thanksgiving {kc style}

Just one of the things I was thankful for during Thanksgiving season is that I got an entire week off from work. And I was glad that my break lined up exactly with Brian's, which would be nice for traveling...except that Brian ended up having a lot of work he needed to get done and decided it would be best not to travel during the break. I, however, decided that, instead of wasting my life away browsing the internet day after day (let's be honest) and not getting to see any of my family, I would fly to KC to visit Mark & Emily. They were gracious about accepting my presence at a busy time -- right in the middle of a move to their new apartment.

We checked out the Gear For Sports warehouse sale, where I bought a bunch of $10-$15 Under Armour hoodies for teams I don't care about / have never heard of. I mean, a good quality hoodie is a good quality hoodie. Plus, one of them was for Bethel University, which I thought was neat. I had to think of you, Tine, because, for whatever reason, there was lots of Huskies gear, but since my team is in the same conference, I couldn't bring myself to purchase any of it. :)

Mark & Emily hosted a Friendsgiving that was a major feast. Here's Mark with his first ever roasted turkey (it was delicious!)

Turkey protecting itself from aliens.

Mark & Emily got me and another of their friends hooked on the show Revenge while we were there, so we spent a lot of time on their sectional. I may have to subscribe to Hulu Plus now (and also because stupid Parenthood is only making their last episode available for free, and I can't very well miss 2 or 3 episodes in the middle of the season).

{UNNECESSARY UPDATE: Parenthood on Hulu is back on my nice list.}

The next evening, mom & dad drove up, and we had a Thanksgiving meal of our own. The father of one of Mark & Emily's friends smoked a turkey for us. Oh. My. Gosh. Smoked turkey is so yummy. I want one every year. We also had a bunch of leftover sides from Friendsgiving, we had made up a batch of our grandma's recipe for whole wheat rolls, and mom made pies!

Here's a fun activity for you: Go back and forth quickly between the next two pictures. 1. how we really spent a lot of our time. 2. when we realized we shouldn't look so slouchy for a picture.

my bro got married

Three weeks ago, my brother and Emily got married in Lawrence! We had a bit of a rough start driving out. We had to leave early on Friday to get there in time for the rehearsal. It had snowed the night before (which made it a crazy night to be getting a pedicure...walking around in flip flops with my pants rolled up, brrrr). We actually left on time to make it to the rehearsal with more than an hour to spare, but luck was not on our side. There was a wreck on our first highway, so that slowed us down. Wet stuff was coming down and the defroster couldn't keep up, and it was also freezing onto the windshield wipers, so we had to stop and scrape that off a couple of times so we could actually see. Then there was a crazy wreck on I-70 that shut down the interstate in both directions for a loooong time. I had never seen such a terrible looking wreck before. Something like 11 semis and 1 SUV were involved. The wreck was actually in the west-bound lanes, and they didn't open those back up until 5 that evening. I mean, seriously, check this out: click here. I can't believe only one person was injured.

But anyway. So we were late. And we missed the rehearsal, sad. But we did not miss the rehearsal dinner with amazing BBQ and mom's homemade pies (with peaches that I helped pick and put up this summer)!

Early on Saturday, we girls headed to the church to start getting our hair did.

You can't see it, but that Starbucks cup has a really sweet note written on it from Mark to Emily, aw.

And there was some eating of some yummy Druber's doughnuts, mmm. A guy who was our neighbor growing up and one of Mark's groomsmen brought a box of them to Lawrence for us.

The wedding was beautiful. Brian and I got to walk down the aisle together. We did not have our arms linked incorrectly like I did at prom once. I did almost forget to always keep my body facing the bride, but I remedied that quickly. And probably no one really noticed, but now anyone who reads this and watches the video will be looking for it.

After the wedding, the wedding party hopped on a party bus with this sign and drove to photo locations in Lawrence. It was freezing but fun.

The reception was a huge party! The food was delicious! The candy bar was fun! The open bar was appreciated! And mostly I got to see a ton of my family and family friends, which I loved!

Here is a picture of my hair from the very end of the night. It was really cool but apparently was looking kind of rough by this point. :)

ranked book list {take 2}

Original post here.

1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. Columbine by Dave Cullen
3. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, with the first being my favorite, followed in order by the other two...but why read just the first one and not know how it ends? (unless, of course, we are talking about the Twilight series...) by Stieg Larsson
5. The Hunger Games trilogy, with the first definitely being my favorite, followed in order by the other two, by Suzanne Collins
6. Marley & Me by John Grogan
7. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell 
8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak. I read this book because some of my students were reading it in their freshman English class, they were struggling, and I am always in the market for material being handed to me for my sessions. :) But, oh geez, I need to read some more mediocre books to push this one down on the list. The story is decent, and the subject matter is really important, so I am glad the teacher assigned it, but I thought the writing was horrible! And not subtle! At all. It definitely felt like the author tried way too hard to write with figurative language, and it just didn't work. Sorry to keep harping on Twilight, but reading this reminded me of its terrible writing. I maybe wouldn't have mentioned it, but I just looked up this book on Amazon for the link, and the movie version came up as well. Who plays the leading character? Kristen Stewart. I know I am judging a dvd by its cover here, but I just don't know that I could handle sitting through all of that.

ranked book list

Oftentimes, I am at a loss for how to pick the next book to read. So while this project won't help me in my quest, maybe it will benefit others who find themselves in a similar position. My posting is kind of spotty, so maybe I won't keep this up, but I thought I would keep a running, ranked list of books I've read recently. When I finish one, I'll repost the entire list with the newly added one highlighted somehow. And maybe it will help me in my search for the next book to read -- perhaps it will spur on commenters to leave suggestions for me!

1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. Columbine by Dave Cullen
3. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, with the first being my favorite, followed in order by the other two...but why read just the first one and not know how it ends? (unless, of course, we are talking about the Twilight series...) by Stieg Larsson
5. The Hunger Games trilogy, with the first definitely being my favorite, followed in order by the other two, by Suzanne Collins
6. Marley & Me by John Grogan
7. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

sometimes you just go along with what works.

I work with one of my students on recognizing signs that a conversation is over/nearing its end and then saying something appropriate to end it…and, of course, actually ending it (just saying, if you enter a conversation with this student, it can be difficult to get away). We were doing some role playing. The cue we were working with was one of the most obvious ones (i.e., I would say, “Well, I really need to get going.”). The student was pretty excited about coming up with pretend scenarios we could role play. In the first one, I was supposed to be almost late for a dentist appointment. After we finished that one and she was coming up with the next one, she asked,

“Do you have a dog at home?”

“No, but I have a cat.”

“A boy or a girl?”
“A girl.”

“Ok, pretend it has cancer and you have to get it to the doctor for its treatments.”

day in review {10/16/12}

4:40 alarm goes off
5:00 finally drag myself out of bed
6:17-7:00 on the road
7:30-11:00 read the ENTIRE PLAN test to sophomore student (imagine reading the entire -- directions, passages, questions, answers, repetitions if necessary -- ACT out loud to someone) while still sick with a cold...much coughing and blowing of the nose and losing of the voice
11:10-11:40 lunch
11:40-12:10 scheduled weekly therapy time with student...who is skipping...and has been skipping most of her classes for the last two weeks...instead, attempt to see student with autism, who is having a rough day...abandon that plan as well
12:10-1:10 impact intervention English class...in which one of my three students is skipping...and in danger of having to go to court for truancy
1:20-2:20 work with two students 1:1 in their intervention study hall...one of whom leaves to "go ask his teacher a question about his homework"...and is gone for 25 minutes of our 30-minute session
2:20-2:58 second attempt to see same student with autism...whose day has gotten considerably worse...he is now screaming...and slamming doors...and calling his classmates stupid...and grabbing at anything he can...and threatening to run (a very real threat...I've been a visitor on only one of his previous runs)
2:58-8:38 sit in my office for "parent/teacher conferences"...only one parent has signed up during all 9.8 hours of my required out of contract time for p/t conferences (this exact scenario will be repeated tomorrow night...except I already saw my one parent yesterday, so no visitors tomorrow)
8:45-9:33 on the road
10:20 in bed as soon as I can in order to get as much sleep as I can before the alarm sounds at the same time the next day

love.

One of the best things about getting to spend a sixth of a year at our home places is the chance to spend a lot of time with our nephew and niece. They are sweet, sweet kids, and we love them so much. Unfortunately for you (because you have to miss out on their cuteness!), I'm not going to post their pictures here for the world to see.

We were glad we got to be there for our niece's first birthday party. Missing some of those important milestones is one of the toughest things about living as far away as we do. We usually have to miss our nephew's birthday, and it was rotten to have to wait weeks before I got to meet my niece last year, so we are happy for any opportunity to be there when we can! My sister-in-law definitely has talents in areas where I don't, and she created a super cute party (I suppose I am making assumptions here that it was her and not my brother-in-law, though he no doubt helped pull it all off!).

Several days during the summer, Brian's parents watched the kids during the day, and we got in a lot of play time on those days! We could always expect that we would (1) need to "work the fields" with play tractors and take them to the mechanic, and (2) put out a lot of fires. Both of these activities require a lot of crawling on your knees around and around the living room while pushing a toy vehicle. I seriously needed to invest in some knee pads. One evening when the kids were over, we had a hot dog roast, and then Brian's dad let R be a real fireman and put out the fire with the garden hose. Pretty cute.

At the end of the summer, I had to come back to Colorado by myself because my job started a couple of weeks earlier than Brian had to be back for classes. The night before I had to leave, the kids were super cute when they were leaving to go home and kept giving me big hugs and saying good-bye. Definitely made me tear up. Miss them!