If something's worth doing eventually, it's worth doing immediately

Last Sunday my family gathered in the family room to plan the upcoming week. With people coming and going at different times, attending various holiday events, and meeting with friends, there was a lot to discuss. We all wanted to go up to Colorado (just a 2-hour drive) to visit with my grandparents. It turned out we had two days free for that: Monday (the very next morning) and then Saturday (the day after Christmas). We decided to go that next morning, realizing that we knew that day was free, while it was very likely something might come up making Saturday not free for us.

We went up and visited with Grandma. She's been taking care of Grandpa for the last few years while Grandpa has gradually gotten older and able to do less and less. When I went last year, his hearing was gone and he'd lost his interest in reading. He didn't talk very much, except to bless the food at dinner. So he just sat and watched whoever/whatever was going on. He was getting more and more dependent on Grandma for his basic needs, and gratefully, her health allowed her to take care of him. On Monday when we went to visit, Grandpa stayed in bed almost the entire time we were there. He'd just recently stopped feeding himself, and when he finally did get up and visit us in the living room, he didn't seem to notice us there at first. He did perk up when he saw us, and he smiled at everyone for a little bit. When we put Penny on his lap, he smiled at her and said a little something to her.

I'm very glad we visited Grandpa last week. Yesterday we found out that Grandpa had died. And while it wasn't untimely or entirely unexpected, it is still sad. I am happy, though, that we didn't wait until yesterday to see him. I am happy he got to meet Penny. And I am happy that Grandma gets to rest from her work of taking care of Grandpa.I'm very sad that Grandpa's gone. I feel like the last several times I've gone to see him I've had to say goodbye a little bit at a time. So while 92 is a very good age to live to, it's hard to say goodbye at last. I know I'll get to see him on the other side and he'll be bright and cheery as ever. But I plan on waiting a while before I get there, and I'll miss him before then.

Quandary

I'm having a bit of a dilemma.

We're moving in to Kevin's parents' house on New Year's or just after that. We feel really good about that decision and have made necessary preparations for the move. I've cancelled my student teaching appointment in Boise, Kevin's finishing up his job, my sister is coming up to take my piano, and the ball is definitely rolling.

Now here comes a big road block, one that tears me up inside and I can't seem to find a solution for: our cats are not welcome at Kevin's parents' house.

I had originally thought it would be fine for the cats to just stay downstairs where we'll be living. The litter box would go in the garage, and everything would be fine and dandy. I'd vacuum every couple days to keep things from getting too fuzzy, and no one upstairs would be any the wiser to there being cats in the house.

This was not okay.

Hmm.... plan B. The cats could live in the downstairs garage. They wouldn't ever come inside, but they'd live in the dark, cold garage full time. I'd put their scratching tower in there and probably a nice cozy blanket or two so they could get comfortable. Kevin and I decided if this was what we had to do, we would probably let them go outside once in a while so they wouldn't feel to cooped up.

Turns out this was not okay either.

Cats are just not welcome in their house, period.

I really don't know what to do. The only "compromise" that they're willing to accept is for the cats to live outside full time. The only problem with this is that Howie would run off, and Toby would spend all day pawing at the door, crying and meowing to come in. This is what happens when we let them outside in Boise, and even before that in Provo. I had originally agreed to this "compromise," but once I thought it through, I realized it wouldn't work.

We could find someone to take in our cats for the next 6 months or so while we're living in Washington. But it seems like people who love cats already have a houseful of them, and anyone who doesn't have cats is allergic or hates them.

Anybody want a couple cats for a few months?
Amongst the din of volunteers elbowing each other out of the way to have the opportunity of taking care of our kitties, the prospect looms of having to get rid of our cats.
I won't do it.

I'd rather live in Boise for absolutely no reason (no job, no student teaching) and keep paying what will turn into thousands of dollars in rent just to keep them with us.

But then the nagging thought comes back that, even though there is this huge deadlocked situation that bars our way to smooth sailing, I still feel really good about moving to Washington. I know it's the right thing for our family to be doing right now.

I just don't know how it's going to work.

Meow!

Toby joined our little family in October of 2006. We lived in our tiny little cottage in the middle of a big field, and we had a bit of a problem with field mice. For Kevin's birthday, we went and picked out a tiny black kitten and brought him home. Kevin named him October, and we call him Toby for short.

When we brought him home, he was the size of two of my fists with my pinkie sticking up as his tiny kitten tail. He fit inside Kevin's sweatshirt pocket, and when he got scared, he would run under a coffee table. I remember the day he was big enough that he ran to the coffee table and thunk! He didn't fit under it anymore.

When Kevin went on his internship in Hong Kong, Toby was my little b

uddy. I'd come home from work, and he was meowing and happy to see me. I'd talk to him as I worked in the kitchen or around the house, and he'd meow back to me.

He likes to snuggle with me when I'm sleeping. When a small kitten, he'd weightlessly pad across our bed and make himself comfortable in my hair that spread across my pillow. Now that he's

huge, it's a little bit painful when he steps across me, and he curls up on my shoulder more than my head--which is good because I enjoy breathing.

(warning, unflattering picture)

I had several miscarriages before having Penny, and during each one, I'd snuggle Toby like the baby I didn't have. I know he's a cat, but he filled a need for me, and for a few years he was my baby and my child. I needed someone small to love, and he filled that void perfectly.

A couple years ago, I remember hearing a cat meowing LOUDLY. I was in the back room, and it sounded like Toby was in the kitchen having a major fit about something. But Toby was right next to me making no noise at all. It turns out that there was a little fuzzball kitten stuck in a tree outside in our neighbor's yard. Kevin went out to investigate, as did several of our neighbors. A little while later, we had another kitten. This one we named Howie.

He is a good friend and little brother for Toby. They entertain and fight with each other, and they keep each other in shape. They run around the house together, and when they're not fighting, they lick each other's faces clean and sometimes even snuggle together to nap.

As a matter of fact, we have Howie to blame for Penny's birthday being a week before her due date. We let him play outside our apartment while we went for a walk on a Saturday. By the tim

e we came home, he was nowhere to be seen. I love the little fuzzball, and in my extra hormonal state (38 weeks pregnant), I was very upset by his being lost.

I roamed around our neighborhood a few times that Saturday looking for him, alternately weeping and calling for him. Then on Sunday, I was really upset and couldn't stop crying, so I left church early to go look for him. I walked around the neighborhood in every spare minute I found, calling for him and looking everywhere I could think of.

We put up a few signs around the neighborhood, but then it rained and ruined them. So that Monday, I went to Kinko's and spent a good chunk of money making full color flyers for our Howie. We walked around our block that Monday evening putting up flyers, and I had painful contractions every so often during that walk. When we got back to our apartment, I peered off our balcony and saw that fuzzy little stinker over in the next parking lot over. I toddled down the stairs and ran (yes, ran!) over to scoop him up.

And then Penny was born a few long hours later.

I didn't grow up with cats, and I never really understood how people could get attached to their pets. But somehow it happened to me.

Growling, Jumping, Baby

Title says it all. Post by Kevin.

Real food

Now I know that when I show a picture of my baby eating solid food for the first time, I'm supposed to have globs of it all over her face, hair, and clothing.
I'm sorry to disappoint.
But these are pictures to mark the first time Penny ate some cereal. I only gave her a tiny bit, and she was happy before, during, and after eating it. So I consider that a success!

Tonight we had some friends over to dinner, and it made me think about a few things.
First of all, if I ever start stressing about my house having to be clean, I need to just invite some people over. It makes a lot more sense to clean things up when people are actually going to use them. For example, our kitchen table. I'd been doing sewing projects on 3/4 of it for about a month now, and for longer than that dust bunnies had been frolicking underneath it. But with only the 2 of us using the table, it never really mattered. Bring in the friends, though, and suddenly it's all spic and span.
I also tried to clean my kitchen as I went along. I was partially successful. I always try to do this when guest come over anyway. One of my parents once pointed out that it's always more appetizing to eat something that comes from a kitchen that looks like it would pass the health code. Maybe that was in response to one of my more... creative... cooking attempts. But either way, when guests come over, I try to have my kitchen clean enough that they feel comfortable eating in my house.
But besides getting all hung up about cleaning, I'm really sad to be leaving my friends I've made here in Boise. People are so friendly here! I think it's just part of the culture here. When you're walking along the greenbelt along the Boise river, people greet each other as they walk or jog by. And that feeling is just compounded in our ward. When we moved in, people reached out to get to know us, and we tried to reach out and get to know other people as well. Also, we took the Marriage and Family Sunday school class, which was a smallish group of about 8-10 couples. We all learned each other's names, which was just a starting point for all of us to become good friends. I'm really going to miss these foks!!

Change of plans

I would like to thank everyone for their ideas on keeping a cleaner house. It's given me a good idea of some areas where I can do a little better with only a little bit more effort. And it will come in handy because....
We're moving. Soon. To Washington.
It turns out that Kevin's job that was going to end in July is ending in January. And while we were contemplating staying here so I could do my student teaching, it just didn't make economical sense to stay in Boise, keep paying rent every month, and start paying childcare just so I could complete a 3-month unpaid internship that doesn't technically have to be completed until 2012.
So after Christmas we'll pack up and go live with Kevin's parents in their basement. I know some in-law basements are scary, dark, spidery storage units safeguarding boxes of dusty school projects, books no one will ever read, and musty Christmas decorations. But not this one. Kevin's parents' basement is an actual apartment with a bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room. It has a big sliding glass door and even its own garage. We will still share the kitchen upstairs, which is why I'm a bit nervous about my cleaning skills. Kevin's mom keeps an immaculate house, and I... don't. I don't want to drive her nuts, so I'll really be working on this.
Somehow this move doesn't stress me out as much as student teaching (or at least the idea of it) did. I'll have to cancel my student teaching appointment, and there's a slight possibility I may be able to do it in Washington. This could turn out to be wonderful, because since there are more Asians in the area (not hard to do, seeing how Boise has essentially none), there may be an opportunity for me to teach Chinese. Yay!
The weather won't be as dreadfully cold as it's been here, and so when it's not drizzling, Penny and I can go on walks again.
It will be really nice for Penny to get to know her A-ma and A-gong. She's a sweetie, and she's starting to notice what's going on around her a lot more and starting to share her personality more. They'll get to know her, and she will learn more Chinese than she probably would otherwise. This will be one of the highlights.
I will miss Boise. We've made some good friends in our ward here, and I've just started a new calling with the Young Women. I was looking forward to getting to know them better.
It's always hard to change plans, but we both feel really good about the steps we're about to take. We've been blessed by listening to the Holy Ghost and trying to follow the Lord's commandments. We've been living frugally, working on a food storage, and putting some money away in savings. We could theoretically stay here until I'm through with my student teaching, but again, it just doesn't make sense to blow our savings on an unpaid internship that doesn't immediately need to be done. I'd been excited for my student teaching, but as I tried to get the details worked out, nothing seemed to fall into place. As more and more challenges arose, I found myself dreading it. And now that we've made the decision to move, I feel like I can do this. It does involve more work and a little more frantic scrambling to get things done, but it feels right. And with God's help, we can do anything.
Even learn to keep a kitchen clean.

Whelmed

Last week I felt like I'd finally gotten a handle on things, so much so that I figured I could try keeping my house a bit cleaner.
Well, that has fallen by the wayside as I've had a bit of a change of plans made for me.
I was all ready to start student teaching at the end of January. I'd contacted my teachers I'd be working with, and we had started discussing curriculum. I felt a little overwhelmed at the amount of work it would take to organize a curriculum, but I had 2 1/2 months and knew I could do it.
Then my school contacts me: "Oh by the way, before you can student teach, you need to complete this 3 credit class starting today and going straight through to the day you thought you'd start student teaching. Happy holidays!"
Wow, talk about overwhelming!
It's actually a really useful class (about curriculum and lesson planning), but it was more than I'd expected to have to do over my holidays. On Tuesday when I found out about this, I was completely stressed and overwhelmed. There are many projects and observations I'll have to do, and now that Penny is my little buddy all the time, it makes it a bit harder to just run off to go observe a class.
So I went through my syllabus and broke everything down, writing down all my assignments and their due dates. I spend Penny's nap times working on school instead of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or catching up on sleep. I feel very busy, but as long as I keep moving, I know I can do this.
I'm not feeling entirely overwhelmed anymore-- just whelmed.

Messy

Hey everyone reading this,
I've never been a very organized person. I don't like cleaning, and I don't like organizing. But I do like having a clean and organized house. Can you see my problem?
I don't have the money to pay someone to come clean, and honestly, I'd like to have the satisfaction of knowing I can keep my own house. I love those houses where you walk in and see a few carefully placed decorations, see the fruit bowl on the table, and smell sweet candle scents wafting from wherever.
Contrast this to my house. You walk in and see a pile of shoes spiling out of the shoe shelf, blocking your entry to the house. On the couch and coffee table are heaps of books, jackets, Penny clothes, mail, and anything else I've looked at or used during the day. The dining table has a rock-hard orange and grapefruit in the fruit bowl, along with some tomato stems and random fruit stickers. The dishes pile up in the kitchen, and even if all the dishwasher ones are in the dishwasher, there's still a pile of pans that need handwashing. And while my house sometimes smells neutral, I know that often there's a competition of subtle aromas wafting from the sink, garbage, bathroom, and cat litter box.
So I'd like to know your tips and tricks. What works for you? What doesn't work? And don't feel like you have to have an immaculate house to contribute. Here, I'll share one: About once a day I wipe the bathroom counter and sink with TP to cut down on the dust and hair. It makes it look a bit cleaner when I don't have time to clear everything off and thoroughly clean.
But that's one of my few successes. I'd like to hear some of yours!

BYU vs U of U: a children's story

Here is a happy baby we brought to the BYU vs Utah game. Awwwwwww, how cute!

Here is the sad baby we took home at half time. Everyone in the stadium was yelling and screaming-- including her-- although she was yelling for a different reason.

Here is the sack of potatoes that we got to heft all the way home. Poor sleepy baby!

Alrighty, now we can go enjoy the game!! Here is the awesome group that rushed the field. Oh wait, is that us??

Yes, that is the score: 26 to 23. WE... ARE... AWESOME!!!

This is Max Hall getting hoisted and crowd surfed. You could tell on his face he wasn't entirely confident in his crowd, and rightly so. He landed in a heap of people. Daniel was on the bottom of that heap. Sarah got it on video.

Yay for a good ending to a good game!

Note to self

Never ever EVER write a blog entry about how consistent your child's sleep schedule is. Neither Penny nor I has had adequate, regular, extended, or otherwise acceptable sleep patterns since then. It has not been a happy time here in Fisher land.

I notice that when I'm not feeling great, whether I'm tired or sick or a little of both, the first thing to go is cleaning the house. While I am glad it's not my highest priority, it's really frustrating how bad things get and how quickly. By the end of Friday, both sides of the sink were filled with dirty dishes, the coffee table was covered in stacks and stacks of books, the couch had a pile of coats, blankets, fabric, and pillows that covered 2 of the 3 cushions. I have a pile of clean laundry that is tragically covering the same spot that I toss my worn clothes when I'm too tired to put them away. Penny had gone through all 80 or so pajama suits that fit her these days, and she was down to the mismatched too-small clothes.

I'm always thankful when Friday night and then Saturday roll around, because then Kevin's home to help me out. He cleared away my stacks of books, put away a few of my coats, swept the floors, and did most of the dishes in the sink. On Saturday morning, he took care of Penny for me for 4 hours while I tried to send my insomniac self into dream land. I got a good hour's nap in there.

I might have complained a little bit when I couldn't find my coat that he'd put away, but I am ever so grateful he helps me out so much. I couldn't do it without him!

Still thankful. Just not consistent

I promise I'm being thankful, even though I've only posted twice or so, after having decided to do this every day. That's what usually happens. However, I'll just go from here. No sense kicking myself for the past.

I'm thankful today for morning naps. I have a 19-lb baby who can't sit up but gets sick of lying on her back or tummy. When I prop her up on the couch, within 30 seconds she's ootched herself into an uncomfortable position. When I put her in the Bumbo, she poops. (Sorry, overshare.) So I usually spend a lot of my day picking her up, moving her, and holding her.

However, every morning she goes to sleep at about 9:30 or 10:00 and sleeps for a few hours. I'm thankful for those couple hours where I can get a few things done and let my back recover.

I'm thankful for my calling in the YW. In Beijing I was called as the Beehive Advisor for the last few months we were there. Then when we moved to Provo, I was called as the YW second counselor, over the Beehives. When we moved here, I played the piano in Primary for a couple months, and now I'm the YW second counselor again. This seems to be my calling for this period of my life. I love hanging out and talking to the Beehives, along with all the other young women. I think teenagers are the funnest, funniest, and most fascinating group of people.

Winners!

I had fun going through my comments for the last couple weeks. I have some regulars and some occasionals, and I really love hearing from you all!
This may or may not be fair, but this is how I chose my winners. If you commented anything, you got one point per comment. If you actually did a thankful list, you got five extra points. Then I used random.org to choose randomly from my contestants.
I should have done this back in the day. I used to feel bad that I couldn't buy presents for all my friends, so I'd just end up buying no one anything. Or I'd buy a million tiny things (like strawberry hard candies or something) and intend to give one to each of my friends. But that's no fun. So I'm happy to make a few nice(ish) gifts and give to random people. I may do this more often. We'll see....
So my random(ish) winners are:
Merry used-to-be-Packard
Sarah McK
Laura W
Sara Lee
and
Andrea Blatter
So, Sarah, I have your address, but the rest of you folks should email me yours. I still use my hotmail account.
I love you all, and I'm very grateful for blogging as a way to keep in touch with some of my dear friends from throughout my life. I have a few friends here in Boise, but now that I have a kid and most of my friends have kids, it's much more of a hassle to get together with anyone. So we don't. It's lame and kind of lonely, but that's just the way it is.

The Hero's Journey

I talked to my mentor teacher I'll be working with for my student teaching. Since I don't start for two months, I thought it would be nice to spend part of that time reading the books I'll be teaching. There are many books out there, and I haven't read the majority of them. My class in high school read many books, and I haven't read the majority of those either. And now I'm going to be a teacher. Can we have a big, Charlie Brown-style "good grief" all around!

So it turns out that the curriculum I'll be teaching includes King Arthur and teaching the Hero's Journey. Blah!

When I heard that, I instantly thought of my freshman high school class when we read a few chapters of The Once and Future King. Blah! King Arthur is overrated!

I also remembered my senior year learning about the Hero's Journey by reading The Odyssey. Blah and barf! Who cares that Odysseus went on a boat and that's an archetype of other people going on boats in other books?!

I told Kevin what I'll be teaching, and the minute I said King Arthur, his eyes lit up. When I mentioned the Hero's Journey, he got so excited he looked like he'd pop.

Sometimes I forget my husband majored in Comparative Literature.

And that he'd just spent the last month reading Le Morte D'Arthur FOR FUN.

He showed me a couple websites and some information about Joseph Campbell and his research into ancient myths. He worked off the ideas of a lot of other guys (of course) and came up with a bunch of elements that essentially every story, myth, legend, and epic adventure story have in common-- around the world. He put these ideas together and came up with the typical Hero, typical villain, and typical events that happen in these legends. He came up with the word archetype. (!!) That's pretty cool.

Then on one website, there was a chart showing how these archetypal events were strictly what George Lucas based Star Wars on. And it compares them to events on the Matrix.

This piqued my interest.

"Hey, that's kind of like in the Lord of the Rings when..." I started making my own connections and getting kind of involved.

"Wait a second, HARRY POTTER is the archetypal hero! And Voldemort is his villain! And his call to adventure is when he gets his letter inviting him to Hogwarts! And the Mentor is obviously Dumbledore! And there's a prophecy!!! Aaaahhhhh!!!!!"

There was much excitement.

Tonight, still thinking about Harry Potter being the Hero on the Journey, I said to Kevin (as if we were still having the same conversation from several nights ago), "But what's the Abyss for Harry Potter?"

Not missing a beat, he says, AND I QUOTE, "Well, it's the graveyard, obviously."

Obviously!!

I have a feeling this unit will be fun. :)

Stats

Penny is awesome.
Four month stats:
Weight: 19 lbs (higher than 97%) (gives me a good workout)
Height: 25.5" (90%) (she's slimmed down)
Head circumference: 17" (97%) (to store all her brainpower)

Growling

My giveaway contest has now officially ended. Thank you for everyone's responses! Anonymous entries will not be accepted (sorry Mr. Viagra salesman!), but I'll count everyone else's. I'll post something about the winners, and should you be one of them, I'll contact you as well. Maybe by the end of today? We'll see.

Today Penny has her 4-month checkup. I'll post her stats when I get them. Prepare to be impressed. She has only gotten bigger. :)

And this next video shows her newest and greatest trick: growling. For a few days this week, it took the place of all her cute baby noises. She wouldn't talk or even laugh. It was all growling. But now she's realized she can still make cute baby noises AND growl. She's learning a lot.

Thoughts on teaching

As I'm getting ready to student teach (filling out forms, contacting my cooperating teacher, etc) I'm thinking a lot about what and how I'll teach, and I'm also remembering a lot of what I did last year and how it applies. Or doesn't apply. Whatever.

Last year at my job, I spent a lot of time reading student essays and conferencing with the students about what they'd written and how they could make it better. I loved the opportunity for 1-on-1 feedback like that, and it's something I'd like to incorporate into my future classroom.

One funny thing, though, about teaching writing in Utah is that a lot of your students are Mormon and have only ever written Sacrament meeting talks.

For example, some of the papers I'd read went something like this:
Today I will be writing about the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States has three main sections: the Preamble, the Body, and the Bill of Rights.

The Preamble states that blah, blah, blah. (Nice paragraph here about the Preamble).

After the Preamble, the rest of the Constitution outlines how the government works and the various jobs of the various branches of government (explained nicely in a beefy paragraph here... sometimes).

The Constitution wasn't complete without the Bill of Rights, which were the first 10 amendments to the Constitution (blah blah blah).

In conclusion, I am thankful for the Constitution. The Founding Fathers were great men who worked hard to make this country what it is. I am grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy here in this wonderful land. I love America!

And then I would laugh really hard to myself as I prepared a swift critique of these Sacrament talk essays. I mean, it's great and appropriate to bear your testimony at the end of your church talk. And if your talk was about following the prophet, you could still testify of prayer and the scriptures. But in school, if you're writing a 5-paragraph expository essay, then by golly, your final paragraph shouldn't be a testimony of random, Social Studies-related facts. Hee hee.

I had a good analogy for what an introductory paragraph should be: it's like a movie trailer. You want it to be more than just a poster showing the Batman logo with Joker's makeup around it. But you also don't want it to be that 5-minute movie theatre trailer that covers all the funny and exciting part of the movie, leaving you wondering why you'd still pay money to see the whole thing.

But I struggled with explaining why you should rehash your main points in a conclusion.

Now fortunately (or unfortunately once you hear how absolutely dorky I am), I've found a good analogy for a complete 5-paragraph essay: An episode of Dancing with the Stars.

At the beginning, the annoying announcers come on and say, "Tonight we have the steamy Latin round, where each of our couples will be competing to give the spiciest samba or the most romantic rumba." This is followed by each couple walking down the glamor staircase. You hear their names, their partner's name, and you can see their costume and make a pretty good guess about the dance they'll be doing.

Then in the body of the actual show, you watch each dancer, one by one. They'll show a portion about the dancer's rehearsals that week, then they do their dance, the judges give their critiques, and then they head backstage for their scores. Samantha awkwardly interviews them about their scores, and the couple reminds you to phone in your vote. You see a glimpse of the next couple smiling and waving to the camera before we're off to a commercial break. This is the detailed part. This is where you get to know each contestant, you get to decide whether you like them or not, and whether you'd vote for them.

At the end of the show, the announcers come back on to let you know you can now vote. They show a 5-second clip of each contestant's dance, and below it is the number you'll call to vote for them. This reminds you of their dance, refreshing your memory of why you liked it or not, and motivates you to get up and vote for the winner of the Latin round.

Which is dorkier: my watching Dancing with the Stars, or my watching it enough to apply it to writing a 5-paragraph essay in school?

Um, no comment.

Day 11 (depends on how you count)

I haven't made a daily list of things I'm grateful for. It doesn't mean I'm not grateful; it just means I didn't write on my blog. I used to beat myself up about all these things that I let slide. But now I don't. I used to write in my journal EVERY DAY (for like 7 or 8 years). And now I don't. I write a blog occasionally and a journal occasionally as well. It adequately records my life. I have a lot fewer entries that consist of, "I didn't do anything memorable today," or, "Today I did a ton of stuff but I'm too tired to write about it." I'm glad that I learned that I can do something like writing in a journal every day, but now I'm thankful I've moved past that.

And you know how people with very symmetrical faces are considered the most beautiful? Well, I am therefore thankful for the big zit right in the middle of my chin. I am just that much more symmetrical and beautiful now.

Oh, and be sure to write in my comments somewhere. I think I'm modifying my giveaway (WHAT? It's MY giveaway; I make the rules) to include everyone who has commented this month. You have until the 15th!!

Watch out, students!

I've been on somewhat of an educational hiatus. In fact, I don't even remember the last time I took a class. It must have been sometime this spring, but I don't really remember when. Or what it was about. But I remember being sick with pregnancy over Christmas and also almost failing a class during that time. And then I took a couple weeks' break and then took my last class, I think. And I think it was about distance education, special education, or maybe curriculum planning.

Anyway.

After taking the better part of a year off, I'll be starting my student teaching sometime this spring!! I just got a call today from my education specialist at UoP, and he told me I got my placement. Wahoo! I'll be working at an alternative high school up here in Idaho.

Last year I worked at one in Utah, and I loved so many things about it. I loved how the teachers were so willing to help the students. They were always trying new things and trying to come up with new ideas to motivate the students, help them learn, and move them on towards graduation and then to real life.

The teacher I worked with, Kelly, was the guy who started the program that later became the school. I would talk to him about it, and I remember one conversation in particular. I asked him how he decided to start his afterschool program and why he wanted the challenge of working with the failing students. He said something about enjoying a challenge, and then, "Anyone can teach AP students."

That really got me thinking. I would love to teach at a school where every student is curious, takes initiative, finishes their assignments, and comes prepared to participate in class discussions. Wouldn't that be ideal? Or would it?

Kelly was right: where's the challenge in that?

I got to spend a year watching Kelly teach classes, keeping a large percentage of the students actively engaged in learning. I got to see some of the other teachers at our school use their talents and skills to reach our students. I learned so much!

So I decided that when I did my student teaching, would I rather work with a teacher who would show me how to make AP classes even more AP? Um, no. That's not where I lack skills. I need help learning to reach the students who don't care. I want to learn to manage a classroom of rowdies. I would love to watch a master at work, taking cues from their example and taking pointers on my own efforts. I would hate to have a student teaching experience in a classroom of young eager beavers and then someday flail on my own in a classroom of struggling students.

So I'm super excited to be doing my student teaching next semester!

PS: I also like the fact that there's a daycare on campus. I'll check it out first, of course, but I think it would be ideal for Penny to be able to come to school with me, and I could go check on her during my lunch hour (half hour) (few minutes). :)

How not to make noodles

Kevin and I have been trying (3 times total) to make noodles by pulling them, like they do in China. I've read recipes, watched videos, and after our first two semi-successful attempts, even watched a Chinese cooking show that explains it step by step. Armed with this new information, we headed to the kitchen.

We had trouble getting the dough to be stretchy enough to hold together and form noodles. Basically, we'd wap it against the table a few times, and we'd just end up with a piece of dough slightly longer but almost as thick as we'd started with. Don't get me wrong, they still tasted pretty good. But they weren't the noodles we wanted.

My logical reasoning at this point was to get better flour. Obviously, if you want your noodles to stick together better, you'll need flour with more gluten, right? That's what we tried, but it was a large leap in the wrong direction. Turns out, what you need is more like pastry flour, with very little gluten in it. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but I trust the guy on the video. I found that video incredibly helpful. Also, this recipe for laghman (Uyghur noodles) is on a fascinating blog that I want to spend more time reading.

So tonight's noodle experiment ended with boiling some spaghetti noodles and having our tomatoes, peppers, and lamb on top. Now that we know what doesn't work, we may have better luck in the future with our noodles.

For the grandparents

Mommy, this is what I keep calling you about.

Broadway, Disney, and cheesy lullabies

I made a new station on Pandora, and it rocks! Well, it's actually completely cheesy and not rockin' at all, but I love it! I searched for Part of Your World, and I now have a station that plays me songs from all sorts of Disney movies, musicals like the Sound of Music, and then some random lame songs that I have to thumb down (like folksy lullabies, songs sung by Elmo, and Schoolhouse Rock multiplication table songs).

I love having a station of songs that lets me sing along with just about every single piece that comes up. I'm learning to belt it like the Broadway Wicked ladies. Penny likes to hear me sing, and I love singing!

After two whole days of listening to it, I am actually kind of sick of it, but I'm still pleased with myself enough to mention it on my thankful list today.

Washington D.C. baby!

Last month Kevin took the Foreign Service Officer Exam, and last week we found out that he passed! It's an incredibly low passing rate (about 20-30 percent of applicants), and Kevin and I are so excited about this!

This is just the first step, however. Since he got his results, he's had to write some personal narratives and have a Chinese language phone interview. He aced both of those (in my humble, unbiased opinion), and now he just gets to wait. The next step would be to get invited to come to Washington D.C. to participate in an oral exam sometime this spring. We really hope that happens, but if for some reason it doesn't, we have a trip to Disneyland planned as a backup. I never thought I'd say this, but I hope we don't go to Disneyland.

When Kevin took the exam last month, he spent a lot of time studying for it beforehand. If it were me and I were taking it, I wouldn't know where to start. I'd figure that since it's such a random test, I'd just study random things randomly. Kevin had a systematic approach, though. A large part of the exam was based on US history, politics, and culture. Talk about broad! Kevin decided to memorize all the US presidents and the major events in each of their terms. And if you think about it, that covers just about all of American history. Plus it give him a nice backbone to keep events chronological and organized in his mind.

Another thing Kevin did well was to use his time wisely. I generally tend to procrastinate everything. If I were studying for the Foreign Service Exam, I'd be surfing wikipedia the night before the test, hoping to come across some useful tidbits of information. If I had to turn in some personal narratives by a certain date, I'd be "writing them in my head" for a month but not actually turning them into words until the night before they were due. But Kevin is awesome and turned them in two weeks early, after polishing and perfecting several drafts first.

If I were the Foreign Service, I'd snatch this guy up.

Thanks

So I'm not doing this every day. I might do it twice in one day and then not the next. That's how I roll.

I'm thankful for digital cameras. Remember the days of regular, film cameras, where you took a series of pictures and didn't know for weeks (after you finished the roll and had it developed for way too much money) if it turned out?

I went to this amazing concert of the Three Tenors under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. My pictures look the same as my Fourth of July fireworks pictures and numerous flash-less campfire pictures. And then I always had the problem (still have) of taking pictures without zooming in. I'd get my prints and squint at the middle to try and remember why I'd taken a picture of the stupid thing in the first place.

And then there are the sleeping zoo animal pictures.

But now, thanks to digital photography, I know which pictures to retake, which to delete, and which to use/not use a flash. I can upload a few to my blog, several to facebook, or all of them to my computer, and it costs me NOTHING. I'll print 2 or 3 out of every hundred to send to grandparents, but besides that, my pictures are better organized and better utilized than they ever have been.

Thank you, digital cameras!

Gratitude

I'm going to copy a few people (Ashley and Sara) and try to write something I'm thankful for every day. Or almost every day. It's not something I'm going to beat myself up about if I don't do it. I stopped doing that a while ago. Life is much happier this way.

Anyway, I'm thankful for fall. I love the changes that the world goes through at this time. We go from stifling summer to a point where maybe a tree turns yellow, and you start to feel a little bit of crisp cool in the shade. Then you have harvest time, where your garden (if you have one, sniff sniff) dumps its bounty on you. You get to pick apples and make applesauce, and the store sells the last of its summer watermelon and sweet corn. I really think Thanksgiving should be in October.

Then comes the colder last bit of fall. The leaves are falling from the trees. This morning on my walk I passed a few houses with about 15 bags of leaves waiting the recycling truck. And the thing is, I couldn't see that any of the trees were yet bare of leaves. I bet they'll have 15 bags every week from now till Christmas. There is frost on the grass in the mornings, but it melts once the sun hits it.

I really love this time of year because of marching band in high school. I spent more time outdoors in the fall than in any other season. And here in Boise, I can see the BSU stadium from my front windows, and every once in a while I hear the band practicing.

I'm thankful for the fall!

Thanksgiving Giving!

Hey blog readers! Have you been to the store lately? Have you noticed anything? Well, I think it's strange that during the month of October, the Halloween candy almost gets elbowed out of the way by the Christmas merchandise. Now that Halloween is officially over, Christmas can stop lurking in the shadows and take its place at the forefront of every storefront. Let there be carols on the radio! Let there be gifts made and purchased! Let us have Santa Claus on our Coca Cola!

But let's not forget about Thanksgiving. There might not be too much merchandise available, and there's not even any special Thanksgiving candy, but it doesn't mean it's not a holiday worth celebrating.

The best part of Thanksgiving, in addition to excellent food and crisp autumn weather, is the opportunity to spend time with loved ones. So this year I want to give thanks to my friends that keep in touch with me through my blog (even if you're reading this on facebook) by hosting a giveaway!

In order to enter, I'd like to hear what you are thankful for, and here are some details:

1. Please leave me a comment or a link to your blog listing things you're thankful for.

2. You can be thankful for as many people, places, and things you want, but I'm limiting it to one entry per person.

3. Please leave your thankful lists by November 15th. I'll pick the winners (I'm thinking maybe 5 of them, chosen randomly) and send the loot hopefully to arrive by Thanksgiving.

In the spirit of skipping over Thanksgiving, the prizes will actually be Christmas boxes full of Christmasy candy, decoration, and other hoopla.

Halloween

Our ward had a Halloween party last night. It was also a chili cook-off, which I never have understood. I mean, you invite a million kids to a party and then serve... chili? I brought macaroni and cheese.

And here we are in our awesome costumes. (And yes, I'm a flower.)

Penny is shocked to see that, even though she had no candy bag, cannot talk or say 'trick-or-treat,' and can't even eat solid

food, she came home with four (ahem, you can only see 2 in the picture... something happened to the other two) fun-sized candy bars.

Sharing

Even though this post says it was written by Kevin, it was not. I just added him as an author on this blog so I don't have to keep signing him out of his google account.

At Costco the other day, I decided to add to our food storage by buying a large bag of rice. It turns out that rice is rather dense, and while I can easily lift a bag of cat food that big, rice is quite a bit heavier. Twice as heavy, in fact.

The rice was on a low shelf, and I was able to lug one sack onto the lower bit of my trolley. It teetered on a support bar for my whole shopping trip, but it stayed on the cart.

When I got to the car and tried to heft it into my trunk, it was heavier than I'd thought, causing my body to lurch forward and my face to hit the handlebar. It hurt for several days, but didn't give me a glorious bruise, or else I'd have posted a picture.

Well, to make a boring story longer, today I took that 50-lb bag of rice, sewed little bags, and split it into several manageable-sized bags. They look like little panda-print pillows stacked on my shelf.

So there! My food storage may be embryonic and unorganized, but it's cuter than yours. Ha ha ha!

Boise in the fall

I know people travel to Vermont and the east coast in the fall to view the leaves. Well, thankfully, all we have to do is go on a walk. Boise is amazing in the fall!This is just out our front window:And this is just out on the main street:

There are a few streets around here that have really old, Victorian-era mansions on them (interspersed with some normal-sized houses, too). Apparently they are THE streets to do your trick-or-treating on. That being the case, there are some pretty fun Halloween decorations.
I thought these spiders were fun. I was just going to take a picture from the sidewalk, but Kevin made fun of me for being scared to walk up the front walk towards the giant spiders. There's a reason these pictures were all taken in the day time.Some of the decorations are a bit hokey, like this inflatable ghost. But I LOVE the landscaping at this house. It's right near our apartment, and I walk by it and ooh and aah all the time.This one showcases my awesome photography skills. If you look really close, the wind chime is little skeletons. (!!!)

This next one is kind of plain, but I thought it was pretty:

Then these next ones are getting a little more awesome. This first one has great Halloween decorations, but I think it would be a beautiful house all year round. I mean, porch swing, folks!

Coolest by far:

I wouldn't trick-or-treat at this house. They'd probably have someone sitting on the front porch pretending to be dead or something.

Heads on stakes!

And then this last one is my absolute favorite. I will not be heading in this direction on Halloween night, but taking pictures during the day is just fine!

That's a lie. I wanted to stick my camera through the gate to get a better view of all the ghouls and skeletons inside the yard. But I got scared. Seriously! The skeletons look like they're going to have motion detectors in them and start laughing or howling at you when you get close, and I didn't want to risk it.

So I did get this blurry picture through the side gate:

This was a random little friend we met along the road on our walk:

And this is the little autumn apple of my eye!No, a picture post would never be complete without a picture of Penny. :)

Fatter and fatter

Back when I was in China teaching English, there was a track and field day at the school. All our kids were in running races, jump-roping competitions, and all sorts of other events. It was a fun, all-day event for everyone.

Now, most of our classes were little elementary school kids, but each of us teachers taught a couple classes of older students. In each of these classes, most of the students memorized the English words and phrases just fine, but spoke no English to save their lives. But there was always one student who spoke it brilliantly and would take on the role of conversationalist and translation representative for the class.

In my friend Sarah's class, this was a boy named Rainbow. Now, if I remember the details correctly, Rainbow was a chubby kid but one of the funnest and funniest in his class. His classmates adored him, and on the field day, he sat on the bleachers surrounded by chattering classmates.

Sarah went to talk to her students, and they all told her which events they'd been in and how they'd done. Then she asked, "Rainbow, aren't you in any events?"

And Rainbow replied in his fun Chinese accent, "No, teacher. I am fatter and fatter."

Sometimes Penny talks to me, and often I interpret for her, verbalizing what I am sure she is trying to say. And often she is saying, "Mom, I am fatter and fatter."

Lately

Well, it's been a bit of a drag lately. Kevin got sick on Monday, and I got sick last night. It's not horrible, but we're both kind of achy and blah. I still hope Penny doesn't get it. I'll keep sending her all my immunities and antibodies, so we'll see.

Another annoying update is that the internet doesn't work on my computer. Our apartment complex has had really spotty internet because the router would get overloaded and shut off. Now they've replaced the router, but it's a weaker signal. This means we can get internet on Kevin's computer with its big ol' antenna, but mine doesn't pick it up. Boo.

On the happier end of things, it's autumn here (as I realize it is other places), and it's beautiful. Right outside our front window, the maple tree has turned yellow, as has the locust tree behind it. The Redbud tree is on its way to yellow, and these are all framed by pine trees and some catalpas that are still green. See, I could be cooped up in a much more unpleasant place.

And the company could be much worse:

Not that we're competitive, but...

Our baby's fatter! I mean, chubbier!

Sorry, other Fishers. :)

Three months (and a day... I wrote this yesterday)

Usually in my life, three months tends to just fly by. I mean, it's the better part of a semester, a fun summer job, a whole football season. Usually I just blink and it's gone.

However, this has been the longest three months of my life.

And Penny's.

Yes, Penny has just turned 3 months old. Her new tricks include LAUGHING! (as of yesterday-- gave us a chuckle), smiling a ton, rubbing her head back and forth to polish a nice bald spot onto the back of her head, jumping in her jumper, raising her eyebrows, and being generally joyful.

I mean, not right now. Right now Kevin is holding her because she wouldn't stop screaming when I put her to bed. The second time.

Sometimes I know what she wants. Like when she fusses between 10 and 11 in the morning, she is ready for her nap. But so many times I have NO IDEA what's wrong. I always thought moms just KNEW, but apparently it's something you gradually figure out. And the baby has no idea either. She just knows she's uncomfortable. But is it the beginning, middle, or end of the digestive system? Nobody knows. It's an amazing thing, this learning process. It just makes for long months. Thankfully, though, longer months means I get to enjoy them longer.

There are many things I LOVE about hanging out with Penny:

When Penny wakes up in the morning, she squeaks and squirms and rubs the hair off her bald spot. But then when I peek my face into the crib, she stops and breaks into the most joyous smile!

She is trilingual... at least. Some of her favorite words are A-Gu (Taiwanese for uncle), Unga (the running back for BYU), and ni (Chinese for mud). She's so smart!

Our apartment complex has a gym, but since Penny is such a chunk (about 18 lbs now), I don't need to go there to lift weights.

Now that we have cooler weather, the bare-leg look isn't as comfortable. Thankfully I somehow ended up with about a million one-piece pajama sets that fit her now or will fit her soon.

Costume Party!

These pictures are for Sarah's online costume contest.

Penny's expression on this one was just the last end of a yawn, and I thought it was pretty funny:
Then this one is a smile, but she blinked. Oh well. Bumblebees fly by sonar anyway, don't they? (um... no. But we can pretend)

Everything but the Potent Potables

Tomorrow Kevin is taking the Foreign Service Exam. He's been studying a lot, but it's kind of a Jeopardy-type test. You just have to know everything. I think he'll do wonderfully, and I'd like to request that you remember him in your prayers tonight.

And tomorrow morning.

Thanks!!

Jumping Baby

This is a video of Penny jumping in her jumper. She is amazingly skilled. The minimum age is 4 months, but Penny is just 2.5 months. That means she is an extraordinarily advanced child prodigy. At least we think so.

And for you folks who don't watch videos of babies (I never do), here's a picture of the star:Since the weather has gotten so cold this weekend, we got to dress Penny in her way-cute fuzzy fleece bear suit. And that is my Guang Hua jacket. No comment.

Budget

Ever since we've moved to Boise and Kevin has his real job, my money spending philosophy has been basically to buy whatever I needed whenever I wanted. Now while this is an excellent philosophy, it was remarkable how, even though Kevin was making more money than both our previous jobs put together (not hard, btw), we were spending money at about the same rate as it was coming in. We went out to eat, bought a computer, went to the movies. Something needed to change.

Enter Chelsea the mega-budgeter!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Excuse me while I guffaw and snort for a while.

Just kidding. I HATE budgeting. The whole idea that I'm supposed to, for example, set $20 aside every month for car repairs so that when they happen once a year or so, I have $240 all sitting ready for me to spend on car repairs. Um, I'm not that organized. I never will be. Same goes for putting it into envelopes. Ew!

So we found a system that does work for us. We have a set amount that we'll spend on food for the month. Then for all my purchases, both food and otherwise, I keep the receipts and jot the amount on the list on the fridge.

And that has made all the difference.

Basically, instead of planning ahead, it helps me to see everything that I've been spending. I think just seeing everything-- instead of the amount having been spent and disappeared into thin air-- keeps me from buying too many things.

It's worked pretty well so far. Now I have money to contribute to the Chelsea's Disneyland Fund, the Cruise of the Orient Fund, and the House Down-payment Fund. Well, theoretically. Right now it's just in the bank.

Friends and food

We've lived in Boise for four months now, and just in the past few weeks I've felt like I actually have friends here. I guess it took a while because I met people the first month-and-a-half, then I retreated into my cave for the next month-and-a-half to birth a child, and now I've come out of hibernation again (just in time for winter).

For me, making friends involves small groups. I would love it if I could just jump into a ward or community and meet and love everyone. But it's overwhelming. Instead, I need smaller groups in order to get to know people on a "quality over quantity" basis.

For example: our Sunday School class. We were invited to attend the Marriage and Family class, and it's comprised of probably about 20 people. We all go and introduce ourselves almost every week for whatever new person may be attending. It helps sooo much. How often in a regular Sunday School class do I attend for months and months and still know the names of only 4 people?

On Monday our ward had a ward family home evening potluck at the church. We got our food and sat down with... what turned out to be a table of Sunday School classmates. Yay! We all talked, gabbed, joked, and held Penny. It's great to feel comfortable with people.

Then last night we had one of the couples over to play Ticket to Ride at our house. This couple in our ward just came back from living in Shanghai for 6 months--- which instantly gives us similar experiences and a lot to talk about. We played our game, but it was really just a backdrop to an evening of awesome conversation and excellent food.

I get on these spurts where I eat one type of food over and over and over. Sometimes it's something healthy like applesauce, PBJs, or bananas. Unfortunately, this month's food is milkshakes. I'd been eating (drinking?) vanilla malt milkshakes every day or so, enjoying the fact that they cost so much less than at a store. Then I discovered these pumpkin pie milkshakes. My world has been turned upside-down, folks! They may be THE most delicious thing I have ever eaten!!!

I've tried other pumpkin milkshakes before, but they usually taste like bad soft-serve with too much nutmeg. These taste like pumpkin heaven in a cup! You have to try them, my dear friends!! You haven't lived until you've eaten one.

Videos

This first video highlights the chubbiness of our darling child.In these next two videos, there are a few tiny snippets of Penny goo-gooing, Penny hiccuping, and myself goo-gooing. If Penny weren't so darn cute and chubby, there's no way I would post this video of myself. :)And this last one I took the other night. It's pretty cute too.

Unfinished business

One of my special talents is to start projects and not finish them. Now that I have a baby, I've been developing this talent, and I'm proud to say I'm becoming quite the pro.

For example, from the couch where I am sitting, I can see about a hundred projects, small and large, that I've started but not finished.

The stroller is in the middle of the room from our walk last night. I should fold it up and put it in the corner. After all, that's why I got a small one.

Along those same lines, the Baby Bjorn is strewn across a chair from another outing yesterday.

The mail keys are on the cat scratching tower. (Not an unfinished project, but just disorganization-- another talent I'm perfecting).

Under the Baby Bjorn is the king of all unfinished projects: the quilt I made for our wedding. I stupidly decided to hand quilt the darn thing, and it will never be finished. If I am truly to perfect this talent, I need more items like this.

Thankfully, I have a pile of dishes in the sink. This is one of those wonderful projects that keeps multiplying like Elijah's widow's cruse of oil. Happily, I will always have this project. Yay!

On my coffee table, I have a pile of paid bills, waiting to be filed. Mixed into this pile are some letters, birthday cards, unopened mail, pages torn from a magazine, and pieces of a project I'm working on for Christmas presents.

My journal is another project that won't ever be completely finished, but I keep working on it.

I'm reading Anna Karenina, which is sitting on the couch to my right.

There's a spiral notebook that I put on my coffee table so I could write with my free hand while nursing. It is still blank. Bad, Chelsea!

My pantry shelf has several pieces of fabric flopped over my electric skillet and a sewing machine shoved underneath. I don't know that I'll ever finish the burp cloths I'd started to make.

On the kitchen table are two boxes of apples. Since I didn't feel like I had enough going on in my life and this teensy tiny apartment, I requested on freecycle for some apples. On Wednesday night I went and picked to my heart's content, and I've been working on making applesauce ever since. This is also why I have a huge canning vat on my coffee table, empty jars all over the kitchen counters, bowls and pans littering the stove, and a bag of canning supplies hanging from a cupboard.

Once I'm finished canning (which may be after the applesauce or possibly after some grapes I have my eye on), I'll probably go ditch the canning supplies in our apartment complex's Room of Requirement, moving forward on my project of cleaning out my closet to make room for Kevin's bike.

Once I'm done with all that, I'd like to spend some of my free time practicing the piano. I have been working on one of Brahms's Intermezzos, and I'd love to polish it and possibly memorize it. I miss being able to sit at any piano anywhere and just play something.

Perhaps I'll get some of this done sometime. But Penny helps me add to this list by waking up and being hungry right when I've gotten to the middle of another project. It's a good system we've got!

Literariness

Last weekend I took the Praxis exam so I can student teach in an English classroom next semester. I learned a couple things while taking it.

First, I learned that I don't know the difference between the different types of novel: Roman a clef, picaresque, blah blah blah. I'd never even heard the words. I'm pretty sure I missed a few of those questions.

Second, I learned that I miss being literary. I read a lot, but while Harry Potter and the Princess Diaries are fun, they don't feed your soul the same way beautiful literature does. I read some passages on the test, and just reading and contemplating them for those simple questions afterwards made me realize how much I miss reading.

So I'm determined to become literary.

Right now I'm reading Anna Karenina, which is Kevin's favorite book. He gave me a copy while we were engaged (it's easy to give gifts to your fiancee, as you know you'll soon be getting them back), and I read it that summer. However, even though I read it all summer, I didn't finish the darn thing, and now I've forgotten all of it. So I started over. I'm already almost 100 pages in, so in a few weeks I'll have finished it.

After that, I have a few books in mind.

On the test, there were passages or "name that author" selections from books I'd read in high school, and I felt pretty good about them. However, when I say I read something in high school, it usually (always) means my class read it and I just participated in the class discussion while reading snippets here and there. I'd like to go back and read some of those.

And then there are so many great novels that I've never read. I found a list of Time magazines "100 greatest novels" from this century, and I'd like to read some of those. 1984. A Passage to India. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Beloved. How can I call myself an English teacher when there are so many books I haven't read?

I was talking about this to my awesome husband, the Comparitive Literature major. I was whining about how I'd start some of these books (like Death Comes for the Archbishop), and they were just soooo boring! That one in particular just felt like reading an old day-in-the-life sort of diary with no drive or direction. But it was included on this list, and it's a "classic." But I couldn't get into it at all. I whined some more about how I could never figure out these books and why they were great or what there was to appreciate about them.

He said simply, "It's written like stained glass windows in a cathedral." (Um, and I'm the one becoming an English teacher?)

Now I want to read it.

Penny-ellopy

This is just a picture post.
Here is Penny after her bath: I think she looks like Moses, which, of course, I would know from seeing the movie a hundred times. This is exactly what Moses looked like in his basket. Except Penny's not in a basket. And she's wrapped in a pink towel, while Moses' was surely not.
Penny is sucking on her fist some more:

And these pictures are centered really well because she was swinging while I took them.

Sunday night update

The other day (yesterday) Kevin took a nap, so Penny and I took a walk... to Carl's Junior. I wanted a milkshake. In my benevolence, I even thought about buying Kevin one. But they were $3.29-- each! I mean, I do have money coming out my ears, but I have better things to spend it on.

So we lengthened our walk a bit to go to the grocery store, picked up malted milk and ice cream, and came home to have unlimited milkshakes.... until the ice cream runs out.

And for other news in Penny Land, this week she discovered her hand. She now likes to chew on it and has been known to really go to town on it!
And this is Penny's first foray into literature: Anna Karenina. I started reading this the summer before Kevin and I got married. It's his favorite book, and I never read it. I restarted it just recently, and with all my time spent sitting around nursing Penny, I should get it read pretty quick here.

I have nothing to say about this next one.

And this is my dear little Penny doing her push-ups. This is about as far as she goes. When she's squirming and ootching on the ground, it reminds me of those Garfield cartoons where his tummy grew so big he couldn't walk but just flailed his legs helplessly. Yes, Penny in a nutshell. ;)

And in other exciting news, our toilet is broken. I mean it still does its little-but-vital job, but the water is constantly running. This really bothered us-- Kevin for the noise and me for the water wasting-- so I just cranked the knob and turned off the water to the toilet. Um, now it still runs despite being turned off. Ugh! Our apt. manager is coming to fix some other things on Monday (the kitchen light that blew out something and the front door that sticks shut), and I'll jsut tell him about it then.