Friday Night Lights

I had been looking in my recipe books for something...For what?  I have no idea any more...but a couple of days later I found this on the floor:

It is said that odors or particular smells evoke memories: the same can be said for some recipes.

My mom, being the hospitable person that she was and the wife of a head football coach, invited all the coaches and their families to our house for waffles after every home football game.  She claimed that this act was really a selfish one. Wanting her husband to come home, yet knowing that coaches want to talk about the game afterward and knowing she did NOT want to talk about it, she devised a plan.  Just invite the other men that wanted to talk football (and their families) over. In that way, she (and the other wives) could have the best of both worlds.

During this time, mom did have a lady come clean the house every Thursday. (Her name was Eliza.) Mom's Thursday evenings were consumed not with house cleaning, but with making waffle batter and homemade syrup.  She used the recipe above for her syrup (right off of the maple flavoring package) and used the waffle recipe that came with her SunBeam waffle iron she received as a wedding gift back in 1949. (recipe to follow)

On Friday nights after the game, the wives would come and bring their children. We played while the ladies fried bacon and made waffles and visited. The men ate, talked, and drew football plays on paper napkins. Lots of good memories...and is the smell of bacon making you hungry?

Buttermilk Waffles

1/2 c melted butter                                                     2 T sugar

2 1/2 c flour                                                                 1 t salt

2 1/2 t soda                                                                  4 eggs

2 1/2 t baking powder                                                2 c buttermilk

                                                                                     1 1/2 t vanilla

Melt and cool butter.  Sift together dry ingredients.  Beat eggs at high speed until fluffy.  Add buttermilk and vanilla.  Beat to blend.  Pour over dry ingredients.  Beat until smooth.  Blend in melted butter.

Flower Fix

The date is August 23, 2010.
It is my first day of full-time teaching after taking off for a year and a half to care for my mom and recoup after her death and the death of my mother-in-law.
About half way through the day, the secretary brought me this:



Gotta share the story with you:
About 8 years ago, I had to move from my comfortable little job of Content Mastery teacher into a not-so-comfortable job as 3rd grade classroom teacher. (Actually, I guess the phraseology should be that I got to make the move; but believe me, I just wasn't feeling it!)

Even though I was very stressed about this change, I did not feel that I had any right to complain about it. My prayer had always been that I could stay out of the classroom (and away from the extra demand of time and expense that it requires) as long as I had children at home. I was reassigned the summer after Jodi graduated from high school. Kind of hard to respond (outloud anyway) with anything but, "Thank you, God!"

After watching me agonize day after day, night after night, and weekend after weekend over my job and all the responsibility of getting those 3rd graders to pass the TAKS test, my sweet husband came up with the perfect Christmas gift. He arranged for the local florist to deliver flowers to me at school every two weeks for the remainder of the school year. Oh, how that brightened up my day and life! (and probably his, too!)

I suppose I showed my appreciation adequately, because he then gave me a Mother's Day gift of flowers for the Fall. He has continued to arrange for my "fix" of fresh flowers to be delivered to me at school each subsequent year, interrupted only by my time at home.

Yes, I enjoy the flowers. They remind me of a beautiful life outside of school. And I love it when people ask me about the flowers. I get a chance to brag on my sweet, thoughtful husband.

Love you, Bobby!

School Days, School Days

Some of you young 'uns may not know the song:

School days, school days,
Dear old Golden Rule days.
Readin' and Writin' and Rithmatic,
Talk to the tune of a hick'ry stick.
I wrote on your slate, "I love you Joe!"
When we were a couple of kids.

(Hmmm...I'm kinda like Conner. "They usually rhyme, Boo Boo!" Don't know if I'm missing something or not and really don't want to look it up right now. It's not important to the story.)

But yesterday was my first day of my 19th year of teaching. I "got" to go to New Teacher Orientation because I missed last year to stay home with my Mama. And blessing upon blessing, I was rehired and hopefully will be able to finish my career at Glen Rose Elementary.

The interesting thing about all this (or at least to me), is that I was rehired into basically the same job that I was hired to do 18 years ago: Special Ed and Content Mastery. A perfect job for some pretty near perfect times.

But as the school industry goes, I always knew that a possibility existed for me to be moved into a regular classroom. (For you who are not familiar with all this, MANY more after-regular-school-hours are required for that kind of assignment.) I just prayed that if it did indeed happen, it would wait until my children all graduated from high school and left home. Sure enough, the summer after Jodi graduated, I got "the call". I was moved into a 3rd grade classroom (the first year that the state of Texas required students to pass the reading portion of the TAKS test to be promoted to the 4th grade! ...a little pressure there!)

I did get through that year and survived. Because 3rd grade was being moved from the Elementary campus onto the Intermediate campus, I requested a reassignment to first grade. I remained in first grade 6 years. They were very hard years, but enjoyable. How can you not love 6-year-olds? I always said that they would be learning in spite of me if not because of me, just because they're in that eager-to-learn stage of life.

Anyway, I consider myself very blessed to be able to go back to work at a lower stress job (at least I anticipate it to be!) I honestly never expected to be this happy about going back to work!

But I want my story to go back even further than me.

My Mom and Dad were both teachers.

I was always told that my Daddy started coaching/teaching at North Junior in Waco the year I was born. As I'm trying to put a date to it, since I was born in July, I'm really not sure if he started in 1954 or 1955. I gotta hope that it was 1954, because that sure would have made things easier for them financially. I don't know how long he stayed at North Junior (I could research it, but probably never will.), but he then moved to University High School and was the football coach and then Assistant Principal there for all my growin'-up years. Then(the aha of my story)he was moved back to North Junior as a Principal and remained there until they actually closed the doors of that school. He was able to return, if not to the actual job, at least to the place at which he started his teaching career!

Just to fill you in with the bare bones of the remainder of his teaching career, I will tell you that after North Junior closed, he was moved to University Junior High School as the Principal, but didn't stay there long before he retired. I think I'll follow in his steps and choose to retire if I get moved from my starting place again! I believe that Daddy was in the teaching profession for 33 years...and every one of those years was in the Waco Independent School District. Pretty much unheard of for coaches and administrators these days...

Mama not only taught all 33 (or 35) years for the Waco ISD, but she was even on the same campus: Kendrick Elementary. Do I hear "Amazing"??

My sweet brother, Donnie, is an educator, too. I'm thinking that he's quickly approaching his 30th year...if he's not already there. ...and Stephy, his wife, is a school nurse. (Stephy's mother was also a teacher in Hawaii.)

I believe my grandmother, Sadie Ross Ragsdale, was trained as a teacher, too, but I'm really not sure on the details of that.

So attention to the beginning of school days has long been a focusing factor for this family. Things have changed. I doubt teachers had inservices about the best uses for slates and how to keep students from writing "inappropriate" messages on them...but I am very sure they didn't have multiple days about how to use all the technology available!!

"The same, but different."
from Cherry Pies and Lullabies
...a story with which I became familiar as a first grade teacher...