Elphaba For A Day...

I've always wanted to play the role of Elphaba, so when the French National Honor's Society at our school announced their "Have A Laugh And Help Sudan" fundraiser (embarrassing teachers for certain quantities of money donated), I was all over it. We have a sister school in Sudan where, a few years ago, no girls attended school at all. Now there are 600 of them! Throughout the year, we've had various fundraisers and drives----everything going strait to that little village. A brilliant Social Studies teacher at our school runs the foundation and goes there every year. We raised about 3,500 dollars with this fundraiser and 9,000 or so with a 5k walk in the fall. For $950, I was willing (okay...I was excited) to paint myself green for a day. I ended up having far more fun that I could have imagined...especially when I got to scare the Little Raptors (a preschool on campus for teachers' kids). They squealed and screamed and probably had bad dreams last night! Here are some pics...

Here I am with Martha Riley, the Social Studies Teacher who runs the project for our school. She wore her wedding dress from 30-something years ago for the occasion! See http://www.projecteducationsudan.org/ for more information on the project.

Kelly Snell, the Dance Teacher/Performing Arts Chair/Student Council Advisor and I went in on this together. She dressed as Glinda, the Good Witch...complete with bubbles and whatnot, while I acted her counterpart. She and I are both obsessed with WICKED and already have tickets to see the touring company when they come to Denver in October.

Several of my theatre kids stopped by my Spanish classes that day because they heard about what I looked like and just had to see it! Taylor, a very talented Junior, was one of them. She was our lead in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and plays prominent roles in the children's show I'm directing now.

I tried casting a spell on Jacob...it didn't work. I'm not so sure my students were able to take me very seriouly during class that day. I mean, would you respond to a green-skinned witch if she asked you to start conjugating stem-chaning verbs?

I carried a broom around all day...naturally.

I experimented a lot with my witchy hand movements...for when I get to actually play that role. You know, character exploration...
While this is a hideous picture of me, I felt it necessary to give credit to my makeup artist. Brandon Bill is the theatre teacher at our school and he and I have worked together to direct all the shows this year. He's brilliant in all aspects of the craft, and particularly good at makeup. We got to school at 6:15 so he could help me become convincingly green!

A Mother's Day Tribute

Happy Mother's Day to the Moms we love so dearly!!!

Mom's who stood beside us on the most important days of our lives...

Mom's who taught us to make the world around us beautiful...

Mom's who taught us to appreciate nature...

Mom's who taught us to celebrate and love life...

Mom's who taught us to teach others...

Moms who love an adventure...

Mom's who value education...

Mom's who love the arts...

Mom's who taught us to be something more, do something greater, and strive for excellence.

Why Peru?

I've found it somewhat difficult to explain to people what it is that Brent and I are doing in Peru this summer. Here's a video that explains it all. It even shows communities that we'll be visiting and people with whom we'll be working.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neZZvvnL8Lg

Fun With Guns In Cheyenne

Just before our trip to Vail, all the Fowler clan headed out for a good old Wyoming "Shotgun shoot out." Can you believe I married into this family? Hee hee...

Steve believes it's very important to teach the kids about guns.

Macy & Steve

The Fowler Boys love to shoot pop cans, computers, pumpkins...anything that isn't living!

Liss totes baby Cash along for the show!

Climb Every Mountain

Back at Base Camp of Quandary Peak. This is near Keystone, CO (the ski resort).

Quandary Peak, 14,265'. I'm holding the "sign in tube" which holds a piece of paper where you can sign. Needless to say, I didn't bother signing in that day. It was amazing to be on top. We had lunch there.

The 2 tallest twin peaks in the distance are Grays (14,270) and Torreys (14,267) peaks, the 2 first 14ers I summited. This was taken from Quandary.

Corey Dobson (a med school peer) and myself atop Quandary. We're smiling because when your O2 saturation is 60% you're too stupid to realize how much it hurts and that you shouldn't be so happy to be dying. For what it's worth, Corey beat me to the summit by about 20 minutes. He's an animal. Note on high altitude stupidity: the chump who took the picture has his fingers in front of the lens. Oh well. They had come from Texas for the third time to summit this mountain, because they failed to make it the first 2 tries. That really put it into perspective for me.

This is Avery the dog. Avery couldn't take the 50mph winds at 13,000 feet, so she "quit". She was obviously thinking more clearly than the rest of us. Note: there was a loco dog we met on the mountain named "Quandary the Dog". Quandary (yellow lab) lives with his family at the base of the mountain and summits with a group every day. Every day. That dog has more 14er summits than any human. I guess that he is a late sleeper b/c he was going up w/ a group when we were going down.

Corey Dobson atop Quandary

Grays and Torreys peaks. These are cool mountains b/c you can climb them both in a day. You connect them via the "saddle" bx them. My 1st 2 fourteener summits.

View from Pikes (14,110) peak ascent.

Even though atop Pikes peak we were frozen w/ 60 mph winds, on the way down it thawed right nice. 12 mile hike. We left at 4:00 AM to summit.

View near top of Pikes Peak (near Colorado Springs). The really depressing thing w/ Pikes is that you can DRIVE to the top. So right there I was standing on the shoulder of a road where a bunch of blue haired retired gerries were heading up in their '96 Lincoln Continentals w/ the heater on full blast, jamming to Marty Robbins and the Sons of the Pioneers. Needless to say, we didn't take the road. We were just crossing it. But when we get on top to the gift shop, the AARP members all want to know why we are all tuckered out.

Luke Helland, Corey Dobson, Nate Gebhard going for the final summit push. If I remember correctly (which I often don't at that elevation) the actual peak is the small peak you see just to the right of the guy in the middle.

SORRY!

Sorry, everybody, for not keeping this updated! I've been mega busy with work, work and more work! I'm greatly looking forward to the last week in May and the first week in June when I can actually leave school after just 8 hours of work like everyone else! I've either directed or assistant directed every one of the 3 shows we've done this year at our school, so my work day from September to May is from seven a.m. to five, six, seven, eight, even nine p.m. if we're just about to open a show! I'm pretty sure I'll be accepting less commitments next year. Brent is about to finish is first full year of med school, and he's honored all of his classes but one. He's an avid mountaineer these days and keeps busy with the scouts. We're off to Peru for the summer starting in June. It couldn't come sooner! We love you all and hope to get this blog updated soon!

RAWR!

I just thought I'd show ya'll how manly my husband is while climbing Quandry's Peak...one of his many fourteeners. The wind blew so hard he was knocked over! I'll climb with him someday...when there isn't snow on the ground!