Frosty was my choice.

Forty-two years later I still love him. To me, he is just as beautiful, just as perfect, just as emblematic of the ideal horse as he was when I was eleven. If I had to get rid of my collection, he would be the last to go, and even then I would try to hang onto him somehow.

That's who my favorite horse is.

Hobby Horses

This is my upstairs office, the place I go to write, relax, sew, and just have some quiet time.

As you can tell from the picture on the wall and the shelf to the side, I am a horse lover. I have been all my life - my mother says that when I was beginning to talk, I used to point out the horses in fields from the car window.  Most young girls go through a horsey phase and then outgrow it when they become teenagers, but some of us continue to go through life as true horse lovers.

I am fortunate to be in the latter category.That's why I have these:

 And these:

 And these:

These are just the ones I have on display in my office. There's also a glass display case in the living room with 40-50 porcelain ones, and in the closet in my office are several boxes of horses I never unpacked when we moved in! All told, I have about 500 horses in a collection that spans back to when I was six years old (1963) and Santa brought me a brown china riding pony I named "Brownie." (Brownie is all beat up and has been glued and re-glued many times, but he still gets to live in a place of honor in the china cabinet - no packing box for him!)

Usually every summer I spend a day or two dusting the horses, reliving happy memories, and sometimes rearranging them. (I don't buy too many any more, just a couple a year that strike my fancy; finding room for new ones can be tough.) But because we had two weddings last summer, and Cole and Emily lived with us after they got married for the summer, I never got last year's dusting completed. And with surgery to have my other knee replaced scheduled for June, I knew I needed to get the job done as soon as possible.

Today was the day, and what a trip down memory lane it was! Here are some old favorites from my original collection from when I was in grade school:

 Hercules

This big boy was one of my first pieces, and I used to make harnesses out of felt and thread, and then a wagon from a shoe box and lincoln logs for him to pull my dolls in. I am very fond of this guy.

 Dappled Dude!

He's not dappled, he's an Appaloosa, but I named him after a pony at Girl Scout Camp (Sycamore Valley, on the Wildcat River out by Hershey) that I loved. Dappled Dude took my dolls for rides since he came all tacked up and ready to go.

 Sheena, Black Minx, and Shannon.

Their names are from horsey books I read, possibly race horses. Black was my favorite color for a horse at the time. Come to think of it, it still is! 

Scojeadon

I got her in the mid-70s. She's named after a real horse I cared for. Scoj's owner, Susie Gillespie, hired me to feed her mares, Scojeadon and Sycamore Lass, and donkey, Jose daily. I cared for them from 7th grade through high school graduation. Sue's nickname was "Scottie", and she combined that with the names of her two best friends, Jean and Donna to come up with Scojeadon.

I am a little dismayed that I cannot remember this guy's name!

Miss Windy Warpaint

(Where DID I come up with these names??)

Windy is my second favorite piece in my collection. She's actually quite a rare piece and worth some money now. I used to make her tack and have her go down by the Wabash for trail rides, carrying my dolls. I remember one snowy day when my friend, Bobbie (another avid collector and horse lover), and I took our horses and dolls down to the creek that runs through the neighborhood I live in right now. Back then it was a creek through a cornfield and perfect for a ride in the snow.

 Sham

Sham is named after a horse in a book by either Wesley Dennis or Walter Farley. The color on this piece has always made me think of Hershey pie!

 Torpedo

Despite the fact that he's in a standing position, Torpedo was a fast horse for my dolls to ride, hence the name. It's also because of Torpedo that I realized I was in an earthquake once. I was about 11, and per usual, was playing with my horses. Torpedo was still on the shelf, and when I went to pick him up, I noticed the chain reins, which were dangling like they are in this picture, were swaying back and forth. Then I realized the house was swaying! I wonder if I would have noticed the motion if not for the reins?

Tribal Dancer

Yet again, another black horse! His name came from a horse show program for the Lafayette Society Horse Show (held at Columbian Park) which was a HUGE deal when I was growing up. I always wanted to be a ribbon girl and hand out ribbons while wearing a pretty dress. I never got the chance, but I did get to show my own real horse, Cee Hunt, there a time or two! 

My children have little interest in my collection, and that's fine with me. I imagine that I will one day sell it off piece by piece, or give some of it to a horse crazy child who reminds me of myself so many years ago. Maybe my kids will want one or two pieces to remember me by, maybe not. 

Regardless of where my collection ends up, it has been an important part of my life since I was six years old. I may no longer have the dolls go for rides down by the creek, or make wagons and saddles from scratch, but I do enjoy looking at them every time I am in my office. And just this afternoon, I gave Torpedo a big kiss on the nose when I finished dusting him.

In my next post, I will post a picture of my favorite piece in the entire collection. Any guesses as to its color??

The Decorah Eagles

Sarah shared a link with me a few weeks ago to an eagle cam - you could watch a pair of eagles nesting in Decorah, Iowa live! The camera is on 24 hours a day, and the eagles are completely unaware of it. (An infrared camera is used at night; the eagles cannot see that, either.) This is the third year researchers have studied this particular pair of eagles. The mother is about 8 years old; they do not list the age of the male. Both of the other two broods raised by this pair fledged.

Every day I visit a couple of times to check on the eagles and their three eaglets. This morning when I tuned in, I had two surprises - it had snowed, and both parent eagles were on the nest together. Quickly I grabbed my camera and snagged some shots.

 My first view from the eagle cam this morning. Can you tell which is the male and which is the female?

 See the white outlining on the feathers of the eagle on the left? Notice how that one is significantly smaller than the one on the right. It is also sitting on the eaglets. And look at the scruffiness of the feathers on the eagle on the right. (They're scruffy regardless of the weather.) Think you have it figured out?

The one on the left is the male and the one on the right is the female. She also has skin extending beyond her eyes that he does not, and can look "frownier" than the male.

Normally the female is in the nest with the chicks most of the time. This morning he is covering them, and she did not make him move off the chicks when she returned. Instead, they both hunkered down and huddled together, riding out the storm.

The nest is 80 feet up in a cottonwood tree near the Decorah fish hatchery. It is estimated to be 5-6 feet across and weigh 3000 pounds. (Just think, those eagles carried all that material up there by mouth and by talon!) Both parents are excellent hunters and usually you can see several different dead animals in the nest at a time. I have seen a rabbit, crow, muskrat, lots of fish, and several unidentified animals that the eagles were feeding to their babies.

When I first began watching, I wondered why the nest was so large. I have learned that the eagles walk around in it, that they put game around the perimeter to eat when the eaglets awake, and that the nest has to be able to hold 2 adult and 3 juveniles at once.

 Change of shift! The father moves off the eaglets. One chick's head pops up for a look around.

 The male walks around the edge of the nest and prepares to leave while the mother steps in to cover their babies.

 He walks to the back of the nest (where he often takes off) and she gets a closer look at their offspring.

She waddles slowly forward to get in place, and then fluffs the nesting material with her beak to make a softer nest for the eaglets. I have really come to respect the mama - she is so vigilant and spends the majority of her time caring for her young.

Having Fun with Friends

Our dinner group got together Saturday night at the Gibbs' home. When Gibbs host a party, they go all out - Olympic Night!

We started with Greek themed appetizers which we nibbled on while we made our own team flags.

Couples had been told to dress alike, which added to the team feeling. We then did a torch relay around the house and lit "the Olympic flame" - a pillar candle that we kept burning throughout the evening.

Tim read us some Olympic history, and since much was centered on the Greek god, Zeus, even honored our Zeus posthumously with his own flag during the festivities. Of course, I got teary.

Next we hopped in our cars and headed to The Parthenon, a Greek restaurant close by. while eating our meal, we played an Olympic trivia game. Craig and I won that, so we got to be the first competitor in the Olympic games.

Yes, you read that right... there were games when we got back to the Gibbs' home! The first one was a ping pong ball bounce - whoever could bounce the most balls into a can in one minute won. We came in third.

Bryn desperately tries to keep Eric supplied with ping pong balls.

Notice there is an orange ball already in the can for our team!

Then we went to the basement to play foosball. I'd never played before, and to my amazement, scored all our goals and won the event for the country of CragLyndia!

We trekked upstairs again to play curling, using a mini shuffleboard for the game, and then into Tim's "man cave" to play a shooting game on the pool table.

Note the lighted pillar in the center of the table - our Olympic flame.

Pat Connolly could not resist mugging like one of the animals Tim has hunted on his big game safaris to Africa. (The resemblance is pretty amazing!)

Next up - a shooting game - whoever landed the flying disk closest to a mark on the fireplace won. I think we came in last for this event.

My favorite event was last. Synchronized swimming to a tune from the musical Grease. (Greece, get it?) This was a HOOT. We had a bag of items to use as props and no rehearsal time. Let's just say it was hysterical.

 The Connollys get into the swing of the swim.

Seymours won with their graceful swim.

A pas de deux by Craig and me - here we are forming the shape of a heart as we swim together.

A kiss at the finale.

The Gibbs did a beautiful routine under dimmed lighting.

The evening ended with a medals ceremony. Gibbs were last and won tinfoil medals, Craig and I got the bronze (make-up bronzer strung on a ribbon), Connollys were the silver medalists (spoons hung on ribbons), and Seymours won the gold - chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil and strung on the ribbon.

What a fun evening, and very unexpected. Normally we just eat a nice meal and play a quiet game, but this was a whole new level of fun for us. I am going to remember this idea.