five years later

Convocation15. Photo by Fresno Unified School District.

If you read my Facebook page then you know that today is the gathering for all 10,000+ Fresno Unified School District employees to kick off the 2015-2016 school year. The district runs buses for all of the employees from the various high schools so no one has to drive their car to the university where this big event takes place. Each high school and its feeder schools has a specially designed t-shirt in the high school’s colors. The areas sit together and cheer together. It’s a big rah-rah-rah convention of school employees. There are some motivational speakers and some student testimonials. All to get the staff inspired to give it their best for the next 10 months.  Students AND colleagues are counting on you. I am thankful I don’t have to attend this big pep rally as I don’t do well in such crowds of cheering people. I was actually invited to this year’s hoopla by the teachers at the elementary school where I am chaplain.

Knowing that the teachers would be back to work on Monday this week, I put on my chaplain shirt, picked up pastries for the office staff, and drove out to the school. I picked up the school calendar, the new bell schedule, and met with the principal and the four first grade teachers. We were all pleased that we would be working together again this year. Both the principal and the teachers mentioned an inservice they were attending the next day on restorative justice. This discipline strategy has been incorporated at the high school levels and would now be implemented in 23 of the elementary schools. They all thought I should attend so I did.

It was very informative and I enjoyed getting to spend the day with the teachers of the school where I will again be the chaplain. Many of the upper grade teachers had never met me or knew much about what I did. I went to lunch with three of the teachers and we got to know one another better. They invited me to join them at today’s convocation. NO. That would be where I would draw the line. I left my teaching career in that big school district and had no intentions of going to this event again.

Five years ago, when I first retired, I had plans to move to San Francisco and get a marketing job with a non-profit. I wanted to be a big-city girl doing good work with good people for the good of the community. Although we found a place to live and had the best time for 15 months, no one wanted to hire me. I think that all they saw was a retired school teacher, not someone with social media smarts and marketing savvy. So, I came back to Fresno.

Here I am now, doing good work with good people for the good of the community, yet within the same school district I was so anxious to flee five years ago. God has a sense of humor as this is not something I would have ever planned to do. I don’t get paid, but my teacher’s pension allows me the ability to do the work and live pretty well. I am grateful that our house and cars are paid for. I have learned to not make plans but rather let God do the planning. Five years from now? Who knows.

Our granddaughter started first grade today.

In five years, she will be starting sixth grade. I just want to be around to see it.

The stars don’t always align

My goal for Tuesday was to get Leeya’s sixth year birthday picture book completed and ready for submission. To channel all of my yearbook layout skills, I wore my 2009 yearbook staff t-shirt.

Tuesday was the best day to do this work as Terry would be gone all day so I wouldn’t have to share bandwidth with him. Our Internet connection is pretty slow and will often drop so I need to align all the stars to get the best results. I had collected in a file on my computer all of the photos I wanted to use to tell the story for the past year. Shutterfly had sent me a discount code for the book. One would think it would be “all systems a ‘go’.”

It didn’t “go” that way, as you probably guessed. I worked for a couple of hours on the page layouts, the whole time keeping an eye on the upload of the 50 or so photos. As the photo meter counted down, I was pleased with the success of the upload. However, that glow of success ended around 11 o’clock when I realized it had been about a half hour for the one remaining photo to upload. I couldn’t save the file or order the book as long as that one photo was still attempting to upload.

Shutterfly offers an online help line so I put in my pleas for assistance as to how to get the file saved since I had the whole 22 pages laid out and photos captioned. There was a queue and I was number 11 with a wait time of 10 minutes. I again watched a countdown until I was up to submit my problem. The customer service rep found that one photo was hung up in the system. She suggested a way to copy the code for the book and send it to her in a Word document. However, when I did what she asked, it was determined that I was using a “simple path” book and her ‘fix’ would not work for me. I would have to shut down, losing all of my work. My head hurt. Noon was upon me. Terry would be home soon. Okay. I shut down and walked away for a moment.

Then I came back thinking I would just upload the photos and work on the actual book another day. The customer service rep had suggested that method so as to have the photos all on Shutterfly’s server before starting to work on the layout. When I logged back in, there were all my photos, except that one that got hung up in the system. With one click all of the photos flowed into a layout, not the layout I had designed, but a good one none the less. I had to type in the captions, but I knew what I wanted to say, having done it all earlier. After I proofread and changed around a few photos, I could click ‘ship.’

Leeya will have her Book 6 by June 1.

What grandmas do

Those of you who regularly stop by here know that I tend to be an “over-the-top” grandma. This post will be more proof.

For a long time now I have been following the blog My Own Cuddly, written by a lady who takes children’s drawings and turns them into a toy. Her creations make me ooh and aah.

A couple of months ago when the grandchildren stayed with us, Leeya made this drawing for me the morning that her dad came to pick them up.

 

I put it on the fridge but began to think about the blog and getting the picture turned into a doll. I contacted the lady who makes these, and after I sent her a scan of the drawing, she said she could make it and have it to me before Christmas.

In today’s mail, I received the doll:

Three generations of little girls

These three photos are now on my mantle. The one of Leeya is her school picture for this year and just arrived. As I sit and look at them, I can certainly see a resemblance and so decided to scan them and, using Photoshop, put them together into one photo.

From left to right: Delaine at 3 or 4; Jennifer at 2; Leeya at 5.

Visiting preschool

Our granddaughter turned five this week. She attends preschool Monday-Thursday and so we went to celebrate her big day and take her to school.

Leeya’s mom made vegan chocolate cupcakes and fruit kebobs for her classmates. We delivered those goodies and sat in on the last part of the day’s class. It was great to watch Leeya with her friends and teachers and see how she performed in class.

Leeya’s teacher told me that Leeya is definitely ready for kindergarten. She learns quickly and can stay focused. She enjoys learning. Leeya is very cooperative and cordial with her classmates.

I was highly impressed with her teachers and the classroom setup. They manage the students, giving them confidence in their abilities while having fun while learning.

Since it was Leeya’s birthday, we took a few gifts with a card that contained $5, a dollar for each year which has been our custom. Today, when we went by to say goodbye, Leeya had a gift for us as a thank you.

 

Grandparent’s Day

Although yesterday was Mother’s Day, we didn’t do anything special around here. Jennifer did call, late in the day, as she is very busy on Sundays with her job as youth pastor. Not only did she make flowers for all the mothers in her church, but she also entertained her in-laws who were visiting to celebrate our granddaughter’s fourth birthday, which happens to be today. Four years ago my life changed, big time, and all for the better. Becoming  grandma was one of the best things to ever happen in my life.

May 13 2009

 

We won’t be there today to celebrate with Leeya. I left a card with four, one dollar bills for her to open this morning when her parents and baby brother sing Happy Birthday to her.

Last week, when we were visiting in the bay area, Leeya spent one night in the hotel with us. I snapped a photo of her and Terry, on their way back from breakfast. It made me think of an earlier picture Terry had taken of Leeya and me as we walked along the salt marshes in Alviso when Leeya was two. I photoshopped the two pictures in celebration of this birthday and how happy we are to be grandparents.

Leeya walking with grandparents

Weekends are when we work

Our routine, for the past few months, has been to babysit our granddaughter on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That keeps me from writing and posting much to this blog on those days. I will take a few minutes this morning and show you some of our weekend:

I'm on Caltrain, heading to San Mateo, on Friday morning

Terry arrived late Friday afternoon from Fresno. He and Leeya spent their time watching Veggie Tales videos

A trip to Ikea on Saturday gave us a chance to get out of the house:

The toy kitchen at Ikea had a sink where Leeya washed dishes.

Leeya found a table and chair set she liked.

It’s a cold and foggy morning in San Francisco and we are up early so as to go back to San Mateo for more babysitting and then on to Fresno this afternoon. I will be writing more this next week, when I have some time off!

A picture a day

I’m going to try to take AND post a picture each day for 2011. The pictures may be great, but most will be of every day, mundane things. Here are the first two for the first two days of 2011:

Jan 1-My granddaughter likes to sit in the refrigerator.

 

Jan 2-On a cold, rainy afternoon, I baked chocolate cupcakes.

How I spent my weekend

Although in Fresno most of Thanksgiving week, we zipped back to SF at the tail end of the week so Terry could go to the big car show at Moscone Center. While he was there, I went over to Embarcadero Center, specifically to See’s Candy, but I also looked at the Christmas decorations.

On Saturday we picked up small granddaughter and headed back to Fresno so her parents could do some grownup activities with friends.

The high chair is ready to be packed

We had lots of fun for two days. We played with Leeya’s mother’s toys:

The 31 year old rocking horse

The 30 year old pot-bellied bear my mother bought Jen on her second birthday

Leeya played on the computer. She loves Veggie Tales’ Barbara Manatee.

Her parents don't allow her to touch their keyboard so this was pretty special

We love to eat.

We played dress up.

We went to the neighborhood park.

And then on our way back to San Mateo we stopped at Casa de Fruta and played on the trains.

And we all survived.

A great Monday had by all

Our Monday was filled with our daughter and granddaughter. We drove down to San Mateo early in the morning so that Jen could take our car and run errands while we stayed at the house with Leeya and did some chores.

After Leeya’s nap we all took off for Central Park in San Mateo and then stopped at Whole Foods to pick up a few things. Fun time had by all, and I even remembered to take a few pictures for you to see:

Leeya coming through the tunnel

Our girls having fun