Posts

Showing posts from 2014

More Wallpaper: The Living Room Saga - Part 3

Image
Once our walls were finally painted and dry and looking significantly better than when we moved in I finally put the pictures that had been sitting in our guest room for the past three years on our walls. The living room was finally started to feel like home. The next step was buying and putting up a new chandelier to replace this one: Besides the fact that this particular chandelier was not our style at all, it was clearly not someone else's style, evidenced by the $20 masking tape sticker that was stuck to the side. I have no problems with using and reusing items. I believe that some of the greatest treasures can be found in other people's trash. HOWEVER, there is a limit, and that chandelier was the limit for me. The very first time my husband and I attempted to put up a chandelier was when we first moved into our house in Indy. The dining area (because we didn't have a dining room) had a hideous fruit Tiffany style lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was one of the

New First Steps

Image
Theoretically, it should have been easy. I never stopped working, which means that for the last five years my little girl has been attending some kind daycare situation. We had a wonderful first three months together (thanks to my perfectly timed April delivery which extended my maternity leave into the summer months) and then she was off to a wonderful in-home daycare. Because of moves and circumstances beyond our control, she has moved around some, but for the last two years (her preschool years) she has been attending the same daycare as her little brother. I have dropped her off in the morning for a day of learning, snacks, and play. And then during the summer months she has been at home with me. Everything changed today. Today my baby girl started Kindergarten. I remember when I started Kindergarten 30 years ago. That was back when a half day of school was the standard. I started school with a couple of my preschool classmates and my childhood best friend was a little girl who I

This Is When It Gets Hard

Image
I am a wife, a mother, and a teacher. They are three vocations (not jobs) that I relish. They make me who I am, and without one of those vocations I don't feel complete. But this is the time of year when those three vocations collide in uncomfortable ways: the beginning of the school year. As usual, this summer has been fantastic, and as I noted last year , the older my kids get, the more enjoyable that summer time is. And this summer was packed. We camped, both kids had swimming lessons, my daughter went to two day camps, and I spent the majority of the summer purging and selling a much as I could through Facebook garage sale groups. We went to the park, to the drive-in, and hung out. It was a good summer for all of us. During one weekend camping trip my daughter asked my husband why he couldn't be a teacher. She wanted to camp for longer and knew that if Daddy also had the summer off she wouldn't have to go home yet. We laughed at the idea of my computer nerd of a husba

Yeah, I Don't Really Miss the Tent

Image
In our third year of marriage,  my husband suggested that we go out to Yellowstone for a summer vacation. I felt like the suggestion came out of nowhere. As a well-traveled girl who spent five years living in Wyoming I scoffed at the idea that we would be able to just up and travel to Yellowstone without months of advance planning. After all, it is one of the most popular national parks in the US. I remembered visiting once, when I was 11, and the crowds were sizable, especially considering that our family visited shortly after the wildfires that nearly destroyed the Old Faithful Lodge. But we did quick research, discovered campsites along the way that were still available, and made plans and quick reservations. In a matter of weeks we were packing up our little four-door Focus with all the camping equipment that would fit and we headed out west. It turned out to be the most amazing vacation of our married life, at least before we had kids. We stopped at Wall Drug, drove through the

Book Review - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Image
My family lived in Wyoming between my 6th grade year and junior year of high school. Those five years were a learning experience for me in many areas of my life, but one of the surprising areas was in a new perspective on race in America. I was a Midwestern girl who had spent eight of her earliest formative years in Detroit, a city where I was surrounded by race issues related to black/white. One of my best friends was an African American girl who lived next door and my Lutheran elementary school had a healthy racial mix. When we moved to Wyoming I was suddenly surrounded by a sea of white. There are exceptions, which was true in our town, but for the most part the Wyoming population is very white. That is until one visits the reservation, or the "rez." While exposure to other races had never been lacking in my upbringing, exposure to real, live Indians was a new experience for me. And as I get older and learn more, the minimal exposure to Native Americans that I experienc

Brave New World of Memories

Image
Picture of me in Florence, Italy - September 1999 - I was a pretty cute 20 year old. I spent the fall semester of 1999 studying in London. That semester included a trip to the continent (France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany), a long weekend trip to Scotland, a week long trip to Ireland, and trips all over London. I took many rolls of film with me, tried to heed the warnings about what x-ray machines would do to my film when going through customs, and when I finally returned to the States I eagerly waited with bated breath for the store to finish developing over 300 (that's right, THREE HUNDRED) pictures. By contrast I took nearly 400 pictures on digital devices during a single week long family vacation to Florida. I love taking pictures. I love looking at pictures. Photographs are a time capsule; they capture a moment, an emotion, a memory. And they help us share those moments, emotions, and memories with those who cannot be there in person. I was so excited when I got

Book Review - A Long Way Gone

Image
Several years ago we saw Ishmael Beah give an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . As frequently happens when we see Jon Stewart give an interview with the author of a newly released book, our interest was piqued. And again, as frequently happens when a book piques our interest, my husband read the book and I didn't. When I made my goals for 2014 I publicly promised myself I would read more for fun, or at least for personal gain, in an attempt to get away from my terrible habit of just reading for professional and academic purposes. And while A Long Way Gone is a title on my extensive AP reading list, it is also a book that I wanted to read. So when my reading for the 2013-2014 school year was complete, I finally picked it off of the shelf and began reading. Beah's book recounts his experiences growing up during the war in Sierra Leone, including the couple of years that he served in the government army as a child soldier. His heartbreaking account of separatio

Most Magical Place On Earth

Image
My first trip to a Disney park was before I was even born. My parents lived in southern California at the time, and while they only lived there a short time, they took advantage of the experience. They took me, in utero, to Disneyland. When I was six months old my parents took me back to Disneyland with my paternal grandparents and my two youngest aunts. I've been told I rode "it's a small world" with my grandparents over and over again to great delight. I do not remember the experience, but it's nice to know that I had the experience as an infant. When I was nine, I traveled back to California with my parents and two younger sisters. We stayed with friends of  my parents and got to experience a lot of southern California, including Disneyland. I loved Disneyland. We did everything we could at the park. I wasn't brave enough to try "Space Mountain" and I freaked out when my mom tried to take us on the Snow White ride (even at nine I was still reeli

Adventures Made of Blocks

Image
Today, for the first time ever, we took both children to an amusement park. Our daughter has been to Disney (more on that when we get to our Magic Kingdom day) and both have been to the zoo numerous times, but we had never gone to an amusement park as a whole family. That is, until today. In Orlando there are many choices for family entertainment, but when you are the parents of two small children, there are different factors to consider than those with older children. While it may certainly cost less to take your family to the parks (children under three are free at most parks and they tend to eat less) you also have to decide if it is worth the money that you will be spending in addition to the exhausted children at the end of the day. Older children may cost more but they are also able to do more, remember more of what they did, and they usually have significantly more stamina in the sleep department than toddlers. Or at least, they are much better at pretending that they do.

A Book Review - Allegiant

Image
The third book in a trilogy is tricky. I've been reading a long time and I've read a lot of series and a lot of endings to series. For example, I love both Return of the King and Deathly Hallows . Both novels wrap ups series and characters that I grew to love over the course of reading all of the books. They conclude the series in a logical way while also giving the reader just enough information to believe that the characters one has grown to love have a fruitful future ahead of them. Life will not be perfect. life may not even be easy, but they have a future that will be more positive than negative. I remember my disappointment after finishing Mockingjay , the conclusion to the Hunger Games series. While not the greatest of literary achievements, I did enjoy the series. However, Mockingjay was a letdown after the action packed, character driven Catching Fire . I wanted to see where their story ended up, but it was kind of slow and predicable. I guess that's what hap

When Zombies and Steinbeck Collide

Image
I am not a fan of horror fiction. As a child and pre-teen I didn't get into the Goosebumps series or Christopher Pike books. I like mysteries, but I still don't like horror films. I can handle a good psychological thriller (like Silence of the Lambs ) but I hate slasher films. They are gross, purposelessly violent, and make me afraid of the dark. To this day I still have not seen any of the Friday the 13th films or any related to that genre from my childhood. The closest I have come is seeing Gremlins , and let's be honest, that is child's play next to Chucky. But I love fiction that speculates on what could be. Fiction that looks at our sinful human nature and explores what would happen in the face of any kind of worldwide disaster. So when a new show was being advertised during the early seasons of Mad Men , my husband encouraged me to watch. I have never liked zombie fiction, but within the first couple episodes of The Walking Dead I was hooked. It wasn't the

Snow, Snow, Go Away, So I Can Teach a Full Five Days

Image
No, we have not brought in the nativity. Poor Joseph is just praying that he will see his family again.  I am a California baby who has spent her entire academic career in the northern half of the United States. I fondly remember those rare snow days in Detroit, MI. Snow was far from a rarity, but those snow days in the city were a treat. There was one Valentine's Day party that got completely skipped, which was probably a good thing since the Valentine's Day cards my mom had ordered from Current hadn't arrived in time for the scheduled party. We built snowmen and forts and dug through the snow fully decked out in poofy snow pants and boots. Then we moved to Illinois where we experienced more of the same kind of weather, although maybe with a little less of the hardy Michigan attitude toward snow. Then came five years in Wyoming where days off of school for snow were rare. Our first year there it hit -40 degrees the week before Christmas and we still went to school.