No new Botflies

So my back seems to be healing up just fine. I kept it covered with duct tape for a couple of days to smother anything else that might be in there. When I took it off the whole had healed over and just a small lump remains. I have an appointment this week just to follow up that it's all taken care of.

Monday Morning is now complete!

So Nate has an anology of the school year relating to the work week. September is considered to be "Monday morning", October is "Monday afternoon" and so on. Tomorrow is the official start of Monday afternoon, which of course is very exciting. The year is off to a great start, Nate is really enjoying his students this year as he taught most of them last year and therefore has very few discipline problems so far. Also it looks like he will be getting his enrichment program back so he's pretty excited about that. He says "it's the best year so far". Not bad considering "Monday mornings" can pretty much set the tone for the year.
My year is starting off pretty good too, busy but that's nothing new. Volleyball is in full swing now and we have a lot of work to do but they are a great group of girls and I look forward to what the season has to offer. My classes are pretty good for the most part, I have a great science 20 class that is pretty small now that it was split in two, just 18 students which is a dream. I also have a hilarious Phys. ed 20/30 class that keep me in stitches all afternoon, 32 of the funniest kids I have ever met. On our first day of Canoeing last week, there was two students who I knew where going to fall in Bower Ponds within the first 5 minutes, and sure enough as I called the kids in to show them some basic paddling techniques "Harry" and "Lloyd" (aka dumb and dumber) managed to flip and sink their canoe. So needless to say I scrapped the paddling lesson and taught the class "t" rescues instead!

Friday Night Botflies

Well as many of you know for our honeymoon Nate and I went down to Belize, land of white sand beaches, Mayan Ruins and much much more, including the Botfly. Before we left I had been reading about the strange bugs of Belize as I am a self-proclaimed bug "hater" and wanted to know what I was in for heading to this tropical paradise. I came a cross the Botfly and it completely grossed me out. It had said something about the botfly egg attaches it self to the nose of the mosquito and when the mosquito bites someone the egg is dropped into the whole where the heat of the human body hatches it. Now the egg grows into a larvae by make a tube like air hole to the outside of the body and can live under the skin for up to 8 to 12 weeks. Completely disgusting right? I read it out to Nate and made special note to take care of my mosquito bites while down there. So towards the end of our trip I got not one but two mosquito bites that swelled quite a bit so I did what the book told me and put a thick layer of vaseline over the bites, the one my leg quickly went down and healed however the one bite on my back never really did go away. In fact when we returned to Red Deer the bite was still there and occasionally after adding more vaseline to it and recovering it with a bandage it became quite sore, sending shooting pains into my back. Well a month and a half later the bite had become quite large, I had seen 3 doctors of which the first two simply looked at it and said nothing, it should be fine, they ran some blood tests just in case but all came back normal. So last week the third doctor gave me some very strong antibiotics for bacterial infections. The bite seemed to be getting less red, so I decided to try and squeeze any fluid out.... funny thing happened. There was what looked to be some puss so I tried to wipe it away with a cotton swab, however it didn't move, it was hard. So I adjusted my pinch around the bit and squeezed a bit harder, much to my absolute surprise and disgust, a botfly larvae plopped out on to the counter. I lost it, I called Nate into the bathroom and he confirmed it looked like a larvae. It was horrific, I felt nauseated at the idea this had been living inside of me for over a month. So for the last two day's I have duct taped my bite as the lack of oxygen is supposed to kill off anything else still living in there. Hopefully I will have seen my last botfly. If you would like to see what the larvae looked like, stop now and google "botfly". I warn you it is not for the squeamish.

Back to school

OK so you can stop hating us now. We have officially gone back to work. The kids were at school ready to show their true colors today. I already picked out a few who will be helpful in making my "grace" grow. We affectionately call them, "grace growers". You know the kind who look around the room and decide where to sit based on who they can get into the most trouble with or do the least amount of work. Or the kind who don't let you get away with anything including repeating the word "the" twice in a row in a sentence without feeling the need to point it out in an attempt to make you look stupid. Little do they know you wouldn't have done that in the first place if you hadn't turned around 3 times in the last minute to asked them to get on track. Surely I don't point out all their flaws to their classmates!
Anyway all in all it looks like it will be a decent semester with plenty of lovely science 14's, science 20's, phys. ed 9's and phys. ed 20's.
Note I must mention there were plenty of great kids today who were incredibly friendly and wanted to swap stories about our summer holidays. I'll be sure to share some stories about those kids as they arise.

Our day at the beach also happened to be the end of an era. My Dad finally decided to sell the boat he purchased when I was just 1 year old. We spent many summer days warm and not so warm hitting the lakes of Alberta and B.C. Luckily he sold it to Wayne, my cousin-in-law and Greg my cousin, so I am sure we haven't seen the last of it. But it provided us with many memories and above are the pictures of Dad's last ski on his beloved boat. It was a beautiful way to end a great day with the sun setting behind him.

I thought I would post a little bit more of our summer so the next few shots are of a visit to Gull Lake where my cousin Becki and her family were camping for a while. Grace came down from Edmonton and taught me even at the age of "almost 3" that she understands what is clean and what is dirty! The first shot was when we decided to go and check out the swimming area I am holding her because after just two steps in she looked up and me and said "it's dirty". She wouldn't take a step further but insisted we go out to the rope of the swimming area to "see the ocean". Gotta love Alberta lakes! Grace also told me how she wanted to jump off the boat and go swimming so Auntie hoped in first and Grandpa ever so gently dropped Grace into my arms. I think it surprised her how cold it was at she clung to me for dear life and looked scared. So I swam to the back of the boat and that was the end of her swim in the "ocean". She gladly sat in the boat for the rest of the evening and watched everyone else ski and knee board.

Rafting with the Ouwehands

A couple of weeks ago we went rafting with Caryn and Dan down the Red Deer River. It was a great evening full of beers, beavers, and landslides!

We got Married!

So on July 12, 2008 we finally tied the knot. It was a beautiful sunny day in Red Deer at Sunnybrook Farm.

Our pictures

There are a plethera of pictures of this past summer that can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/linksiler

One Year Later

Ok so we haven't made an entry since last August and look what happens. It is once again a gloomy day in August and school is back in next week. Much has happened in the past year and this year we promise to make a better attempt at this blog thing!