Song of the Day

I have this weird thing with songs sometimes where I don't like them at first, but then one day I decide I love them. Like flipping a switch. I didn't ever dislike this one; it was just melancholy feeling so I didn't listen to it. But now I love it.  "Amarillo Sky" is the same way.  And I hated Eric Church's "Springsteen" when it first came out, until one day I decided I didn't hate it, and now I luuurve him and pretty much everything he sings. Nasally twang and all.  He's adorable. Anyway, back to Jason Aldean.  Love this song.  

Weird Kids and Summer Stuff

Kids are so weird.  I love them.  After school Josh's friend said, "It's so hot today, right when I walked outside I broke into like 3 sweats." Hmmmm...   Do we have to count them all separately?   I didn't know that was a thing, but now I think I will do that.

Tonight Josh was going outside and he's all... Mom, I want to see if I fart when I run, if it will make me go faster.  Uh huh.  My little genius.  I really worry about that kid.

Yesterday at the splash pad, Lexi came running over to tell me that there was a BEE!  And the all the kids were yelling BEE!  And then Josh came wandering over a minute later all... "So, there was this bee?  And everyone was all freaking out?  So I flicked it off.  C'mon people.  Be a man."  Ha!

Omigosh this weather.  This freaking weather.  It has been so beautiful.  I love it so much.  I need at least another month of 90+ degrees.  Utah is bitter cold and gray and brown and just ugly for so much of the year... I love these blue skies and the puffy white clouds and the heat.

We've been having some good times...  Courtney's wedding, which will be getting its own post; a Chamberlain family party; a Rasmussen Sunday dinner; visiting at the pool with Lauralee, Mindi, Cami, and Marilyn; a picnic at the castle park with the Rasmussens; and the splash pad with Josh and Lexi and Sean.

Next up:  Davis County fair, hopefully with Heather, Scott, Wendy, Katie, and assorted children; camping at Pineview with Scott, Wendy, and Katie, and assorted children; possibly a Lagoon afternoon.  Gotta squeeze every last drop out of summer vacation before I have to go back to work next week.

July Highlights

I hate when I don't blog regularly because then there's just too much to write about and things get lost.  My memory is so terrible.  If I don't write it down, it might as well have not happened.

So let's see.  Where did I leave off?  The AP Institute at the beginning of the month was pretty good.  I got some good ideas, but it's always a challenge because I will forget things by the time I go back to work.  The district cut us back to 2 prep days before school starts this year, and those days will contain a 3ish hour faculty meeting, a department meeting, a coach's meeting, a PLC meeting, an advisory meeting, and possibly one other meeting that I may have to attend.  And a meeting with the secretary at some point to learn the new finance system.  So I'm not going to get much actual work done those 2 days.  That leaves me no time to prep for 2 classes I've never taught before, one class I haven't taught in a few years, and another one that I've taught for years, but now I'll be teaching honors.  So I'll be changing some things.  And writing new disclosures.  I'm just planning on working that whole week.  Which is why the school district can get away with cutting our prep days.  They know we'll just work anyway.  But, luckily for me I still have a few weeks before I have to worry about all of that.

OK, so here are a few summer highlights.

We went to the drive-in to see Despicable Me 2 and Monsters University with some of the Chamberlain cousins.

The annual Chamberlain Pineview Extravaganza was great fun.   Everything went great, except for the thunderstorms that always seem to roll in only when the Chamberlains arrive.  But there were S'mores and campfire, games, swimming, Sean and Brinley catching catfish and then the other kids arriving and making a little pool to keep them in, Jaden cracking everyone up with his awesome joke, relaxing and visiting, and of course wave running.  The water was especially excellent for wave running this year.  I could have gone for another couple of hours.

Sean taking the kids fishing

Playing the sign game

Eating Max's dutch oven cobbler

Climbing trees

This child refuses to get her hair combed.

The third installation of my (soon-to-be Award Winning) photography series entitled "The View From My Awning", in which I take photos of the view from under the awning of my trailer at different campsites: 

Sean took the whole week off because we weren't coming home until Thursday, but he ended up with jury duty on Thursday morning, so we came home Wednesday night.  Thursday night we took the kids swimming at their grandma's house, Friday we went to Seven Peaks, and Sunday we went to Lagoon.  It was a busy and fun week, and I'm glad we got to do some fun things before the kids had to start school again.  

Another fun Chamberlain tradition happens in July:  the Bountiful Handcart Days parade.

My kids are on year-round school, so they started back last Thursday.

Sean and I went to the Jason Aldean concert last Saturday night.  It was really good.  I didn't really like the venue so much.  It was at Rio Tinto soccer stadium, and we had floor seats, so we were down on the field.  It was hard to see.  I like stadium seating better.  But the music itself was so fun!

Heather is here visiting, so we've been over to visit a few times.  Mostly we're just doing wedding junk, though, this week.  Everything takes forever, especially when you're me.  It takes me forever to do anything. I don't care if everything is perfect, because it won't be, but I just want to have fun.

Next up:  Pineview with Scott and Katie.  I'm so excited!

Sometimes a Smoke Is Just a Smoke

Students have long suspected that English teachers sit around just making crap up about the symbolism and theme and literary devices in pieces of literature.  That they just pull stuff out of thin air.  I'm here to say, it is true.  In my class today, we were doing an activity with a piece of artwork, and it involved analyzing the elements of the painting and the theme.  Here is the painting and some of the observations that were made:

• The man does not want his son to go off to college.  You can tell because the unlit cigarette in his mouth is symbolic.  If he wanted his son to go, he'd have it lit and be puffing away.  (Wait, wha??)
• The color (or pattern?) of the son's tie and socks shows that he is ambiguous about leaving home. (scratching head??)
• They are sitting on the running board of a truck.  This is symbolic because a running board is something to "assist" you in getting into the truck and moving forward, and college will "assist" the boy in moving forward.
• The color (red) of the flag and lantern is symbolic of the father wanting to "stop" the son from leaving, and of love and power.  The lantern symbolizes knowledge (light).  
• The title of the piece is "Breaking Home Ties" and that's an allusion to the railroad ties.

This piece of artwork has plenty of things to analyze without having to just make this kind of crap up!  You can look at body language, facial expressions, the physical proximity of the dad and son, their hands, how they are each looking in different directions with one weary and one hopeful, the hats, the difference in their clothes.  All of these things are legit ways to analyze what the artist was trying to say. You don't need to stretch that far.  Pretty sure that the flag is red because.... the flags they used to flag down a train back in the day were red!  It's not like the flags used to be purple but the artist changed it to red to make a statement.  Der.  Crazypants English teachers.  Actually, mostly just one or two crazypants.  And me in the back trying to not make WTF faces.  

Summer

I love, love this hot weather.  Winters in Utah seem to last soooo long, so I try to enjoy the heat while it lasts,  no matter how sweaty it is.  I don't care.  We have pools, air conditioning, lakes, streams... It's not hard to find a place to cool off.

In the last few weeks we've spent a lot of time in the water.  We've been to grandma's pool twice, to Seven Peaks waterpark, to Layton Surf and Swim, and up to the river.   Also, Sean bought the kids a small pool for the backyard, and they've played in that quite a bit.

Last Saturday we headed up to Perception Park, one of our favorite campgrounds, to the day use area.  We had a picnic and played in the water.  I had enough tubing taking the kids to Seven Peaks water park the week before, so I just stuck a lawn chair in the water and sat there.  It felt great.

Courtney's 21st birthday was today.  Mindi, Cami, Connie, and Marilyn threw her a wedding shower.  It was probably the most fun birthday she's ever had!  So many really nice people came and brought her so many lovely gifts.  She was so grateful.  Courtney, Brittney, Lexi, and I took her out to dinner tonight.  Sean, Curtis, and Josh went fishing, and they weren't back yet, so we had Girls Only Dinner.  It was really fun to get to spend the day hanging out and having fun.

Tomorrow we are going to Grandma Saundra's house for some more family history fun.  Scott, Katie, and I all kinda got bit by the family history bug in different ways but at the same time.  It's been fun.

Next week I have a class I have to take for school.  I was excited about it a few months ago, but now I feel meh.  Partly because I don't have a babysitter.  Hmmmm.... Not sure how this will play out.

I lost one of my students last week in a terrible car accident.  So sad.  She was so sweet and just so beautiful.   Life is way too unpredictable.

This is a crazy summer.  There is something scheduled every day.  It's going by way too fast, but man I'm just happy to be alive, so I'll take it.

Luka from E.R. came to fix the spring on my garage door last week.  I kept thinking he looked familiar, and then I would realize it was because he's Luka from E.R. disguising himself as a man named Chris.

Man I hate these guys.  Not just garage door guys... any "specialists".  They judge you and your stuff and tell you why your stuff sucks and you need something new.  Dude.  I don't want a new garage door, no matter how crappy you think this one is.  Even if it had a giant hole in it, I'd still be all... yeah, we'll throw some plywood over that, a little duct tape.  I'm not buying a new garage door right now.  You are competent at what you do, and I respect that.  That's all I want.  Just fix the dang spring.

Something that's been on my mind since my insurance company called me last week and my father-in-law and I were talking about it last Sunday... Obamacare.  Basically, my thoughts boil down to this.  Yeah, it sucks.  And yeah, it's going to need some fixing.  Actually, they're going to have to scrap the whole thing and move to single payer health care.  Do I want the government running health care?  Hell no.  But it's the only way to do it in today's world to ensure that everyone is covered at a cost that doesn't bankrupt us individually and as a nation.  Bottom line.  Sure it sucks.  I don't like it.  What's the alternative?  Go on the way things are?  Can't do it.  Rely on charity care?   Not a solution.  Let people go uninsured and take care of them in the emergency room?  Contributing to the mess we're in now.   I said to my fil that if Obamacare were to be repealed, I'd be in big trouble.  I have a child with diabetes, and my insurance company would love to dump me if they could.  My fil said... well, they could write the law so that insurance companies couldn't exclude people for pre-existing conditions or cancel their policies when they get sick.  Ok, I said, that costs the insurance company tons of money.  Makes health care costs soar.  Well, he said, they would have to spread the costs out through the population.  Yes, I said, that's the insurance mandate that has so many people up in arms.  Look, bottom line... you can't keep the parts of the Affordable Care Act that are popular without having the parts meant to bring costs down... the parts everyone hates.  I am not unaware of the problems with ACA.  I'm not happy about it.  But in the words of the infamous Mick Jagger.... You can't always get what you want.

We went up and mowed the lawn at the cabin on Friday afternoon and the kids played in the river.   The weather up there was so cool and nice.

We had a bird nest in one of our backyard trees, and the eggs hatched a bit ago.  The birds were so cute sitting up in there.  It's been fun watching.  I guess they flew the nest last night or early this morning... and ended up in the window wells.  One of them was in Brittney's and it woke  her up squawking at 6:00 this morning.   They couldn't fly out, so Sean went out and lifted them out with the end of the hoe.  Don't know where they are tonight.  I hope they learned to fly.

Our garden sucks this year.  It's just too dry.  And the weeds.  Oh the weeds.  So many weeds.  But there are lots of potatoes, so that will be good.

June Sorts of Things

Josh's baseball season wrapped up last week.  He got hit in the side of the eye with a pitch on Tuesday, and luckily all he got was a little bruise.  His batting helmet protected him.   A lot of those little guys cry when they get hit by a pitch, because that business hurts, man, but Josh just took his base.  Scared me a little, though.

Tim McGraw was excellent, as predicted.  That is one fine looking man.  I was a little concerned at the very end when he brought Brantley Gilbert back out to help him finish up the last song of the encore... I was afraid that the stage might spontaneously combust from all the hot.

This was a lazy, relaxing weekend.  We did chores, worked in the yard a little, that's it.  For Father's Day, Sean's dad came over and we had dinner.  Courtney and Curtis came over as well.  Hopefully Sean enjoyed it.  He said he did.

I am very laid back in the summer.  I'm not a mom who gets worked up about her kids wanting to sleep in or sit around in pj's playing video games.  It's nice to just kick back in the summer.  It's not like they spend all day doing that; they get up and around and do other things.  But then I feel guilty and feel like I really *should make a schedule and make them do more chores than they do and be more regimented about making sure Josh reads and practices his times tables or whatever.  So I guess maybe I'll come up with a schedule of some sort and make a half-baked attempt at implementing it.

I've come to a very important conclusion about parenting and life in general.  Based on conversations I've had and things I've read over the last while, I think the most important thing a parent can do for a child is teach him or her to work.  Knowing how to work hard is a hugely important life skill, and I see a lot of kids/young adults who don't have it.  I'm really worried about if I'm teaching my kids to work hard enough, and how do I teach them?  My mom told me a few months ago that she wished she wouldn't have let us work in high school; that she now agrees with the idea that school is your job in high school.  I disagree.  It taught me so many important things.  School is very important, but the key component I think, no matter what, is knowing how to work hard.  We were talking with Sean's dad when he was here on Sunday and I said that I think college is overrated and I'm not encouraging my kids to go anymore. That's really not even true... I just said it to see if either Sean or his dad were listening to me.  I don't think they were.  But college isn't the end-all-be-all necessarily that people act like it is.

I told Sean that I'm going to get healthier (I tell him that at least once a month) and that I was going to start drinking less Pepsi and more water.  So today he asked me if I had managed to drink less Pepsi and I told him yes, but I'm switching to vodka instead of water.  He just said, "Well I guess we better hit the liquor store then."  Very supportive husband I have.  Today was not one of my better days.  The kids fought me all day long, and then they broke the garage door.  Sean spent the evening trying to repair it.  He did everything he could, but he can't do the thing with the spring, so I gotta call a guy tomorrow.  Over the last few days he fixed the computer, he fixed the dishwasher, he fixed his grandpa's leaf blower... he's a good guy to have around.  Everyone needs a Sean.

One of my former students made the Top 20 on So You Think You Can Dance.  If only I can remember to watch the show now....