The Secret Lives of Teachers

About 15 people from my school went down to Las Vegas for a Kagan (school stuff) training. One first grade teacher is in love with Donny Osmond and two teachers went to see the Donnie and Marie show ($250 per person). They took millions of pictures with my camera (they left theirs at home) and bought T-shirts and sat starry eyed in our workshops for the next two days. This woman, Tammy, has been in love with Donny her whole life. She once got to go to a wedding reception where half the wedding party was the Osmond family and she shook Donny's hand in line. It's what she lives for and now she can die happy...she saw his concert and sleeps in his T-shirt. She's almost my age and it made me feel good to know there are other crazies in the world. She walks around school now with a constant smile and we know what she's thinking about. LOL

Connie the Amazing!

Not only does Connie wrestle 5 kids, keep Bishop Sowards fed and ironed, run fund raisers at the elementary school but she finds time to run down to my school and put up fabulous bulletin boards for me. Look at the size of this box of chocolates. It was huge..about 3 feet high it was filled with Little Debbie snack cakes in silver cupcake tins that made it look like a box of GIANT chocolates. The kids went crazy over it and insisted on eating a stale chocolate from the box 2 weeks later. I let them. Thanks Conners for making me "look good"!

Sexy Lady Brabra

6th Sense

I will always be amazed what pets let little children get away with that they don't let adults get away with. Kate was taking our cat Toast by the sides of the face and forcing her head around so she could look the cat in the face. Then she proceeded to point to the cat's eyes, her eyes, cat's nose, her nose. Toast let Kate mess with her repeatedly over and over again. When she turned her head away she then let Kate grab the sides of her face and turn her back. AMAZING! Animals have a 6th sense around babies I'm sure of it. My Grandmother, Dorothy Murial Norman Capener told me a story of her 5th birthday. Her mother had made her a brand new apron WITH A POCKET! That was her one and only present back in 1907. She was so excited she ran outside to show her Daddy. He had just opened the gate to let all the horses out to graze. The pack of horse was charging straight for her. She stopped dead in her tracks. The lead horse spotted her and jumped to the left and all the other horses blindly followed the first horse. She was left standing in a cloud of dust but untouched. Animals just have this 6th sense about little children.
(not a very glamourous setting for these pictures...but you have to click on the pics to enlarge them and see how cute Kate was with Toast).

Six degrees of seperation

This is a sister's quiz.
Guess who showed up randomly at my house Friday night?
Here are your clues:
Her Aunt, Dottie Bell, lives in my ward and I was her visiting teacher.
She grew up in Pleasant Grove.
She now lives in Logan.
She is Teresa Allred's visiting teacher.
Her first name is Sharon.
Do you give up?
She is Clark Salisbury's wife.
Yes! Clark and Sharon stopped by to say hi the other night on their way to Zion's National Park.
I LOVE St. George! It's actually on the way to somewhere!
I felt like I was seeing a long lost brother. Sharon may have thought I hugged her hubby one too many times but it was just sooo good to see them!

Carry On!

This weekend I made a wedding cake for a friend of Connie's. The mother of the bride was actually Sarah and Anna's kindergarten teacher. This cake is covered with fondant balls. It seemed weird but looked kinda cool when it was finally put together. I made the fondant bow shiny by brushing it with cooking oil. I had to show off my new armware also. Friday I went to the Dr. (for the first time in lots of years) for a sore elbow that seemed to get worse these past few weeks...very painful and sore to the touch. When I left I had two wristbands for carpal tunnel and a black band to place below my elbow for tendonitis. I also had three steroid shots--one in each wrist and one in my elbow. The bad news is I am not able to participate in the Winter Olympics XX but the good news is the Dr. said he would write me a note to miss Primary music for the next six weeks. I opted out of the permission slip. I had to take off all the software to make the cake but I did have partially numb hands because of the steroid shots. I had no idea all this would happen when I went to the Dr. There is always something happening to make life interesting and challenging. My motto: CARRY ON!

The Three Stooges

"So there I was..." (to quote Brother Hancock) coming out of my Wednesday night ESL class at 8pm tonight and trying to get in my car door. An elderly gentleman was getting in the passenger side of his car which was next to mine. He turned to me (or so I thought) and said, "Where've you been?" I perked right up and said, "I have been at a class learning how to teach children that don't speak English." He then pointed to his wife who was coming up behind me and said, "I was talking to my wife." His wife replied, "Why do you care where's she's been?" and hit him in the ribs. I thought he was talking to me. He thought he was talking to his wife. She thought he was talking to me...and then we all burst out laughing. It was one of those "you needed to be there moments" but it sure made my day :)

You Always Win With Grandma!

While watching the grandkids yesterday while Connie and Ben were at the temple, I was playing "Battleship" with Jared. Being very intelligent like all my decendants, I began to explain to him the strategies of playing the game. I showed him the ABC's and the 123's along the tops and left side and how at each turn we would say one letter and one number. Jared could do one or the other but eventually caught on and would call out "CD" or "AB" on his turn. When it was his turn he would put a peg or two into the board. The color was determined by my telling him he had a hit or a miss. On hits he used a red marker and on misses he used a white marker just as I had taught him. On my turn I would correctly model how to call out a location of my battleship by saying "J10" or "F7". We were having a great time playing, but not really playing, the game. Jared kept shouting out, "I'm winning aren't I Grandma?" I would tell him that indeed he was winning and was very good at playing. You can see from the picture how Jared's gameboard looked. On my turn, Kate who was sitting on my lap would put a peg in the board and then clap excitedly...as if to say, "I got one in and now let's all applaud appropriately because I am very smart just like all of Grandma Merrell's descendants."
Inevitably the fun abruptly ended when it was my turn and I called out, "I1". Jared's face crumbled and he said, "YOU won? I thought I was winning Grandma?" Wanting to burst out laughing, I instead held it in and recovered by saying, "Oh that's right Jared. You are winning. Grandma meant to say, "D4"...and the game continued on with everyone satisfied. Aren't kids great? You always win with Grandma!

John Canaan

Kohler's went to church with Brad's brother and they announced a concert that night in the St. George Tabernacle was going to feature John Canaan. He was very popular when Robin and I were in college. His most memorable song of the evening was, "You're Not Alone." He walked around the crowd and sang and I bawled and bawled. I sure am glad someone was paying attention at church.

Julia Child Fan

So after everyone left St. George and the Christmas events, Connie brought Annie down to go to the doctor and we sat around for two days and recouped. All of a sudden I realized I didn't know where Kate was and hadn't seen her for quite some time and jumped off the couch in a panic and ran through the whole house and didn't find her! When I came back to the living room I saw her sitting on the kitchen table giving herself a bath in butter. I sure was relieved to find her but not happy about the greasy mess we would have to clean up. Connie says Kate LOVES butter and has done this same thing several times at home. It's hard to get riled up when she is having so much fun.