Field Trip Day with Kiddos of the WL

I had to be at WL at 9AM because today was our big trip to Iowa University. What happens when you take a few at-risk kids to a university? Well nothing too bad if the kids respect and listen to what you say. Although, one of the boys in my group did try to put the moves on this college girl at lunch. But I can't blame the kid for trying. I told him afterward that he would have to bring some better moves next time. Those moves might work on the middle school girls in WL, but they won't work on college girls from the suburbs of Chicago.

We did see some cool stuff like a Physics lecture. Oh yeah, that's right. I said Physics. It helped that the professors were pretty good with the kids and blew stuff up. They also had some pretty cool science type toys for the kids to experiment with.

We also got to eat in a really nice dinning center in one of the residence halls that reminded me of one of the dinning halls at UNI. I had a country fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, corn and a roll. There were several stations to choose from serving everything from Chinese food to Mexican.

I think the kids enjoyed the trip and I think they were surprised that school wasn't as expensive as they thought. One kids thought it cost something like 300 thousand dollars a year. It was good time and I think the kids got the chance to imagine themselves in college one day.

New Job for Daddy!

This past week I was offered a job with United Action for Youth (UAY). It is a full time position where my primary responsibility is to manage a mentoring program at local junior high school. I will also be responsible for working on with nearby town's youth recreation program. They are also going to try me out assisting a Family Support Worker with their caseload.

I had been looking for this kind of opportunity ever since moving to Iowa City from Waterloo almost three years ago. UAY is a local non-profit agency with several community projects focused on engaging youth in positive activities. I don't know too much about what my daily activities actually look like but I am extremely excited to get started.

It is also nice because I got a huge compliment from the Agency Director. He said they were very impressed by my work experience during a previous interview and wished they had a position that fit my qualifications at the time. So when this position opened they called me to interview for it before anyone else. It was awesome. Go Me!

Gingerbread House Proudly Takes 2nd Place

This is an update about the Gingerbread House a co-worker and I made along with the kids from our BASP.

We found out last week that our house came in 2nd place. We got beat by the display with brown-bag houses (pictured below with our entry). I probably would be disappointed if the 1st prize was anything other than free food from Panchero's, but I think it's a pretty good show for our first time.



I have no idea what happened to our house after the competition. My plan was to get it back and let the kids destroy it in a fun way, but no such luck.

Gingerbread House On Display

The gingerbread house went on display this past Friday at the Sheraton in Iowa City. There were a few other entries on display as well and I have to admit I like our chances of winning.

If our gingerbread house wins the favor of the judges, whoever they may be, the entire BASP gets .

Although, I don't like Panchero's, I do like winning. Below are the pictures of the competition so far along with ours.

The Ginger Bread House

About a week ago, the BASP (Before and After School Program) I work for was invited to enter a gingerbread house for display at the Sheraton in downtown I.C. Feeling creative, I volunteered to co-lead a group of kids in the design and construction of a gingerbread house.

As sort of the self-appointed concept and design leader, my idea for the gingerbread house was inspired by the classic claymation story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (the one with the abominable snowman).

We are almost done with it execpt for trying to make an abominable snowman and adding some more marshmallow trees. In all there were about 20 kids that helped with various aspects of the house and landscaping. Each one had very good ideas. One of the best was to have Santa stuck in the chimney with his feet hanging out of the top. Unfortunately, we weren't able to make that happen, but there's always next year.

It was really fun creating the ideas for the house and seeing it come to life with all the kids.