Horses at Ninety Degrees

Memorial Day was HOT - 90 degrees before noon! But many of my kids and grandchildren wanted to go out to Prophetstown to see the farm animals, so we headed out into the heat - after all, I am always happy to be around horses myself or to indoctrinate introduce a new generation to them!

 My sister, Leslie, is the farm's director, and she works to find rescue animals who can find a new purpose by becoming farm animals for visitors to see.

This little mare arrived last year from Indiana Horse Rescue, the same place I got Abby. She is eighteen years old and loves her new life.

 What a mane! (Abby's pasture mates chew hers off; it's nice to see a full mane on this girl!)

 The big barn is Amish built and absolutely beautiful. I could spend hours in here!

Generally the stalls are empty as the farm animals can come in and out at will. But when an exhibit is going on, like the parade of breeds, or the draft horses come in for the corn harvest, they are temporarily housed here.

Trinity (our horsey granddaughter from Colorado) holding Cambria with Great Aunt Leslie in the back, and Julie, Titan, Ian (who had gotten grumpy in the heat), Mila, and Kate.

After the barn visit, we cooled off in the 1920s farmhouse (it may be almost 100 years old, but it is air conditioned, thank goodness!) and then headed home for lunch.

If you are ever in west central Indiana, I highly suggest a visit to Prophetstown State Park and a visit to The Farm at Prophetstown!

A Sobering Memory

I have many happy memories from my twenty years of teaching, but there are a few that wipe the smile right off my face and make me realize how fragile life can be. One of those memories is wrapped around this student.

TM and me sharing a laugh yesterday on the last day of school.

TM's mother posted this comment with this picture on our classroom Facebook page last night, and immediately my mind went back to the events of just a year go and how very close TM came to losing his life.

TM had procrastinated some homework - big time. During the school day, I had sat down with him, gone over what was missing, and been quite stern about the importance of education and learning to be responsible, insisting that he complete his missing work and hand it in the next morning. I also emailed his mother and explained the problem, asking her to remind him about it.

That evening, a corvette driving too fast crashed through the wall of TM's home and into his living room, through the very wall where TM and his brother had their game system set up and where they played together each evening. (Go here to read a news account about the accident.) Had TM followed his usual after-dinner routine, he and his brother would have been in the path of the car and killed. The speed of the car was so great that the car went completely into the home, almost disappearing from outside view.

Why were the boys not there? Because TM was working on his procrastinated homework and sitting in a chair next to his mom (who was pinned by the car on the couch and hurt) instead of sitting in the car's path playing games like usual.

Amy has said ever since that my insistence that her son complete his homework saved his life. Perhaps it is better to say that TM's procrastination started a chain of events that led to him being out of harm's way.  Regardless, I am grateful that TM and his brother are alive, and I get chills every time I think of how close he and his brother came to losing their lives.

A Unique Gift

I've been teaching for twenty years and have received many gifts from students during that time.

I have never had a student who could make balloon creations and whose gift was a horse he had made out out of balloon, though!

He also made me an origami horse, too!

Horseyreader Visits

Horseyreader is the name my granddaughter, Trinity, uses on social media - it reflects her love of horses and reading. She is in town this weekend for my retirement party, so of course she and I headed out to the barn!

 As always, Abby came up from out in the pasture when she saw me approach. Trinity loved hearing Abby's soft nickers to us as she came.

 We brought Abby's favorite  treat - peppermints!

 I love the contented look on both girls' faces.

I have to work Tuesday and Wednesday, and then my career is over and I will have loads of time to spend with this girl.

Six Classics Presentations!

My students must do four presentations on classic books they have read during their two years with me. Those who really fall in love with classic literature sometimes ask to do an extra presentation (which always amazes me as the paper and project take a good deal of work.)

This girl chose to do TWO extras, one during her fourth grade year, and then the other this year. And it just so happened that this year's extra classic presentation was my last ever since I am retiring.

Her choice? Walter Farley's The Black Stallion.

She even dressed for the occasion.

 And made a really cool movie as her project.

It was a claymation/stop motion movie complete with sound and a blooper reel!

The classics presentations are my absolute favorite thing to do with my kids and is what I will miss most during retirement - having the kids discover that classics are not just "dusty old books on your grandmother's bookshelves" (as they are fond of saying in jest.)

To have my last classic be a student's second extra presentation was just the best for me. The fact that is was a horsey book was the cherry on top.

Now There are Two

It took a while, but now there are two curios full of horses in my home!

These are the pieces that I decided would be moved to the upstairs curio. I was looking for bigger, space-grabbing models. (Although the cats ended up remaining downstairs as did the WEG Esprit and WEG Big Ben.)

 There's now some empty space on the bottom of the first curio.

Craig got the new one anchored to the wall and I began carrying clinkies upstairs and putting them into their new residence.

I have three pieces on the way from Clinky Mayhem that will reside in here as well. I can't wait to add them!

Who Goes Where?

Craig has been hard at work upstairs anchoring my new curio to the wall in one of the spare bedrooms. It's a necessary task - we have 14 grandchildren, eight of whom are younger than five, and all of whom are coming Memorial Day weekend to celebrate my retirement.  The new curio is tippy, and it needs to be secured to the wall pronto before the kids arrive.

While he is working on that, I am pulling pieces out of my other curio cabinet, trying to figure out which one to put where. It's an enjoyable task.

 There are breakables everywhere - on the love seat,

 the dining room table,

 a nearby windowsill,

and even on the floor! (That very broken and glued brown MIJ clinky was my very first piece - given to me by Santa in 1963.)

I had so many pieces crowded into my first curio, that these represent only two shelves' worth!

I think I will put my "clunky clinkies" (those pieces that have heavy features like Metlox, Freeman-Leidy, etc.) upstairs along with larger, non Breyer chinas (Lakeshores, Chevals, Lenoxes, and some resins.)

I will post pictures as soon as I get everything sorted out!

A Surprise Party

The end of the school year is always fast paced - there is so much to do as you wind down an academic year. I am learning that, if you add in retirement to the mix, things become ever more hectic.

But those add-ins are often poignant and touching, like the surprise party a bunch of my former students threw for me on Thursday. I was bringing my class back from a chess meet with another class...

 ... and was stunned to discover that the classroom was already full.

I knew these people!

They were former students from my twelve years as a Hershey teacher!

Kathleen handed me a container of her mother's famous "Loftus Fudge"...

 ... and then gave me a big hug.

I was so stunned, I did not know what to do or say. 

There were former students everywhere, mingling with my current class!

There were so many people, I did not know who to talk to first.

So I just jumped in!

So many people who have been dear to me over the years.

After mingling for a while and for old time's sake, my former students wanted to go out to the playground (even though some of them are college students!)

 This is one of my favorite photos from the day.

While we were outside, we took photos by the year the students were with me.

 Front row: Katy, Albert, Sophie, and Jessica. Back row: Lilli and Angelina. They are finishing their sophomore year at Harrison.

 Nikki, Lauren , and 6'3" Zach  (when did he get so tall?!) are freshmen in high school.

Ben and Meredith, who were in the 2/3 and 4/5 class with me and so were with me three years, just finished their freshman year at Purdue.

 Harrison seniors Emily, Kathleen, twins Grace and Ellen, and Jon.

Chris, Daniel, Jay, and Erin are juniors in high school. (Jay just flew out to Los Angeles and met with a producer and recorded some demo records after his YouTube channel was discovered by an agent. He was also invited to appear on The Voice but declined. His YouTube channel can be found here; he has over 53,000 subscribers! Note to self: get his autograph while I can!)

Caroline and Madeline will be juniors at Purdue this August and were part of the original 2/3 and 4/5 class and thus with me for three years.

The party wound down after two and a half hours.

Such a lovely gesture from these folks, and so meaningful to me to see them all again. I am incredibly blessed to have been their teacher.

New Curio

Last Thursday I had an opportunity to stop by a large antique market and found this:

I had been looking for a second curio for quite a while, so I brought Craig to see it on Saturday to get his opinion. He agreed that it would look nice in our home and did some measurements to see if it would fit in the place I had in mind.

It would so last night our son Curt helped us load it up and bring it home. Pictures soon as I get the shelves back in and begin filling it with horses!

Glad I Didn't Trash Him!

Many years ago, I bought United Design's Classic Critters Friesian in Harness, a piece that is larger than their others and was pretty costly (at least, when it comes to my budget.)

It is such a pretty piece! And very, very heavy.

The logo/documentation on the box.

I had him out on display until we moved back to Indiana in 2006.  I packed him up in his original box and stored him in my hobby closet.

Three years ago I was going through the boxes that I had stored, and pulled him out to check on him. To my dismay, he was badly damaged.

I could not believe that that had happened - what a bizarre and unusual way for a piece to break! It looked as though something had been set on him or put pressure on that spot over time. Except that... nothing had. He was in his box with nothing pressing on his back.

I nearly tossed him out then and there, but then decided to wait and see if he could be fixed.

Enter my friend Kay Schlumpf. She was having several of her models repaired by DeeAnn Kjelshus and recommended that I let DeeAnn take a look at it and see if a repair might be possible.

We met up at a Great Lakes Congress show, and I had her take a look. DeeAnn said that this kind of fracture sometimes happens if a pocket of resin remains soft while the rest of the resin hardens. She said that she would have to drill out the damaged area and refill it, then paint it, but that it could be repaired. I sent the piece home with her and crossed my fingers.

DeeAnn sent me pictures of the finished repair work this morning.

 It looks terrific!

 I am so glad that I did not chuck this piece into the garbage but gave it a second chance instead. (In fact, that is now its name - Second Chance.)

Thanks, DeeAnn, and to Kay for the recommendation as well!