Hiking: Brent's Trail/Preparation Canyon State Park (11)

3.23
Today was our first day of homeschooling during the corona quarantine her kids are expected to go back to school until at least after April 30 so the weather was looking good for today so we decided to go out on a hike Mason is also kind of on call so he is home with us until he’s needed in his office so who is the weather in a lot of different locations to go I’m sort of building my list and we will just pick places to go and then I stays. The kids were very concerned that we were not “home schooling today and askI explained that some days it will look more traditional and other days will look more like homeschooling on the road. Woodrow was not feeling the mood to go hiking so we were delayed by an hour because he was not wanting to go and we had to pack up the toys in his room and put them in the car in his pajamas for shortly once we are on the road he was perfectly fine by the time we got to our location. I’m going to start a new #Called #We’reNotHavingFunBecauseTheKidsAlwaysLikeToComplainAboutHikingAndThenTheyHaveAGreatTime.

Hiking: Beaver Pond Trail/ Heron Haven (19)

5.1.20

Hiking: Calvin Crest Loop Trail (17)

These next several posts will probably be all out of order, since I got behind (as usual) and decided to catch-up on the hiking that we did most recently.  We've been fortunate with really nice weather lately, but that means more and more people are outside, which makes social distancing difficult.  Since we have a pretty flexible schedule these days (har har), I decided maybe we'd try taking 1-2 weekdays to go hiking and then on the weekends we can stay home so we don't see as many people.

Friday (April 10th) we drove about an hour Northwest to Fremont, NE.  I'd heart about a trail at the Calvin Crest Camp Conference Center.  The location is closed occasional weekends for retreats, but I'd heard the trails were decent, even though they are designed for mountain biking.  The website for the camp didn't have any trail maps, and I was able to find an okay map on All Trails.  But, we decided we'd check it out anyways.

There's a couple locations near us that are mountain bike trails and they're pretty nice, but it is hard to get a good loop or actual map since the bikers tend to just ride around.  The trails at Calvin Crest were marked, but we still ended up wandering into someones private property and eventually looping a long way back.  We ended up hiking just over 5 miles.

This place was really nice.  Mason felt it was the most heavily forested area we'd been to in Nebraska.  I think there was just a pretty good variety, and nice pine areas.  I think as more and more trees bud and the leaves return, we'll be reminded even more of how amazing this area is.

Ironically, this marked the day that we purchased our house in Nebraska.  One year living the good life.  We really love it here.  We've visited and lived in so many places that we probably wouldn't have chosen if we weren't living the military life, and Nebraska has been one of the best surprises.  We really like it.  It's a great balance of city, suburbs, and rural.  I'm glad that we'll be here for three years.    

Happy Holidays 2020

 

Happy Holidays Loved Ones,

2020.  Wow.  My focus word for this year was “rejoice”, and while this year has had many unexpected moments and taught us that there is a lot in the world outside our control, we can still find opportunities to rejoice and be glad.  There were hard moments for sure, but when I look back over the year, I am thankful for all the wonderful times we have had.  This year we were given an opportunity to build up the relationships within the walls of our home, to slow down, and to stay connected to loved ones even when we couldn’t gather face to face. 

One of my goals for this year was to complete 25 hikes.  We crushed this goal by the end of May.  We used time at home to be outdoors in nature, and that was a saving grace to me this year.  I think our whole family is refreshed by being outdoors and finding the hidden gems around us wherever we move.  While our travel plans were cancelled for the year, we were fortunate enough to travel to Chicago in October for my sister’s wedding.  We can’t wait to hug our family again!    

Mason started off the year continuing his staff job doing nuclear mission planning at Strategic Command HQ here at Offutt Air Force Base.  He worked from home for several weeks and this summer he was at home in a ten week Joint Professional Military Education course.  His small group got a top academic award for a paper they wrote.  This Fall he moved above ground and started working on the Commanders Action Group.  He’s up before the sun working out every day and ran his furthest distance ever this year-16.5 miles.  He’s in the best shape of his life and feeling good.   

I try my best to keep up with everyone in the house.  Between kids who grow overnight and need new wardrobes, a fridge that is constantly being depleted, and laundry baskets that keep filling, I enjoy being home with the kids.  I have taught online for the past six years, but in January, was promoted to a full-time position, teaching English and Social Studies to 6th-12th graders online. I’m continuing to write monthly pieces for Omaha Mom and participate in the Offutt Spouses Club book club, and local MOPS group.  This year Mason and I are leading the Cub Scouts hikes…at last count I was around 55 hikes for the year.  In my evenings I am up late reading away, so far I’m at 127 books for the year!     

Theodore turned nine in September-my baby!  He promoted to Webelos in Cub Scouts, is in swimming lessons, and played tackle football this Fall.  It was really fun to watch the boys get to play sports for the first time, and Theo loved it all!  Theo is still interested in bison, teeny mates, presidents/white house, sports, and Greek mythology.  His favorite thing to eat is hamburgers from Sinful Burger, a local restaurant.  It’s exciting to see what he enjoys.  He is liking third grade a lot this year and has gotten to do some fun projects at school.  

Woodrow turned seven in August and is at a really fun age.  This year Woodrow has been taking swimming lessons, promoted to a Wolf Cub Scout, hiked many miles, and played flag football this Fall.  Woodrow likes to play with legos, play football, play with his teeny mates, and play Madden NFL/Mario Cart on his ipad.  He’s my late-night partner in crime and has recently been enjoying reading chapter books on his own.  Woodrow’s been excelling in second grade and keeps us laughing with his antics.

Maximus turned four in October and is full of personality.  He is super friendly and doesn’t mind chatting with people he just meets.  He’s made a new little friend who lives across the street, and it is fun to see them running around playing.  At the beginning of the year he was in gymnastics classes, but now is only taking swimming lessons.  There is no shelf too high for Max to climb and no treat he can’t find.  He loves to look at books, play with playdoh, snuggle, play at the park, and bake.  Max is also in preschool two mornings a week and has so much fun!    

I really enjoy blogging, but was not great at it during the second-half of 2020…I will try to be better next year and we’d love for you to follow our adventures here:  http://ellenmason.blogspot.com.  The boys also enjoy getting snail mail and emails.  While 2020 had many unexpected moments, our marriage is stronger than ever, our kids our healthy, and our family keeps on adventuring!   

Ten Years Ago

 My second teaching job was at a small, rural, pre-K-12th grade school in Louisiana.  I think almost 90% of the school population (teachers and students) were related by blood, and if not by blood then certainly by friendship.  My students got many laughs at my dialect, phrases, and by calling me the Yankee teacher. 

10 years ago I was a young teacher; in fact, my former students are the not the age I was when I was teaching them.  It’s fun to see them getting married and having children of their own. At that time in my life I was a young, it was my first time teaching high school, and throughout the years with a little more experience and a little more maturity there are so many things I wish I would’ve done differently in my classroom.  I really wanted my students to like me and that didn’t always serve them the best.  I felt like I was in a position where I had to teach certain material even though I knew if that wasn’t necessarily what was going to serve them in their future lives.  I wish I had had more real-life conversations with more of my students; although I think I tried my best to be an example of a different/outsider perspective of life and I appreciated the conversations I did have with them.

 

10 years ago two of our students were killed in a car crash.  Trent and Evan “Pudge”.  They had been at a party, were drinking, and crashed their car on the drive home.  I think about this event all the time.   The older student (a senior), Trent, I knew of and saw him at school, but I had not actually taught him.  The younger student, Pudge, was a junior and his mother was a teacher at the school.  Everybody knew these boys.  The majority of the community spent their lives watching these boys since birth. At the funeral their school pictures were displayed and I couldn’t help but think that these were young men that had amazing futures ahead of them; but now as a mother, when I look back at their photos I think that those boys were babies.

 

10 years ago at lunch I held a teacher-student book club.  We were discussing the book Thirteen Reasons Why, which was newer at the time.  One of the discussion questions that we were mulling over was, “can you imagine what life would be like if you lost someone and you never got the chance to say goodbye?”  In the novel a high school girl commits suicide and so a lot of our discussion was talking about high school community, friendship, and what it would be like if someone just wasn’t there anymore. 

 

10 years ago in my junior English class I saw goodbye to my students, and told them to have fun at the party over the weekend and to be safe.  I had heard of a big party that was happening over the weekend, no details, just that there was one…again small community, teenagers who like to talk about everything in class.

 

10 years ago after my junior English class I had had a discussion with Pudge about how he could bring his English grade up.  I gave him some assignments to redo over the weekend.  After school, as I was preparing my classroom for the weekend, I noticed that he had left his English book under his desk.  I brought it down to his mom’s classroom and he happened to be there talking with her about where he was possibly going for dinner that evening.  I just remember having this conversation with him and his mom, and putting my arm around his shoulders and joking with him about how he was going to bring up his grade but had left his English book behind.  I don’t particularly think that Pudge liked me very much as a teacher.  I like to think that there were moments he felt a connection and that I cared about him.  I often think about many of the wonderful conversations about life we could have had and I regret that maybe I didn’t have as many of those conversations with him as I should have.  He was smart, witty, intelligent, and definitely had an opinion on all subjects.

 

10 years ago I woke up and saw on my phone that I had many missed phone calls and text messages from my coworkers.  When I called one of them back he gave me the news about what had happened.  This moment and the weeks that followed just are etched in my brain.  I had never lost someone I knew that I was so young.  I remember the conversations I had with my students, I can picture some of his friends sitting in my classroom just crying, or being mad, I can see the hallway decorated, the boys who all got matching BDS tattoos, and watching as this moment in time unfolded in this tightknit community. 

 

Their death occurred at a time in my life when Mason and I were trying to begin our own family and I remember thinking there’s so much you cannot protect your children from in this life. While I had always wanted to be a mom, this scenario seemed beyond my grasp of understanding.  How a child could be taken away from their mother.  Pudge’s mom, Martha, is one of the most amazing women I have had the pleasure to know.  I didn’t know her extremely well, but watching her grieve the loss of her child and how she could remain faithful to God and to keep on living day after day after day amazes me.

 

I think about Martha and Pudge so much.  To me she a pillar of a woman who I admire and her son is the student who I just loved, got frustrated with, but who taught me so much about what is really important as a teacher…it’s not always about the textbook.

 

Now that I’m a mom with three little boys of my own and I see my former students starting their families I can only imagine what his life would have looked like but I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to know him.

Arbor Day Farm

This week I had a wonderful experience with my kids.  I've been trying to plan a rough sketch of our weeks now that Mason is working from home.  We had an entire day free, so I decided to take the kids to Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, about 40 minutes South of us.  We went here in the Fall and did a hike, tour of the apple orchard, and played on their large playground.  Because of Covid, the tours weren't running, but everything else (besides the gift shop) was open, including their new treehouse adventure which wasn't complete when we went in the Fall.

I had to buy tickets the night prior for a reserved two hour time slot.  I was a little bummed at the end time, but soon realized once we arrived no one was going to be shooing us away.  We arrived at 11:00 and it was perfect.  The day was partially cloudy, and pretty hot, but that clouds helped a bunch.  I think they were offering 12 tickets every half-hour slot, so there weren't too many people there, and everyone who was there was very spaced out.

The kids played for about 45 minutes in this small nature playground area.  They had a blast!  I didn't remember this area from our first visit, but they enjoyed playing with large blocks, a water feature, xylophones, and just having fun.  I think it was extra enjoyable since they really haven't been to any playground or activities since March.  I had this BIG reminder as I started to get antsy and want to hike, that there was NO REASON to rush them.  I just finished the book, "Let Them be Kids." And here I was able to live that out.  It just really hit me, how often I'm hurrying them along to the next thing, or not being present in the moment with them, but it was fun to watch them play.

There were a few shells in the water feature, and Theo right away said, "Mom, this is just like in Harry Potter when they try to scoop up water in the cave."  Both Theo and Woodrow commented (at separate times) that one of the xylophones sounded just like music from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.  They're making connections. It was such a nice moment for me.  We played for quite a long time in the smaller play area and then on the larger climbing structures including a giant spider web and small zip line.

Eventually we got to go on the small creek trail and we got to see a doe and her fawns crossing the trail.  There are some fun interactive parts on the trail the the kids like to look at and then we were able to check out the large Treehouse Adventure.  It was set-up to be a one-way path, which I'm not sure if that was due to Covid, or if that's how it will always be set-up.  The kids had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the large trampoline in the sky the best, but they probably would have played on it more if they could go all different directions.  I was impressed Woodrow enjoyed it so much, since sometimes he gets nervous with heights.

We were pretty sweaty by the end of this loop, but the kids wanted to play just a bit more in the small nature garden, so they played there for awhile before we checked out the small store (grabbing some popcorn and apple cider), picking out our free trees to plant, and heading on our way home.        

Omaha Mom: Cooking with Kids

This post was rewritten and revised a few times.  Originally it was supposed to be for Memorial Day, then we re-worked for social-distancing, and then it got put on the backburner.  But, where it is.  A little different this month.

Cooking with Kids for Summer Picnics
https://omaha.momcollective.com/home-lifestyle/cooking-with-kids-for-summer-picnic-fun/

My next project, is working to put together some information for an Instagram Take-Over next week where I'll be discussing favorite books for adults and kids, and literacy tips.  :)

Hiking: Two Rivers State Park (10)

3.22.20

Two Rivers State Park was a fun little jaunt from our house.  We took a scenic route through the city and cornfields.  This was about 45 minutes West of our house.  There wasn't much information on trails in the park, but I thought there would be enough area to walk around anyways.  This was definitely a happening spot for the local fishermen.  We were able to walk around the campgrounds which thread between the river and small ponds.  There's also a caboose park that was closed for campers, but the kids had fun poking around.  I'm not sure it's a place I'd go to hike regularly, but if I wanted to take the kids fishing, it would be a nice spot to go back to.

Hiking: Schramm State Park (9)

3.17.2020

Right as things were starting to shut down back in March, we met with my friend Kelsey and her kids for a hike at Schramm.  This place is really nice for hiking.  You can get in 3-4 miles on a pretty nice loop trail.  Unfortunately with so many places closing, this became a popular hiking spot and we haven't been back since March.  

Omaha Mom: A letter to myself

I am thankful that I am able to be a writer for the Omaha Mom Blog.  I enjoyed writing this post and sharing my heart. 

Mama, you are beloved even if you believe otherwise...

 (Click the above link)

Hiking: Neale Forest (20)

5.6.20

As a way to integrate Cub Scouts, school, and outdoor activity we've been having the boys plan different activities.  For this hike we gave Theo and Woodrow a map with a point on the trail they had to reach.  Woodrow planned which trails we'd take to get from the parking lot to that point, and Theo had to plan the route back.  They had to use the map scale to determine how long they thought the route would be all together.  (They figured 2.6 miles).  They also had to mark each intersection on the map and list a way that they would be able to tell which direction to go at the intersection.  On the hike they had to look for a piece of trash that they could reuse as a survival tool (Bear Grylls style).

We decided to do some hiking at Neale Forest which is normally not too crowded, and has lots of different trail systems on hilltops, in canyons, and through forested area.  The last time we were there they had just completed some controlled burns, so it was nice to see the new greenery growing in.  When we we headed to the trail head we discovered there were two horses roaming free.  I suspect from a local farm, but it was fun for the kids to get up close with the horses for a few minutes. 

Woodrow did a nice job navigating us to the half-way point.  They had fun skipping through the forest and playing with each other.  Since Theo's route ended up having some backtracking, we decided to take a different route back to the starting point.  We talked with them about how their plans changed and their estimate length (2.6 miles) versus my Fitbit trackers (3.5 miles).  The boys were pretty done with hiking at this point, but it was such a nice day we decided we'd walk some more trails.  We ended up doing 7.2 miles total, and by the end, they were done.  But, it was still a gorgeous day, and this is definitely a gem in Omaha.