Mother Hen

WARNING: My camera was left at school, so these photos representing each mini-story are actually not photos of the actual events or my actual children.

My class got an incubator with 9 eggs this past week. The eggs were 18 days in incubation already, so we got to watch them hatch on Wednesday and Thursday. The kids were hyped up and excited all week. I thought it was great and all, but I was super paranoid about Samonella poisoning all week long. My hands are sore from soap scrubbing and sanitizing like 12 times a day.

So I get home from work on Thursday and Kira is running a fever. "AHHHH- she has Samonella from one of us", I thought. Thoughts of Douglas touching the egg shells and wiping the goo on his shirt and then holding Kira flow into my mind. But no diarrhea or stomach issues along with the fever (phew). I really do have fear of Samonella poisoning.

7 of the 9 chicks hatched. The other 2 were duds I guess. I found homes for all 7. Several of my students live on farm land and have coops already. My class named the chicks: Brownie, Rosie, Bronco, Amy, Ally, Fuzzy and Yeek. So cute. Douglas and TJ were very interested in keeping the chicks and suggested they share a room with Kira. I briefly pictured her room with chicks running around and had a mild anxiety attack. "Nope, sorry boys. Chickens need to live outside."

Kira's fever seemed to have no rhyme or reason. She still had a temp of 102.9 this morning, so I took her in to the Instacare to see if she had an ear infection or something. Of course, I wasted 4 hours there just to find out that "she must have some kind of virus". I hope she's better soon. I'm sad my little chickadee is feeling bad. She's usually so chipper, and now she just whines and lounges around. Hopefully the fever will be gone soon.

I also had a picture of Douglas performing in the 1st grade patriotic program. I was surprised that they sang some of the songs off of the CD that my 4th grade teacher (Mr. Francis) and another teacher (Gaye Gibbs) from Westridge Elementary (my alma mater) helped write/record. I even recognized Mikelle Maug's voice in the background. Pretty cool that those songs are around still. Douglas did well in the program. He looked so handsome in his blue and white striped patriotic shirt. Unfortunately, he wore his Bronco Football sweatshirt over it during the program. Oh well.

TJ is busy training for the Wellsville Mile competition coming up at the end of April. He runs a mile or more each day at school, and sometimes practices again at home after school (when it's not SNOWING). His fastest time so far is 8:15. I think that's awesome. He still has some work to do (to beat those other long legged 4th graders), so wish him luck with his training.