Go, Randy Truitt!

For the past four years, Indiana's educators, regardless of political affiliation, have had major growing concerns about how the Indiana Department of Education has been pushing through mandates while supported by a Republican-led state Legislature.

Teachers and administrators have been aghast; now even those legislators who wrote the laws and mandates are beginning to have their own concerns. Indeed, there has been a real sway in opinion in that now it has become bipartisan - both Repulicans and Democrats currently in office are dismayed at what the IDOE has been doing.

Randy Truitt, a representative from Tippecanoe County and a Republican, wrote the following letter. I have highlighted some of my own concerns that he shares with the governor, Mitch Daniels,  and Tony Bennett, State Superintendent of Education.

Thank you, Randy Truitt!!

A GOP lawmaker speaks out

Karen Francisco | The Journal Gazette

The Indiana Select Commission on Education's second meeting is under way. State Superintendent Tony Bennett is opening with one of his favorite approaches – linking his agenda to the Obama administration through U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

I suspect Bennett sees all criticism of the Indiana Department of Education through a partisan lens. Unfortunately for him, the criticism is coming increasingly from his own party. Tying his agenda to Obama's certainly isn't going to appease a growing number of Republican critics.

The latest is Rep. Randy Truitt, who has sent a long and thoughtful letter to Sen. Dennis Kruse and Rep. Robert Behning, the co-chairmen of the select commission. In an interview this morning, Truitt said his concerns are based on extensive conversations he's had with his "education roundtable" in Tippecanoe and Warren counties. His letter – posed as a series of questions – takes the department to task for its implementation of education bills approved by the GOP-controlled General Assembly.

The West Lafayette Republican raises questions about teacher evaluation rules, the A-F grading scale, the school turnaround model, the student growth model, the state's No Child Left Behind waiver and IREAD-3.

Truitt, the father of three public-school students, acknowledges that he voted for all of the education reform bills, but now is unhappy with their implementation.

"I'll call it overreaching," he said. "DOE is not the only department where this is happening – where the legislative intent gets changed, but I just started seeing more and more where I would vote on something based on the way it was discussed and it turned into something very different. … I spent a lot of time in the last session trying to vocalize my concerns. It just kept getting worse and worse."

Truitt said he believes there are about 25 members of his caucus who share his concerns. "I'm just kind of tired of changing the rules on these teachers," he said. "I've never once had a teacher come up to me and say, 'I don't want to be evaluated.' I've never heard a teacher say, 'I want to teach with bad teachers.' "

He said the legislation makes sense if it is carried out correctly, but questions the speed and volume of the changes.

"When I tell the DOE that people out there aren't trying to derail the reform, just make sure the legislative intent of things we pass is maintained. Give things we pass time to work. It's hard enough to change when things are stationery; moving change is impossible."

Truitt is passionate about the concerns raised. I suspect we'll hear much more from him in the upcoming session.

His complete letter follows:

May 3, 2012

The Honorable Robert Behning

The Honorable Dennis Kruse

200 West Washington Street

Indianapolis,IN46204

Dear Bob and Dennis,

It has been an honor to represent Tippecanoe and part of Warren

County at our statehouse over the past four years. We have dealt with a number of highly publicized issues on many fronts and I firmly believe that many of the measures that we passed will continue to move our state forward. I am confident that with thehard work of our legislators and the hard work of our citizens, we can ensure Indiana is an economic and policy leader in our nation.

As you know, we spend a considerable amount of time talking with those that we represent. I feel it is so important to understand the community in which we represent so that one can help shape policy that not only helps our community but improves the entire state. I feel that TippecanoeCountyis unique when it comes to education. This is due to a number of reasons which is greatly influenced by the presence of Purdue University.

As we were going through the education reform measures over the last few years, I have been regularly meeting with a group of local educators that educate the children, our future, in our area.

As you can imagine, I live and work alongside these people, and I see on a daily basis their hard work and dedication. I have 3 children in public schools (freshman, 8 grade and 4 grade) and what they do for our children should be commended. We all know that the education system inIndianais not perfect, and I am not against true educational reform. 

However, I have become increasingly concerned about the passage of legislation and the application and interpretation being different from the discussions and the wording that I feel we have carefully placed into the law.

It was our desire to seek educational change and improve the overall system, and in the last two sessions, we have worked to implement changes that would, in our perception, better the educational system for our children for generations to come. 

One of those changes involved teacher evaluations and after hearing from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE), we voted to enact wording in Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) that would require teacher evaluation with local control.

After we pass legislation, it takes time to get feedback on the impact of legislation that we passed. This winter, I was contacted by members of my constituency who believed the intent of the legislation that we had passed had been changed via "legislative guidance" by the State Board of Education. This was confusing and concerning to me as I voted for Senate Bill 1 as a way to empower local districts to implement evaluation systems that they had the right to create and implement, based on some common

tenets. 

We believed this would improve and shine a spotlight on instruction. After reading and listening to "experts", I am concerned that the process is requiring our local teachers be evaluated from Indianapolis based on a test score. If this is true, where in the "real" world do we evaluate a person where the evaluator never actually sees the employee in action? 

I sure hope that this is not being centralized or becoming a one size fits all process. I feel strongly that the wording in SB 1 was written the way it was so this wouldn't be the case. However, I have seen documentation that tells me that the intent of the law as I read it is being interpreted differently by the IDOE and that is concerning to me. The documents from the IDOE are attached to this letter.

As you begin your process this summer of studying this and other issues, I encourage you to think about a number of items that hopefully will cause you to think about the true impact of what we passed, the legislative intent and most importantly what the impact will be on the children ofIndiana. Some questions for you to ponder:

• Why would the state want to rank teachers who they have never seen in action by a test score?

• Why is it permissible for the IDOE to override a local evaluation?

• Why is the IDOE issuing "legislative guidance" such as the above that was not part of the actual legislation?

• Why would the IDOE use only "negative growth" rather than the wording in the law of "negative growth and achievement" as part of the legislative guidance?

Another concern I have heard was the A-F Grading Scale and the School Turnaround Model. Although the IDOE insists that "quotas" and bell curves are not built into this model, when one looks at this with practical common sense, and looks at documents it does seem as if there are quotas for evaluation. In addition, when the growth model is explained, there seem to be more questions than answers.

• Why would the IDOE want to move D and F schools into the "bottom category"? This would have increased the amount of schools in "school turnaround" dramatically. With a larger amount of schools labeled as "failing," wouldn't this hurt our communities? 

While we decided to remove this provision from legislation last session, I was surprised to see the exact wording and methodology in our Waiver application to the Federal Government submitted well before we convened last session.

• Why was there a State Board hearing on this rule in January...before the legislature voted on the school turnaround language? This seems to signal a strategy of moving a concept first and then following after the fact with legislation. 

I can't tell you how many times I heard last session that we need to do this to allow what is already happening to happen. This would indicate that we are simply enforcing what the State Board of Education wants to do, rather than the State Board of Education being a vehicle to help implement legislation that the General Assembly passes.

• Why can a parent not know how much each child needs to "grow" in order to be typical growth? Isn't this something we would want a parent to know?

• Why are schools not given credit for typical growth? It seems to me that if a child has typical growth, they have made a year's growth. Why would this not be accurate?

• How can students who are pass plus on ISTEP+ be low growth? When you are pass plus on ISTEP+ you have made more than a year's worth of growth. How can these students be low growth?

• Why are students being compared to other students around the state who score the same score they do? Why are students not being compared to themselves? Isn't this a true measurement of an individual's growth? Isn't that what we are trying to accomplish?

• When there are State Board of Education hearings, why is there only one state board representative there to listen to the public? Why, in the past, have there been no state board representatives there to hear the public's opinion?

• Why are there no proposed changes to the State Board of Education rules based on feedback from the public? This leads me to believe that public comment and testimony is meaningless.

I have been approached by local educators who have questions about the No Child Left Behind Waiver that was submitted andrecently made public.

• Who wrote the waiver? Did they collaborate with a wide variety of educators from across the state? If so, what educators did they collaborate with?

• Why are educators telling me that IMAST, the test for students who have special needs, will no longer be used? Why would we not want our students who have special needs to be able to show what they know?

• Why are there less special education children (from 2% to 1%) who will be eligible to take ISTAR in each corporation under the new waiver? ISTAR is an assessment for students with more severe special needs. This would penalize corporations who have a larger population of students with severe needs as they would have to take failures for students over the 1 % of scores allowed.

Why, in the waiver, do schools have to watch for all of the following:

- School grade (total percentage of students passing ISTEP+)+ high growth in language arts and math, Progress with the bottom 25%, AND any subgroup over 30 students. 

If a subgroup grade is 2 letter grades below the school grade (example: School is an A, special education students are at 70% on the ISTEP- C), the school can be a reward school (because they are an A) and also a focus targeted school (in school improvement) AT THE SAME TIME. I thought the school grade was supposed to make it easier for parents to understand. How are they ever going to understand that a school can be an A AND be a failing school at the same moment?

Why does the priority status for the school include the following "Schools that are in the D and F category for 2 years). I thought we were not combining schools into the bottom two categories.

It seems, if we eliminate IMAST, decrease our percentage of students who can participate in ISTAR, and add in confusion for parents, as well as monitoring every subgroup, we've really not waived anything at all. This waiver seems to be less beneficial for our struggling students and we are still monitoring exactly what we did in No Child Left Behind.

I have also heard local concern over the current testing of students.

• Why are 3rd grade student passwords, log ins and access codes for a practice test 40+ characters long?

• Why are teachers threatened about losing their license several times throughout the state paperwork that is released about the testing?

• Why are teachers concerned if their students erase? They have been told the IDOE has "normed the erasure marks" and school districts and teachers have been talked to by IDOE personnel about a higher than normal number of erasure marks on tests. Elementary children like to erase, and they do make mistakes.

Unfortunately we now have a situation where guidance and policy is being released by the Indiana Department of Education and the timeline has already begun before educators saw the policy. For example, the Waiver information has been recently released to educators. However, they have been told this is now year 1 ...in April! How is that fair to school corporations, teachers, students and our communities?

There is a new assessment that was mandated by legislation called IREAD-3. We created this to assist with ensuring we would create an educated population for businesses to employ as adults. Schools that do not have 90% of their students pass this test must use the Indiana K-6 Reading Framework created by the Indiana Department of Education.

• Why is there not an enrollment day limit for students who take this test? For example, students who move into a school the day before or even during the IREAD-3 window must take this test. Their score counts in the school's total. 

The school might have not had an opportunity to teach the children at all, but is held accountable for the consequences of the move in student's score. Students who do not speak any English are also required to take this test. In the area I represent, a child moved in from Mexico two weeks before the test. The child not only could not complete the test, but cried the entire time. How is that moving our state forward?

• The K-6 Reading Framework requires schools to replace their reading series if they do not have one that is on the "approved list," which was just released this week. Isn't this a financial hardship for schools? 

A strong concern for local educators is the seeming elimination of the improvement requirement for PL221. It does not appear that the new grade calculation uses improvement (the passing percentage of students). It uses student growth (high, typical and low ...again, the same concerns as stated above). The law states that schools are to use the following:

The Indiana State Board of Education first adopted category placements for the state's public and accredited non-public schools beginning with the 2005-2006 school year. Thresholds for category placements changed as of 2009-2010 and category placements changed to reflect letter grades (A-F) as of 2010-2011(511 IAC 6.2-6-5). Category placements are based on three factors:

1. Performance: percentage of all students who pass the state's English and math ISTEP+ (also ISTAR or IMAST) tests (for grades 3-8) and English 10 and Algebra I ECAs (also ISTAR) (for the class of 2013). AND

2. Improvement: improvement in the passing percentage of students passing ISTEP+ and ECAs (also ISTAR or IMAST) over a three-year period

• Where in the school grade calculation does it indicate the calculation of the improvement in the passing percentage of ISTEP+ . The grading document released from the IDOE is attached.

If our educators are required to be evaluated by data and are required to be given a school grade, quite possibly our IDOE leaders should be equally accountable for the state data. They should be graded on the number of turnaround schools they have.

This would be a motivator to encourage IDOE to work to prevent these rather than give the perception that educators currently have, which is the IDOE wants to take over more schools faster.

One great idea is to give our local schools (our community) the flexibility to improve instead of waiting to some arbitrary length of time and then give that same flexibility to an outside source with no community "skin" in the game.

There is a concern from our local educators and our community that policies and procedures from the IDOE are not school friendly (no day requirement for students taking the IREAD). I continue to see our community and education leaders testify in Indianapolis on a regular basis and see very little movement on the topics at hand. 

It is my desire that all of us really think about what we are trying to accomplish and that we listen to those who are doing the work every day with very little thanks from those of us who are I, for one, am very thankful for the educators from my county and what they do for the children of our area. 

I appreciate the opportunity to send you these thoughts and hope that we can hold everyone accountable in this process in a fair way so that the end result is exactly what we intended it to be!

Submitted with respect,

making all of these changes.

Randy Truitt

State Representative

District 26 -West Lafayette

Cc: Dr. Tony Bennett

Ghosts of Classes Past

A classroom closed for the summer is an empty, sad place.

 Lifeless.

 No joi de vivre.

 Bright colors may remain behind, but there's no laughing children to accompany them.

 My friend and colleague, Eunice Maurer, says to think of it as a resting classroom, resting for the next year as we teachers, too, are resting for the upcoming year.

 A colleague from Urbana, Tiffany Clark, says she feels like the ghosts of generations of kids are still there. I have often gotten that sense, too.  This classroom has had at least forty-five years of kids! That's 1,200 plus children who called it home for a year. Wow, if only the walls could talk.

 Eve Reiss, who used to teach in the classroom next to mine, gave me her pearl of wisdom when she offered that the classroom will hold the former kids' essence, keeping the room welcome for its next group.

 I find it interesting that so many other teacher-friends feel that same sense, that aura, of loss and loneliness in a closed classroom like me. And although I don't believe in ghosts, I DO sense past kids, especially when the walls are stripped, the books and papers are put away, and the entire building is dark and quiet.

Then, there are little whispers you seem to hear, and you wonder about those who have come through the school doors and into your room. Where are they now and how have they fared?

I think that's why it feels so sad and bleak - the joy those hundreds of kids brought in is no longer there.

And so the walls and the teachers wait. Until August when they reverberate again with the happy sounds of children learning.

Rest well, room 23!

More Iowa Fun

Driving to Iowa means crossing rivers. I don't mean "rivers" like the Salt Fork in Illinois (which is really a creek, not a river.) I mean major rivers ; the Wabash (twice), the Illinois, the Mississippi, the Cedar, and the Iowa.

That means crossing over bridges. Some are scary (the bridge over the Illinois at Havana, Illinois. Yikes!!) but most are not. I like my bridges with lots of iron girders like this:

 The bridge over the Illinois River in Peoria.

 Just look at those girders!

Kind of artistic looking, and certainly very, very strong. Yessirree, this bridge is secure and safe!

Saturday evening after I arrived, Sarah, Todd, JC, Trinity, and I went to dinner at... can't remember the name. It is a Mexican restaurant which specializes in seafood dishes along with more traditional fare. JC and I split some chicken fajitas. Yummy!

Still hungry, we went to Isaac's Ice Cream Shop and sat out on their patio enjoying some truly delicious ice cream together. The scoops were humungous! And, they tasted great in the 90 degree heat.

 Sarah is a bit sleepy, too! Either that, or she's singing opera. :D

 JC relaxes after finishing his cone.

 Trin takes after Boompa's side of the family and meanders her way through her meals and desserts.

I stayed at the Sleep Inn in North Liberty since Jessica and Andrew were also house guests. I didn't want to make anyone give up their bed, plus the motel had a nice indoor pool. Monday morning JC and Trinity came over and swam with me for an hour and a half. We had the pool all to ourselves.

Sadly, I had to go home Monday afternoon as I had to work Tuesday. Sarah took me out to lunch at Bennigans before I went and we had a nice chat. So proud of that girl. 

It was a fun trip, and I can't wait to do it again in June!

Grandmumsy, Roderick, and Tabitha have "Tea"

Grandmumsy found a treasure in an antique shop that she brought along on her trip to visit Mumsy, Papa, Roderick, and Tabitha - the same set of china she had as a child and passed down to Mumsy when she was a girl!

 Tabitha eagerly unwraps Grandmumsy's find.

 Lovely salt and pepper shakers and a sugar bowl.

 Grandmumsy and Tabitha sip lemonade and eat crumpets together.

 Cheers!

Tabitha said she was really excited and felt special using the china. 

Roderick joins us for crumpets and lemonade, too. Such a fine young man, using his best manners!

Sad Student News

(Second post of the day.)

I knew that someday a student of mine would pass away well before his or her time. And Will Cuva did two years ago as a sophomore in college.

I also figured someone I had taught would go to prison, and even had an idea as to whom that might be. Sadly, I was right.

Ryan Hollingsworth.

The kid never had a chance - mom was in Texas in a halfway house for crack addicts, Dad had just remarried a twenty-three year old. She came on a field trip with us and sat in the back of the bus, telling jokes with inappropriate words.

On Pet Day, Ryan's father brought their two bearded dragons to show. But he couldn't tell us their names because they, too, were bad words. And on it went.

Ryan had the label of behavior disorder and seemed to enjoy proving it. He struggled all year, but he made progress. At times I saw that "child of God" surface.  Once he asked me if I believed people were predestined to do things. Treading cautiously, I asked him why he was asking that. Turns out his preacher had told him he was predestined to go to Hell, and that there was no hope for him because he was evil. That got my mama-bear up, and I responded that I believed he was a good person making some poor choices, but that there was always a way back. He was absolutely NOT predestined to go to Hell!

I even wrote a research paper on Ryan that was published in Teacher and Teacher Education, a research journal, and how this student responded to a Nel Noddings-like caring classroom.

Despite the good progress he made, I suspected Ryan would struggle. I was right. The first day of middle school, his arm was broken in a fight. I saw him when he was 16 and he had dropped out of school. Then, just this week, Martha Churukian, the art teacher at Yankee Ridge, sent me word that Ryan had gotten thirty years in prison.

Wow. I cried.

I cried for the little boy who had the cards stacked so high against him. I cried for the potential he had, and the glimmers of the really neat kid he showed me occasionally. For a wasted life. Certainly he chose to do what he did, but what might he have achieved had he had a better home life?

Here's a cut and paste of the article:

URBANA — A homeless man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for a sex-related crime.

On Monday, Judge Tom Difanis sentenced Ryan Hollingsworth, 22, whose address was listed as homeless, to 30 years in prison for predatory criminal sexual assault of a child.

Hollingsworth will receive credit for 119 days he has already served.

Assistant States Attorney Stephanie Weber said Hollingsworth faced between six and 60 years in prison for the crime. She had asked that Hollingsworth be given a sentence "on the high end" of the range.

Hollingsworth had pleaded guilty to the charge on March 22. As part of a plea agreement, a second count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child was dismissed.

According to a police report, Hollingsworth molested two young girls under the ages of 13 who were the children of a woman he knew sometime in April or May 2009.

Champaign County sheriff's investigator Tony Shaw said he arrested Hollingsworth when the man showed up to meet with his probation officer. Hollingsworth was on probation after pleading guilty in March 2011 to criminal sexual abuse, admitting he sexually molested a child in Rantoul between December 2008 and June 2009. He was sentenced to 30 months of probation and was required to register as a sex offender.

Shaw said in early January the girls' mother brought the case to the attention of authorities after the girls made statements to adults that led the adults to believe the children may have been molested on a different occasion.

The mother also contacted Hollingsworth, who admitted to her that he engaged in sex acts with the girls at times when he was looking at pornography on a computer. The acts allegedly occurred at a home in Urbana and another home in Rantoul between April and May 2009.

Cleaning Tip

Need to clean something? Like... oh, let's say, twenty-nine student desks? And you don't want to do it yourself because that means peeling and scraping off all those name tags (an arduous project - I put 'em on to STAY!)

Try the experienced teacher's secret weapon:

SHAVING CREME!

I kid you not. It works as an incentive to get those tags peeled off (don't let them have their dollops of creme until the tags are off!) and actually does clean the desks' surfaces. 

 As a nice bonus, your classroom smells like menthol (if you count that as a plus...) The kids enjoy "finger painting" on their desks, writing messages, and making patterns with their hands by patting the shaving creme dollops.

CP shows an added bonus - hand softening! Well, maybe not so much, but it does have conditioners in it, depending on the brand, so...

I learned this trick of the trade from Pam Green years ago and have implemented it every school year. It's an inexpensive, fun, and unique way to end the school year.

Camera Case Surprise

I got an email from Mrs. B. this morning. Her son, CB, is a 5th grader in my class. She wrote, "As I was prepping the camera for the talent show today, look what I found in the case! :)"

And attached to the email was this photo:

That's ten or eleven origami cranes. Yep, the kids are STILL making them out of every scrap of paper, napkin, or gum wrapper they can find!

I wonder why on earth he squirreled them away in the camera case!

A Night to Remember

Last Tuesday was a night to remember for me. Why? With help from Curt and Vanessa, who acted as chauffeurs and co-conspirators (Craig had to teach), my students and their parents surprised me with a banquet in my honor at Teppenyaky Grill in Lafayette.

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. So stunned, in fact, that it has taken me nearly a full week to compose a thank you note!

This is what I sent:

My mother taught me it was polite to send a prompt thank you note when someone gave you a gift or did something nice for you. Tuesday night’s banquet was certainly a thank you-worthy event!

However, I am clueless to know what to do or say – I was so completely caught off guard and so touched by your actions that I STILL don’t know what to say. (And those Worldy Wise words just aren’t working for me now…)

Normally I have no trouble expressing myself on paper. But I have honestly struggled to write these thank you notes. Lots of words have come to mind, but not THE words that describe how I felt that evening.

So, perhaps this will do: I hope that someday, each one of you, child as well as adult, experiences a lovely evening surrounded by people you care about. That during that special moment you discover that you did actually touch a few lives and that it has been appreciated. And that you feel a similar overwhelming sense of gratitude to the extent that you, too, cannot express yourself. Then, you will understand why I still cannot come up with an adequate expression of thanks. 

Suffice it to say that it was an unforgettable night and one I will always treasure in my memories. 

You’re the best.

 Mrs. A. who planned the whole shebang.

  JG is one of seven kids (she has triplet sisters!) and she came to the mic and then to get a hug.

  KO surprised me when he came up to speak - he's not one to show his feelings.

  CB only spent one year in the class. How I wish he had been in the program earlier - so much potential! Still, he came a long, long way and made up for lost time. Good guy.

 WW came in with a note that he had behavior issues as a 4th grader. Those soon disappeared and he had two wonderful years. I will never forget what he said this night. "Thank you for always giving me second chances." Wow. 

  ES claims to hate reading, yet she has read books by authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and other classic writers. She has a beautiful singing voice, too.

  HS is the one I wrote about a few months ago when I said a student threw her arms around me and told me not to cry when Zeus was mentioned. Sweet girl.

  SA and KO - fourth graders so I get another year with them!

  LW has difficulty articulating but he still got up to speak. Proud of him!

  JT - had his brother, too. One of my all-time favorite families. He got up twice because he said he had forgotten to give me a hug.

  Another surprise speaker - MC. 

  EJ - her mom is the other co-planner of this evening. She and I have a goodbye dance we do at the end of the day when she leaves, and she called me up to do it for everyone!

  EP and JG unveiling a homemade gift.

  Note the orange and blue letter "I"!

  At the end, the children wanted a group hug. I consented, but made sure I was braced against the wall first!

  Love these kiddos.

  Kids seemed to just keep coming up!

  At the end of the hug, some kids have gifts they wanted me to open.

  Another giant orange and blue letter "I".

  And an orange and blue necklace (made by JG.)

  A book recommendation - typical of these children!

It was a memorable night, and I am still wrapping my mind around the evening and what these wonderful families did for me. 

Another Gifted and Talented Bingo

Last night I was grading the last spelling test of the year. CP's test looked a bit odd and puzzling. He had numbered each word per usual, but several of those numbers were also circled. A note at the bottom of his paper explained it.

"As you may have noticed, I circled all the prime numbers."

BINGO!

A Gifted and Talented Perspective

Sometimes it can be a little difficult to define what being gifted or talented means when it comes to intelligence. In fact, there is no agreed-upon definition even though it has been thoroughly researched. But, sometimes a teacher knows it when she sees it.

Case in point -  the following analogy was part of this week's Daily Language Arts assignment that I was grading today.

shark : fish :: koala : _________________

I got a lot of "bear" and "mammal" responses. (Not one marsupial, although that was what the grading key had as the correct response.)

Then there was LT's response, one of those times when that GT perspective surfaces and the student comes at a problem from a very different perspective. She wrote,

shark : fish :: koala : eucalyptus


I looked at that a moment and then reread the analogy. Of course! Sharks eat fish, and koalas eat EUCALYPTUS!

BINGO!!

Mother's Day 2012

Mother's Day was wonderful, and included dinner on the patio and Google chatting with my children who were not in town.

 Curt scored with this Illini i-phone pad while Vanessa did a photo shoot with Abby and gave me a disk chock full of pony pictures.

 My mother came and we enjoyed dinner on the patio.

During the Google chat, Cole was playing with the icon functions and "served" me a cake. I tried to blow out the candle, but it just didn't work!

The card from Kyle, Ashley, Braden, Adelaide, and Corrine.

Cards from my kids, chocolates, beautiful bird cards from Sarah, a button from Lisa along with a dozen roses...

Doesn't get much better than that!

Are You Sure You Aren't a Horse Lover?

Hmmmm. I wonder why Dolly has her ears pricked up and what she is so intently watching.

 Why, look - it's my husband! You know, the man who says he doesn't really like horses.

I'd say Dolly knows differently. 

 Diablo comes up to see if she can get in on the clover treats, too.

Then Thunderbolt has to check things out, too. And my husband just keeps petting and feeding big handfuls of clover. (Even walking away to pick some really BIG bunches growing by the barn.)

 Both horses just enjoyed hanging out by the gate with Craig. And I think he, too, is enjoying himself as well.

 But wait! There is another pasture with five horses on the other side of the barn.

 Sure enough, Craig walks down to visit with those horses.

 I don't know their names, but Craig felt badly that one of the five kept getting chased away by the others and so wasn't getting any clover treats.

 He thought about it for a few moments, and then started handing one horse some clover to distract it while throwing more to the horse that had been without. It worked! Now everyone had had a treat.

Finally he walked back to where I was standing. I asked Craig if he were ready to go. "Ready?" he said in surprise. "I have been waiting for you to finish."

Really?? Finish what? All I have been doing is standing there taking pictures of you with the horses. And you knew I was right there, waiting. For YOU.  I'm not buying it.

Ol' softie!!