My Story Board

Friday October 17, 2003 - That's the date of my first Chemotherapy treatment. I had been diagnosed with cancer the month before on 9/11/03. One of "my girls", Amanda Ward (I called her Adub), was the leading lady in the play at the Laguna Playhouse and we had been planning to go to her "Opening Night" since the beginning of the school year. I had the chemo, was feeling really bad but was still able to make to the show that night!! She ws AWESOME!!

Yearbook has always been one of those " wait... wait... wait... OMG!! It's late!! It has to be to the printer in the morning".... well it was, only after the yearbook staff stayed 'till about midnight and I finished it off by pulling "an all nighter", (you'll find out about those when you study for college finals!). I dropped it off to the printer by 7:00 AM and was back to school ( in the same clothes from the day before) before school started. "Stay Awake" pills kept me going that night and through the day. This was before I found out about Red Bull.

A surprise birthday party for me on my 50th birthday. How sweet! Noise makers, party hats, plenty of cake and ice creamand tons of presents!! You guys are awesome---- what would I do without you? I don't want to find out.

More 50th birthday stuff. Also along w/ all the food, etc., the kids had snuck into my room before school started and massively decorated my room with ribbons, stringers tons of ballons. They stayed up for about a week!!

At the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, the church, specifically Executive Pastor Darren Smith and Church employee (also a former student mom) Mary Okida had these red rubber CHI bracelets made up for every student at the elementary and junior high school. What an honor and priviledge it is to work with such great people. By the way they purchased more for the kids this school year also. What's great to see, is that the kids where them all the time. Some where them all day and all night, never taking them off. It helps remind them to have CHI all the time!!

Speaking about the great kids at this school, I went on the Washington DC trip over the 2006-2007 school year. That was a great class of kids and we had a great time. While standing in line to get into the Capitol, these "great and wonderful" 8th graders snuck up behind me while a couple of them distracted me and stuck about 20 of these bumper stickers all over my back and "butt"!! The stickers were there for about a half hour until some stranger helped me out. Did I mention what "wonderful and nice and "full of CHI" these toads are?

"Get out a pen, pencil, crayon or piece of chalk. Something to write with!" I say it to the kids ALL the time when it's time to start taking notes, etc. One student, Clint Garvin, was the first to actually take out a piece of chalk!!. He gave it to me as a "keepsake" after class!

The "Fun Stuff" page on my website use to have a game called "clicks" it tested how fast you could click your mouse on the squares. Most of the kids could click 25-30 squares, they would printout their results and we would give the high score a $1.00 credit at the snack bar. Someone ( I won't mention any names, use Photoshop to place check marks into all of the boxes! Then printed out the results. OMG! here clicked 100 boxes, a new world record. CHI finally kicked in and he told me what had happened. I gave him the snack bar credit anyway!! Great Job!

Remember me telling you about my great 50th birthday surprise party? Well one of my presents was a huge mylar helium filled ballon with "Happy Birthday" on it. It was still full and floating in the classroom over a month later. Then .... along comes Stefan Juneaus and his infamous paper clip. He swung it, hit the ballon and popped it! What a miserable toad! " Oh my!, I didn't mean to do it!" he said, with the paper clip bent open w/ the sharp end exposed in his hand!