third time's the charm?

So, this is the third time in five days that I've attempted a new blog post. The first two times, I lost it due to technical difficulties (aka: Dora, my dying Dell). Since this is still not officially posted, there is a chance I could lose it a third time, but here's hoping.

This past Friday was the middle school fall party, and the theme was Heroes and Villains. I was expecting there to be about 20 Batmans running around, but I was very impressed with the creativity and originality of the students! The students did a little catwalk presentation of their costumes and then did little skits or performances based on their characters. After that, they played games and ate snacks, then received awards for winning costumes. Overall, it was a really fun evening. Somehow I became the coordinator for the staff costume, because apparantly they always do a group costume. Fresh out of ideas, I made an executive decision and we went as Captain Planet and the Planeteers. I had the element of Fire. Did anyone else ever watch that show? I seem to have blocked it from my memory, but I was shocked by how much of the song and characters I remembered. I had to do a bit of "research" to put together our costumes, so I watched a few YouTube videos in the process. Here is a picture of the staff costume. Some of the other heros and villains present were Charlie's Angels, Powerpuff Girls, X-Men, Hogan's Heroes, the cast of Heroes, Cruella DeVille, Batman, The Incredibles, and various other Disney characters. If you want to see pictures of the student costumes, please go to my Facebook album by clicking here.

This week has been a pretty big one for my friends and family back home in the states. On Saturday, Grandpa Forrider turned 70, and he also used Skype for the first time to talk to his granddaughter in Germany. Saturday also marked the wedding of my best friend Carla to her now-husband Daniel. My mom celebrated her birthday on Tuesday and on Wednesday Jeff and Heather Miller (friends from Greencaste) welcomed the arrival of beautiful baby Lydia. I thank God for all of these people and for the wonderful ways in which God has provided for them!

Today I felt like Miss Frizzle. I took the seventh graders on a nature hike in the Black Forest and even wore my leaf earrings! The students were thrilled about leaving (no pun intended) school for two hours, but they didn't particularly enjoy the "brisk" walking weather we had today. Today seemed to be the coldest day yet this fall, and being in the forest made it feel about 5 or 10 degrees cooler, so yes. We were cold. But we (well I, anyway) had a blast and gathered lots of leaves, needles, mosses, and various other plant specimens. The trail itself takes about 1.5 hours to hike, and this was the second time this week that I've hiked it because I went on Sunday with Jill to scope it out. So I'm a little sore, but I still feel great. Here are a few shots from the trail, the rest can be found in my new facebook album. This is a different link than the one above, because I ran out of room and had to make a new album! Yay!