Catch Up!

I thought I would finally bring you up to date on what's been going on with me, my students and my little family. Two weeks ago we (the other two house teachers and I) had our Sophomore House Olympic games. We had students sign up for different events each in our own 2nd and 6th period classes. The reason it was 6th and 2nd was because those are our first classes of A day and B day. We have conference periods 1st and 5th. Anyways, my team was from Athens and our colors were supposed to be blue. Most of my students forgot but some got way into it and dressed entirely in blue. Turpins class was from Corinth and they were red while Landeen's class was from Sparta and they were green. The reason we chose those civilizations was because we wanted to incorporate Landeen's world civ curriculum. So our first group was our B day students so our 6th period classes. We had two boys and two girls for every event and the team that got the most points, (Gold=3, silver=2 and bronze=1) got breakfast the following class period. I decided that I would announce and so I got a large sound system and we hooked it up to a CD player and Andrew downloaded the NBC Olympic music and made a CD for me. We played it while I "opened" the olympic games and also while we had medal ceremonies. It was really cool to have the great music blaring through the stadium. The kids totally took it seriously that day. The second, not so much but I wasn't surprised considering the students. (Bad attitudes) It was still really great for both days. So the following pictures were taken by my student, Jessica Jones. She took it very seriously and tried to get the very best shots. I am only showing some of them considering there were hundreds but you will of course get the idea.

Me of course doing the announcing. I love announcing for things like this and it was really fun to do.

This is Barbara Turpin, she is like my "mom" at school and teaches Language Arts. She presented all of the medals during the ceremonies.

This is Todd Landeen, he helps to coach the Sophomore volleyball team, so we know each other pretty well. He teaches World Civilizations. He was our judge and measurer for the games.

The First Event: The Discus

Here the athletes are practicing throwing a frisbee like a discus. We had them throw it like a discus because we wanted it to be a little more even. Notice "Usain Bolt" in the background, AKA my CRAZY Polynesian student.

This is Emily Hibler, She loves to participate in everything and the kids actually love her. I am so pleased because I know how mean kids can be. She participated in the discus and didn't medal but by the end of the day she had a few medals around her neck that kids had given her.

Bo Jensen in action.

Our female winners. So cute story, the gold medalist, Kayla did NOT want to participate. She kept making excuses for why she couldn't do it. She said she was terrible at throwing a frisbee and really didn't want to do it. Anyways she I talked her into doing it and she came down and threw that firsbee and it flew and flew and flew. It sailed across the football field and beat everyone else. When I called her name as first place she was still really shy but had a huge grin across her face. It was priceless.
Here are the boy winners. Cute is not quite the word for these guys but can we say very very typical tennager boyish?

Second Event: The Shotput

These girls are waiting to show their stuff in the shotput competition.


Here is McKenzie showing us how it's done. Of course we didn't have them throwing a real shotput so instead we had tennis balls.
Zack throwing on the boys side. Todd Landeen was very particular as the judge he wanted to make sure that they threw it like a shotput instead of just throwing the tennis ball.
This was funny, so most of the students, except for the athletes, were up in teh bleachers watching and cheering on their classmates. The Spartans defnitely had the most spirit and made their own signs out of regular notebook paper. If you click on the picture you may be able to see they spelled out Sparta. They would scream really loud and hold up their sign everytime I announced a Spartan athlete. It was really fun.

The female shotput winners. What cute girls!

These are the boy winners, notice there are only two. The third place winner was put out that we weren't going to use a real shotput and had a bad attitude and went back into the stands and refused his medal. It reminded me of that French ice skater in the real olympics or world championships, that refused to put on her bronze medal at the medal ceremonies. Also, notice the second place winners cute smile. I was totally shocked to see him smile like this because he is usually Mr. Serious and gangsta-like, and yet he pulls out this cute innocent smile. Love it~

Third Event=100 meter sprint

Another story, so the girl from my team is of course the girl in blue, but what's funny is that she is on the drill team and the girl in the maroon right behind her is the actual track runner. I knew that Danza (the girl in maroon) was really into running and was really in shape because of our exercise assignment that we had just finished so I thought for sure she would win. But..... my dancer girl pulled out and beat the runner and the swimmer. It was very exciting. I was worried at first that there would be some sore feelings but Danza was like, "Wow! You are a really good sprinter! Why aren't you on the track team?", the dancer just shrugged and smiled.

The boys also took the sprint very seriously. However, I think two of the athletes must have forgotten to bring their tennis shoes because one is in his socks and the other is in his bare feet. But at least they still got out and tried it eh?!
The dancer gold medalist, the runner silver medalist and the swimmer bronze medalist. What a cute picture!

The boys who remembered their tennis shoes. :)

The Fourth Event: The Standing Long Jump

Most of the athletes had never done this before but it turned out to be one of their favorite events to watch. My little photographer did a great job on these pics.
Nice extension don't you think?
The boy winners.
The girls. Surprisingly these are some really short girls but the tall girl (6 feet tall) jumped close to 7 feet long but fell backwards on her back and ended up losing.

The Fifth Event: The Javelin
Instead of a real javelin we just used a short dowell. :)

The posing girl winners.
The boy winners. I wonder how the gold medalist, Colton could actually see where he was throwing with that fro action.

The Final and Sixth Event: The 4x4 Relay.
Each team had two girls and two boys. We would have had them run around the track but the track had a few things layed out on it that we couldn't move so instead we had them each run 25 yards on the football field. It went boy, girl, boy girl. And Sparta won.


Here is the second place team from Corinth. Yeah my team got third but not in the overall score. My team ended up winning, 28 to 21 to 18, so yeah I had to provide breakfast the following Monday.

Overall this was the most fun activities that I have ever done with my students. I think they really liked it and I hope that it becomes an annual thing. I just appreciate the other two teachers humoring me and going along with the plan. But they loved it and thought it was a great success!

So did I mention that amidst all of this we were having parent teacher conferences? well we were and I was pooped but fortunately we had Friday off as a compensatory day for the teachers and I got to go........Bridal Dress shopping with Miranda. Now I promised Miranda I wouldn't post any pictures of her dress but I thought I would post the next cutest thing.....

She did this at every single store and I didn't even put her up there, she just had it in her mind that this was the coolest thing and she just has to get up on the box and view herself in the mirrors. That was a fun thing to do after a very hectic week.

On Saturday I had tickets to go to the general women's conference at the conference center so Miranda, Sara and I went and loved it. It was Miranda's first time going to the conference center and it was a cool experience as always.

So this past week Leah and I have been attending as much volleyball as possible. I did mention in a previous post that Leah is crazy and she definitely is at these things. She gets really excited with all of the noise and wants to climb the stairs and crawl down the aisles of the bleachers. The folliwing picture was of the intense varsity game where we lost by two points after 5 games. AHHHHH! So frustrating, it's good i'm not coaching!!!

So in case you didn't know Leah is growing up. She now has two little bottom teeth and has started walking a lot. She isn't quite a walking proficient but she will be soon. When I get a video I'll post it because it is darn cute.

Well I hope you enjoyed all of the action in this post and hopefully I can keep up a little bit more often in the future. (Probably not) but I'll sure give it a try. ;)