Good-bye September

I can't believe September is over and October starts tomorrow! Where has the time gone?

Tonight, I (Sara) went to water aerobics at the Y and when I came home, Jason was in the kitchen crying. Don't worry, nothing bad happened. :) He was making homemade spaghetti sauce and was chopping up a bunch of onions!! Our eyes are practically swollen shut because the onion smell has permeated our house, clothes, pores...

And now, a question, more of a thought really. And I would love to hear some feedback on this one:

Today I had a student using her cell phone in class. We have a "no electronic devices" policy at school. I asked her to put her phone away.

Girl responds: "I'm talking to my mom".

Hmmm I thought. "Tell your mom I said 'Hi'". (very sarcastic tone used here)

Girl: "The teacher says 'Hi'. My mom says 'Hi' back.

Me: (inside my head) "What the heck??"

Later on that period....

Me: Why were you talking to your mom on the phone during class?

Girl: I had to figure out what I was doing after school.

Me: Next time you need to talk to your mom during my class, let me know, and you can use the phone in my office, that way I don't assume you are using it to talk to friends.

Girl: ok.

Later on tonight I was thinking, what kind of parent talks to their student on the phone when they know the student is in the middle of class? I mean, I understand the need to communicate things with your kids, but come on. I feel like that disrespects me as a teacher. And it makes me wonder why some of these kids don't feel like school is important. Maybe because their parents don't respect some of the policies of the school and classroom? Now here I go with the "when I was in high school", but when I was in high school, we would get a note from the office if our parents called, or there was a change in after school plans. I would love to hear your thoughts, you other teachers, you parents, etc., on this.

Oh, and I should mention, there was another student in this same class that was texting back and forth with his mom to clarify after-school plans. What the heck??

Fuming over. Good-bye September.

Monday Morning....

How did it get to be Monday morning so soon??

Jason and I spent the weekend in Lincoln City. It was a relaxing weekend with beautiful weather, but I never actually set foot on the beach.

But I could use one more day to the weekend. But the clock says 6:36am and we should be leaving the house in about 10 minutes to start another week. Yawwnnnn....

Beaver Nation

Sweet game tonight!!!
Oh my gosh, what a game.
OSU beat #1 ranked USC, 27-21.
We listened to the second quarter, sitting in our car, in our driveway.
We watched the second half on the internet.
What an awesome game, hope you all are Beaver Believers now!
Go Beavs!

Race for the Cure

This morning was the Race for the Cure in Portland. Mom, Cathy, and I did the 5k walk.
Grandma Harden was going to be there with us, but she wasn't feeling well. So she will have to wait until next year. We had a good time and we are planning to do it again next year!

New Teacher Time Warp

Okay -this is crazy!! Somehow tomorrow is the end of the third week of school. Time is flying, and I am hanging on for dear life. So much happens in the school day that I can barely keep track or where I'm going, who I am talking to, or what I was doing two seconds ago. But it is still fun. :) I guess it helps that I am person that likes change, and things are always changing at school.

Jason has said that he is not interested in chaperoning the Homecoming Dance in a few weeks, so I guess we won't be doing that. I've planned my first field trip, coming up in November. If anyone is interested in helping chaperon a group of 35 kids to the Oregon Food Bank, please let me know!! I'm looking for 3 willing volunteers. :) :) :)

A veteran teacher gave me some great advice on the first Friday of school. She told me to get away and rest and do something fun that first weekend, because being a teacher is like running a marathon. Yes, we get those glorious 2 1/2 months off in the summer, but holy cow, I am busting my butt for the rest of the months.

It's only 8:04pm. Isn't it time for bed............

P.S. Happy Birthday Diana!!

Hamilton Mountain Photos

Here are a few more photos from our hike. It was about 2300' elevation gain, 4 miles up, 6 miles down.  The photo at the top of our blog page is the panoramic from the top.  Here is a link to the panoramic. 

There were a couple waterfalls we passed along the way:

hmmmm should we take the difficult route, or the more difficult route? More difficult of course!

We started down at the base of beacon rock. We are probably 3/4's of the way when I took this picture:

The switchbacks towards the top were killer!

Cassie got in a good swim on the way back down

Hamilton Moutain Hike

Saturday morning we hiked Hamilton Mountain, which is in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side. As you will see in the pictures, we were trying to support the Beavers in their effort to win their first game. We got several comments from fellow hikers about our orange t-shirts, and people wondered where Cassie's OSU shirt was. We felt like major dorks. Oh well, the Beavs won that day!!

We were pretty tired after hiking 10 miles, but not too tired to pass up a wakeboarding invitation for Sunday. We got some great pics of Jason wakeboarding, but the pics are on our friend's camera, so you will have to wait to see those. But here are some pics from our hike up (and I do mean up) Hamilton Mountain.

Dinner

Grilled Sirloin Strip Steaks with Crushed Garlic and Tennessee Barbecue Sauce:

From Food

Dinner

-Grilled marinated salmon with grilled zucchini and mashed potatoes

From Food

Summer Reading

This summer I (Sara) read 3 books. I highly recommend them all.

The first one I read and finished was They Like Jesus but Not the Church by Dan Kimball. He spends time talking to people to help identify what makes people like and respect the person of Jesus, but reject the body of Christ, or the church, or Christians. He explores 6 misconceptions of the church and Christians. Interesting, sobering, and humbling.

The second book I started in June, and just finished tonight! It is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. I got this book through the Ford Family Foundation of which I am a scholarship alum. It is a social psychology book that looks at what makes messages and messenger contagious, patterns of social epidemics, and how small things can make big differences. Very interesting book, with amazing analyses of how Sesame Street became a hit, to the rise and fall of crime in New York City, the success of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, and lots of other tidbits. Quick read, although it took me almost 3 months to read, actually reading time was probably 5 days.

The third book was Unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. This book was very similar to They Like Jesus but Not the Church, but was based on research by The Barna Group, looking into what 16-29 year-olds perceptions of Christians. This is a really interesting book that compares different generations and really uses research to give a sobering look at how "outsiders", or those outside the church, view the Christian faith. This was a really interesting book to me because I am in the age-group they researched, as are most of the students I teach right now! I can see some of these perceptions and arguments that Christians act unChristian, and I am fascinated by the ability of these researchers to present their findings in such an honest and real way.

Anyways, I know all you out there in blog land are just made of time! ;) But if you get a chance to read any or all of these books, let me know and I would love to talk about them with you! Or better yet, you can borrow them all from me if you want!

Ok, that is the end of my summer reading book report.

Electrical Woes

A few days ago the dishwasher stopped working during the middle of a cycle. We were like, oh crap... So I checked under the sink and sure enough, the GFI outlet had been tripped. So i did the whole test/reset thing on both of the outlets under the sink. One outlet is hot all the time and powers the dishwasher. The other outlet is triggered by a switch on the wall above the counter. That outlet did not reset. ahhhh crap.

I put off fixing that outlet for a couple days. Probably a little too long if you ask Sara what she thought. So yesterday afternoon I set out to fix the outlet. I figured while I was at it I would replace the loose box that the outlets sit in.

I unscrewed the outlets, unplugged them both, took out the existing box. The existing box mounted on the face of the drywall under the sink. I replaced it with one that sits back flush with the wall. So I cut a hole in the wall, routed the wiring behind the wall and into the box. Then proceeded to wire up the outlets. This is usually a simple task but being under the sink, behind the garbage disposal made for some tough doings.

Anyways, after wayyyy too long I finished it up, screwed it all back in and turned the breakers back on. Then I went to test it. Hit the reset button on the 'always hot' outlet and it turned on. Hit the reset button on the switched outlet and it didn't go on. oh crap.. hmmmm... oh there needs to be power to it, so I hit the switch to the on position and then hit the reset button. Bingo! All done.

After a frustrating afternoon I finished the dumb project and had a decent sense of accomplishment.

Fast forward to bedtime.....

I'm laying in bed, can't sleep so I am thinking about all kinds of things... 4wheeling, welding, facebook friends, my dinner, the outlet project... the outlet project.. hmmm that project sucked didn't it. yeah... I recalled how the outlet didn't reset till I turned the power on the switch to the on position.... oh crap... no freaking way!!! I just realized that the original outlet was never bad..... AHHH CRAP!!!! I just didn't turn the switch to the on position before I tried to hit the reset button.

I wanted to tell sara my discovery but she was already asleep. So my long drawn out project was all done for nothing. I guess it just gave me some opportunities to work on my patience.

Mt. Hood Biking

Yesterday I woke up a little after 6am to get ready for an awesome day of mountain biking. I loaded up the bike on the car and got all my stuff ready and headed over to meet Chris at his house. After Heidi made us some awesome lattes we were on the road. It was overcast and actually misting a bit until we got maybe 15 miles from our destination. Then it just cleared up and was beautiful. We parked my car at the Camp Creek campground and I jumped into Chris' car to go the rest of the way. We arrived at Timberline Lodge about 9:30, got ready and were on our bikes.

The Glade trail starts right next to the Magic Mile lift and goes down. Its a very steep, rocky, technical ride down the mountain. Constantly picking our lines, avoiding huge sharp rocks, trying not to crash, we made our way down the mountain. We got to the bottom and saw some buildings.... oh crap we went too far. We weren't supposed to get all the way to Government Camp, there was a turn off we were supposed to take. So we went up about 2 miles and proceeded on Crosstown Trail.

This trail was pretty fun, its faster and smoother so you can just cruise.. There were some creek crossings too. One of the creek crossing was a bunch of 3 or 4 inch logs set together. Chris managed to get a tire stuck between one and went down. Right into the creek!!! So he was wet and muddy the rest of the trip. We had a good laugh about that one. Also on this one there were some logs that were in the trail that you had to go over. I tried to go over one and then went right over my handlebars. Having my feet stuck in my clip-in pedals didn't help!

After the crosstown trail we hit up the Pioneer Bridal trail. This one is even more fun. Fast and curvy it whips through the forest. A few sections were really rocky with sharp big rocks. I came into one of these sections way to fast and about ate it hard. I didn't crash but I did get a flat tire. So I changed that out and we were on our way.

Once we made it back to my car at the bottom, about 13 miles later, I opened up my backpack and pulled out my car keys. The treasured car keys. (this is the key (pun intended) item that was forgotten by my good friend (I won't mention names) the last time I did this ride. We had to ride our bikes all the way back up!

So it was a great day of riding. On another note, later in the afternoon a friend of mine helped me fix up my skid plate for my truck. I got to weld for the first time!

ok bye

The First Week Recap

The first week of school is over, and I am sure some of you are interested in how it went and how I am doing.

It was a good first week, each day getting better than the first. I teach 6 classes. My classes have between 30 and 35 kids each, so I have about 190 students, grades 9-12.

I made it through the week just fine, no melt-downs (you can even ask Jason if you want). I think I made it to the gym every day after school too! I have my prep period first thing every morning which is super nice because I can get all ready for the day before seeing students.

I have no reservations about teaching and I am excited for the rest of the year. One of my students from last year asked me if teaching was my new job and if I liked it, and if it was my career. I said, yes it is, yes I do, and yes it is. What could be more fun than teaching kids the difference between a cake pan and a springform pan, and a rotary egg beater and a whisk??

Race for the Cure

My mom, aunt, grandma and I are signed up to walk in the Race for the Cure on September 21st!
I am pretty excited about doing this. If you want to join us, you can still sign up to run or walk.
If you want to donate, click on the little Race for the Cure icon on the right hand side of our blog and you can donate!

First Day of School

It's over! Yay - now onto the second day. :)

The first day went really well, no major flubs and problems. It actually felt like the day flew by, even with 82-minute class periods. I had a lot of students that were in my classes last year when I was student teaching, so it was fun to see their reaction when they saw I was their teacher again.

I think I was just out of routine as my students were, so we will all hopefully be up and running at 100% by the end of the week.

So I guess I will go back tomorrow.

P.S. My first day of school picture at home was not all that great since it was 6:45 this morning. If you are dying to know what I look like as a teacher on my first day, you may request a picture. Otherwise, no freebies. :)

Labor Day Weekend '08

Ahh...the final 3-day weekend of the summer.

Mom and Dad Friend came up for the weekend. We went to the Oregon State Fair on Sunday after church, despite the pouring down rain! We had a great time walking around, looking at the exhibits, people watching, eating fair food, looking at the cows, pigs, horses, and goats....etc, you get the picture. Ya'll have been to a fair. Jason and dad enjoyed some $4 corndogs, Mom and I had some taco salad, and we all got yummy milkshakes! We had a great time.

Today we played 18 holes of golf at Chehalem Glenn in Newberg. We had "fun", but didn't play all that well. It was a tough course. I think I lost every ball I had in my bag, but I (Sara) did end up with 2 pars on the day. Not too shabby since I hadn't golfed in probably 6 months.

We met up with Eric and Cathy and Grandma and Grandpa for the traditional meal of Labor Day weekend....Thai food. Hahaha. :)

And tomorrow, drumroll please...................is the 1st day of school! Yikes.