Tiger Vacation (Spring Break)

Hoosier asked me to post some of her spring break pictures with a short description of some of her travels/activities in Tampa, Florida...



Hoosier just relaxin' in the swing by the pool.

She wanted to return to her roots as a jungle cat. Rrroar!

She couldn't resist riding the tricycle.

Livin' life at the beach

Hoosier had a lot of fun playing in the pool with Brendan and Emeline.

Hoosier spent some time with a transplanted northerner at a neighborhood cookout.

There was an alligator in the pond behind the house. Hoosier's idea for a new movie... Crouching Tiger, Hidden Gator

Hoosier worked the morning show with Chadd and Kristi.









Hoosier had a lot of fun at the Hard Rock trying on a KISS costume and test-driving the car that a player could win.

She had an opportunity to meet and greet some of Tampa's finest.

Hoosier even made a special visit to the Gandy Bridge.

Capsulation Day

Today was the day... Capsulation Day! The capsule was packed for burial, placed in a plastic container, and sealed with a stinky sealing agent. The selected students were more than ready when I went to pull them out of class this afternoon to head out.

The looks on their faces when they walked into the new school for the first time were priceless. We explained where everything was in the building, but we were not allowed to take them around for a tour. Then after posing for a few pictures with the capsule, it took less than thirty seconds for the two boys to wedge the box with the capsule between the beams and into the wall.

After the capsule was dropped in, the principal looked at me and said with a smile, "That's it!" How right she was. That's it. The rest is up to history.

Filling a Capsule in Time

Today we had a special assembly to gather the students together to fill the time capsule that will be placed in the wall under the display case in our new building. This was a huge project, more work that I realized I had signed up for.

We gathered such items as newspaper articles about the building project, advertisements, a Styrofoam lunch tray (can't wait to see the end of those), white-out, pictures of the one-room schoolhouse, pictures of the current building, pictures of the building progress of the new school, coins, a yearbook, coal from the basement that once housed the source of heat for the building, magazines, book rental fees, maps of the current building's many uses, and much more. Altogether there was 26 different items placed in the capsule, and those items are laid out beside the capsule in the picture to the left. The principal and I selected students to help us pack the capsule, and those students really came through for us.

I can't believe the amount of work that it took to pull off this entire project. I know there were many hours put into the printing and captioning of pictures by my principal. I couldn't even give an estimate into the number of hours I spent incorporating unique characteristics in our yearbook when asked. I was also asked how many hours it took to do the maps. Again, I have no clue. I was at school until 9pm Thursday night getting things organized, but it was so much fun.

I know that all the hours were worth it. To think, in 50 years people will open this and be in awe of how we lived. When I think about, I realize there will be a lot of changes. I mean, just look at my 29 years of life. When I was a kid, a cordless phone in your house was cool, and we thought we were awesome because we had a computer. Now I carry my phone in my pocket and receive all my emails on it as well. I can't imagine 50 years from now, but I do know it was a huge honor to be a part of the historical project. Ok, so its not a historical project that we will read about in history books, but in our little corner of the world, we are making history.

25 Random Things About Me

My recent posting on Facebook after being tagged by a friend...

1. I have no fingernails left as I have chewed them all off because of my current stress level.
2. I can beat my husband at any and all Wii games.
3. Because I know it drives my husband crazy to have me kick his butt on the Wii, occasionally I let him win. Shh, don't tell.
4. I have six African clawed frogs.
5. I am allergic to my school building. Next year, next year, next year.
6. I am lost without my blackberry.
7. I took 359 pictures last week alone, all were for the school yearbook and/or the time capsule.
8. Kelvin Sampson... told you so
9. I went on the roof of our new school last week to take pictures. Shh, another secret.
10. If one more person around me announces she is pregnant, I'm going to scream.
11. When I was a kid, I stuck a key in an electrical outlet pretending it was the ignition of a car.
12. I wear two pairs of socks almost everyday from December through February.
13. I have a 40-45 minute drive to school everyday, and I truly enjoy that fact.
14. Last May I cut off about 1/4 of an inch of my thumb with a paper cutter. It grew back, but it looks and feels weird.
15. I'm a big klutz, but I've never had a broken bone. (knock on wood)
16. I have to have a piece of gum every morning before school starts.
17. The one time I rode a horse, I freaked out and couldn't get off the thing fast enough.
18. I will not answer my phone during an IU basketball game.
19. I am an overachiever and a perfectionist, a very stressful combination.
20. When a cool project comes around, I can't say no to being involved no matter how many other projects I have on my plate.
21. I get a sinus infection every fall.
22. The most prominent color in my closet is red/crimson. (Shocker, I know.)
23. I've been adding to this list for 10 hours now, and I'm still not done. Of course, I am also working on the yearbook and some time capsule items.
24. It still brings a lump to my throat when I have to pass by my grandma's nursing home, which is usually twice a day on my way to and from school.(She died in June of 2006.)
25. Before the start of the Big Ten season, I predicted IU would win three games, all at home... Michigan, Penn State and Northwestern. They have lost two of those three already, and Northwestern recently went into East Lansing and pulled out a win. Outlook not good.

Tigers Need a New Playground

This past Wednesday we had our weekly staff meeting. I had training in another building, so I was only able to stay about ten minutes. At the meeting, the staff discussed fundraiser ideas for the new playground. I was looking over the list trying to think of how I could take one of the ideas and add a unique twist to it or come up with an entirely new idea for the list. I had an inspiration Thursday night.

Have you ever heard of "flocking"? Well, an organization raising money will place a flock of flamingos in someone's yard. To have the flock removed, the owner must call the organization and also pay a small fee. I thought, why can't we do that? How cool would flamingos look in our snowy yards too? Talk about drawing attention.

So when my principal called Friday morning to tell me we were closed, I told her I was heading up to work on the yearbook, we could work on the time capsule, and I had to share this idea. I refused to tell her the idea over the phone. It is difficult to see me jumping around in excitement over the phone.

When she FINALLY got out of her meeting with the playground rep, I explained the idea to her and the secretary. The secretary said her neighbor is a minister at a church whose youth group did the exact fundraiser. I begged (you can just see me begging, right?) her to call and get some information on how they got the project off the ground. I mentioned that maybe we could get tigers instead of flamingos since we are the tigers.

Doris later gave me the number of the person to contact about the project. In the mean time, another teacher came in, and Karen wanted me to share my idea with him. Basically, I was still bouncing off the walls, and she wanted him to know why. He also mentioned it would be neat to use tigers. BOOM!! It hit me.

My dad had made yard signs for my sister's high school dance team. Could he make some tiger yard signs for us? I called his cell, interrupted his work, and asked if he still had all the equipment necessary to do such a project. He told me that if I could get a pattern and find a lumberyard to donate the wood, he would do the cutting, sanding and attaching of the signs.

I don't think anyone could believe that I was getting this project moving so quickly. Why put off to tomorrow, what you can do today? I took a Subway lunch order and explained I would be making a side trip before picking up lunch.

I went to Big C Lumber and explained we were doing a fundraiser for the new Wayne Center playground. I asked if they would be able to donate scrap 1/4" USB or plywood and scrap boards for the stakes. The gentleman, Chad, typed up the order and asked if I wanted to take it with me now. It was that simple!! I told him I would rather wait until my dad could come with his truck as I was driving my little Honda Civic. He laughed and agreed.

I met my dad there later that afternoon. Big C didn't just give us free scraps. They gave us full sheets and boards!!! We wanted enough wood to make twenty signs. We were going to be able to make thirty-six!!!!!!!!!!

I helped my dad get the wood home and unloaded. I said I wanted to help when he was ready to do the cutting and sanding. He asked if I was able to come up the next day. Holy cow! In forty-eight hours, this was going from a little idea to a project on the move.

Check us out...



Dad cutting out a tiger head. He never broke a blade. I started to cut one out when he was getting tired, but realized I had better stick to the sanding.





I am attempting to sand the wood and not my hand. If you know me, you know this is something that takes major concentration. :-) My mom did a lot of sanding too, but she refused to be in any photos.






My dad had a few perfect cuts. I kept them because they gave me a few ideas. They would be great stencils for sidewalk decorating or something. We could also use them as picture frames and put a bunch of student pictures inside. The opportunities are endless.






A product of our long day of work. Next steps in assembly: put together a painting crew, paint the heads one afternoon, paint on the face lines another afternoon, return heads to my dad for stake attachment.




In the mean time, I plan to type up a letter to go home and also contact the News-Sun of our project in hopes they will run a small article asking for interested participants in the community. The tigers will roam the area playing in yards to raise money for their own playground. To host a tiger for a day or two, the cost will be $1.00 per tiger. Once they are finished roaming, we will auction off most of the signs. Will you host a few tigers in your yard?

Brett Favre

Ok, so its all over SportsCenter and on all the playoff half-time reports... What is Brett Favre going to do? Will he retire? Will he come back for another year with the Jets? ... Who cares what he says he is going to do? A year ago he was all about retirement. Then he comes back and raises a big stink because he wants to come back and expects his position to be open to him. When you say you are going to do something (i.e. retire) and then you go back on your word, that would make you untrustworthy. Brett Favre broke pillar number one. Give it a rest already with the Favre reports; you can't trust what he says he will do anyway! ... I will now step down off my soap box and return to watching the game. Cheers!

2008 Year-end Review

2008 seemed to just fly by. Looking through my 2008 calendar, I wonder if I ever took time to breathe. Ah, yes, there were a few nice vacations in there. Let's see, what are a few things kept me busy in 2008?

January: Holy crap! I subbed EVERY day possible in January, including the first day back from Christmas break, which is amazing. I was at North Side 10 out of the 18 days and LaOtto 4 of the remaining 8. A cancellation took away a North Side day. How did I ever know where I was going each day? Somehow I had my schedule memorized because I can remember people rattling off dates, and I would know where I would be and for whom I would be subbing.

February: The calendar appears to be just as full of sub jobs. I was so lucky to be booked ahead of time most days. Getting that call at 5:30 and having to rush to get ready was a pain. I do see an empty week on the calendar. I had been feeling worn out on a Friday, which I just assumed was because it was a day I was in four different classrooms at North Side. By Saturday I was not wanting to eat and my fever kept spiking. On Sunday, Chris dragged me to RediMed when my fever reached 103.6. They shoved some Q-tip thing up my nose to run some tests. I had the flu, and the doctor told me I was not to enter a school building for at least a week. Rats!! I had to make a few phone calls to cancel on some teachers, which I always hated doing. I don't remember much of the first few days of having the flu. I spent all day in bed and ate very little. By Thursday, I was ready to eat again so Chris brought home pizza rolls from the local bar. Yes, I was sick, but I was craving pizza rolls for Valentine's Day. Eating pizza rolls in my big, comfy sweats with my nappy hair... now that is some Valentine's Day love right there. The upside of having the flu: I lost 7 pounds. Hmm, a week off of work and losing weight, why did I get a flu shot this year? Oh yea, I don't like missing work and the way the weight was lost wasn't pleasant.

March: In 2007, I had the pleasure of experiencing KMS's Disability Day as I was subbing in an 8th grade classroom that day. In 2008, I was asked, although I believe I volunteered first, to help put together a PowerPoint presentation for the end-of-the-day assembly. I found an awesome rap song to play during the presentation and also included one of the songs Tami requested. I had a blast going all out on this project. I could do some of the screens ahead of time as they had informational text. That day, I ran all around taking a ton of pictures. After I was forced to stop and eat some lunch, I locked myself in an empty classroom for about forty minutes to crop, resize, edit and insert pictures into the presentation that lasted about 7 minutes. I finished just in time to run into the gym and set up the projector and laptop with a few minutes to spare. It was such an awesome experience seeing all the different sides of this eye-opening day.

April: This was just another busy sub month. Looks like I didn't sub just two days... one the day after spring break and the other day the job was canceled the night before. I do remember that my mom actually took a sick day, first time in like 10 years, but she couldn't get me because I had a teacher call the day before to book me. Mom wasn't too happy when she called in, and the sub service listed me as unavailable for the day.

May: So one Sunday morning I am at the church cutting cardstock for the Jr. Church lesson I am going to teach that morning. I got frustrated by the piece-of-crap paper cutter. It kept slipping on the paper. So I slammed the blade down on the paper in frustration and also because I was shown that this is the best way to make it work when cutting cardstock. For being such a dull blade, it had no trouble going through the end of my thumb. I took off about 1/4 of an inch of the tip of my left thumb. It went numb pretty quick, but I lost a lot of blood. I refused to allow anyone to take me to the emergency room. Instead, one of the Youth members took me to the EMS station to have it wrapped. Once back at church, I taught as if it didn't look like I had a whole roll of toilet paper on the end of my thumb. I then went to the after-hours clinic to have it checked out after church. The doctor couldn't even take all the wrapping off as he said it would just start to bleed again. He improved the wrapping and sent me with orders to return in a few days. Did I go right home after the visit? No, I went to North Side to do prep work for the week. See, I was in the middle of teaching during a maternity leave, and I had a lot of work to do that day. A few days later, I went to RediMed to have the wrapping removed and have a look at the damage. The doctor said I was lucky... no nerve, muscle or bone damage. He said it would grow back in time, but I had to change the bandages often and keep it wrapped for about a month. I am just glad I cut the left thumb instead of the right. What would I have done if I couldn't write? A teacher who can't write is like an accountant who can't use a calculator. I guess I would have gotten by, but I would have had to let all the people who offered to help me actually help me. Let people help me? How unJennlike is that? ... Oh, the thumb? It has grown back completely. You can only tell something happened if you look closely... thumbprint didn't come back on a portion of the new skin. I know the doctor said there wasn't any nerve damage, but as the person who experiences the feeling, there is something missing under the new skin.

June: I started my summer job the day after school was out. No break time for Jenn. My summer job was a lot of fun and a big boost in my science resources. In interviews, I would reply to the weakness question with the answer of science. Teaching for the Botanical Conservatory's Eco-Adventure Day Camp everyday changed that answer. I can now make rockets, make a tornado-proof house, run with the buffaloes, teach kids to row a boat (I could do this before summer camp though), eat weeds that taste like syrup, catch butterflies, lean over the edge of the Lincoln Tower, hose down five kids at a time with bug spray, make a trash bag poncho and wear it with pride, and many other useful abilities.

July: During my only week off of the summer, we drove to Florida and back. We made stops in Louisville (Slugger Museum to personalize our bats), Alabama (peach ice cream ROCKS!) and Bloomington (spent the last weekend with friends here because it is the most awesome place in the whole state). We had a lot of fun relaxing on the beach and eating too much food.

August: About the middle of August, I had to choose one of three job options. I had the option of holding out for a corporation that told me they would hire me if a teaching position came open, and I had two options at one school in another corporation. I didn't know what to do, so someone told me to make a pro/con list for each option. What a brilliant idea! It made the decision so much easier. More to come on this. ~ I spent a weekend in North Carolina with Chris as he was there on a business trip. I flew out right after work on the last day of summer camp. We extended my stay into a long weekend since I didn't have to report to school until Wednesday. What a beautiful area of the country. The mountains were gorgeous!

September: So the job I decided to take was getting into full swing. It took me awhile to settle in and feel real comfortable. I didn't want to overstep my position, but I wanted to do more than just what I was being paid to do. I'm an overachiever, I always have been and always will be. As a sub, my overachieverness was welcomed, and I always felt my opinion was valued. This new environment was going to take some getting use to. I mean, I had been on their sub list, but I was only there a few times the previous year. Would they like me? Would they welcome my work-a-holic attitude? Would they accept my crazy sense of humor and sense of adventure that never seem to take a day off? Would I grow to love Wayne Center as much as I love North Side and LaOtto? OH YEA!!! I obviously made the right choice, and not just because the one corporation didn't end up having any teaching positions come open. I can't imagine being anywhere else. I love it at Wayne Center. I feel valued and accepted. I have grown to love the students and staff, having the honor of calling some of the staff members my friends. My job is awesome. I mean, for real? I get paid to listen to kids read to me. I get paid to help them become better readers and writers. If this job counted toward my teaching license, I would keep it over a classroom job for awhile. It took awhile for some of the students to warm up to me and realize that I wasn't going to allow them to quit or just slide by. Now I see improvement in all 42 students I have the honor of working with. I love each and every one of them. In a classroom, I would have 20-28 students, and I would probably feel like I never gave any of them the attention and one-on-one work they needed/deserved. Here I work with 42 students in a small group setting that allows me to focus on individual strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I feel like I need to do more for each of them, but what teacher doesn't feel some sort of inadequacy? We want to do everything for every student giving them every opportunity to learn and excel. ... I'm rambling here. Let's move on to October, shall we?

October: So some of my co-workers and my boss decided to decorate my little corner of the school for my birthday. No, it wasn't with happy birthday wishes. My desk was covered in stinky crap - a Purdue cup, a Purdue hat, Purdue this, Purdue that. How disgusting! It was awesome. No one has ever given me a bigger taste of my own medicine. It was well-deserved and pretty funny. The best part is that I wrapped up the PU $=;& for my white elephant gift at the staff Christmas party. HAHAHA!!!

November: CHARACTER COUNTS! was in full force, the 40 Faces of Mrs. Pashea came out awesome, and of course, there was Turkey Bowl 2008 as Grandma Stella... did I tell you I love Wayne Center?

December: What a crazy-busy month!! My days were full of the school work with side trips to take yearbook and website pictures with after school tutoring and evenings filled with Christmas gift preparations. I spent countless hours getting the school's CHARACTER COUNTS! website ready to go live. It went live just before we had the big ice storm, so I am not sure anyone but the principal has really checked it out. I went to school on two of the cancellation days to work on the yearbook, which is more work than I had realized it would be... but it is a lot of work when I want to include cool features that will be well-worth the extra hours, so I am not complaining in anyway here. (Wow, were you able to read that huge run-on sentence in one breath? I'm on break right now so its not like I am trying to teach you how to write.) Christmas was great. It was full of food, fun, family and festivities.

All in all, 2008 appears to be all about work for me. We had some nice vacations and a lot of fun with friends. My niece turned two in December, and my nephew turned one in October. Our families are doing as well as to be expected given all the circumstances that surround each person. We are pretty blessed. I mean, we both have jobs. We have a nice house. We live in a great neighborhood. We both get plenty to eat. We have clothes to keep us warm, which is good since my husband isn't wanting to turn up the heat. We have plenty, and we give as we can. We have the love and support of amazing friends and family. What more could we ask for, right?