Thanksgiving 2009

Megan and Liliana before dinner!

Megan made her first pumpkin pies! They were awesome!

We had a great Thanksgiving! We ate yummy food, made new friends, played board games and had a nice time.

Nicole and her mom, Shannon.

Nicole's Dad, Tim.

Hope everyone enjoyed their holidays as much as we did!

Holiday Plans

Happy Thanksgiving all! We are planning to enjoy the day at home with David, Daniel, Kate and Marthy and some new friends! We are looking forward to a relaxing day cooking two different turkeys---traditional and fried.

We are planning to go to Phoenix for Christmas. We will just be in town a few days, so we'd like to coordinate some kind of gathering where we can see everyone without running around. We'll figure that out as it gets closer!

In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving! We are very thankful for your love and hope you all have a blessed day.

B

YAY! Comments!

Thanks for posting comments out there ya'll! I really was starting to feel like I was posting to some random online diary.

I wish I had something more interesting to post for you today, but it's only 7:10 am and I'm just drinking coffee.

Oh, there is a dense fog advisory today. Is that newsworthy? Weatherbug thinks so because it sent me an alert to my desktop.

Betsy

Comments

For anyone having trouble with comments, I have changed the settings. Anyone should be able to post comments now:)

Betsy

Master's Frustration

I have recently resumed courses to finish my master's degree in curriculum and instruction. I have 15 classes to take and will be done in about 16 months. I'm taking the courses on line since I am addicted to my laptop!

I like that I can wake up and write a paper from 1am-4am. I like that I don't have to leave my house to learn. I like that they have supports in place to help students succeed should they run into any problems.

That being said, I'm in week 2 and I'm already frustrated with one aspect of the program. It's these mandatory "Learning Teams". This is a small group of people who have to communicate, prepare weekly team projects and submit them on time. These assignments comprise 40% of my grade.

We have assignments due on Monday. NOT ONE PERSON IN MY LEARNING TEAM has participated. I have already started the essay, the power point presentation and the learning team charter. I've contacted my instructor. She says she will move me to another group tomorrow if my group doesn't participate today.

Great. I can give up my Sunday doing other people's work that should have already been done.

I'm definitely NOT choosing to work with these people in the future. Unfortunately, this instructor assigned us our learning groups and I had no choice.

Also, if you are reading this, can you please post a comment once in a while? I won't continue posting if there's no one out there reading.

Thanks!
Betsy

Brrrr. It's cold!

The high today was 59 degrees. We have a freeze warning in effect through tomorrow at 9am. We have a fire raging in the fireplace, but the house is cold. Tomorrow the guy comes to check on the heater and connect the gas to it.

We're getting excited for Thanksgiving next week! We have Troy's Aunt, cousin, and cousin's teenage kids coming for dinner. We expect it to be a very mellow day and are looking forward to some time to chill as a family.

I guess chill is the right word, considering the temperature!

Brrr.

Betsy

A tale of two vehicles

Troy's truck is in the shop for some maintenance. We are down to one car since last night. I applaud families who can do with only one car.

Today requires so much driving, that Troy should wear a chauffer hat! We will be leaving this morning at 6:30am. A quick drive thru Sonic for my morning ice tea and Steven's "ice cream Friday" treat. A quick drive through QT for Troy's morning Rock Star (and I'll probably ask him to get some gas for my car:). Troy will then drop me off at work around 7am. He and Steven will return home to wake up Megan and get Steven on the bus by 7:20.

At 8:25, Troy will drive Megan to school.

At 10:00, he will go to the bank.

At 3:55, he will go pick up Megan. Then, he will come and pick me up. We will come home and pick up Steven. Then, we will all go get Troy's truck.

Fortunately, after all this running around, we get to go to the church respite night! Steven gets to see his girlfriend. Troy, Megan, Keren (her friend) and I will enjoy Nicoli's Italian dinner and a nice walk around Old Town Grapevine.

TGIF!

Betsy

Time.

As you can see by the changes on the blog, I have far too much time on my hands today! I'll do anything to avoid housework! Hope you like the changes!

Fall

This upcoming week in kindergarten, our focus will be on the letter "L" and our theme will be leaves. We have many activities planned that all revolve around leaves. The homework one day is a "leaf hunt". Classwork on various days includes experiments with leaves, graphing results of these experiments, creating art with leaf rubbing. I kept pondering where children would get the leaves we need for these activities. I just naturally planned on going to a craft store over the weekend to pick up some fake leaves.



Then, I looked in our backyard....this is what I saw.

Turns out, there really is the season of fall! In the desert, this time of year is known as "cooling off" or "less hot". Here is North Texas, it's really a season. After raking the backyard leaves, I wandered out to the front yard. I knew that our front yard tree wasn't losing leaves, but looked down the street and saw the beautiful fall colors all the way down. It was kind of cool!

B

Walking Pitre Dishes

I'm sick with the crud. I'm so giving that I even shared it with Troy and Steven. Whatever "it" is, "it" is going around school. One of the teachers went to the doctor yesterday. He told her that she should expect to get sick all the time since teachers spend our "...days with walking pitre dishes."

Wow. What a way to think of it.

Fortunately, my class has enough cute in them that I can't see the pitre dishes!

B

Where did the weekend go?

I don't know where it went. We even had an extra hour due to the time change.

It's Sunday night at 5:40 and we have spent the weekend doing things that needed done....Troy and I both even worked about 5 hours this weekend. Grocery shopping. Laundry. Put away Halloween decor. Whew.

We still have to mop the floor, but will wait until Steven is in bed for the evening.

I think I'll go to bed early tonight.

Betsy