Week O Fun 3rd Edition: Sauturday

Graduation Day!  

Graduation was nice, and short- as Neumann likes it!  It helps when there are only 42 names to read.

Ready and waiting!

She made it!

The Julia shirt was a hit!

Lynn always thinks of flowers

Lots of the friends

and family

Congratulations Julia!  We're so proud of you!

Awards Mass

The underclassmen ended the year with their academic awards Mass.  Philip is in the 2nd row, left.  He won Academic Conference awards for band, wrestling and football and the NCAA Academic All State in Wrestling.  All of them are for having a high GPA while participating in sports.

 

Week O Fun 3rd Edition: Friday

 Friday was Philip and Nicholas's last day of school.  

Done with 7th grade!

Finished with sophomore year!

No crepe paper trails this year but Julia and I did pick up treats for the last day of school.

Julia and I kept prepping for her party and we went to one party that evening.  It was a pretty easy day!

Catholic Schools Week

 Always my favorite week of the year!  We did a farm theme at St. John's this year.  I was the corn field.

I ordered corn balloons thinking they'd be may 10 or 12 inches.  Nope.  28 inches each.  And I had 20!  It was a bumper crop.  There were also clouds, crows and a Fr. Vandewalle scarecrow.  

Later I harvested the corn and sent one balloon home with each of my students!

I don't have any photos but we discovered how easy ChapGPT makes it to put Father in pictures.  My favorite was how Mrs. Trutna made him into a three piece hillbilly band.  He plays the banjo, washboard and a drum in it I think.  He was also a sheep, pig, cabbage, and bee in various parts of our farm.  Good thing he's such a good sport! Yay Catholic schools!

NHS

Julia was inducted into National Honor Society.

She read petitions.

Jeremy was out of town so it was just Julia and I.  There was lunch after the Mass and we debated who to sit with because it was set up for families but the Darts came over so we didn't end up alone.  It was just school lunch...but it was tator tot bake, my favorite!  I got to school after having the morning off, and my whole class, the lunch lady and our secretary were rather concerned I had missed tator tot bake until I assured them that's what was served for NHS!  But lucky me, they saved me some so I got to eat it for lunch the next day too.  Apparently I have made my love of that particular lunch very clear.  🤣

Here's all the inductees.

Great work Julia, we're proud of you!

Homecoming

Since the band is going to DC to march in the 250th anniversary parade they have a special little routine they do in the middle of parades.  They call it Cav Swag. They debuted it for the fair parade and pulled it back out for the Homecoming parade.

Nick got to go this year since he's in 7th grade.

Here's the annual senior photo.

 I guess I didn't get a picture of Philip except when he was marching.

Got Inspired

For my bulletin board early this year!

We got new laptops so I had to go drop my old one off in late July and I put up my hallway bulletin board while I was there.  That's pretty early for me!  I love the quote and how it turned out.  :) 
 

Mission Trip

Julia thoroughly enjoyed the Neumann mission trip to New Mexico for the third year.

This year they built an altar down the path and worked on an Native American reservation.

A nap after the week is always in order.

Philip decided to go on the Steubenville retreat this year.  He's planning on joining the mission trip next summer and Julia is already excited.

First/Last Day Splits

I was done May 7th!  Yay!!!

 

Nick was done with 6th grade on May 16th!  On to Neumann! (And after 17 years, no Vranas at St. Wenceslaus anymore!  I appreciate that they have done a good job educating my kids but I can't say that I'll miss having kids there...)

Philip and Julia finished up on the 21st.

Freshman year, check!

Ready for senior year to start!

It's the LAST Crepe Paper Trail!

And I am definitely not nostalgic about it.  I was over making these awhile ago but I made it to the end of Nick's St. Wenceslaus run.  Good job me.  :)

 It was SUPER windy and I couldn't find a roll of crepe paper so this one was actually made of wrapping ribbon.  More sturdy but harder to see in the pictures.

Guess Where I was

When the new pope was announced?  Sitting on the floor of my empty classroom organizing spelling cards.  That tracks for me.

Prayers for Pope Leo the 14th!

FFA

Philip had a good year of FFA.  He became a Greenhand and won Star Greenhand too.  He competed in saying the FFA pledge, which has a more official name than that but I've forgotten it.  He did a land judging competition too.  He wasn't able to get Intro to Ag in his class schedule so Mr. Heinemann okayed him starting with Plant/Animal science as a freshman. He must have learned a lot because he got 4th place in a horticulture competition which qualified him and his team for the State competition.  (It also means Julia asks him the name of every plant we see- he's started making them up.)  He didn't qualify for finals at State but it was a good experience.  He didn't apply to be an officer this year either but says he will next year.  Also I want to note that at the banquet while enjoying the way the officers recite their jobs and symbols I knew enough that I noticed when one of them accidentally said the wrong part- but to their credit they just kept going like nothing had happened!  My favorite part is the secretary who sits behind the ear of corn and sends correspondence "everywhere that corn grows."

We were teasing Philip he was trying to keep full days of school to a minimum in April.  He missed for track, state FFA, the orthodontist and district music.  He had a pretty good streak of missing class going there for awhile.  *Eye roll

Casino Prom

Prom's theme this year was casino.  It started because the seniors wanted a casino themed post prom and carried over to the dance.  I organized post prom Thomas's year and did not enjoy it so I opted to help with dinner this year.  Plus someone decided it was too expensive to go somewhere like The Mark or Urban Air every year so they are alternating with hosting post prom in St. Wence's gym.  I wanted nothing to do with figuring out a casino theme in St. Wenceslaus's gym, I am not that fun!  The kids seemed to enjoy it though.

Julia went with a simple black dress.

Michaela Quinn came over and fishtailed her hair, which was a good choice because it was windy!

The traditional mom looking frumpy with the dressed up prom goer.  Samuel and Thomas here.  Turns out although I'm pretty sure I took similar pictures with the older boys I didn't put them on the blog.

They sort of did the class picture thing.  They have 1/3 girls 2/3 boys and didn't seem to have that alpha girl to organize the picture taking.  Plus some of the girls decided it was too windy to bother going. 

 

Close One

So being the fun teacher that I am...with a class of 10 boys and 2 girls who need to be kept moving especially during grammar class which is towards the end of the day, I bought 100 ball pit balls.  I wrote words on them and then the kids separated the words into bins by parts of speech.  That part went pretty well with help from my very strict "you WILL get a demerit if you through the balls across the room" rule.  The close part was when three 6th graders were at my desk for help with their math.  One of my boys, who maybe doesn't have the best impulse control, started to mess with the ball pit balls that were in the bins on my desk.  "Hey!  Don't mess with my ba-"  I stopped short, looked at the two boys and one girl and assessed my choices.  Hope they didn't notice or own up to it.  I could tell the boys knew so I picked the latter.  "Turns out it's a little hard not to accidentally make inappropriate jokes about those," I said sheepishly.  They boys laughed and let me off the hook.  My sweet female friend expressed how confused she was about what was so funny (more than once) and to their credit neither one of the boys was willing to explain it to her...and neither was I.  Never mind Hadley, never mind.

 

Spring Blizzard 2025

We had a doozy of a blizzard and it's a long story...

Day T minus 1 Tuesday March 18th

School for tomorrow gets called off at 4pm.  It's 70 degrees and beautiful outside but all the weather people agree something is coming.  We're excited- we'll bake and catch up on movies and do all the fun snow day things!

Day Zero Wednesday March 19th

Around two or three in the morning the blizzard starts.  It's a heavy, wet spring snow with high powered wind.  We wake up to flickering electricity but go back to sleep.  When I finally get up at 8:00 I discover the power's been off for 45 minutes already.  No fun snow day things because they all need electricity.  Sad.  I actually ended up going back to bed because I didn't feel very good.  Jeremy and the kids kept busy.  They gathered up candles and flashlights, Jeremy started the gas fireplace and Philip and Nicholas built a battery fan to try to move the heat from it a little.  Did I mention Sam was home for spring break?  He worked on homework until the internet went down.  I suppose Julia read.  But for you city people, don't forget, in the country no electricity means the electric well doesn't work so we have no water. Normally we think ahead and fill up the bathtub or something but this time we didn't prepare at all.  Jeremy used the nozzle on the hot water heater to fill up some buckets so we could flush the toilet. We had milk and juice to drink. The blizzard cleared midafternoon and we could see we were on the higher end of the snow totals that were predicted.  We figured we could eat leftovers for lunch, use the gas-powered Blackstone for a steak dinner for Jeremy's birthday and then make it through the night if necessary.  Jeremy and the boys headed out to move snow around 4:00.  While they are moving snow Jeremy got a call from OPPD our electricity provider:  don't expect power until next Monday.

By this time the roads have been mostly cleared, the sun is back out and the temperature is rising but there were hundreds of electric poles that snapped in the wind.  Miles and miles and miles between us and where our power comes from.  We packed up the fridge food and clothes for five days (including uniforms just in case) and headed to Lincoln!  The trip went smoothly except that the bypass was snowed in at the curve.  Sam was driving Jeremy's truck (Jeremy drove his work truck because the van was blocked in by snow and Sam's car that didn't want to start) it was a good thing we were in the truck, because we ended up going over the median to turn around and go through town to 77 both of which were pretty much clear.  Jeremy didn't take the bypass because he was dropping off Larry the cat at Laniks so he could stay in their garage.  As we drove through town we could see the south part of Wahoo was starting to get power back.  They have their own plant that supplies the town and some of the surrounding rural area.  More about that later.

Day 1 with no power Thursday March 20th

School was cancelled because the gravel roads were still snowy and there wasn't any power pretty much anywhere in Saunders County except Wahoo.  So we had a nice time in Lincoln with my parents and Lynn stopped by for a little while too.  At 9:00 Jeremy told me he was going try to buy a generator at Harbor Freight before heading north (because Menards was already sold out of them).  I thought he was crazy and would just end up frustrated but he got one!   So he headed to Wahoo to hook it up and then tried to get to Fremont because he needed to get stuff out of Christensen Field where they were supposed to have had a high school ag day the day before.  He didn't make it to Fremont.  The roads were mostly clear of snow but there were downed power lines and jack-knifed semis all over so all his pathways were blocked.  He did stop at his cousin Michelle's near North Bend because it was on one of the routes he tried.  They didn't have power there either.  Once he got back to Wahoo our generator started house hopping.  It went to our friends in Colon, Father Fleck at the Colon rectory, Steve and Raleen's and Father Townsend in Mariana before making it back to our house on Saturday.  Everyone ran it long enough to get some heat in the house, get the fridge and freezer back down to temp and then passed it on.

That night we got the call that St. Wenceslaus and Neumann would have a late start at school but not St John's since there was still no power in Weston.  

Day 2 with no power Friday March 21st

With a 10 start we easily got to Wahoo in time for school.  I stopped at the coffee shop and then went to the library and joined the work party there.  Most of the county still didn't have power so there were people plugged in and working at all the tables.  I had conversations with a bunch of people I wouldn't normally see, replanned lessons, corrected papers and got everything ready for whenever St. John's was back in session.  I also made a stop at home for all the things we hadn't thought to pack for Lincoln.  I had lunch with Jeremy which was nice and then I brought Nick to the doctor because we discovered he had a patch of ringworm behind his ear.  I tried calling the wrestling mom nurse and getting the cream without a visit due to the whole no electricity and staying in Lincoln situation but he hadn't been to the doctor since 2023 so that was as no go.  We went.  (We were right, it was ringworm but he got an oral pill not the cream.)  I dropped him off at Lanik's to play with Larry a bit and took Julia to get her car from home before Nick and I headed back to Lincoln.  Julia was signed up to work the fish fry and had play practice.  It was a good thing she worked the Fish Fry.  They decided to offer free meals to anyone still without power- which at this point was still a large portion of rural Saunders County, so they needed lots of help.  She stayed at Jen and Mike's after practice so she wouldn't have to drive to my parents in the dark.  Where was Philip?  Good question.  He was at a track meet in Crete.  It was combined with the meet that was supposed to be the day before so bottom line, he would be back late.  We worked it out with the coach that he could drop off Philip at gas station where they would get off I80 to go to Wahoo.  Then Jeremy called while I was in the St. John's fish fry line with my parents, Sam and Nick.  He said he'd heard from the coach that the meet was going really long so it would be at least 10 before they'd be heading out.  Philip had finished his 58.7 second 400 meters so he was done.  (He came in 13th out of 43 competitors!  Great job Philip!  But seriously, he was there almost 8 hours and competed for less than a minute.  Track is dumb.)  So after I finished my fish I drove 40 minutes to pick him up.  I didn't have anything better to do anyway.

Day 3 with no power Saturday March 22nd

Jeremy and the boys went to Wahoo to clean up Steve and Raleen's yard, helped their neighbor and started on ours.  Julia came back to Lincoln from Jen and Mike's that morning.  We hung out with my parents, did a little shopping, went for a walk around the neighborhood, checked out a new bookstore in the strip mall by my parents and made a birthday cake for Jeremy.  Jeremy and the boys got back in time for a late dinner.

Day 4 with no power Sunday March 23rd

We had a leisurely morning and went to Mass at 9:00.  We planned to have a birthday dinner celebration for Jeremy before heading back to Wahoo.  We figured we could spend a powerless night at home so we didn't have to get up in time to make it from Lincoln for regular start school on Monday.  And then about 2:30 Jeremy got another call.  OPPD had restored power in our area...but please call if yours isn't working.  I managed to get ahold of a friend who was going to be driving past our house and could check for us.  

Running water means that after four and a half days the power was back on!! Yay!  We packed up and headed home.  Four days of no water makes for a messy house even when you haven't been there most of the time.  We promise not to take electricity for granted...for at least tomorrow.

Day 5-6 Monday & Tuesday March 24-25 Most of Saunders County has power...

But Weston still doesn't, so no school for me.  I caught up on some housework.  Late Tuesday evening Weston finally got power but they advised Father to wait until Thursday to have school so there'd be time to make sure everything was working properly.   Wahoo utilities had to replace dozens of poles and then pull wires the 10 miles from Wahoo so Weston was the last town in the county to have power restored.  There are still a few rural houses waiting.  They say it was a 500 year event.  5th largest power outage in OPPD history and largest ever in terms of damage.  So glad I was alive to experience it.  Meh.

Day 7 Wednesday today

I'm catching up on blogging before "normal" starts again tomorrow!

Side note:  Thomas was in Hastings for the blizzard.  They also got hit and lost power but thankfully they were back up by that evening (I believe) so his normal routine wasn't interrupted very much.

2nd half of Philip's Wrestling Season

So these pictures are in reverse.  End of season to the middle of the season.

This is how Philip celebrated the end of wrestling season.  A nice carb-filled lunch at Olive Garden on our way to watch State Wrestling!

After Christmas he wrestled 120 and did really well at that weight.  He had a great season for his freshman year!  He had over a 50% win record and did a lot of growing.  Not body growing- mind set growing, which is pretty much more important than any other kind of growing in wrestling.  He has always been our most emotion wrestler on the mat.  He made really great strides keeping it together on the mat no matter how the match was going.  I'm so proud of you Philip!

I must have taken pictures at districts on Jeremy's phone.  Philip wrestled really well but went out in the heartbreak round.  There were four ranked wrestlers in his bracket and top four go to State.  He was happy to get a couple mentions in wrestling commentaries about being in the running  in our district- even if they all said he'd have to pull off a big upset in order to make it.  

This was parents night at Neumann's dual with Public.  The dual only had three matches *insert eye roll here.  But Philip was one of the three and he won!  Neuman won the dual for the third year in a row I believe!

Somewhere along the way Philip introduced us to a part of wrestling we'd managed to avoid for over 10 year...cauliflower ear.  Stupid.  And yes, he was wearing hear gear.   He's not sure how it happened.  We'd noticed his swollen up ear but I didn't know anything about cauliflower ear so I figured the swelling would eventually go down.  Nope.  You have to get it drained.  The sooner the better.   Our small town doctor didn't want to do it because he had no experience with it.  So off the ENT Philip went.  Since we weren't too quick on the uptake it needed drained and scraped out and then he got one stitch to hold the hole the space where the blood had been together.  And no wrestling for a week when you feel fine but have this stupid ear you can't bonk.  He had to miss the Neumann tournament.  Oh well.

The ENT told Jeremy how to take out the stitch so that we wouldn't have to come back for a two minute procedure.  Imagining fussing and cussing in our bathroom as the stitch came out, I opted to ask our PA friend Laura to take it out instead.  So Philip had another first- stitch taken out in the bleachers at Neumann.  I'd like to say that was the last of the ear but it wasn't.  It immediately flared back up after his first match back.  By then it was time for districts so he just wrestled and then got it drained the following week.  No stitch this time because there's little danger of it getting hit while sprinting.  And now he has a lovely wrestling souvenir- a slightly deformed ear.  It's really not that noticeable.

He came in fourth at Arlington which I think was the first time he broke into medals!

Congratulations on a great freshman season Philip!