Get your Kicks at Route 66

One of the largest car shows in our area was last weekend. The car show is called "Route 66." Joey was in heaven. The car show lasts all weekend fills several city blocks in downtown San Bernadino. We walk for hours and still don't see all the cars. It is a good thing that the cars don't always stay parked in their spots. The cars can also cruise around the streets of the car shows, showing off. One could be deaf after a pack of muscle cars drive by, all reving their engines. The cars with hydrolics turned the corners on three wheels. And my oh my, all that polished chrome and those snazzy paint jobs made it impossible to pick a favorite. Here are just a few of the beauties that we saw.

A new way of paying teachers

One of my fellow teachers sent this to me in an email. It was very interesting and I am all for it. Take a look.

Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school.That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning -- that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations. LET'S SEE.... That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days =$280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here!There sure is! The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student --a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL....

I wouldn't mind this new pay schedule, a six-figure salary for teaching! What do all of you think?

Overdue for an update

Well, it has been way too long since we have updated. Be forewarned, this entry may end up a little lengthy. Here is what we have been up to since the last time we posted.

Back in early May, I received tickets from a co-worker to attend one day of a HUGE country music festival. I went to one of the three days. It was amazing! I was thrilled to see one of my favorite American Idol alumni, Bucky Covington. (My very favorite Idol alumni, Carrie Underwood performed the next day and I missed it.) Taylor Swift was incredible, it is not hard to see why she is such an up and coming new star. Other acts I saw were Dierks Bentley, BOTH Judds (AMAZING), and to finish off the night, Rascall Flatts. That day was probably one of the coolest concerts I have ever been to.

The next day, Joey and I went to an air show at March Air Reserve Base. The base is not too far from our house and their planes fly over our house on a regular basis. It is hard to catch those planes on film, they move so fast, but below is my best photo. The coolest part of the whole airshow was watching the plane in the middle fly around. It was so fast and LOUD. It buzzed the ground and set off every car alarm in the parking lot. Then it joined up with the other two planes in the photo, old meets new. It was a wonderful sight to see. Here is a shot of Joey and I sitting on one of the HUGE carrier planes. I'm wearing my "Survivor" hat the I bought the day before at the Stagecoach festival. (By the way, the camera added about 30 pounds ; ) Bad camera angle.)

The next day, Joey and I set out to go to the movies and stopped by the grocery store first to buy some treats to smuggle in. Fate intervened and we left with a puppy instead of treats for a movie. Joey and his soft spot for dogs!!! The dogs now outnumber the humans in the house. The new puppy was finally dubbed Duke, named after a John Wayne character. He is half boxer, half pit so Joey thought he should have a tough name. He is adorable and we love him to death, even when he is making a mess which is most of the time.

On Memorial Day, Joey had to be to work by about 5:00 in the morning to help with a HUGE motorcycle ride, West Coast Thunder. Over 7,000 motorcycles showed up to ride from the dealership to the Riverside National Cemetery. People line the streets and wave flags and many of the bikes are decked out with flags as well. Maybe next year Joey and I will get to ride in it instead of Joey working it.

Being an 8th grade teacher this year, I had to say goodbye to a wonderful group of students this year. This group has long been dubbed the worst behaved group of students our school has seen in a long time. While it is true, some of them have given me the most trouble I have ever had, the rest of them are perhaps the best kids I have ever seen. I will really miss them. Making the goodbyes twice as hard is the fact that I have now taught at least half of them two years in a row. A few of them have even been my students all three years they have been at Wells, I taught one 6th grade class a few years ago. I am so grateful I got to be a part of all the special events at the end of the year that only 8th graders get to do. It gave me a chance to say goodbye and have some good times with the students I will remember forever. I know it sounds cliche, but I truely believe I will see amazing things from many of these students. Some of them have probably already forgotten my name, but I feel as though I made a lasting impression on others. Whatever happens I wish ALL of them the best.

That brings us up to date. Joey is working like crazy as motorcycle session is in full swing. His dealership gets more and more business all the time. Me, I am working around the house to finish up some of the projects we started when we moved in but didn't get a chance to finish. I also have a computer class for teachers I have to complete this summer in order to renew my teaching credential. It is hard to believe we have been in California for 5 years now. Time flies. We hope to see many of our friends and family this summer as we vacation and attend weddings. We send you all our love until the next time.

Can you hear me now?

We are in the middle of a minor renovation of the downstairs portion of our home. We have torn out all of the beautimous teal green carpet that was there. Now we are replacing it with a laminate wood flooring. Being the oh-so-very-loyal Cingular or "The New AT&T" (or whatever the company is calling itself now) customers that we are, we couldn't help but notice that this project looks very much like a commercial we have seen recently. "More bars in more places!"

Momma Mia!

The highlight of our February was a visit from Joe's mom. It was such joy to spend time with her. She may be a senior citizen, but she was running circles around Joe and I. The three of us definitely never had a dull moment, we were always on the go.

Most of the things that we did were just little things, but memorable. The first weekend Ma was in town, she and I spent the whole day in the car driving around, getting our other car fixed and then taking a few beautiful scenic drives. There was our trip to Old Town Temecula which is a popular biker hangout on the weekends. She has lost a lot of weight lately and she was dressed in a Harley shirt from Joe's work that day. There was more than one biker who slowed down to take a second look at Ma. Ma was in town for Valentine's Day. Lucky Joe got to take out two beautiful women that night. At dinner, I gave him an Irish Wedding Bell. (Irish tradition says that every couple should receive a bell as a wedding gift. It is placed in a prominent place in the home. Any time there is a fight, one of the couple can ring the bell to end the fight and call a truce without having to admit blame or fault.) Joe took it out of the box and attempted to ring it. The packaging prevented it from ringing at first, but it only took a few shakes before it fell out. The bell began ringing, LOUDLY!!! The packed restaurant went silent as all eyes turned in our direction. Had Joe been aware of how loudly the bell had rung, he probably would have stood up and given a speech. Luckily for us, he seemed oblivious to what had just happened, and everyone else quickly went back to eating and chatting.

We did a few things that Ma loves to do. One of them was go to a car show. It may be a little known fact about her, but she LOVES a good car show and SoCal has plenty of them. And of course, everytime Ma comes to visit, we have to go to Chinatown and spend some time in Los Angeles. While we were there, we took her to eat one of her favorite foods, hot dogs, at the most famous hot dog joint in LA--Pinks.

But, by far the most memorable event during Ma's trip was the day she became a TV star. We had tickets for the finale of the TV show "Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann." Ma and I spent many hours the Saturday before looking for the perfect "TV outfits." I am glad it paid off for one of us. Ma had a good close up of her face on TV. Joe and I were sitting right next to her at the time, but were our faces there? NNNNOOOOOH! I guess we just have faces that were made for radio. ; ) At the time of this posting, you can still go to ABC's website and watch the show. We were on the "Week 7" episode. You will see Ma's face about 20 minutes into the show, right after the big opening number with Drew Lachey. Here is a picture of Joe and Ma outside the studio right after the show finished taping.

We love having Ma here and wish she could have stayed even longer. When she returned home to Massachusetts and the snow, she wished the same. = ) We hope that next time she comes she will stay much longer. In fact, we bought our house with her in mind. One of our bedrooms has already been dubbed "Ma's room." Even with Ma having her own room, we still have plenty of space for the rest of you to come and visit. We love having family and friends around. See the beauty you are missing?

This is a picture I took of the LA skyline at sunset during Ma's visit.

The Science Fair

As most of you know, I am an 8th grade science teacher. Being the "mean, awful" teacher I am, I made my honors science class enter the science fair, while I made the fair extra credit for all of my other classes. Our school science fair was during the last week of January and guess whose students won all of the awards for the 8th grade students? That's right, I am very proud of my students for sweeping the school science fair. I think every teacher needs a moment just like that to validate them as a teacher. It seems like you give and you give and you give, but you don't always receive gratitude or see the results of all your work. It is nice to have a great moment like that to know that you are doing something right. So well done my young Wells Warriors!!! Thanks for making your teacher proud.

Finally, the Butlers have come back to the blog

Okay, every time something has happened during the last month, we have said "Let's post that." We had all the best intentions of posting, but we all know what path good intentions pave. So please forgive us if we all of a sudden have a "blog diarrhea" and post several updates in a short period of time.