Daisy, Zoie, Taylor, Dagan, Natalie, Elliana, and Kayleigh recently attended SOU’s Summer Academy program. Judging by the pictures, they seemed to have had a good time. Academy is a week-long college experience for high-achieving students.
All right all you Room 15 kids (past and present), it’s time to report in with your summer activities. What are you up to? Where have you been? Going to the Jackson County Fair? The lake? Taking tennis lessons? Email me a picture and a description about how you’re spending your summer and I’ll post it here on The Platy. To get us started, here’s a great pic of Kim and Abby hangin’ out at the beach. It looks like a lot more fun than spending time messing with video games or watching YouTube.
No doubt many of you have had a few spider dreams this summer. Meanwhile, Rayden has had to put up with the real thing! She reports the following: “Nightmare has been doing well. She was holed up the better part of summer vacation. She slowly stared uncovering her hole, and we thought we could finally see her. Come to find out, it wasn’t her! She had been molting. She was hiding a little further back. It looked as if there were two spiders with her molted “skin” in there. That evening she uncovered the entire opening to her cave, and finally emerged. Hungry and thirsty! We tried to remove her molted “skin” intact to save for the class to see, but we didn’t have luck on our side.” Click on the picture of Nightmare top watch a quick video of her waving and dancing!
It turns out mermaids do exist! During our Hawaii trip, this one washed ashore in the lagoon below our lanai. She rested there for awhile and then disappeared, presumably back into the sea. While on the Big Island we also went on a jungle hike to a secret waterfall with our friend Fabio (click here to see the short video), swam with sea turtles (click here), looked into a fiery volcano, and met Mr. and Mrs. Hadley for breakfast. What a great trip!
Here’s our first “Summer Activity” post. This one is from Jazmin and her family during a visit to the Crater Rock Museum. In this picture she’s standing next to a beautiful purple crystal that looks as tall as she is! She also saw an amazing dino head.
If you’d like to share your summer events on The Platy, send me a picture and a paragraph describing where you’re at and what you’re doing to mack.lewis@district6.org. Happy summer!
What a pleasure it was to host a little homecoming for former SVE Room 3 kid, Shannon Mapes! Thank you Dallin, Daniel, Baylee, Kristin, Anna, Sierra, Mariah, Cameron, and Connor for visiting with us. It was great to see every one of you!
I hope all my Room 15 Rotters are having a great summer. Perhaps we’ll bump into one another on the 4th of July! But what else are you doing this summer? Recent Room 15 kids still have access to your webpages, so you can post photos and tell us about your vacation activities. I’ll try to do the same here. My most recent event was a trip to Portland to see our 13 week old granddaughter, Lilla. (You can see a quick video of Lilla by clicking on the picture.) While in Portland we also did some bicycling on the Eastside Esplanade and at Champoeg State Park, bought some books at Powell’s Books, and had some nice meals out with family. How about you? What are you doing this summer? Let me know, kids.
I promised I would keep all our Room 15 Rotters apprised of my summer travel. Sadly, there’s been very little so far, but Mrs. Lewis and I did manage to get away to Central Oregon for a couple nights last week. Because Mrs. Lewis is an aspiring art quilter, we visited the quilt show in Sisters. I can tell you all about piecing and stitching techniques, just as she can tell you about relief pitchers and dropped third strikes! After viewing a gazillion quilts, we went to the Summerfest in downtown Bend, strolled along the waterfront in the Old Mill District, and watched marmots munch nearby. The next day we moved on to the headwaters of the Wood River near Fort Klamath, camping at Jackson Kimble State Park. The source of the Wood River is Crater Lake. Crystal clear water seeps out of the side of the mountain just below the National Park. Note how the water appears aquamarine, just as it does along the edges of Crater Lake.
So that’s one of my summer events, what about you kids? Will we see anything posted on your pages?
In other news, our own Adrienne Birmingham is appearing in The Secret Garden at South Medford High School this weekend. I’m still waiting for Ryan Kulpa to contact me to collect a special classroom checkbook reward. And I need a couple more kids to commit to the artichoke fiesta. Any former Room 15 Rotters out there?
It seems to me a number of Room 15ers were interested in eating or trying artichoke. Well, the chokes are ready to go, so who’s in? Let me know via e-mail at mack.lewis@ district6.org.
Room 15 Rotters have been complaining that there hasn’t been any new Platypus updates lately, so here goes. Before we all went off to vacation, we talked about posting our summer events. Here are mine so far.
Since “vacation” started I have had 14 hours of Teacher Union meetings (a meeting each day for the first six days of summer), and I’ve taken care of a bunch of household chores I never had time for during the school year (finished installing our new back door, took a bunch of aluminum to the recycler, cleaned the greenhouse, collected bids for a new roof I can’t afford, “fixed” the lawnmower, vacuumed the pool, trimmed trees, and took some stuff to Goodwill). I’ve also worked on a new play for Scholastic’s Scope magazine (about child labor in the early 1900’s) and tried to get caught up on my Spanish lessons (Y tu?). Not much of a summer so far, huh? Between meetings and chores, we have managed a few moments of fun: we spent a night car-camping at Farewell Bend, went to my former student Olivia’s surprise engagement party (!), took in a CP American Legion baseball game (go Comets), met my first-ever student, Amee, for dinner at Mazatlan (right after her National Guard drill), and cooked an Italian dinner (provided by the Ryersons) with my oldest son and his girlfriend (hence the picture of the ground beef in the skillet and the water on to boil). I also managed to send a real (and complete) text message on my Tracfone. HBTA! (which means “How ’bout them apples?” in textspeak).
I’ve also noticed that only a couple kids have posted on their webpages. Good job Jocelyn for your Top Ten lists. And good job Makaila for telling us about Seattle. I want to see more such posts. (Kulpa, if you’re reading this, I have something special for you.) And now that I’m almost caught up, I hope to provide a few posts of my own about summer adventure, so stay tuned!