Valentines' Day Pasties!

Hello everyone!

This was a really good week for both of us. On Tuesday, we were delighted to find a new CG (community group) that we want to commit to. They have a wonderful mix of ages, several married couples with kids and some without, and a great leader for the discussion of the sermons. Hopefully, this will be another great CG for deepening friendships and supporting each other. To our surprise, we already knew a few people in the group when we arrived. Cameron and her husband, Tim, were in the group- Cameron leads junior high youth group with me and is the one having a baby (I wrote something about that last week). Also, we went to a work party last year at the Brinton's home to help out with chores while Sara was on extended bed rest in the hospital. Sara and Mark along with their 3 kids (Micah, Asher, and tiny Zephan) are also regulars. I, especially, mourned the loss of our old CG, and it means a lot to me to have found a new community to invest in.

At school, I've been getting quite a few scholarship applications turned in. It seems that the promise of a party is more motivation than getting college paid for! Oh middle schoolers! (I get asked MANY times a day when the party is going to be!) One of my kids was all excited this week, because I let him borrow my Lion King movie after he finished the book in our tutoring sessions. His eyes were so wide as he recounted the details of the movie to me for about 10 minutes! He even told me stories of when he lived in Africa and a hyena got in the house and was sleeping under the bed or he had to tiptoe past a sleeping lion alone at night to get back to his home. He's such a cute kid and many of his teachers have told me they are seeing improvement. He only had about 3 years of schooling in Africa and is now placed in 7th grade because of his age- poor kid!

Two of my other kids won a pizza party with me this week. I worked with both of them last semester for social studies and still tutor one this semester for writing class. These 8th graders have a particularly tough time in school and needed a little extra motivation. They are also the type to brag endlessly about getting something that others didn't get, so I told them I would never buy pizza again if any other student asked me why they didn't get pizza too. As we were walking down the hallway with the leftovers in a box, a student asked, "Hey, how come you got pizza?" Mine lied, "Oh...that's Angie's pizza. She was helping us with extra credit during lunch." Then, as we parted ways, he yelled, "Thanks Angie, for helping me with my homework" just to make sure he kept his end of the bargain. Not exactly what I meant...too funny! It's even more amusing if you know the two kids.

Finally, I went to help out at another Americorps school's math night. Three of my team members work full-time at this elementary school and asked for some more volunteers. Carnival-themed, the math night featured a dinner and tons of booths with math games to win prizes. I worked at the kindergarten table playing "racing bears" and giving out pencils and rulers right and left. There was also a face painting table that painted math symbols on the kids' faces- it's so cute to see pi on little cheeks running around and multiplication signs on foreheads and noses!

At my team meeting, we had a great training on classroom management skills, some of which I hope to be able to apply right away for my tutoring sessions. We also watched a PBS special on housing discrimination that explains a large portion of the current gap in net worth between white and colored families (8:1!!). Since it was the day before Valentines' Day, we received a valentine from our randomly selected "secret Valentine". I got a really sweet hand-painted card and list of 10 things Autumn likes about me. It was very touching. My Valentine liked the paper heart chain I made too.

On Friday, all the offices in Kayle's building were shuffled around. Since people are hired into various teams gradually, the offices used to be pretty scattered, even for people working on the same project. Now, Kayle's entire Visual Basic team has been relocated to the 6th floor, which is really nice. Since the town of Redmond requires buildings to be no more than 6 stories, Kayle's building is the tallest around and he has a great view over the treetops of the mountains. Meanwhile, during the move, Kayle's team enjoyed a morale afternoon of playing board games together. Apparently, he also got to come home that morning and sleep in after dropping me off. I guess he used some of that morning time to write my valentine too...

For Valentines' day, I got some amazing dark chocolate that I picked out during our grocery trip last week (and Kayle hid somewhere so I wouldn't eat it early). I also received a sweet letter written during the before-mentioned morning off. Kayle received a valentine that I made with markers and construction paper at school as well as a letter. His special request was that we make pasties for dinner. So I made pasties with little heart-shaped holes in the top. We might go out for dinner today or tomorrow, but, since we had a really nice dinner out last week (prime rib and halibut), we didn't feel we needed to go out again so soon.

Yesterday, we also went to Home Depot. Kayle was doing dishes on Thursday when he went to grab the handle of the kitchen faucet to spray off some plates. To his great surprise, the handle came right off in his hand with the detached hose left squirting all over the place. Kayle got pretty wet and scrambled to turn off the water. Then, when I came into the kitchen, he turned it on again and got me pretty wet as well. It was highly annoying to do dishes with one hand constantly on the snake-like hose, so I insisted we fix it ASAP. Only $20 later, I am happy and our kitchen is clean again!

This upcoming week, I have no school (mid-winter break) so I need to attend a week of team meetings downtown instead. I have been assigned to do a presentation on the history of race relations in my home state/community. I'll be working on that all day tomorrow (President's Day) if you want to call with any input. Apparently, we are also doing yoga and dance lessons for an hour or so every day. I'll let you know how THAT goes! This upcoming weekend is also the junior high retreat.

Finally, I am excited that Kayle showed me something called a feed reader that allows me to keep track of new posts on the blogs and sites I try to follow. You can get Google Reader yourself (it has a simple instructional video on the site) by going to Google and clicking on the "more" tab at the top. Yay! Now I don't have to try to check so many websites! All the new stuff is in one place...

We love you all so much and can't wait to see you again...
Angie and Kayle