I'm Done with Middle School!!!

Now, I know some of you are thinking "Shouldn't she have finished middle school about 11 years ago??" Yes. I did then. But I am done with my student teaching at the middle school now. Today was my last day. Hooray!

After spending two days home at the beginning of the week with the ever-wonderful stomach flu, I finished up the last two days, just getting those last student teaching hours in.

And now, it's time to get ready for a baby shower tomorrow for Christi! Gotta go bake some cupcakes! :)

Seattle, Everett, Anacortes, Friday Harbor, Snoqualmie

We just had a great time hanging out with Christi & Aaron all weekend. Friday night we drove up to Everett after work. We took our time getting ready and didn't leave town till 6pm because we wanted to miss most of the traffic. I figured that Friday afternoon on Memorial Day Weekend would be horrible traffic. Since we left late enough though there wasn't any traffic.... at all!

Saturday we drove down to Seattle to hang out for the day. It was our lucky day... The Folk Life Festival was going on! Its kinda like walking around in a concentrated Ashland, OR. We got our culture fix for the weekend there. We also took the monorail over to Pikes place where we ate Hum bow and cruised the market.

Sunday we got on a ferry and went to Friday Harbor. The weather was beautiful and the boat ride was alot of fun. For what was supposed to be a rainy weekend, it turned out rather nice. I hope you all had as much fun as we did! Oh and my favorite quote of the week came from my nephew Aaron, "Uncle Jason....", but it sounded more like "unco Jasn" :)

Friday Harbor Slide Show


Seattle Slide Show


Oh I almost forgot... Today on our way home we stopped in Snoqualmie, which is east of Seattle, and got to have lunch with my good friend from high school Dan. I haven't seen him since our wedding so it was great to catch up with him.

A new kitchen

Just kidding. I don't have a new kitchen, but I do have an improved kitchen!!

Last night I was running the dishwasher and doing dishes when I heard gushing of water underneath the sink. I opened the cabinet door to see water just flowing out of the pipe all over the place. I had a meltdown. I just laid down on the kitchen floor wondering why I hated my kitchen so much at that moment.

Instead of doing a complete kitchen remodel, and instead of just putting a band aid on it, we decided it was time to put in a garbage disposal! As we were pulling out of Home Depot on our way home with our new treasure, a Badger 9, 3/4 horsepower garbage disposal, we realized that this little investment would tide us over until, hopefully next year, we can do a complete remodel!

So today Jason stayed home from work to put the little bugger in, and it did take a while, because of the electrical "stuff" and several trips back to the Depot. But when I walked in the door returning from Step Aerobics, I heard a beautiful sound. The "hmmmmmmmmmmmm" of the garbage disposal whirling about in all its garbage disposal glory. THANK YOU JASON!!!!

And then here are a few pictures of Cassie enjoying her new toy she got at Petco today.

AND, T-23 days until graduation for those keeping track.

Quarterhorse

Like Sara said, we had our first gig.  It went really well, we got alot of complement and even a booking agent that wants to book us for another show in July.  Here's a video from the show.  Jozi Bently singing 'Something More' by Sugarland.  I'll post more videos as I get around to it.

Club Underground Gig

I (Sara) just got back from the gig at Club Underground that Quarterhorse is playing at. I stayed for the whole first set and a couple of songs of the second. They sounded really good! I think they will probably sound better as the night goes on too, so Jason will have to let you know how the latter part of the evening went. But if ya'll get a chance to hear them play someday, I think you will be very impressed, they are a very talented group of musicians! Stay tuned for Jason's update of the weekend o' gigs. :)

Pass comp exams? Check!

I passed my comp exams! This is how I found out.

2:57 - Call Graduate support office
Hello?
Hi, I'm calling to get the results of my comp exams.
What's your name?
Sara Wuertz.
Okay, here you are. Congratulations, you passed both sections.
Great, thank you.
Thank you. Good bye.
2:57 - Hang up phone. Small quiet celebration.

I guess the big celebration comes a month from today when I graduate!

Photo Update 2

This weekend we borrowed a steam cleaner from our friend and went to town cleaning our house and our cars. Then, sunday sara made a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond and picked up a slip cover and a futon cover. So now we have matching furniture! Yay. We are trying to keep cassie off of the couches. Its working so far but she doesn't like the new rules.

Also sunday morning I went with my neighbor to one of his friends houses who just had a couple cedar trees fallen. They were already cut into rounds and we loaded them up and brought them back to our houses. Here is the pile that I ended up with. Time to start splitting!

Quarterhorse Gig

Photo Update 1

We finally got our camera back so I went around and took photos of all the stuff we've been doing. Here is the photo update.

View of the deck from on top of the shed roof. Planter boxes, benches, and steps into the door:

View from back corner of lot:

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day
to all you
Mother's,
Grandma's,
Great-Grandma's,
Great-great-Grandma's!


"Honor your father and mother.
Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you." Exodus 20:12 (NLT)

Updates

If you have been reading our blog, then you know that our camera has been in the shop for over 2 months now. Which makes writing blogs, and showing you what we have been up to, very difficult. Since our camera has been out, we have done several projects around the house that I will tell you about and you'll just have to imagine if your brains.

- Washed and stained the deck.

-Stained the benches and planters boxes, and added them to the deck.

-Completed the step from the deck into the house.

-Bought a couple new tiki torches and put them out and about the yard.

-Installed two new lights on the back of the garage to light the deck area.

-We are getting ready to plant our vegetable garden.

So imagine that all in your creative minds and you'll see our beautiful yard.

Oh yeah, and I am 38 days away from being done with school for-e-ver.

Comp Exams are O-v-e-r!

If only it were this easy!! This is nothing like what my comp exams were like today.

Today I woke up at 5am to get ready. My friend picked me up at 6:25 so we could carpool to Monmouth for our exams. I dropped off my car at the high school in Newberg. We hit a detour in Dundee because of a shooting that happened last night. We arrived on campus at 7:45. (I think Jason was still asleep at this point in the morning...almost 3 hours after I woke up and was in a different county!).

The test started about 30 minutes behind schedule. During the first 3 hour session I had to answer 2 essay questions. One was about the cycle of curriculum, instruction and assessment, and the other was about diverse student learners. Then it was lunch time.

Me and some friends from my cohort hit up Burgerville for some milkshakes, and then headed back to campus.

The afternoon session started about 45 minutes behind schedule, about 1:00. I hit a major wall around 2pm. I developed red itchy eyes, restless leg syndrome and extreme, debilitating boredom. I probably got up to go to the bathroom 3 times in 4 hours, once to just get up and walk around and wake myself up. I drank 1 large Nalgene bottle worth of water in about 30 minutes. I chewed one piece of gum to smithereens. The 3 afternoon questions were on literacy, social foundations of schooling, and becoming a reflective professional. I finished with about 15 minutes of the test left. My friend was still finishing, so I ran over to the Registrar's Office and turn in my graduation forms.

We headed back north, and she dropped me off at Newberg High School where I did parent-teacher conferences for about 2 hours, before finally heading home. I was so tired that I FORGOT to stop at Dutch Bros!!!! That should be a huge hint of how drained I was at that point in the day.

And this all pays off because now comps are over (I get the results on May 14th), I am one day closer to graduation, and there is no school tomorrow (doing the happy dance!!)!! If you need me tomorrow, I will be sleeping. :) Actually, more likely, cleaning my house, grocery shopping, working out, doing homework....

Happy May by the way. Hope you had a nice day. Down by the bay. Eating some hay. Oh, and pay day! Hey, hey, hey.....Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Here it Is

I was out of the office yesterday so I couldn't post this yesterday.  The picture was only on my work computer.  Anyway, here it is.  It is a Tonka Dump Truck.  Aaron played with this every time we went to the beach.  Each time we walked to the beach someone carried aaron on their shoulders and someone else carried the dump truck.  One time I set the truck on the ground to let it roll down the hill and he didn't like that.  So I had to pick it up and just carry it.  At the beach he would fill the dump up with sand and then dump it.  It was pretty fun!