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.