The Semester Has Ended!! YaHoo!!

Dylan loooooves chocolate!

This is the way Chris eats much of the time - leaning on his hand.

The boys are ready for bed. This is one of the few times I've actually caught them standing together long enough to snap a picture.

The week is coming to an end and with it the semester. WWWHHHOOOHHHOOO!!! Until near the end of the semester, it probably was the best semester I've had since I began teaching - some 30 years ago. This was one special group of students. I got tons of emails thanking me and telling me what a great teacher I was and how much they had learned. One said I was the best teacher she had since the 10th grade. She is married and has two children. They actually restored my zest for teaching and validated that this is my calling.

The snag that occurred near the end was when I was called in and told that I would have to teach the pediatrics part of the maternal-child course from now on. AARRGGHH!! The amount of pediatrics background I have.....well, you could put in your eye, and you wouldn't feel it!! The last time I had anything to do with pediatrics was before I graduated in 1968! I've never worked in pediatrics, never wanted to work in pediatrics, and don't want to have anything to do with it now. The same thing happened to my counter-part on the other campus. She doesn't have anymore peds experience than I do. What are they thinking?? Needless to say, we are MOST upset. It will nearly double my class hours load. We protested quite loudly, but in the end we lost. After finally starting to crawl out of the big-black-hole-of-the-curriculum-change I was shoved into last January, I'm now back in it. Oh, retirement....where aren't thou???? How I wish I could just walk away from it all. I did hand them my official notice that I don't plan to sign my summer contract. Full-time faculty are not required to work in the summer. Since Jeannine's baby is due in July, I want to be free to spend some time in Montana and not have to worry about juggling classes around my time off. You only get 5 personal days off each year - there is no way to schedule a baby around that!! I hate teaching summers anyway. You have to teach the same amount of material in 5 weeks less - and you get paid less!! That's no deal in my books.

I just got my treadmill put together this afternoon and took my first trip on it. Works great! Last night I tried to balance the monster on its side and attach this heavy end-piece with 4 large bolts. It was impossible without 6 hands! I finally gave up. Today Mark helped me get that end-piece on before he went golfing. He said I never would have got that on by myself. The rest was a piece of cake. Now I can walk and watch QVC all at the same time! Since it is in my quilt studio, I can dream about all my quilt projects. Right now the quilting has gone by the way-side with the grandsons here, so quilt-dreaming is as close as I can come to it for awhile.