Versatile Blogger Award

Thanks so much to Becky of Hummingbird Hollow who awarded me: 

It has only three rules:

1.  Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post

2.  Share seven things about yourself.

3.  Pass the award onto seven recently discovered and deserving blogs.

Seven things about myself (choosing random/unusual things for interests' sake):

1. I lived in Kodiak, Alaska for a few years as a young child. We lived right on the water in a duplex and huge fishing boat buoys would float up onto the beach. We hung one from a tree to make a cool swing!

2. I was bitten by a monkey once. Yes, and it was at the dentist's office! This children's dentist had a monkey named Rudy in a cage in his office. The technicians would bring Rudy out sometimes. Once, when one of my brothers was in the chair getting a filling, Rudy was on the counter next to him and I was in there watching, Rudy leapt and hung from my wrist with his teeth clenched into my skin. It didn't hurt that badly but of course scared the bejeezus out of me. 

So many parts of that story sound absurd: monkey in office, monkey on the dental counter hanging out, sister in brother's room while filling being administered... none of that would happen now! Years later, that dentist was in the news-the animal rights people were outside the office protesting. Not sure how that story ended... he really was a good dentist though, as crazy as all that sounds! :)

3. I never went to environmental camp as a child. At Ardmore Elementary, where I went to school from 3rd through 5th grade, they went in 6th grade. At Bennett Elementary, where I went for 6th grade, they went in the 5th. Luckily, I teach 5th and 6th grades and have gone to environmental camp with my students countless times which more than made up for my missing out as a young 'un! 

4. I went to college in Bellingham, WA and ended up staying there for 10 years before I went to student teach down south (and stayed!). While in Bellingham, I worked in most every department of the YMCA. I started in the daycare and eventually ran the morning daycare program. I took 5th-8th grade kids on caravan camping trips to Yellowstone, San Juan Islands, Grand Canyon, Olympic Peninsula and maybe a few other places. I worked at the front desk and helped on "Teens Nights In" and taught aerobics: bench step, low impact, kid aerobics and subbed for all other classes there. 

5. I have curly hair. When I was a pre pubescent (or maybe pubescent), I followed some great directions from Seventeen magazine to create the highly desired smooth, silky, STRAIGHT hair: before bed, wrap all hair against head and secure with bobby pins (imagine the word "swoosh" as you do this). In the middle of the night, get up and take out bobby pins, swoosh the hair around the head in the opposite direction and resecure with pins. Sleep. Get up, remove pins and enjoy that hair all day long (until a good fog or sweat when it would FRIZZ out again!). I couldn't stop touching my smoothy hair.

6. As a teen, I worked at Kidd Valley Hamburgers. My boss used the following hiring procedure: "Hey, Heidi! Got any friends that wanna work?".. Me: "yes, my friend (insert friends' names: Colleen, Lisa, Kelly, Kimi, Joni, Linda, Deb, Hope, Sue...not sure who recommended who but we were all there...). He would reply, as he threw an apron at me to give to whichever friend, "If they smile a lot and are not busy on Tuesday, bring em in!". This resulted in a HUGE group of friends working the night shifts. By the end of this period of our lives, most of us drove VW bugs, had invented different types of burgers during the slow times and had a LOT of fun together dancing in the back room of the grease pit restaurant to Michael Jackson songs!

7. My friend Deb and I have, over the years (beginning in college), found humor in saying the same word repeatedly to see how weird it can sound. This probably began when we would stay up all night studying for finals and we would be slightly rummy. I remember that one of my first words that I thought sounded funny was "faucet". Say it about 15 times right now. I will wait for you to come back. Come on-do it! :) See? Deb brought up another classic one: "moist cake". Saay iitt.... slowly and with enunciation....seeeee? So, as a teacher years later, I have told different classes of mine about this and I get a periodic student who is on board and thinks of good words. My daughter is way into it and started young-we text Deb words that we think of to this day. Julia has always loved the word "lipstick" and most words with an "cks" sound in them... I get amazed when I stop and think about how we put sounds together to communicate and that it works. And that there are so many different languages with different ways to combine sounds to communicate. Who is with me? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?.....  Whoa..deep thoughts. 

Okay... now 7 deserving bloggers for this award:

1. Mrs. Tjaden-Welcome to Room 309-Classroom blog-she has tons of personality and keeps up her blog consistently!! It is FUN to read this blog...

2. Grace Loves the Beatles: Grace is YOUNG and brilliant. Seriously. I send potential blogger students to her site for inspiration and to see how it is supposed to be done! I have known her father since the day he was born-his fam was my fam's "BFF" as I grew up so it is cool to see the next generation be so cool and impressive. Enough gushing for the love of god! :)

3. Life's Rich Pattern (Annabella). Annabella is one of the first people to participate in my photography challenge. She does amazing things in the areas of quilting, photography and WRITING. You can feel her smart and caring energy through her posts. 

4. Angela at Abounding Adventures: She is my teammate at school and my friend. Her blog  is about their new adventures as parents. She is witty and creative. 

5. Mama Kat-Mama's Losin' It!. She makes me laugh SO HARD. It looks like she had a quest to get on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and I think that she should revive it or get a campaign going. She does a Writer's Workshop with prompts for people to write about. Go to this site and you will laugh, I promise.

6. Ladybug Cards: Jen is one of our "office ladies" and a super creative woman. Look at her site and see what can be done with scrapbooking supplies. I have gone to a few of their card parties where everyone brings supplies to make a card. You leave with a whole bunch of cute, handmade cards for all kinds of occasions. Check it out!

7. Lori's Life Lessons-Lori was a teacher at our school until this year when she went to work for some other women who used to be teachers in our district. They are famous and Lori will be soon too I am sure! She writes about what she learns in her life that can be applied in the classroom and she is a hoot-she used to write the minutes to our staff meetings and even they were hilarious.