Memorial Day hike

I was going to post this last week, but the last days of school have been consumed with students buzzing around my head like a hive full of bees. "Mzzzzzz Cheeeeeneeeeey," they buzz, "Mzzzzzzzzzz Cheeeeeeeeneeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!"

Deep breath . . .

On Memorial Day, Brock and I took Emma, Kate and Jane on a 10 mile hike! They trooped their way up and down the mountain to see a really old tree--The Jardine Juniper. It's over 1000 years old. You can kind of see from the picture how gnarled the limbs have become. It's a pretty cool thing.

I was so proud of the little squirts. Ten miles is a long way for a 9 year old kid--but little miss Jane did it without a complaint. Kate had a bit of a hard time coming down the mountain. I think her long and lean legs were taking quite a bit of impact that she wasn't used to. Emma was very strong on the mountain as well. I was happy that she had this experience so she can feel confident about the pioneer trek we're going on in two weeks. If she can do a ten-miler, she can trek.

Kate thought this rock looked like the heads like those you see on Easter Island.

Good job little squirrels! Brock and I are so proud of you!

We have a lawn!

Hooray!

Plenty of work yet to do, but at least we have sprinklers and grass. What a difference it makes!

Poetry Slam!

We had a school-wide poetry slam at BEMS yesterday. The Ogden Standard Examiner came and covered the event. Read about it here. There is a short video with some pictures at the bottom. The chick pronounced my name wrong (that darned Dick Cheney and his long "a"), but oh well.

We wrangled some excellent poetry out of these 8th and 9th graders. One kid even brought a bongo drum and played during his poem called "I am a Soldier". It was seriously good stuff. I was proud of every one of them.

We had one slam for every class period throughout the day. All the kids enrolled in language arts that hour came down to the auditorium for the slam.

Emma got 2nd place in her class hour. There were four classes competing--so about 120 kids, give or take. She did an excellent job. I was quite proud. She won this impressive glitter ball for her efforts. (Love the black!)

But the coveted first place prize was . . . The Black Beret!

And since it's not exactly beret season in our local shopping mall, these are hand-crafted. By me, of course. Six lucky kids won the black beret from a sea of about 800 language arts students. It was a fun, fun day.