It's Friday. Two and half days to go...dreaming about summer...

Although I never think about my salary or how much I am making per hour, I still found this rather humorous! Thanks be to God that most teachers don't care about how much they make in a monetary value!!!

-Lauren, a teacher anxious for summer!

"Sick of those highly 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 minutes off for lunch and plan-- 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 a 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 30children 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/30 students = $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.... Make a teacher smile; send this to someone who appreciates teachers.

The Living Rosary

The Kansas City, KS and MO dioceses collaboratored together with the Eucharistic Family Rosary Crusade to host a Living Rosary at the Royals Baseball Stadium in KC. It was a beautiful way to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ). Several different countries were represented in prayer, song, and attire. Each prayer of the Rosary was led in a different language. There was hope that over 25,000 would be in attendance. I am not sure of the final attendance count. Here are some pictures from the afternoon.

Sarah, Katie, Katie's friend with Isaac, Ann-Marie, and Sheila

The Rosary outlining the baseball diamond.

The megascreen showcasing the events

Sarah with my sleeping Godson, Isaac

Here's a little raw footage:

Lunch Date in St. Louis

Last weekend I came through St. Louis to meet up with my high school friends for a float trip. I had the brief opportunity to see some of my family. I drove in Friday night after school and stayed with Dad and Francine. We had the evening to catch up. Then upon the return from the float on Sunday night I visited with my Mom and Tom and then also with the Roths (my aunt, uncle and cousins). I took my first personal day of the year, and let me tell you, it was much needed and it has rejuvenated me to finish out the rest of this academic year. I went to Mass, then spent some time with my grandparents. After that I met up with my sister and two of my cousins for lunch at the Boat House Restaurant at Forest Park. As we were driving back to my cousins, we drove up next to another aunt in a traffic jam! So that was a sweet surprise! Finally at the conclusion of lunch I drove back to Kansas City to get ready for the school week.

Lunch at the Boat House...

We called my cousin Scott to wish him a happy birthday. We decided to eat in his honor.

Caitlin, Robyn, and Jordan

Jordan, Me, and Caitlin

SISTERS: Robyn and Me

SISTERS: Jordan and Caitlin

I love my cousins (including all those not present)!!!!

A Taste of Summer

Since the summer of our high school graduation, my high school friends and I have stayed in touch during the holidays, but primarily through annual float trips. We have been on 5 since our graduation 7 years ago!!!

It is a great opportunity to catch up, share in some laughter, and rough it up a bit!
I certainly hope we keep this tradition up as best we can, but even more so, I hope we keep our friendships. I feel truly blessed to say that I still have friends from high school because I know this is often a rarity. Though we have taken several different paths, it is as though time has not changed our friendships. I have no doubt that this group of people, that I call friends, will be in my life forever.

THE FLOAT: We took last weekend to travel south to Lesterville, MO to float about 15 miles on the Black River. We took off around 1:00 on Saturday. We floated a majority of the trip on Saturday and then set up camp on a bank along the river around 5:00pm. Once we hit land we set up camp, fixed dinner, and enjoyed each other's company by the campfire.

You may ask, how were the waters? Well the river was high, fast flowing, and cold, but we survived. We had a five canoes for 11 people, 2 dogs, and all of our gear. We had two tips in the first 20 minutes of our trip, but from then on out, we were dry! Fortunately/unfortunately, I did not personally experience the exhilaration of tipping!

Here are some pics!

NATHAN: Float Trip Extraordinare in terms of clothing.chaco's...check. cut off jean shorts...check. sunglasses, ball cap, Led Zeppelin t-shirt...check, check, check.

Pre-party...AKA loading

Gotta love the bus ride down to the river!

Aubrey and Phil

David and Katie

Rachel and Kevin (our fearless leader and float coordinator)

our camp site ... a bank along the river

Rachel and Molly Brown

David and Katie

Jessica and I: We have been friends for 20 years!

Kevin and Nathan: Master Cook and Master Engineer...please admire our fire pit.

Jessica and me.

Aubrey and me

2008 Float Crew

The Past Two Weeks...

"Be firm and steadfast; go to work without fear or discouragement, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or abandon you before you have completed all the work for the service of the house of the Lord."

~ 1 Chronicles 28:20

These last two weeks have been trying, but they have been filled with blessings as well. My students are truly starting to test me and I am realizing that I no longer see Christ within them...So I ask you to please pray for me as we approach the last month of the academic year!

Aside from struggles at school, I have no complaints! Life is good.

I have used the past two weeks to catch up with friends, enjoy the beautiful weather (when it's present), catch up on rest, and be busy with various activities. Last weekend I went to the Royals game, attended a women's morning of reflection, played Ultimate Frisbee, and spent the evening with to friends at a park for a picnic and then we spent time in Adoration.

Sarah and Stacy at our picnic!

Stacy "attacking" the bread!

This weekend was filled with good things too! Friday night I attended a talk by Christopher West, a phenomenal speaker on JPII's Theology of the Body. I had the privilege to hear him speak several years ago while at KU. The KC Young Adult group put this on at a loft downtown. On Saturday, I spent the morning at home with some friends and then spent the afternoon and evening at a Collaborator meeting. Saturday night, I guess that was just last night, I had a slumber party at my place with some of the women from the Collaborators. It was a night filled with community and laughter to say the least. Today I went to Mass with some of my friends, then attended my condo's Cinco de Mayo party in which I got to know the neighbors a little better, and then slept on my couch for several hours.

This leads me to now, where I need to do a little planning before tomorrow begins!

Many blessings to all. You are all in my prayers, as I hope to be in yours these next few weeks! ;)

Robyn

My sis...

My sister Robyn is making major motions forward in her videography business. She now has a company called Big Red Box Productions, LLC. I wanted to share with you her latest news since many of my friends have met my sis before and so that the family can get an update as well!

So here's an update from Robyn.

If you would like to see some of her sampled work click on her logo below.

"Hello Family and Friends!

First off, Shawn - Happy First Communion and Birthday! I love you and am so sorry to have missed your big day.

To the rest, I wanted to send a little update to you because God has really been sending blessings to Big Red Box Productions and I wanted to share with you. Yesterday I filmed the Ram's Draft Party down at the Edward Jones Dome. And the Rams were the ones who hired me! This is the second event that they have hired me to film and hopefully this is the beginning of a long lasting relationship with them. They were very pleased with the first event and I can only hope they are pleased with the footage I captured yesterday! It was a great time, a little nerve-wrecking a points. I would say the most profound part of the experience was realizing that the players were my age and the cheerleaders 4 years younger. Very very strange. Still, its hard to be confident around them, but hopefully I'll ease into them being my friends! (Don't worry, asap I will bring them to a Carmody celebration, but give me a little time.) We haven't settled if they would like the footage edited or not, but my fingers are crossed that they will. (I'll let you know!) So that is big time.

Also big time is that the company my dad works for has hired me to make a 2 minute video piece for their salesmen to use. Tomorrow I will be flying out to Washington DC to do the filming, coming back Tuesday and then producing 500 DVDs for them in the next two weeks! So this is also a huge opportunity for BRB Pro.

Now, if I can just get these philosophy papers done (by tomorrow) then everything will be settled! On a better note, only one more semester of school! I will be walking across the UMSL stage next December (Mom, put that on your calendar somewhere!) and I am going to have everyone over to my apartment to celebrate, see where I live finally and for you to meet both my awesome new roommate Stephanie and my always awesome cat Aiko.

A little update on Tim - he is doing really well and we're doing really great and having a lot of fun while being way too super busy. He is now working at Trader Joes along side of UPS and starts his shift at 5am, which means he's getting out about the time I like to wake up! He is liking it although God is bringing in great new opportunities for coffee and so we're praying that God will lead him where He sees best fit for Tim's passion right now. We are very active in our church, Grace & Peace and love it...we are surrounded by very wonderful, down to earth, people and families (small kids galore) there. I have another great set of twins in my life now at church (Joe and Nadine) which is the second picture. The first is of Aiko in all of her glory. Please share with your kids.

Hope you all enjoy. Would love to hear back from you. I love you!
Robyn, Pumpkin Head"

KC Royals!

Friday night some of my colleagues from PHS and I headed to Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals play. Those who attended from the math department went out to dinner before hand and then carpooled to the game. The game started out a little slow, but once we headed into the 6th inning the game picked up and we witnessed a victory! It was a cold night in April, but we had a good time.

Dinner and Happy Hour with my colleagues and spouses.

The largest screen in major league baseball...

The youngins' of the department, at least for the remainder of this year.

Kerrie, Becky, and me.

Marcia and Jetta. Jetta is my mentor at school.

The fountains.

Friday Night Fireworks

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!