When The Students Are Away...

This has become a summer tradition for Dan and I:

 


After the guys head to bed at night and leave for summer school and work in the morning we sit down and play a few rounds of Dutch Blitz. So far I'm up 6 games to 2. (If I did hastags they would be: hekeepstrying; winnerwinnerchickendinner; dutchblitz; morningritual; whenthestudentsareawaythehouseparentsplay; practiceforthegameswiththegirlsinthefall; solongasIkeepwinning; janaewinsmostgamesweplay hesagoodsport)

Everything's a Competition

This summer we have a house of 8 active high school boys. We made that choice last August before we knew we would be placed with girls. It's been fun, especially for me! The guys will come ask me for various household supplies and I get to defer them to Dan since they are kept in a locked closet in the bathroom. It's been a much better division of labor.

It's also been fun to find creative ways to determine who does various chores in the house. Once night Dan challenged the boys to a game of knock-out (aka lightening) to decide who had to clean up the snack. Out they went to practice their shots. About 20 minutes later I joined them to watch for a bit. It was fun to hear them cheering each other on; "Come on, Mr. you can get him out!" "Hurry!" "Mr. are you out already?"

The beauty of this is that once they all start playing, they will continue to play for 45 minutes or so and they end up tired and ready for bed!

Another time the competition was Tenzi but this time it was for the house chores.

The chores were all ranked from easiest to hardest and the 1st person to the the designated number received that chore. The competition was fierce as most of them wanted an easy chore. Then they willingly headed off to accomplish their chores.

We haven't gotten to eating competitions yet, and hopefully we won't ever get to those.

A Natural Campus

Several areas on campus the grounds crew have left to grow wild. They are interspersed between areas of cut lawns and other maintained grass areas. As we drive from our apartment to our student homes, we get to enjoy the beauty and changes that occur to these areas. Today we finally captured one section we drive by regularly:

The wildflowers and other foliage have been striking. It's mid-July and there is none of the brown grasses we are accustomed to in the west.

I Hate It When That Happens!

Just one piece and the border would be complete!

Time to hunt through all 55 million other pieces to find the 1...grrrr....

We Love Feebies!

Our time here in Central PA has introduced us some new foods; baked oatmeal, shoo fly pie, scrapple, Philly cheese steaks, white cheddar cheese to name a few. One that's become a favorite can be found at a chain in eastern US, Rita's Ice-Custard-Happiness. Most of the locations are only open in the spring and summer months. The first day of spring is traditionally Free Rita's Day. They give out free small sizes of their legendary Italian Ice.

Well, as Houseparents, we are all about free activities to share with our students. We split our group into two trips asking the first trip to take care of dinner clean-up so the 2nd group could go sooner. It was a fun dash for a treat, even if it was cold and snowy on the First Day of Spring this year:

Snow Geese Sightings

Last year we had some noisy birds stop on their migration path. They sounded much like Canada geese but they didn't look anything like that type of goose. We later learned that they are snow geese. They are noisy, but very pretty. From a distance a large flock can resemble moving snow on the ground.

We had a couple different groups fly past our house and it was mesmerizing to watch them:

 

(The video might be sound only for some reason. You can hear the geese best after the siren passes.)

A few days later I was running an errand and saw another flock of snow geese on the ground enjoying a meal from the freshly turned earth.

It's been amazing to observe these animals the last couple years.

Pi Day 2015

Well, it's officially a tradition, pies for Õ day! This year was apple crumble and banana cream:

Not fresh crusts this year and made the day ahead so they set better. Both were pretty yummy but I think last year's banana cream pie was better. The girls voted on the flavors and enjoyed this special snack.

P.S. Keep scrolling, more posts have been added to 2014 in chronological order.

Keeping Track

In September, we had an assignment change at work. Instead of being substitutes for 60 Senior Division student homes, we are now assigned to Flex (or substitute) with the same four female student homes. We work 12 days then are off 3. We start at our 'A' home at 2:00 pm and transition to our 'B' home at 2:00 pm three days later, then at 2:00 three days after that to our 'C' home and then onto our 'D' home. We then enjoy our three days off until we start the rotation again.

The change from 12-2 to 12-3 was confusing for us at first and very difficult for others to follow. To keep it straight, I used a school calendar colored our days at each student home and off a different color.

Now that we've been at this for several months, we have it figured out fairly well and don't have to think too hard which home we go to when.

With the assignment change, the number of students we could work with has dropped from about 700 to 48. It may still seem like a lot, but 48 is much more manageable, and we are developing closer relationships with each student. We love our girls and have had a great time getting to know them better and sharing in their activities.

Early Valentine's Get-Away

Due to our crazy schedule, we took our personal day and attached it to our regularly scheduled time off to give us a few more days to play. We really struggled deciding what to do. After much pondering we settled on staying a little closer to home. We found a great place to stay; The Inn at Leola Village. It is very quaint and unique. This is the entrance and part of the property:

This shows the entrance to our room:

The rooms are all above and below the retail stores. It reminded me of Gardner Village in Utah but with places to stay on the property.

Our hotel room was just a quaint as the outside suggested:

(Photo from here)

We decided that we will be frequenting this location for future get-aways.

We spent time enjoying a show at a Theatre in Lancaster; And Then There Were None. We had a good time together letting go of the stresses of home, even if we were only about 30 minutes away.

A Unapproved "Pet"

A number of weeks ago I pulled a pan out to make some dinner and found a little surprise in it. I showed it to Dan saying, "Please tell me that isn't a mouse dropping." We cleaned the pan out well and then kept our eyes open to try and discover if we did have a mouse or not.

Several weeks went by with no sightings so I thought we were in the clear. (Thought being the key word in the sentence...)

One of the houseparents we cover for gave us some Ghirardelli chocolates as a "Thank You" for helping with their students. Knowing Dan as I do, I hid the chocolates in a dresser drawer to ration and divide evenly between us.

Shortly after that I was getting into that drawer and noticed a little mess:

 

I was afraid of what the mess meant...sure enough when I moved the chocolate package I discovered the proof...

...we had an unwelcome guest in our home.

Some time earlier Dan had asked about his leftover Christmas chocolates that disappeared from under our Christmas tree. I figured he ate them but forgot that he did. He insisted he didn't eat them. Until the Ghirardelli chocolates disappeared I lived happily in a state of denial. Now the truth had come out, we did indeed have a mouse roaming our house and eating our chocolates. I suppose the calories would be been on it than us but this is Ghirardelli chocolates we're talking about here!

We called the exterminator and he put a couple traps down and some poison in our attic. He was confident we'd capture the critter. Well, it is pretty slick, one of the traps has been without bait and set for a couple months now since the mouse ate the bait and didn't set off the trap.

Not too long ago I moved a sticky spider trap from our laundry room and noticed a ball of fur in it. I was uncertain how we'd managed to get that much dryer lint in it so I looked closer and discovered claws and teeth. Not sure how long it had been there but our spider trap also successfully captured a mouse!

We've seen no evidence of rodents for some time now and the poison is gone from the attic so hopefully we're in the clear. I suppose only time will tell.

As a Follow-Up

A follow up to our end of 2014 post, when we received notice that our new tv was ready for pick up, it was all we could do to contain ourselves before we headed out to get it. Dan was concerned about getting it home from the store, however, it fit perfectly in the back seat of our car:

It didn't take us long to get it all set up! We have both enjoyed this new toy!!!