What Woud You Do If...?

What would you do if you worked in a high school and if you were walking down the hall one day, and if you saw two students, one former and one current, and they happened to be dating and standing close together flirting and if they saw you coming and then if another one of your students from behind you down the hall just hollered hello to you and if there were all sorts of other students all around and if you suddenly had a strange sensation that something about the clothing you were wearing wasn't right and then all of a sudden you realized your skirt was falling down and if you happened to have on silky pantie hose along with the silky skirt so that before you knew it your skirt was bunched around your ankles...I was just wondering...if this all happened...what would you do?

Ornament Exchange

I went to an ornament exchange this week. It was so fun to see what everyone made and brought...I wanted to share what everyone did, unfortunately I am not a very good photographer so I apologize for the picture quality, it really doesn't give the works of art they credit they are due. Here is what everyone brought.

This last one is mine, it is a melted snowman. If you look carefully you can see the scarf, the branches for arms, the coal pieces for the eyes and mouth and there is even a little orange carrot nose.

On This Thanksgiving

Last night I was at my sister's house and before I left I offered to take some kids home. They have been begging me for months to have a sleepover and I decided now was a good time with no school and all.

Even though we didn't get home until pretty late I agreed to play a game with them. I think we had fun. This morning they slept-in late which was good because I was able to get up and get some things done.

After they were all gone and I had breakfast cleaned up and was getting myself ready for the day I went into the bathroom they used. Now I will note that I usually don't have to do much cleaning in this bathroom because I don't use it very often, but when I looked into the sink I saw toothpaste all over the sink.

I turned on the water and started to wipe down the sink and gave a thanks for the blessing of having had kids in my house. What a blessing to have nieces and nephews who like to come to my house sometimes.

Before and After

Here they are as promised although most people have seen me in the past few months. I did have one of those in my sweats pictures but, they are a little too embarrassing, not that these aren't...actually it about makes me cry to see what I let myself get to, but here it is anyway.

So Many Errors

Wow, just re-read my float post and there were a lot of errors.

For those of you who care (probably just me) I made an attempt to correct them and may have improved the telling of the story in a line or two...yes this is a lame attempt to have people read my blog again and to get more comments. :) Yes I used the word lame despite my efforts to get people to be careful with word usage in all areas of speech...

Tube Terrors: A Tale of Floating the Boise River

As I mentioned in my last post, one of my favorite activities is to float the Boise River. It is the right speed to relax and keep moving at the same time. It also has about 3 rapids that make for a little excitement providing you miss the big rocks that really can bruise the bum...not really hard to miss if you know what you are steering clear of.

So when I went to visit my sister this summer I really wanted to do this. We were a little uncertain about the logistics of it because normally we have two cars so one driver can park at the finish then drive with the other driver to the start. The problem was we only had one car this time. We thought about inviting others to join us but we didn't want to invite someone just for their car. Fortunately we discovered a shuttle that was relatively cheap that would take us from the finish to the start.

So, we drove to the finish, got on our suits and sunscreen, grabbed our tubes and waited for the bus. The float down the river is approximately 6 miles, I imagine the drive is a bit longer since you have to take the streets.

This river is also great because they provide air filling stations at the put-in area, which is great when you are carrying tubes on a bus. It would be crazy to have a bus full of people and inflated tubes and rafts. When we got there however, we discovered that our tubes were missing their valve caps.

At first we weren't concerned because tubes have valves that prevent the air from escaping unless you push on them in just the right way to release it, but when we started to fill the tires we discovered it was more difficult than it should be. Even when we were able to get some air in them the air wouldn't stay in! That is when we discovered the the stems were empty, there were no valves in them!

So there we were standing in only our bathing suits with two deflated tires and no way to return to our car. We were seriously debating if it would be faster/easier to swim down the river or walk back to our car (on the main roads in only our bathing suits I will remind you).

As we considered our options, like looking for a small rock to fill the hole. Then I thought there must be some caps people had dropped just lying around so we kind of walked around looking for whatever we could find that might solve our problem.

We saw that some people had abandoned some tubes that clearly had been through the ringer and were full of holes. There was clearly some attempt to patch them but, clearly the tires did not come through with success despite some serious duck tape usage. It seemed apparent that no one would be returning for them so we took the cap from the one that had one...they too were missing their stems or we may have taken them as well.

So while my sister blew up one tire that would have a cap I continued to look around. Desperate I ripped some of the used duck tape from off of the abandoned tubes thinking maybe I could tape mine. Then we discovered the cap was broken and had to use the duck tap for reinforcement on the cap...but I went and got some more old, used, abandoned tape on a tube for my tire.

In the end we had two tubes which we filled to capacity hoping that between the two of them we would be able to have enough air in at least one of them to get us both to the end of the journey...we did this knowing that the time might come very quickly and that we would be sharing one tube.

It was apparent that the duck tape alone did not work as well as the duck tape combined with the broken cap. As I sat on it in the water little bubbles came out of it and when I pulled it out of the water a small hissing noise could be heard. Knowing that our only other option would be to walk the roads in our suits we headed out on the water and prayed for the best.

It was a fun float, we talked as we tried to steer clear of the edges and avoid cliff and tree divers. We joked about how quickly we would be sharing a tube and when we would have to swim the rest.

Amazingly enough both tubes made it to the end and though a bit smaller than than when we began not too small that we had to take such drastic measures to swim or walk.

All in all the whole story may sound funny and be poorly told, but we laughed and amused ourselves by our McGalver-like abilities to make due with only used duck tape.

Floating the river once again came through as one of my favorite activities!

I Kissed the Chain

So since my 100th post I have been meaning to get some before and after pictures, but I am still working on getting some after pictures. Anyway in the mean time I had to tell about some of my summer activities. So I did a lot of fun activities this summer. Some were completely new to me and some were repeats of old favorites. One of my favorite activities is to float on a tube down the Boise River which I got to do. I have no pictures but it was very adventuresome. I will try to tell the story on it soon.

Other activities included hiking, kayaking, snorkeling, and rock climbing. I am featuring the rock climbing here obviously because it was such a huge thing for me and maybe too because I have pictures. ;)

So first I have a picture of what I was going to climb. I was probably one of the last ones to go and those ahead of me at least had some experience and made it look a little easier than it was. So here I am getting started. I think at this point I was saying (probably out loud, but only to myself) I can't do this, it is too hard. Then I answered back with I have to do this, I can do this, I am going to do this! So I kept going. When I got past this part everyone started to tell me I only had the hard part left. People, for the record, words of encouragement usually don't include "you only have the hard part left." But I was determined by now. I made it to the top and as tradition has it for rock climbers, when you reach the top you are supposed to kiss the chain...and I did! So cool that I was able to do this!