Third Grade Thanksgiving Party at the Vine

It's hard to believe it's already time for Thanksgiving! If time flies when you're having fun, we certainly must be having a good time.

Last Thursday, Nov. 20th, was our last day of school before getting a week off for Thanksgiving so of course we had to have a Thanksgiving party! I scheduled a light day of schoolwork so we were done with all our assignments shortly after lunch. Our party started off with several rounds of Thanksgiving Bingo. We used candy corn for the markers and when you got a Bingo!, you got to eat a candy corn. It was a win-win situation for sure. During last recess we planned on decorating cupcakes. Yum! But we had to get a class picture first before the fingers got all sticky.

It's really hard to get a good picture of everyone looking good in the same direction at the same time!

Ths one is pretty good!

And this one is very silly!

Then the class decorated cupcakes & ate them!

After a sufficient amount of time to run off some the sugar buzz from the cupcakes, frosting & candy, it was time for our Thanksgiving craft, pinecone turkeys!

They turned out very cute. It was a very nice day!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Crazy Hair Day and Crazy class pictures

Welcome to Third Grade...again!

Last year, my third year at The Vine Academy ( a home-school school that meets twice a week), I taught a combo 3rd/4th grade class with 6 third graders and 3 fourth graders. I had taught all the fourth graders the year before, so that was kind of fun having kids from one class for two years, but the challenge of teaching both grade levels was exhausting. I did have an aide without which I probably would have gone bonkers. Unfortunately the young, sweet, inexperienced aide who started off the year with us, quit at Christmas time, so we had to scramble over Christmas break to replace her. Her replacement was the pre-K teacher, a very strict, stern, mother-of-four who didn't tolerate the fourth graders slacking off. It was a huge adjustment for the fourth graders from the first aide to the second, but all-in-all, they had a good year and learned alot, at least enough to go on to 5th grade!


So this is my fourth year teaching 3rd grade at The Vine. Each year brings a fresh new class of kids and parents to get to know and figure out how to best teach them. I started off with 9 kids in my class, 5 boys and 4 girls.

One of the little girls (Hannah) had been the only girl with all those boys for the past two years and she had prayed and prayed that God would bring her some little girls to play with in her class. Her prayers were answered, but after about a month of school, her parents decided that it would be best for Hannah to continue this year working as home with her Mom. Although it was a tough decision for her parents to make, I agreed with them but Hannah would still be invited to be part of our class for all field trips and class parties and occassional art projects. Every once in a while Hannah pops into our classroom during the last 5 minutes of school and she is always welcomed by the kids and she is always glad to see them!

So let me introduce some of my other students for this year.

This is Holland (in blue) and Noelle (in pink). Shown below are Mikie (with Holland peering over his shoulder) and Samuel C. (in the green shirt) saying "HEY!". Samuel C. lives a long way from the Vine so he only attends our class one day a week.

At the end of October the school had "Crazy Hair Day" so the kids all came to school with the zaniest hair styles they could manage. At the end of the day prizes were awarded, but even if they didn't get prizes, the kids always enjoy getting to be a little bit crazy!

Crazy Hair participants were (L. to R.)
Sammy M (red & blue striped shirt), Timmy (closed eyes, brown shirt), Noelle, Milahna, and Holland.

Check out the mural on the wall in the background! Pretty cool, huh! This church has a very talented artist who painted each class room a different geographical location. One year our class was in the jungle. Last year we were in the midst of a high mountain range. And this year I think we're on a safari somewhere in Africa.

At the end of the day, one of the parents took a class shot for us.

First the nice pose...

followed by a totally silly pose.

It's a fun, sweet and interesting class with a lot of diversity in ability levels so I have my work cut out for me again this year. But so far, we're having a good time and everyone seems to be making so progress. Praise the Lord!

Road Trip - Day 2

Day 2 was Saturday, Sept. 26th. Our goal today was to drive through Glacier National Park in Montana and end up west of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho in Post Falls where we had made our next hotel reservation. Unfortunately this was the one day of our trip that we hadn't spent enough time researching the terrain we wanted to cover. It looked abmitious but do-able on the map! And we didn't want to miss the very scenic Glacier National Park when we were so close....


After a nice continental breakfast at the Bitter root River Inn, and a stop by the local drug store to pick up sinus meds & pain reliever for Grace, we headed north. (I had messed up my back a few days before our trip and somehow re-injured it this morning as I was getting dressed. I was also trying to get over a mild cold and dealing with great sinus pressure as we went up and over many mountain passes on our scenic drive.) Again, the scenery was beautiful and breath-taking!


We spent quite a bit of time driving along the picturesque Flathead Lake & Valley enroute to Kalispell, Montana which is on the west side of Glacier. We had to keep Ed driving on as we past a very inviting golf course right on the lake in Polson. (Dad thought it was Poison...).


Eventually we reached Kalispell and enjoyed a late lunch. Ed's plan was to drive the southern route along the southern end of Glacier, enter the park on the East side, drive through the park and exit on the west, back near Kalispell, effectively driving a big loop. It was later in the day than what we anticipated, but we pressed on.


The drive along the south side of the park was spectacular, although Dad felt like Ed was driving it too fast. Ruth & I could sense Dad's tension as we quickly snapped pictures out the window of our still moving van.

As we drove along the southeastern edge of the park, we had to stop and take a few pictures of the incredible scenery. SOOOO Beautiful!!!! It had been a long drive but we were really looking forward to seeing the central part of the park so we pressed on without complaint.

Finally we reached the Eastern entrance to the park! Unfortunately, we were very disappointed (that's probably an understatement) to learn that the Park was closed....since Sept. 15. Apparently they close on this date every year for the winter. Major disappointment!

Earlier in the afternoon I had tried to cancel our hotel reservations for the night, but was unable to do that, so we just had to keep driving. So we re-traced our route along the south side of the park and got back to Kalispell around 6:00ish, driving straight into the sunset. Wendy's was our diner of choice this night, then it was back on the road again as we still had 4 or 5 more hours to reach Post Falls and our lodging for the night.

Again we drove along in the dark, probably passing some beautiful scenery until we finally reached Post Falls around mid-night. 15 hours on the road this day. Ugh! Ed promised we would not have such long days ever again on this road trip. For the most part, that was true.

Our 2008 Pacific Northwest Road Trip with Dad! - Day 1

A couple of weeks ago Ed & I went on an 8-day road trip with my father, George, and Ed's mother through the Pacific Northwest. My dad had wanted to drive through the Pacific Northwest for years and was going to do it this Fall, so we offered to go along with him. So on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 25 we flew up to Salt Lake City, rented a Totoya Sienna mini-van and drove up to Ed's mother's home in Logan, Utah. Dad & George had driven from Nebraska and arrived in Logan on Monday (3 days early!) and had just been hanging out and driving around the Logan area awaiting our arrival.

So the next day the five of us loaded up the van and started out on our grand road trip adventure. But first, we discovered that the rental van had an oil leak.... Fortunately, we were able to have it very quickly repaired by the local Toyota dealership and we were soon back on our way, heading North to Idaho.

We stopped for lunch at a quaint little cafe called Pickle's Place in Arco, Idaho where some of us enjoyed their famous "Atomic Burgers".

After posing for a quick pic in their gigantic green rocking chair, we headed on to the Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve, about 30 miles west of Arco.It was a very unique an interesting place that really did look sort of what I think the moon must look like, a very barren black landscape with all kinds of interesting formations.

At one point we got out of the car and Ed, Dad & I hiked this short path to the top of this little volcanic crater.

It was very windy up there but the view was great!

Then we headed north, driving past the famous Sun Valley Ski resort and Ketchum (a very cute touristy town) and on into the Sawtooth National Recreation Area along the Sawtooth Scenic Byway. The trees were beginning to put on their Fall colors and the scenery was beautiful!

From there we headed northeast along the Salmon River. More beautiful scenery along a winding 2 lane highway.

We kept noticing an abundance of magpies (big black birds with white backs) in the middle of the road. From huge number of insects splattering across our windshield, we presumed that the magpies were eating bugs (or bug debris) off the warm road. That was our theory, but it made sense to us!

We enjoyed a simple dinner/supper at a Burger King in Salmon, ID (along with a bus load of high school track stars) and continued on our way, driving in the dark, to our destination for the evening. Since we had made reservations, we had to keep driving, so unfortunately I think we probably missed a lot of the Bitterroot Mountains. Maybe someday we can drive that route again in the daylight and see what we missed!

But we did see quite a few deer along the way. I even had to stop to avoid hitting one once, but fortunately for us, the deer moved quickly out of the way and we all traveled on safely. I did catch just a quick glimpse of a fox crossing the road so that was about it for wildlife for that day.

Around 10:30, after 13 hours on the road that first day, we arrived at the Bitterroot River Inn in Hamilton, Montana. It was a nice triple diamond hotel we had found online, through AAA. After driving past a Super 8 Motel on the way to our hotel, Dad commented, "The Super 8 would be fine with me." And then again as we pulled up to the lobby he added, "Gee, it looks like some place the president would stay." With our AAA discount it was about $100/night/room which Ed & I thought was fine, but my frugal father thought it was a bit too luxurious and expensive for his tastes - though he didn't complain, we could tell he really would have preferred Super 8!