The storm of the century!

This is Stephen posting for the first time in months. It's good to be back. I'd like to post a bit more during the break about my first semester of grad school, my awesome internship at DC public schools this semester, and maybe a even short book review or two, so look for those posts over the next couple of weeks.

So anyways, back to the post title--maybe it wasn't the storm of the century, but the recent snow we got in the DC Metro area was pretty beastly. 24 hours - 16 inches!

Here's an idea of what we're dealing with:

Yes, that is the front of our car. Let me tell you--it sure was fun to dig out this morning.

Of course, it wouldn't be a good winter storm unless it was accompanied by massive disruptions in holiday travel. This storm exceeded expectations, cancelling all flights out of most, if not all, airports in the Northeast, for Saturday. Unfortunately, this included Heather's friend from high school, Allyson, and her husband Jed.

There they are, sitting on their bed for the past 2 nights (yes, that's our couch--I should have listened to Heather when she wanted to get an air mattress. Sorry guys!).

So we've had a good time talking, playing some games (Guillotine and Tripoley, for those who care), watching The Cosby Show, and eating. We also even go to do some service this morning: We went out to clear off the cars this morning by just using our gloved-hands and a cookie sheet for a shovel (my bright idea...). Luckily, we found some snow shovels around the complex, which hastened the clearing of snow on Ally & Jed's car, as well as our own, a neighbor in the building, and an old lady down the way.

After all of our hard work, Jed and I tried to do some sledding on the only hill around. Unfortunately, his snow shovel and my cookie sheet did not function well as sleds.

If you're wondering about what Heather was doing this whole time, it's pretty simple: she was just being the cutest wife ever, as evidenced clearly in the photo below.

So it was quite an adventurous way to start the holiday season. I can't wait to get to my parents' new home in Georgia...particularly because of the jacuzzi in the back yard.

Christmas traditions

Tonight is one night I am sad to be 2,000 miles away from my family. The Jr. High choir sings this song every year at their Christmas concert and tonight will be the last concert where a member of my family will be a member of the choir (Go L!). It may not be the most professional choir around but I am still sad that I am missing the chance to support my sister and relive one of my favorite Christmas memories. I'm so glad I sang with the school choirs in Jr. High and High School. It makes me really teary eyed and sentimental to think about all of the wonderful, cheesy times, the friends I made, and the times where the messages of the songs touched my life.

While I'm making a post I better take a moment to celebrate the fact that 20 minutes from now Stephen will take his last final of his first semester of grad school! Only 4 more work days for me and we will be enjoying Christmas break together!

p.s. if you are looking for a way to think more about Jesus Christ during this season, I highly recommend a FREE e-book on http://deseretbook.com/free. It's called "The Little Book of Christmas Spirit" by John Hilton III (Stephen worked a little bit with him at BYU and thinks he's great!). The chapters are super short and each ends with an idea for making Christmas more meaningful.

Merry Christmas!

More adventures

I have accepted that I am the type of person that loves to read blogs and only make large, infrequent posts. However I am also accepting the advice from a friend to write for myself (so I can remember what I was doing a few years down the road) rather than worrying about making entertaining posts.


This is the view from our apartment. It was a rainy day, but we like it.


Stephen and I at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, probably my favorite museum so far.


One of the many dinosaurs at the museum.

Autumn in Maryland/DC is great! Why? Because it actually exists for more than 2 weeks. We had one week where the temperature was somewhere in the 40s, but as far as I know it's never been lower than that. 50s and 60s every week. I've discovered that I have a summer and winter wardrobe, and nothing in between.

I love this picture :)

We turned a corner and suddenly it was Chinatown!

There was even Chinese on the Chipotle sign. We tried really hard to find a uniquely DC restaurant, but ended up at Ruby Tuesday instead. Oh well, it was delicious!

This van does not seem like a very discreet vehicle for the FBI.

Emptying our wallets to the IRS.

Me and Stephen at the Washington Monument. I wish the camera would have been able to take some good shots of the monument and also of the Lincoln monument in the distance. I highly recommend seeing the monuments at night, they're beautiful.

I went to a free teacher preview of an ice sculpture exhibit. It took over 2 million pounds of ice to construct. The best part was going down some slides made of ice, but my camera stopped working partway through so I didn't get a picture.

Lincoln himself.

The penguins were my favorite.

By the time my camera worked again (it may have had something to do with the 9 degree temperature... brrrr!), the only sculpture left was the nativity! I was so happy to see that the finale was focused on the true reason for the season.

On Saturday we went to the Silver Spring Thanksgiving Parade. It was just a short walk away for us and we really enjoyed it. No one started showing up until 30 minutes before the parade started, a welcome change from Provo's Freedom Festival parade where we had to camp out at like 5 am. We are chomping on cookies with a family from our ward.

"Our beloved Redskins" marching band. Funny story: One day Steve was at an elementary school visit for his internship at DC Public Schools. They had a first or second grader doing the announcements and one of them went something like this: "Tonight our beloved Redskins will be playing the so-and-sos. Go Redskins!" We were laughing for days, it was too cute.

This Darth Vader balloon was the highlight for the little boys of the family we went with.

Not much to say... we had fun!

This bookmobile reminded me of my Mom, I think she and her siblings used a bookmobile when they grew up in rural Utah. I was surprised this one still worked, does that mean they use it?

We loved all the Central/South American dancing groups. We were surprised there were so many in the area!

Last but not least, my favorite man in front of a fire engine. He said he started a post the other day about his awesome internship, but deleted it because it was too boring. I disagree! Maybe I can convince him to post something soon. In the meantime, we will be enjoying Thanksgiving!! Only 2 more days and we are off to see family!

Surprises

No, we didn't buy a keyboard, but I was surprised on Sunday when the choir director in our ward found me after Church and handed this to me. She wants me to accompany the choir on a song for the Christmas program but I told her I didn't have a piano to practice on (and you need a code to get into the Church, so I can't just borrow someone's key). Yay for having a piano to play for the next little bit, even if it is just a small keyboard.



Don't you LOVE getting surprise packages in the mail? It's seriously the best thing ever. Steve's mom sent us these extra BYU football shirts they ordered along with some early Halloween candy.



Okay, this is only exciting to me, but I got some speech materials in the mail that I forgot I ordered! I am especially excited about the books which will help me with doing therapy in the classroom.



On Wednesday night I only got 4 hours of sleep because I was doing IEP progress reports to go out with report cards. When I came home from work on Thursday evening I found this: the perfect nap set up. I can tell you right now I hopped straight in bed, I was so tired after a night of progress reports and a day of meetings and kids. Steve and I don't really get to see each other on Thursdays so this was really thoughtful of him. He even stayed up late with me the night before.

Jammin'

For 2 months we have had an untouched jar of store bought strawberry jam in our fridge so we figured it was finally time to try making freezer jam. And guess what? It was just as easy as everyone says it is. We will never buy jam again.


Boiling the pectin.


Stirring it all together.



The finished product the next day. I love my husband :) (I'm not being sarcastic, I really do)

Peanut Blossoms

My mom makes great cookies. They are always soft and delicious. One of my favorites are some peanut butter cookies with Hershey's kisses on top that won the 9th Pillsbury bake-off in 1957. I'll post the recipe below, but you can also find it at this link on Pillbury's website. For the past few years or so I have really stunk at making cookies. They have been anything but soft and delicious (although I do have the sweetest husband who eats them everytime and never complains). Tonight I FINALLY made a good batch! I swear I once knew how to make good cokies, but somehow my abilities have completely disappeared. What are your tips for making good cookies? Here are the things I've learned:

• If your cookies spread out make sure the dough is not too warm. I put mine in the fridge for a few minutes before putting the cookies on the pan.
• Also try to use a cool pan. I have been using one pan when I make cookies and it was so hot it melted the dough and made the cookies spread out even before I put them in the oven.
• Shortening is better than butter if you're trying to keep the cookies from spreading out. If you do use butter and you're trying to soften it, don't melt it! Use real butter or at least "real" margarine. The "healthy" margarine does not work well in cookies.
• If you like soft, chewy cookies, set the timer for 1-2 minutes less than it says in the recipe. It stinks to open up the oven and see that the cookies are already crispy even though you put them in for the minimum amount!

Peanut Blossoms

INGREDIENTS
1 3/4 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
Sugar
48 Hershey's® Kisses® milk chocolates, unwrapped

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, shortening, peanut butter, milk, vanilla and egg; mix with electric mixer on low speed until stiff dough forms.
2. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in sugar. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake at 375°F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately top each cookie with 1 milk chocolate candy, pressing down firmly so cookie cracks around edge; remove from cookie sheets.

Can't wait 'til February!

Here's a short post to follow my REALLY long post, but this one is much more important. I don't think I've posted about the best news we have: my brother and sister-in-law are expecting a baby in February and fairly recently they found out they are having a boy! Both of my extended families are overflowing with girls, so it will be fun to have a little guy around. My sister-in-law just passed the halfway point in her pregnancy and we can't wait to meet our first nephew, who will more than likely be wearing this


or this :)

National Book Festival

Yesterday I had a blast at the National Book Festival held on the National Mall (I'm still trying to figure out why it's called "the Mall"). Stephen had an all-day seminar on the MBTI personality test so I decided to take advantage of the free time downtown.





What would a book festival be without your favorite PBS characters? Clifford and Arthur were the only ones I recognized though. I guess it's been a while. At first I felt ridiculous getting a picture with Clifford, but then I saw much crazier librarians and teachers during the day and I felt mild compared to them.




Just a glimpse of what it was like. The big white tents were either full of authors or free stuff.





One of the tents had a booth for each of the 50 states. I got an Idaho potato pin from Idaho, a pen from Maryland, a container of sea salt from Utah, several "Reading Deputy" pins from Texas, a state park guide from Georgia, and a bilingual English-Somali children's book from Minnesota. I also got several bookmarks, booklists, and various literacy tools at each of the booths. Guess who was at the Utah booth? Shannon Hale!




And here is a fuzzy picture of me with Shannon Hale. I read a few of her books (Goose Girl, Book of a Thousand Days, and Princess Academy) this summer and LOVED them. I got to hear her at a presentation earlier in the day and she was hilarious! Some of the authors I didn't get a chance to see were: John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, Judy Blume, Rick Riordan, and David Shannon.

It was a pretty dark and rainy day, but I still had a terrific time!

One of the highlights of the day was listening to Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and Number the Stars. They are both Newberry Medal winners and two of my favorite books. She talked about an experience she had when she was 8 that helped her decide she wanted to be an author (although she didn't publish until she was 40). She mostly talked about her newest book, which is also her first picture book. It's called Crow Call and it's true story about a day she spent with her father after he returned from World War II. There's really something special about listening to an author read her own book. She only read half, so I can't speak for the entire book but it seems like a great book, and one that could be helpful for kids today who are adjusting to a returning military parent.

After a few hours at the festival I took a trip to the National Gallery of Art. I am not a real big appreciater of art, but I enjoyed the impressionism section and the section of paintings by American artists.

If anything, the building was really beautiful, inside and out.

Just another picture of DC. That's the capitol building way in the back.

And a segway tour!

One of the coolest presentations was a reading of the first episode of "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure." But don't worry... "It's not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud." So basically several awesome children's authors are each writing an installment of the book, which was started by Jon Scieszka (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man). Every two weeks there's a new episode, each written by a different author and posted on read.gov. Some of the authors include: Kate DiCamillo (Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn-Dixie), Shannon Hale, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) Megan McDonald (Judy Moody series), and Katherine Paterson (Bridge to Terabithia). Anyway, the first episode was hilarious and I am excited to read the rest.

I have to recommend one more author I learned about: Craig Hatkoff. I'd never heard of him, but I was impressed with his presentation about the children's books he co-writes with his daughters. They are all about animals, which kids love, and each is meant to convey a message to help kids deal with the tough things in life.

Can you tell I love books? What a great day.

Homesick

To all of my Utah family: I am homesick!

I like it here, but I could really do without a few things. Namely, the excessive honking, rude strangers, excessive honking, expensive grocery stores that don't even sell bagged cereal or burritos in packages of more than one, teachers that believe every word must be shouted, excessive honking, streets with no signs, and most of all... the general LACK of persons belonging to my family.

Don't worry, we really are happy here. If you could peek inside our apartment, you would find us laughing and smiling on a daily basis. To make the transition a little smoother I am... growing tougher skin, planning better for shopping trips, learning how to navigate the roads, and using our webcam to communicate with family as much as possible.

My job is going pretty well. Most people at school have been very nice to me and I love the kids. About half of my caseload (currently 36 kids) are kids in general education classes who get resource services or just have articulation problems (S, R, etc.). The other half of my caseload are kids in special education classes and have moderate disabilities. The best news about work is that sometime this week I am leaving my closet office to share a temp/portable with the occupational therapist! Maybe I will take a picture once I'm moved in!

This week we had our first ever overnight visitor. One of my neighbors from Murray was interviewing for medical school at George Washington, so he had dinner with us and stayed the night. We haven't done anything social since we moved here, so it was really nice to see a familiar face. He and Stephen had a lot of fun chatting about education and health care. Then yesterday I met up with one of my BYU roommates at the Washington DC temple. She brought some family names and we acted as proxy for them for all of their ordinances. I've never brought a name to the temple to do ALL of their ordinances, so it was a really neat experience. Finally, today we invited a guy from Stephen's program over for dinner, as well as his wife and 4 month old baby. We had some delicious homemade cafe rio burritos and played some fun games. We are definitely happy to see familiar and friendly faces, but wish we could see our families more often.

I'm sorry my blog posts are so boring, but I've decided that they're more for us to look back on than to entertain our friends and family (although I wish I was more talented at that). Hopefully Stephen will make a post soon about his internship that he's starting tomorrow!

Settling in

We are starting to get used to our new home. So far we have mastered driving to the metro station, my school, church, several grocery stores, and the library without using the GPS.

We really like our ward, and they have put us to work quickly (there are about 100 people in Church each week). We have already spoken in sacrament meeting and had the missionaries over for dinner. On Sunday we got called to be Primary teachers for the 10 and 11 year olds. We sat in on their class and we are excited to start being their teachers, especially since it's a calling we get to do together. We only have about 5 or 6 kids and we were pleasantly surprised that for the most part they were actually bright and funny, not annoying.

Last week I posted almost 200 picturs on facebook. I would love to take time to blog about all of them, but then the rest of my day would be gone. You can go here to see them: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2283499&id=17812339&l=39d52dba1d

Stephen started school last week! This basically means he read a lot of syllabi. I won't tell you how much we calculated for the cost of each class period based on his total tuition, but at least some of his classes were worthwhile during the first week. He is eager and excited for things to pick up. In his spare time he has started to look for an internship/job. Luckily he signed up for a weekly career seminar and has access to an excellent career counselor since he doesn't know what area he's interested in yet.

Last Friday we went to the Washington DC Temple Visitors Center for a date. They had an exhibit of photography from the Hubble space telescope. I don't know if the exhibit will be at any other visitors' centers, but if you get the chance, go! It was pretty neat.

I finally got an "office" today. It's really more like a closet, but hey, I've heard about closet offices many times before and what else could I expect on my first year when I started a week after school began. I am mostly happy that I had somewhere to meet with my students today, who are, by the way, adorable. At least the ones I've met so far are. My first day seeing kids wasn't nearly as stressful as I thought it would be and it was brightened by some amusing exchanges. After asking questions in a get to know you game, I asked a 2nd grade student if he wanted to know anything about me, to which he replied: "The only question I have is how was your childhood?" I had to try not to laugh. It was funny to hear such a serious question from such a little guy. Tomorrow: Back to School Night :)

Employed

It has been a very long road, but I can finally say that I have a job to show up to next week!

I signed a contract way back in May with a company that recruits speech, occupational, and physical therapists for schools. Normally they have no problem placing their therapists and they didn't anticipate how difficult it would be this year. My contract said I would start on August 17th but that date came and passed with no contract for any of the local public or private schools. Luckily once school started last week "the man" must have okayed schools to start looking to contracting agencies to fill their vacancies. After months of anxiety I finally have a job :) (had I realized a few months ago how difficult it would be for the company to place me I may have gone straight to the school districts, but now I am glad that I can work for the company I wanted to be with).

Some facts about my school (as listed on the school's website, I have no idea how up-to-date they are):

• It's a title 1 school with 87% of students receiving free or reduced lunches.
• Greatschools.net says there are an average of 17 students per teacher.
• There are a total of 671 students: 50% African American, 47% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 1% Caucasian. This will be very different from Utah but I am excited to get to know people that are different races and have different cultures.
• The district supervisor said that the current speech and language caseload at this school is 30! (this is VERY small and manageable in my eyes)
• Attendance is apparently a big issue as they have implemented a program called PANTS (Perfect Attendance, No Tardy Students). I hope the students think that's as funny as I do :).
• The school's mascot is a Tiger.
• Students are required to wear uniforms.
• Google maps say the school is only a 15 minute drive from our apartment!
• The district observes all major Christian, Jewish, and Islamic holidays (although many fall on weekends or during winter/spring break so breaks won't be that different from schools in Utah).

I am very excited to start working with these students and hopefully making a difference in their lives!

Bye Utah!

Well, we started our journey to Maryland on Saturday. We have lots of pictures and things to post from the past few weeks and from our trip, but since we're staying in Atlanta with Steve's family I don't want to spend the whole time on the computer.


Here's one of the family pictures with my family that we took the night before we left. I think the colors turned out nice. Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger.


And here is the sad moment when we left the driveway, waving goodbye to my family. It really was sad. I cried for the next half an hour of the drive. We are going to miss seeing our family in Utah so much!! In a few short days we'll finish our trip to Maryland and see what it's like. Even though it's hard to leave family, we are excited for all the new experiences we'll have in our new home. I'll post more pictures and stories when we get there.

Only two words are necessary:

Two Years!!!!

Only one word is necessary

PASSED!

T.D. (Thesis Defense, aka The Doomsday)

First the happy news! We had a fantastic weekend! Some of the highlights were

• Free frozen yogurt at Froyo (you get a free coupon just for signing up for the Provo library summer reading program. You don't even have to read anything!). The key lime with granola was DELICIOUS!
• Seeing Monsters vs. Aliens. It was surprisingly very funny and definitely worth a trip to the dollar theater.
• Hiking to Stewart Falls with my sister, brother, and sister-in-law. If you are looking for an easy but enjoyable hike I definitely recommend it. We just parked at Sundance and asked someone to show us the trail head (no signs...what were they thinking?). It only took about an hour to walk to the falls and it the only part that went uphill was not steep. All the pictures are on my brother's camera, or I would post them.

This coming week was already going to be stressful since we need to pack up the rest of our apartment and move down to my parents house for 3 weeks until we leave for Maryland. Now it is more stressful because on Friday afternoon I got the last edited copy of my thesis back from one of my committee members. I gave it to her a month ago and my thesis chair assured me that the changes would only be minor.

Unfortuantely he was wrong and I have a LOT to do before my thesis defense on Friday afteroon! Contrary to the title of this post I've heard that the defense really isn't all that bad and the one I attended last month was surprisingly calm and un-intimidating. The part I am stressed out about is making the changes in time since this Friday is literally the ONLY day all of my committee members will be in Provo before we are moving to Maryland. I understand that even after dozens of revisions my thesis still stinks, but I just wish my committee member wouldn't have taken a month to return it! But hey, a week from now I should be making the real minor changes to my thesis and completing the electronic submission.

Even though I am extremely bummed that we have to move before graduation (the only one I have ever wanted to attend), I can't tell you how happy I am that I will have my masters degree. I know it's a miracle that I was able to get it done so quickly and I really have loved the experience. I am seriously indebted to my parents for prodding me along for 3 years of concurrent enrollment, and summer and AP classes during high school, suggesting speech-language pathology as a major, and supporting me all the way through. I am also seriously indebted to Stephen for enduring innumerable boring conversations about school and encouraging me through all my discouraged days. I'm excited to switch roles and do the same for him.

Takoma Park, Maryland

We finally decided on a place to live next year!!! We've been eyeing the apartment complex for a while, but we couldn't decide if we were okay living 193 feet (I have no idea how Steve found it the exact distance) away from tracks that run the Metro, Amtrak, and freight trains. After talking with the landlord we decided that we're okay with the rumbling of trains (luckily there are no crossings nearby so no whistles). If not, I guess we'll have fond memories :). Every review we've read says that it only takes a few days to get used to and all the tenants say the benefits outweigh the noise. Plus, our apartment will be on the side of the complex that's opposite the tracks. I am personally excited about the fact that we will have a DISHWASHER, garbage disposal, and a living room that actually fits a full-size couch! The city we're moving to is called Takoma Park. It's a suburb of DC (the border between DC and Maryland is right behind the apartment complex) with a population of 17,000, although I'm guessing the city boundaries aren't all that distinct. We wanted to live is a little more west and north in some nicer areas, but this apartment was closer to the Metro, which Steve will be taking to school every day. So we are crossing our fingers that it really is as nice as everyone has rated it and that we are not unknowingly moving into a ghetto. Here are some pictures from rent.com (they're not the greatest). We'll of course post more once we move in!