2023 Wrap Up: May - August

Continuing a look back at 2023, today we remember the middle part of the year. And it was a very busy time!

May, 2023

Live show Indy Blooms is held just south of my home, so of course I invited some of the GLC crew to stay with me while they were in Indiana attending the show.

We headed out to the barn to visit the horses, of course. (L to R: Barn Buddy Kesley, Ellen Vogel, Steff Bodamer, and Liz Cory.)

I didn't show but Liz was showing as well as judging so I sat at her table and helped as needed. 

 

The end of May meant a lot of graduation parties. MaryCate made me this little painting I am holding when she was in 5th grade. I still have it displayed in my office and brought it to her party to show her.

Daniel and Nikki are siblings and were both in my class as 4th and 5th graders. She's a grad student at Purdue in Bioengineering, he's studying Mathematics and is a auctioneer on the side!)

June, 2023

Summer got off to a good start. The weather was lovely and the pastures were lush.

Angelina, another former student, texted me invited me to go to lunch with her. We also visited the horses. Angelina was horsey when she was in 4th and 5th grade and that has continued into adulthood. 

Breyer announced the BreyerFest virtual workshops in June and I could finally share that I had been asked to teach another one for them, this time on making show aprons.

I was pleased to wear the 2023 BreyerFest volunteer shirt, even if I did BreyerFest virtually myself.

I did well at Clover Classic, another new show in Indiana that was close to my home.

Leslie joined me - her first live show since we were kids in elementary school and holding them with our carpet herds! Some of the models in my collection had been hers and she was thrilled to see them win a few ribbons.

July, 2023

July brought a lot of family into town for visits including Beach Son Kyle.

He came for an extended visit - since he is unable to get away often, having him here for a couple of weeks was awesome! Mila, Lukie, and Ian loved his Dad jokes. (So did I.)

 

We took a lot of photos while he was with us. (Cole, Curt, Kyle, Todd.)

My adult children (minus Mountain Mama Jessica who was in the final weeks of preparing for Matilda.) Cole, Curt, Lisa, Kyle, and Sarah.

Lisa's friend Frank came up from North Carolina for a visit, too. Craig and I enjoyed meeting him.

I was thrilled to be invited to former student Madeline's wedding in July.

Not only was I her teacher for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, but when she was doing her own teacher training at Purdue University, she worked as an aide in my classroom. What an honor to be invited to her wedding!

Of course, July means BreyerFest!

I took a screen shot of the ad they did for my virtual workshop for my records. This was my third BreyerFest workshop, at the time I was planning the November Collectors Club workshop on snow globes, I'd stewarded my second BreyerFest Boot Camp, and I'd written two articles for Breyer that were published elsewhere. It was time to put together a bit of a resume to track what I was doing for Breyer.

Horse ears, anyone? If I am doing virtual BreyerFest,  I have a tradition of making a special visit to "the horse park." I happened to perfectly catch Sultanna standing behind me like this.

August, 2023

Hawkeye Sarah completed a second Masters degree, this one in Public Health. So proud of you, Sarah!

On their way home from a camping trip with family, Liz and her husband Sam stopped by to have lunch.

They also brought me a very special model that Liz had found at BreyerFest, a beautifully shaded Alabaster 5 Gaiter with black eyes. I have the red eyed version, but have been looking for the black eyed for several decades.

Where Liz found it makes it even more special to me. It came out of Simone Smiljanic's collection. Simone is one of the four "hobby mothers," and she was also a dear friend of mine.

More family fun (in the category of "boys will be boys...)

Vanessa is trying to snap some photos of the kids and Curt and Kyle were miming (Mimeing?) having a discussion to make her laugh. She did her best to ignore them but you can see that smile on her face. (It really was pretty hilarious; it elicited good smiles from the cousins for the pictures, too.)

Kyle's family joined him for a few days and it was good to have them here. L to R: Lukie, Addie, Melissa, Cory, Mila, Braden, Whitney, and Ian.

In late July, Craig and I hopped aboard Amtrak and headed out to the Rocky Mountains to visit Mountain Mama Jessica and her family.

If you have never gone on an extended train trip, put it on your bucket list. It's fun and you get to see scenery that cannot be accessed by car.

We went out for a visit, but we also went out to see three performances of the musical, Matilda.

Jessica has a long resume of shows she has done, but operas and musicals are her specialty. She invited her family to audition along with her, and they all received parts!

Titan got one of the leads.

He played Nigel, the supposedly narcoleptic boy

 

who is dubbed that when Matilda, thinking quickly, "explains" his behavior and rescues him from the evil headmistress, Ms. Trunchbull.

I knew I would be seeing a lot of Titan, but Jessica surprised me - she didn't tell me that she played more than one role in the musical.

She played the younger evil Ms. Trunchbull in all the flashback scenes!

Every time she came onstage, you wanted to boo and hiss at her, she was so mean and rude.

Offstage, though, both the flashback and the real Ms. Trunchull (both of whom were named Jessica) were kind ladies. The kids in the cast would make them bracelets, draw them pictures, and follow them around during rehearsals.

Like Jessica, Andrew filled multiple roles, too. He skateboarded across the stage in one scene, played a dad, a professor, and here he is a member of the Russian mafia arresting Matilda's dad for theft.

Cambria did not have a speaking role, but as a member of Matilda's class, was onstage as much as Titan.

She did get spanked by Ms. Trunchbull for not following directions

and she danced her heart out with the full cast of kids. Jessica told me that the older kids in the cast were super good to the younger ones and really liked them. That feeling was mutual as you can see from their faces!

All too soon our time in Utah was done and Craig and I boarded the train for home.

Such a busy summer! Stay 'tooned for one last wrap up post.

A Very Special Wedding

The wedding I attended on Saturday was for someone who is very dear to my heart.

I was Madeline's 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teacher and needless to say, when you spend three years with someone, they become almost like family.

Her sister, Meredith, was also in my class. A year younger that Madeline, she was with for me for 2nd, 4th, and 5th grade. (I taught the 2nd/3rd grade Gifted class for one year and then moved on to the 4th/5th Gifted class for the rest of my career.)

I've known these two ladies since they were 7 and 8 - lucky me!

Brooke, Madeline's best friend and matron of honor, was also in my class for three years. Needless to say, seeing these young women again was very special to me.

I sat down Sunday and went through old blog posts on Teachinmama, my original blog. Here are a few of my favorite photos with the girls.

Both girls were accomplished ballet dancers and I went to many of their performances.

A highlight of my Christmases for years was attending their annual performance of The Nutcracker Ballet and seeing their roles change as they grew more and more accomplished in their ballet training.

In 2011 I had both knees replaced, and they came to see me while I recovered at home. As a treat, they made ice cream for me from eggs that their ducks had laid. (If you are ever offered duck egg ice cream, say YES!! It is so rich and creamy!)

I retired in 2018, and with my principal's blessing (and to my surprise), years of former students descended on my classroom one afternoon in May and surprised me with a retirement party.

Madeline and Merry were right in the thick of things. What a lovely thing for all those former students to do for me and what a way to close out your career by celebrating with kids (many of whom were now adults) that you loved and still held close in your heart.

I didn't stay retired for more than a few months - due to illness, a teacher suddenly needed to retire during the school year. I was asked to finish the year as the class's teacher.

There was also a teacher's aide position for that class to be filled. Madeline was a studying Elementary Education at Purdue and I asked her to apply for the job if she was interested. She was, and was able to arrange her class schedule and take the aide position.

She did a wonderful job and it was really, really fun to have her as a colleague. (She is now in her fourth year of teaching 4th grade.)

Bumping into Brooke and Madeline at The Feast of the Hunters' Moon in 2021.

Congratulations, Madeline and Joe, and I hope you have many happy years together! And thank you for including me in your wedding day. 

Love always,

Mrs. I./Lynn

 

Nemea - I Forgot the Greek & Latin!

 Yesterday as I wrote about Nemea, my mind was more on pins, needles, and fabric. So much so, that aside from a brief mention of teaching Greek and Latin in my classroom, I forgot to include some things I'd filed away to add to that blog post. I'm fixing that today.

The last twelve years of my teaching career I taught a gifted 4th and 5th grade class. (Oh, how I loved having kiddos two years!)

My language arts program was solidly based on Greek and Latin roots and their underpinnings in the words we use every day. (I.e., "bio-" means "life," "-ology" means "the study of," therefore "biology" is the study of life.)

Elliot, Cody, and Brooke building words on the board and throwing in some Greek letters for fun. 

Brooke just got married last summer and is an engineer in Indianapolis. Madeline, another of my students, is in her third year teaching 4th grade. 

Katie learning the Greek alphabet and practicing spelling her name.

One of our favorite word activities was what I dubbed "Scrolls." (Sam, the boy in the blue sweatshirt is now an author and sent me an autographed copy of his first book!)

A team of 2-3 kiddos would take a Greek or Latin root and start finding all the words they could that utilized it. They'd write their words  down on "scrolls"(cash register tapes) that I provided.

Honestly, the first time I did it, I was stunned at how far they took that activity - I thought that MAYBE some would find 200 words or so, and that would be it. Instead, I ended up giving them a week to find their words and some of the kids even took their scrolls home to work on after school!

Believe it or not, this is an actual scroll unwound down the hallway.

Being a little goofy and measuring the length of a scroll by "kids" instead of yards, feet, and inches or the metric system.

Sometimes I tried to rein the kids in by reminding them that they did not need to go overboard, but there were always students who honestly loved the challenge of finding their root in words. (This scroll has 1300+ words. Look closely.)

The last day of the project, we'd share our favorite words, how many we'd found using only our brains, how many with help from online sources, and calculate the grand total the class had found. (Oh, my goodness - I just noticed the word "unicorn" is on that white board! I tell you, they are everywhere!)

See now why I am leaning towards making Nemea my first BreyerFest choice, even though I do not care for shelf-eating molds? 

This was just one activity I did with my students as we studied Greek and Latin roots, but I might share another. If I do, you may remember the "kid" whose photo I'll include.

Stay 'tooned!