Hand sanitizer is my friend!

I actually have time at school to write today- that shouldn't happen! I have a class of six students right now, and that's actually two classes combined into one. Normally I would be teaching Algebra to eleven students during this period, and another teacher would be teaching Physical Science to a class of eight right now. How do I then have a combined total of six you might wonder? Because half our school is out sick! Seriously... over half. Students started getting sick early in the week, more and more stayed home as the week went on, and we are down to 13 of 40 high school students here today. We are cleaning the school all the time, sanitizing everything many times a day, squirting sanitizer on kids hands a lot, trying to keep IT from spreading. What is IT you might wonder? Some have colds, some have fevers, all that went to their doctors have been tested for the N1H1 flu. We just got a call from a parent Thursday that a child does have IT. I wonder how many others have IT too. We also are the first school in Erie to have a confirmed case of N1H1, lucky us. There was a whole front page article in yesterday's paper about CCDS having a flu epidemic scare. Gotta love the media, thanks for the publicity, just what we needed.

Still here

I just want you all to know that we are still alive and well! With school only back in session for 4 weeks, I'm still very busy making sure the year is starting off right. That means I bring lots of work home with me to do in the evenings, or I am just too exhausted to do anything but veg! So... not much blogging happens around this time of the year! No interesting news to report anyway!

We love and miss all our family and friends! We wish we weren't so far away from everyone!

Happenings Here and Bruised Ribs

Well, I've been back from camp for two weeks now and am just now taking time to say hi! Time sure passes quickly. The camp photographer did a great job and put together a CD for all the campers and staff of the week's pictures. I can't find mine! So no pictures for now!

Camp was great. We had a wonderful group of teen girls from Kansas City. It only rained one day, and the weather was very nice, not too hot, cool at night. The group of staff was amazing! God really was working in the girls' hearts that week. It was a fabulous ten days, but a long ten days away from Drew and the dogs! It was so great to see them at the airport- yep, all three of them picked me up!

Since then, Drew and I have been working on putting up privacy fencing in our backyard. We are over half way done. I'll put on a pic of the finished project, someday, whenever we actually get it done! I have been working every day getting ready for school to start on Aug.31. We have some staff training days the week before, so I really only have one more week to get everything ready! It's sad and exciting all at the same time to see summer coming to a close. Kim and Greg stopped at our house on their way to Detroit, spending an evening and night with us. We packed it full of fun things- grilling steaks, Dairy Queen, walking the dogs, eating fresh things from the garden (cucumbers are Kim's total fav!), and playing Wii. Thanks for being here Kim and Greg! We loved every minutes of it!

We had a little excitement today. Drew was on a bike ride at our favorite trail with the dogs, peddling hard up a very steep hill when back tire lost traction, sending him and his bike down. The front twisted sideways, and he fell chest first onto one end of the handlebars. He said it felt like someone slammed a sledgehammer into his chest. Luckily, it didn't really cut him much, but we are pretty sure he bruised a rib or some ribs. It is going to be a horrible looking bruise and is still hurting a whole lot this evening. He had big plans for building skid plates for the Bronco this weekend, he says that now I'll have to build them for him! Oh boy- hope he heals quickly!

Off to Camp!

I am all packed... well, mostly packed... and am leaving today to head to Camp CUMCITO (City Union Mission Camp In The Ozarks)! It's a camp in Warsaw, Missouri for inner-city kids from Kansas City. I am assistant director for Teen Girls' Week, and it's one of my favorite weeks of my whole year! Drew will be very lonely this week, give him a call! I won't be back for 10 days, August 2nd. See you when I get back!

Other Colorado fun!

We were so lucky to have our good friends from college- Nate, Katie, and their two daughters- come visit us Thursday night! They spent the night at our condo and after my family left, we hung out in Winter Park until after lunch.Mom enjoyed playing "grandma" to the two little early risers!Drew and I stayed in Winter Park until Saturday so we could watch Micah's race. I promise, he is in this picture!Go, Micah!Coming into the finish lineLunch afterwards at a great deli with HUGE sandwiches!I drank WAY too much Starbucks, but hey- it's vacation!We spent the evening back in Denver- Drew and Micah worked until 4:30am on Micah's Jeep. Drew hopped in the shower and we left for the airport at 5am! Needless to say, Drew slept ALL the way home! (Betsy and I did NOT stay up all night!)

Colorado pics

Our vacation in Winter Park, CO was amazing! I have spent SOOOOO long getting these pictures on here that I really don't feel like explaining them right now! There are a ton of pics because we did a ton of stuff! Just enjoy and maybe I'll get around to writing about them! More to come...

Silly dogs

Drew had some fun one evening by putting his goggles on the dogs. He really wants to buy "doggles" for them, but somehow we haven't wanted to spend money on something so silly! Molly and Annie didn't seem to mind too much, and they look just hilarious! Annie look slike she is laughing!

We have a very fat groundhog living in our garage that likes to hang out in our yard and eat pears when they get ripe. Molly will spend HOURS watching the hole into the garage just waiting for something to come out of it! Seriously, she will just stand there and stare. Sometimes she will lie down by the hole and stare!