Sorry it has been two weeks since I've put up a blog post. May has traditionally been an extremely busy month for us and the first two weeks totally got away from me. Just to catch up, here's where I left off after my fun Saturday early in the month... Mom retired after 40(!!!) years at her school. She began as a teacher's aide when we were in school and continued that while returning to college when we were old enough to manage while she drove 90 miles one way to class graduating in the spring of 1994. She left for a couple of years returning as the foodservice director, community ed director, MARSS (student reporting) coordinator and a whole host of other things. They didn't even get one person to replace her work...it's such a huge job that they broke it up into several. My kids always commented that "the kids at Grandma's school are lucky to have her. She cares a lot about them." The superintendent's remarks at the party reflected that, too, that she always made sure all the kids got a good meal daily. Don't ask her about going to families' homes to gather their meal applications...that wasn't her best plan ever!!! Here we are at her party. She had the biggest family photo of the night. Even in MN, we generally don't look for weather reports to go out driving in May; however, when I headed out for the party, there was already some freezing rain on my windshield. We checked the warnings before leaving for home and saw Winter Weather Warnings for our county for up to 4 inches of snow. I was following my son who was pulling a boat trailer. We saw several snow plows out working and one car in the ditch. It was slow going and visibility wasn't optimal, but we made it back safely. Our area got several inches of snow on May 8. Here is what was left AFTER school the next day at my school. I would hope for faster melting at this time of year. Friday was the busiest day of my work year. We throw open the doors and invite all Grandparents/Special Friends to join their little Huskers for lunch. Going from about 900 lunches to north of 1600 takes a good deal of planning and preparation as well as a lot of legwork that day. We changed up the menu a little this year which made some things easier, but also adds a huge wrinkle of worry about estimating amounts, choices, etc. Here are part of the buns that were freshly baked that day and the enormous pile of bean cans. Kids and grandparent's love Bush's baked beans! We followed up the 1600 lunches with a trip to St.Thomas to watch the MIAC Track Meet which was Haley's last track meet of her college career. She had a great experience as a Blazer/Bennie athlete (they changed names this year). My mom, the new retiree, came down for Saturday's meet. Since the meet and graduation were the same day, St.Ben's has a couple of cool traditions to make it up to the student athletes. I believe the students and for sure the parents liked it even better than the big ceremony. The weekend prior, we were invited to a short presentation of their diplomas and dinner including the president of the college, athletic director, alumnae relations, an academic dean, their coach, the graduating athletes and their families. It was special although more informal and highly personal. On the actual graduation day, one of the CSB coaches gets access to the track press box and fires up Pomp and Circumstance over the loud speaker and introduces the grads while the team forms a tunnel for them to process through. Of course, Charlie joined in as he's a special Bennie fan. Then there was time for more photo with friends and family. Three of this year's grads were daughters of other CSB alums. And more fun photos... Charlie soaked up as much attention as possible, which was a LOT. His hat earned him a ton of photo opps...we had people stopping to ask if they could take his picture. If a tired dog is a happy dog, this dog was ecstatic. He was especially fond of one of Haley's friends and lab partners. They all kept the sun out of their eyes with their hats. Morgan set not one, but two, new school records last weekend as her final races at CSB. Congratualtions! Mom and I followed up the busy day at the track with heading back to Minneapolis on Sunday for a play. It was great to spend Mother's Day with my mom as all the guys were out fishing. The play was called "The Play that went Wrong" and it certainly did. The plot was that the actors were a struggling acting group that had multiple mishaps while trying to perform a play. We laughed from start to finish.
Stephanie and her husband were in Fargo this weekend for the Fargo Marathon. I have only texted with them so far and I did follow them on Live Tracking, so I know they had super strong races and can't wait for them to share more! While they were running, I was putting in a 13-miler. Since Deb has been sidelined, I have found that she is doing these long runs in her head while I do them on the street and asks about my routes. Well, this week, I headed down the Mississippi River toward St.Cloud and enjoyed a lap of Whitney Park before crossing over into Sauk Rapids and along Benton Drive before dipping down into the park to check out a porta potty. Deb hates that next stretch of road, so let's jump ahead to crossing the Mississippi back into Sartell near the old paper mill. At that point, I needed to add on a bit so I went up to the police station and took a right by a bar that used to be a Casey's gas station. I noticed 11 cars leftover from the night before so apparently Winner's Bar was a winner Friday night and they needed a lot of sober drivers! From there I headed back north along the river and back home. It was a bit windy but didn't rain, so it was a good run. There are only two weeks of school to go and both the kids and the staff are ready! This week the foodservice staff had the yearbook dedicated to us. What an honor that the kids recognize the contribution a healthy meal and a warm welcome make to their school experience. Here is our yearbook page. Keep on running and I won't let two weeks go by again without a post! Missee
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMissee and Stephanie are two Minnesota sisters and moms who love to run. We are not experts in running, parenting or anything else, but we do have years of experiences that may be helpful or entertaining to others. Archives
May 2020
Categories |