Adios Lake

This summer Lee's parents decided to sell their lakehouse and move back into the West Lafayette area.  While some of the family members couldn't comprehend the decision to leave the lake, most of us understood their decision.  They bought the lakehouse about 12 years ago.  At that time, all of their kids ranged from age 20 to 25 with zero grandkids.  Everyone had lots of time to spend at the lake and lots of time to help with the maintenance of the place.  There were parties galore!  As you can see from the pictures below (not pictured:  Lee), times have changed.  They are now a family of 10 adults and, as of October, 10 children.  They empty beer cans scattering the yard have been replaced with sippy cups and a swingset. 

While the little ones love the lake, the family just didn't have the time to spend at the lake.  And the grandkids are starting to participate in sports.  So, in addition to their normal 40 minute commute, the Klemme's found themselves spending many a evening in West Lafayette at various basketball and T-ball games.  The era of the lake had ended for them.  Below are a couple pics of the day they moved.  It was a sad farewell, but I know the Klemme's will be much happier being back close to their kids & grandkids. 

Puetz Family Christmas

Saturday was our first Christmas celebration of the year at Lee's Grandma Puetz' house. I must say, this particular celebration is much more convenient now that we live only about 10 blocks from her!

Taryn got to love on some Baby Brock! He is such a happy little bald guy!

There are about a million kids that all need to open presents, so it definitely takes awhile for everyone to get their turn. Taryn decided to take the bull by the horns and do some sucking up to Gma Puetz. Apparently it worked because soon her wait was over and she had a gift to open! She has been waiting SO long to open a present this holiday season!

Family pic time! With the addition of Ella, Lee's immediate family is up to 19 people! 10 adults and 9 kids. We just barely outnumber them. The pics of Lee's parents with all the kids did not pan out. It was a little too close to some of their nap times.

One of the perks of living so close is that I was able to bring Taryn home and put her down for a nap. I may have taken one myself. The downfall of living so close to Grandma Puetz is that all 19 of the Klemme's came back to our house afterwards. I spent all morning cleaning and in about 5 minutes the whole house looked like a tornado went through it!

After the Klemme's packed up and left, we cleaned the house a second time and set up our extra bedroom for Jamie & Garret who came to visit! We went to The Local and had some awesome karaoke. Lots of beer later, we got a ride home in the back of Lee's cop car. Talk about a perk! He even breathalyzed us!

Cell Phone Purge

Thought I would do a post of all my cell phone pics before I start back to school Monday. As if my posting wasn't sporadic enough, now I'm back to having a job! A job where I can't blog at work!

My Dad is famous for reading the newspaper for HOURS on end in a given day. My Mom always said he didn't read the newspaper, he memorized it. This picture is for Papa Jeff!

I gave Taryn her blanket so that maybe she would fall asleep in the car... Instead she did this.

Picking Taryn up at daycare. She's carrying her "pack-pack". (Just so you know, it may look heavy, but all it contains is 1 small blanket and a paci. I'm not into child labor or anything.)

This is why our 4 block walks take like 45 minutes. Notice the sippy cup in her stroller's "saddle bag". Also, notice that I brough a hat for Taryn to wear and sunglasses for ME to wear... Yeah, that didn't work out to well for me.

Painting on the screened-in porch...

SURPRISE! Jasper walked out onto the porch.

Taryn fell in love with this baby at Nicholas Dragut's birthday party today. He is 10 months old and sturdy as heck. Taryn could actually play with him without being completely delicate. Which meant she took over his life. She was holding his hand, feeding him his bottle and trying to teach him to walk.

On Tuesday, my mom and I took Taryn down to the Children's Museum. (More on that in the next post.) Going to Indy gave us an excuse to meet up with this handsome little guy and his mom!

Those cheeks, that hair... He's such a charmer.
The cousins and their munchkins.

My mom & Jamie are like two peas in a pod!

This was such an adorable moment. Taryn finally got to "feed" a real live baby. Poor Kylan thought he was getting food, but all she had was an empty spoon.

As much as Taryn loves babies, I know she is going to be excited when her little cousins can bounce around and play with her!

P.S. We ate at Union Jacks in Broadripple. They had some delicious pizza and a pretty impressive beer menu. I had a couple Peroni's with lunch as a reminder of my fun times at Quenchers in Chicago! Yum!

The Hunger Games

At the beginning of the summer, one of my goals was to actually read a book for pleasure. Between teaching, parenting and grad school, I hadn't read anything FOR ME in a long long time. My mom recommended The Hunger Games.

I started the first book and was immediately into it! When someone describes the plot, it totally does not sound like a book I would like at all, but it is really good. It is a quick read too. I would go to bed at like 11pm to just read one chapter and before I knew it I would be turning out the light at 12:30am.

I flew through the first book and had to have my mom borrow the second book, Catching Fire, from her classroom. Lee and I happened to be driving down to Barry's wedding that weekend and I finished the entire book in 2.5 days.

Onto the third book, the Mockingjay. My mom had already loaned out her copy of this one, so I had to go buy it. Yes, I HAD to go buy it. At this point, I just needed the closure. It was running through my mind so often, I just had to have an ending!! I finished the Mockingjay in under a week as well.

I really loved these books! They definitely are nothing educational, but they are interesting and entertaining and that is exactly what I was looking for during my first summer vacation!

Lee Has a Baby

Since Lee got his new job, we have been looking to upgrade his '97 Ford Explorer. The thing had like 186k miles on it, so it was nearing the end of its life. Lee wanted a truck. So, we had been looking for a truck for about 6 weeks. We FINALLY found one. This isn't the actual truck, but it is identical to this!!
As some of you may know, I consider myself a Ford person, so I am adapting to driving a Chevy around. But, I must admit, it's a nice truck.

It is especially good that we finally found Lee a truck since there was an incident this week with the Jeep. Lee was driving Taryn to daycare when they got hit by a deer. An UNINSURED deer. So irresponsible. But, literally, a deer ran into the drivers' side door. Lee swears that it came through the window and head-butted him. The phone call from Lee went something like this:

Lee: You need to come pick me up. A deer ran into me.
Lauren: OK. You were on your way back from daycare right?
Lee: No. Taryn is still with me.
Lauren: OH MY GOD IS SHE OK?

Needless to say, I was MUCH more appalled when I heard Taryn had been in the car. When I got to the scene of the crash, the car was blanketed in broken glass. She was just quietly holding her backpack. I asked her "Taryn, do you have any ouchies???" She lifted up her hand and showed me a tiny scratch from our cat three days earlier. I figured she was fine after that.

So, the Jeep is in the shop. And I'm driving... The Explorer. Yeah, I got screwed on that deal!!

Math Careers

On Friday my Geometry classes finished up the last section of the last chapter of our entire textbook. Woohoo! We even did it with a few days to spare. Since many of my students claim that math is useless, I decided to make them look into careers that use mathematics, their salaries, their job satisfaction, all of that jazz. My expectations were pretty low. I've seen some of my students' writing and it is pretty atrocious. What I got... A lot of plagiarism mixed with some ridiculousness. Thought I would share a few snippets.

Topic: Actuary (yeah, this is one you're not going to be able to BS)
I could tell that the student had straight up copy-pasted his whole paper, but I really couldn't prove it until this spot:
"The goals of the program include that students be well prepared for the exams they tak, that they will be knowledgeable about the career and in technical areas, and that they have a well-rounded education. In addition, we hope that many students will have passed the Course 1 exam by January of their Junio year to help when applying for internships, and at least one more exam by January of their Senior year when they are applying for permanent jobs."
Um, who is this "we"?

Topic: Was supposed to be Civil Engineer. Somehow he did Sociologist.
This student also had a bunch of garbage that was clearly copied off of the internet. Then...
"The presidential election of 1996, for example, turns on the tide of voter sentiment regarding the controvesial issues of welfare, immigration, and abortion rights."
What?!? I am so confused.

Topic: Computer Programmer
I appreciate that this student did not just copy off the internet. I just thought this part was funny/cute.
"To be able to be a computer programmer you have to be able to speak computer languages."
I guess you would be speaking in binary? 1-0-0-1-0-1

Topic: Actuary (again)
"Actuaries have desk jobs, and their offices usually are comfortable and pleasant."
Mmm, I do remember feeling warm and cozy in my cubicle.

Topic: Math Scientist
This is the entire paper this student submitted. Keep in mind I said it should be a page long...
"Math scientists figure out problem that no one can also they make different equations and find different ways to find out easyer ways to figure out problems. they make about 75,000 a year they work in labs."

Topic: Inventory Stragist
"A inventory stragist could work anywhere most commonly they work at clothing stores like the gap, banana Republican..."
Banana Republican... Is that where George W shops?

After reading these, I understand why our school is on academic probation!

Shroomin'

This time if year, Indiana (and other hick states, I'm sure) go crazy for Morel Mushrooms. These are mushrooms that grow wild. People spend their weekends mushroom-hunting. Me, not so much. I wouldn't exactly trust my own mushroom judgement and would fear finding the poisonous or hallucinogenic sort. But, those that find tons can sell these beasts for about $40/lb. Wowzers.

So, Lee's police chief last week brought us a couple large bags of these Morel Mushrooms. I figured I'd give them a try... See what all the fuss is about. Our first meal was to saute them in butter and then add them to our spaghetti. It was good, but we really couldn't taste the 'shrooms. We gave some to our neighbor and to my mom.

Lee decided to fry up the rest of what we had. He breaded them in a mix of pancake mix and pepper (I was skeptical). Then he fried them up in oil.

They. Were. To. Die. For. Like seriously. Better than I've ever had in a restaurant. Addictive. I wanted to fight Lee for them. I was willing to eat them straight out of the scalding oil risking burns to my fingers and mouth. That delicious.

I'm probably still too lazy to actually go out hunting for them, but you can bet if we are offered some, I will definitely be taking 'em!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Last night Taryn and I (mostly I) spent a good chunk of time tying ribbon around Valentine's Day granola bars and putting her "classmates" names on it... This morning we got her dressed up in her sparkly pink heart-covered t-shirt. At "school" she got lots of Valentine's from the other kids... And I'm pretty darn confident that they have NO CLUE WTF IS GOING ON!

Oh the joys of a Hallmark holiday!!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!

Snowed In

Today is snow day #2 at our house.
We were feeling more than a little stir crazy, so we got bundled up and headed outside for a bit.

Taryn was much more tolerant of the snow than in the past, but she still wanted to stay on the parts that were plowed already.

Lee busted the Explorer out of the snow and we took a drive around to see what the roads were like. I'm pretty sure this is exactly what the news told us NOT to do last night, but oh well! The roads out by us were actually a lot better than the roads in town. As we drove through Purdue's campus (school was called off again today! unheard of!) they had almost everyone that works there outside clearing snow. That's a lot of sidewalks!

I am not sure if we'll be back to school tomorrow. I am guessing Taryn's daycare will be open, and maybe Lee's schools, but I am guessing Attica might take another day. There's a lot of back roads in that school district!

Thanksgiving 2010

I just realized that I never posted anything about our Thanksgiving this year. I only took two whole pictures the entire day. Seriously, how do I always do that? My mom sometimes complains that I have so many pics from the Klemme events and not as many from our events. I'm pretty sure it is because when I'm at the Klemme events, I'm just sitting around taking pics of Taryn. They also spend a giant chunk of time taking posed pictures of the families. When I'm at my family events, I'm helping to cook, talking to family, laughing and usually drinking wine/beer. I am making a concious effort to try and take more pics at our family Christmas this year (while drinking wine/beer)!

I have to admit that this year I was not feeling all that thankful on Thanksgiving. We'd had a pretty awful week, and a day of giving thanks just seemed like a mockery. In retrospect, I do have a lot to be thankful for. I know Jess and Mich do this every week, but since I was a Thanksgiving scrooge, I thought I'd have my own thankful blog...

• Being able to live near my family. There is nothing I love more than being able to call my mom on the way to Target to ask if she wants to come. She adores entertaining Taryn (or is Taryn entertaining her?) and it makes my shopping trip WAY smooth. It is just so great to be able to be at all the family events and have our family at our events.
• A job with breaks and 2-hour delays. I am getting ready for my first winter break and I. can't. wait. I also love that when it is snowy out I get a 2-hour delay and am able to drive to school leisurely and safely.
• On the same token... A job with teachers and a principal that I really like. I've always had pretty good luck with having great co-workers and I am glad that has continued. It is so great to be able to wander out of my room for a moment of "adult time" between classes. It really helps maintain sanity.
• Horses. On the way to our house, there is a Purdue horse farm. Taryn has a new thing now where she tends to be quite miserable in her carseat. I love that as soon as we get to that farm the whining stops and is replaced by excited yells of "'orsies" from the backseat.
• Good neighbors. Our next door neighbor is a retired electrician. His wife still works, so he tends to have a lot of time to toil around in his yard, take fishing trips, etc. I love the fact that sometimes he uses his free time to sweep up the leaves in our yard or snow blow our driveway. He also has told Lee that he would help run a new outlet to our dishwasher.
• Our health. Last winter was a very unhealthy time for Taryn. It was her first winter and she had just started daycare. It seemed like she was sick every week. We were also just figuring out her asthma issues. This year, she hasn't had to stay home a single day yet (knock on wood). Lee spent a day at home with some flu-like symptoms, but compared to last year, things are a ton better. I had to spend a lot of time at my doctor during November, but I am thankful to have those behind me and be looking forward to healthy times again.
• My little family. I could probably write pages upon pages about how amazing Taryn is to me. I feel so blessed to have such a cute, sweet, friendly and loving little girl in my life. And my husband's alright too (haha). Lee does a ton around our house including most of the cooking and vacuuming... Two things I hate. Taryn loves her Dada and you can see that he thinks she's amazing as well. It's great to be married to my best friend and be able to joke and laugh with him everyday.

It it winter break yet?

*
Tomorrow will wrap up week 2 of school. For the most part, things are going really well. I like almost all of my students and I have been managing to get things planned, graded and all around taught. I keep in touch with a lot of my fellow teachers from Purdue and I seem to be doing a lot better than many of them. I think part of it may be that I have worked a career that was extremely demanding. Many of them are straight out of college and don't even know what work is! If they think this is tough, try valuation season!

The thing that is keeping me a little busier than I would like is cheerleading. I know very little about cheerleading since I was only a cheerleader once in like 6th grade (and I still wear the shirt). And there is just so much STUFF to go with it. Like there are so many outfits that they think they need... Uniforms, socks, crop tops, shoes, spankies, sweat suits, t-shirts, bows, cheer jackets, etc etc etc. And when you get the opinions of 15 high school girls together... Oh boy. In general, though, I don't mind it. The girls are really nice and it gives me a reason to get to a lot of the school events, which helps you get to know people.

I have a lot of students that I really enjoy. My first hour class is my tough class to handle, so once I get through that, it's all down hill. I have one 15 year old that is 9 weeks pregnant. I have one boy that really, truly, makes me want to punch him. But, when you have over 100 students, having only one that inspires violent urges really isn't bad. I have a class full of freshmen honor students. While they are nice and math-y like I'm used to in the actuarial world, they are freshmen. I don't know how Fubar does an entire school of these little buggers. This is the only class that I sometimes have to say "BOYS, TRY TO NOT TOUCH EACH OTHER." They are just so spazzy.

I do feel like I am running a lot and the weeks are passing really fast. I am looking forward to my first 3-day weekend next week. And then fall break... And then winter break... Ahhh. And just 34 weeks until summer break!

Our new pet

Here are some pics of our new found friend. This little mother clucker has been seen and heard all over the yard. We even found 5 or 6 eggs under one of our bushes. This evening, all of the sudden, I heard some clucking that sounded awfully close. Turns out, in response to some of the bad weather, she has decided to take up residence on our porch. The cats are obsessed. And I think the chicken likes them as well. She's been strutting all over our porch furniture and has now made herself a spot for the night on the arm of our porch couch.

We have finally been contacted by the drunk driver's insurance people. Now we can get a few estimates on how much it will cost to fix up our damage and hopefully we'll be cut a check here soon... Until then, I am just hoping that the wild animals stay out of our man coop!

Which Way to the Bar?

*
As I mentioned in my last post, we spent the weekend at the lake. The region suffered some SEVERE storms, so the whole way home, Lee and I were checking out down trees and other random damage.

I have blogged before about our "man coop" in our yard. The coop is at the front edge of our property. Directly behind the coop is a large fence. The other side of the fence is our neighbor's back yard. It's kind of a weird setup. Anyway, our neighbor has a shed right there and he keeps some chickens in there. (Yes, we live in Indiana.)

My mom had stopped by our house to feed our cats for us and had texted me to say that the neighbor's shed had some damage from the storm. When I pulled into our driveway, I couldn't believe my eyes! "SOME DAMAGE" was that 3/4 of the shed was completely gone. No trace of any chickens. Rubble everywhere. Our fence was torn down. There was a hole, A HOLE, in the back of the man coop. OMG.

I was still trying to figure it all out. How did the storm do so much damage to just this little space, but nothing around it was touched. As I was pondering this, Lee pulled up and said "I'm pretty sure it was a car." And he was right.
About 5 houses down from our house is a restaurant/bar. It is a pretty high class place. Lee and I went there for my birthday last year and it was definitely not cheap! So, apparently, last night some dude was slightly over served and veered off the road, went through our neighbors yard (as you can see here) and slammed into our other neighbors chicken shed.

Here is the view that the driver would have seen. Although, I'm guessing the guy was seeing double. He literally made it ONE TENTH of a mile before he wrecked. That's pretty bad!

I had texted Lee to say that the coop was damaged and he just wrote back "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO". Unfortunately, it is true.

Look at all this rubble. Geez o pete! The neighbor was out when I was checking things out and I asked about his chickens. He said that he had found two of them, but the other two were missing. He said that he expected they were at the bottom of this pile of stuff. Poor chickens!

This is from the inside of our coop. We have been storing our new kitchen cabinets in there and I think one of them may have been damaged. This drunk dude is going to pay for that!

We have pieced together the story from our various neighbors. Everyone wants to chat about it! Apparently, the guy lives about eight tenths of a mile up the road in his mom's house (cool). As I said above, he didn't make it one tenth of a mile before he was off the road. He went all the way through one yard before smacking into the chicken shed. After the wreck, he ran. On foot. So... He left his car. Our neighbor immediately called the sherriff and gave him the license plate number. They went down and picked him up at his mom's house. Lee has lots of plans and dreams for how much money we might get to fix the coop. I'm guessing we're not going to get much and we're going to have to fight for it. The good news is, half of Lee's family is in the insurance biz, so we do have some good advice.

This evening, I happened to glance out in our yard. I saw something move under one of our big bushes. A CHICKEN! And not just one, but BOTH chickens! They survived! Lee and I went out and tried to catch them to give them back to our neighbor. Those buggers are FAST! So, that was a failure. So, for now, we have two chickens running around our yard. The neighbor thinks they'll head back down to his yard tonight. I guess we'll see... If not, I guess we've got some new pets!

Who Dat? Drew Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

So, the other day my mom and grandma went grocery shopping and lo and behold... There is Drew Brees! I got a text from my mom saying "Drew Brees is at Meijer". Totally not fair since I was in Indianapolis at a lame-o teaching convention. I tried to get Lee to go out and get an autographed copy of his book, but he wasn't interested. Am I the only Brees fan around here? Geesh. My mom's friend did send me this picture though. He looks a lot smaller than he does during the football season. He better get back to bulking up. Football season is almost here (thank goodness!).

I'm a Rambler!

Not a Loyola Rambler like so many of my readers... I am an Attica Red Rambler. Attica Jr. Sr. High School is located in Attica, IN (duh). It is a small school that contains grades 7th-12th and still only has about 450 students (like 60 per grade). I will be teaching four Geometry classes and two remedial Algebra I classes. Our math department at Attica consists of three teachers and one of the other teachers is brand new out of college. We actually had a couple classes together at Purdue. The third teacher has been teaching for about 10 years, but only at Attica for the last 3. It is going to be rather nice having such a small, young department. Definitely gives us a lot of freedom! Attica is about 25 miles southwest of Lafayette, so the commute will only take about a 1/2 hour, which is awesome. The only thing I'm not super pumped about it the technology I have in my classroom... While I do have a few computers, the other technology consists of a tv from 1970 and an overhead projector. So... If anyone has any grants for technology that they know of... Feel free to send it my way!

I was so worried about finding a job in this horrible job market, I am so relieved... But, now I'm starting to worry about getting ready for the school year!!! August 16th will be here before we know it!

Lee, my mom, Taryn and I went over there today to arrange things. We rearranged the desks about 15 times and finally settled on my original design. I made some plans of things I want to bring (like some more shelves). And, I struck gold. I found all of the lesson plans for the teacher that had retired. Sweet! I definitely won't follow them to a tee, but it is definitely nice to have a starting point!

Taryn loved the classroom. She ran around and around the desks, threw some transparencies around, gnawed on a straight edge and danced on top of the desks. She also loved that the window went from ceiling to floor so she could look out. I'm sure she'll get many more chances to run around over the next year! It is just so strange to have my own classroom!!

I would be PO'd

If someone buried me without my full name and the description "his wife"... You know I would be haunting someone hard core.

*We saw this at a cemetary over in Benton County where Lee grew up.