Christmas Recap

Christmas has come and gone and it was a lovely one indeed. Ken and I had two Christmases: one the Saturday before Christmas with my family and one on Christmas eve with his family. During my family's Christmas, we enjoyed a new tradition of "Bring Your Own Soup." Missy made cheesy broccoli, Mom made her famous beef n' noodles, and I made the Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana. All three were a hit. Corrina brought some fabulous breads, Connie and family supplied drinks, and Aunt Sheila and Uncle Roger brought some very yummy pigs in a blanket and little pickle wrap things that Mom and I couldn't get enough of. Grandma brought her excellent peanut brittle and I think some other desserts. In all, we ate well and enjoyed the company.

Gift exchange proved to be interesting yet again. Audra had fun opening all the gifts from family. Here's a shot of her with the purple socks that have a penguin on them and say "Chill Out" that I bought her. Last year, I bought her some socks with princess frogs on them and she liked them a lot. I thought I'd made it a tradition to get her a funny pair of socks each year. In this picture, she's decided that the socks are more fun on her hands.

During our other tradition of the "white elephant" or "bring something from your basement" gift exchange, we all laughed when some interesting gifts came out. People started the game off right by stealing gifts from others. My nephew Josh got a gold purse, which Missy promptly stole. Then someone ended up with a singing/dancing woodchuck from the movie Caddyshack which Scott stole away. I ended up getting a Yogo ball first, but Josh's girlfriend stole that from me and then I ended up with a half broken blender. Ken walked away with a tool box that had a bunch of old baseball cards in it. We all had some good laughs when Jeff brought out an old wig that he'd been given as a gag gift when he left his job at Musco Lighting (Jeff shaves his head). He tried it on and then so did Ken. It's interesting to see what he would look like with curly hair.

Christmas eve found us at Oelwein with Ken's family. A funny event occured when it turns out Lisa and I gave Ken and Matt the same gift: the Scene It Seinfeld edition. We tried to play the game later in the evening, but we experienced some DVD problems, so we settled for just watching a couple of Seinfeld reruns on TV. That's one thing you can always count on: somewhere in the world there's a Seinfeld episode on.

Ken and I were excited to give his dad an engineer's hat we found for him. His dad has been working a lot with his model railroads/trains, so we thought that would be a fitting gift. We think he liked it as he wore it the rest of the evening!

And finally, here's one of Teresa, Elizabeth, Lisa and me on our way to the local thrift store for our annual Christmas eve thrift store run. (Linda had to step out of the van to fill up on gas.) That tradition started a couple of years ago (for reasons I cannot remember), but we've made it an annual event now just because it was so much fun. We had a lot of laughs on the way there and back.

And now that those major holidays are over, Ken and I are trying to figure out a way to get out of town. We've planned a trip to Tennessee, but so far have been unable to make it out of Iowa. First there was the fog that engulfed Cedar Rapids and now we're dealing with an Ice Storm. We're going to try to get out of Waterloo today, but we'll see. I'll post the details as they become available.

The Semester is Officially Over!

Big sigh of relief! My grading is done. Or, for my English-majory friends, to take it out of the passive...I am done grading!!! I finished yesterday at 1:00 p.m. to be exact. I had no problem getting through the Hawkeye portfolios. The papers were shorter and fewer students actually made substantial revisions. The UNI revisions much more time. The papers were about 5-7 pages, with the exception of the overly ambitious student now and then who would think that s/he'd have to write 8-10 pages to get that A. Ugh. Anyway, more revisions on all 5 papers meant those suckers took way too long for me to grade. But I finished 1 hour earlier than expected and was able to start handing them back to students who were still hanging around campus on Thursday of finals week. Today I finished everything by posting my grades online.

Of course, we had a major snow storm come through here last night. We even had "thunder snow!" Apparently this is when it's like a thunderstorm outside so you hear the rumbling, but no rain. Instead....snow and lots of it! I believe we had a total of 8.5 to 9 inches around Waterloo. Here is a picture looking at our driveway.The entire end of the driveway was covered as high as the piles you see on either side. Thank you Mr. Snow Plow. We live on a hospital route so our road is always pretty well cleared, but we pay the price with terrible icy frozen snow drifts.

Hawkeye's classes were, of course, cancelled as is the case there so that meant a snow day for me! Ken stayed home from work until about noon so we could dig ourselves out. There would have been no way he would have made it out of that driveway by 8 a.m. We started by using the shovel, but soon realized our efforts would allow us to leave the driveway sometime next Tuesday at the rate we were going. I seriously began to question why we had NOT purchased a snowblower for this year. I think we thought global warming would have us receiving little snow. Fools. Neighbor George offered us the use of his snowblower in exchange for using it on his driveway as well. And so in a mere 3 hours we were all cleaned out! And just in time as our next storm is supposed to come through on Sunday. Ah, Iowa.

And so, after posting grades and then digging us out of snow, it is actually sinking in that I am officially done for a few weeks. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. I wrapped a couple of presents and determined that I'm a little short on what I need to purchase, so that will mean a trip to the store in a little bit. I'm also tasked with making Zuppa Toscana for Christmas at Melissa's on Sunday so will need to get a few things at the grovery store. I did manage to start my very first load of dishes in our new dishwasher which we have had for a week or two now! (Ken ran the first load.) Isn't she a beauty?!

I've been meaning to get this picture posted for a while. This is a picture of my friend Lynsey and me from our Thanksgiving meeting in Cedar Rapids. She, her husband Jeremy, and son Jack were back in IA from WI visiting family over the holidays, so Ken and I took a short drive to CR so we could see each other. It was a great visit and a lot of fun to just catch up. Before we knew it, almost 3 hours had passed and we figured we should probably let Lynsey get back to her family.

In other pictures, here's one of Tucker. On Black Friday, Menards had pet beds on sale for $5 and now that I'm feeling slightly better off than I did as a grad student, I decided to splurge and by the boys (Tucker and Artemus) each a bed. Tuck warmed up to his within a few days and now is a petbed "regular", but Arty has turned up his nose and deemed the bed no comparison to our bed witht he down comforter or the back of the couch in front of the window.

Oh, and yes, Tucker really is that big! That and the bed was actually made for a small dog. Shame on me thinking that a bed made for the size of a small dog would fit my cat!

I See the Portfolios... They are a-Comin'

Well, here I am sitting in my office up at UNI waiting for students to turn in their portfolios. Me, the diligent teacher, has been grading some as they slowly come it, but now my poor brain is feeling fried and I can go on no longer. I've graded 8, some of which had only minimal revisions, but I felt pretty good about those 8 until the other 41 started making their way into my office and on my bookshelves, making my small grading accomplishment seem extra small indeed.

Because it's been over a year since I officially taught a first-year composition course, I'd forgotten just how daunting the task of grading so many portfolios with so many revisions could be. Why does it seem like it took no time at all to grade those English 101 portfolios back at ISU a mere 4-5 years ago? I seem to remember getting through them so fast that I was able to return them to students during finals week (within days of them submitting them). I was often one of the faster ones among the other teachers, getting them graded and returned well before finals week was even over.

And as I think back on this, I begin to wonder if this experience is at all similar to the childbirth process I hear my friends talk about. Indulge me for a moment as I try to make a comparison. I've heard stories from mothers who agonized during the labor and delivery process only to claim that they "forgot" the experience and later wanted to have more children because of the joy of the experience, etc. etc. Have I in turn "forgotten" the pain that accompanies portfolio grading simply because I wanted to get back into teaching and leave my job this summer? Am I now all of a sudden starting to remember what the process was really like?

That said, I'm terribly behind in posting to this blog, but soon I will have some pictures to post from my fabulous dinner with Lynsey in Cedar Rapids as well as some church and flower pictures from the wedding planning. It's been a busy couple of weeks to say the least.

Ken and I had our engagement pictures taken last weekend and I just picked up those proofs today. I'm happy to report that there are some good candidates and so I think we'll have a fairly easy decision. Our Christmas cards are finally out too after weeks of struggling to get people's addresses and realizing that the postage required would cost me an additional $0.17 per card. Sigh. Nothing's easy these days.

Our dishwasher also pooped out on us last week, but I'm happy to report that we have a lovely new one in our kitchen ready to be run and we just had soft water installed today to make our usage easier. Talk about living in the lap of luxury! Cable TV, a new dishwasher, AND soft water! We're definitely movin' on up, Weezie. Oh, and I also had to take a final exam for my "teacher course" at work. Fingers crossed that I passed. Of course, add all to this the ice storm we had on Monday night, and it's been a busy week!

Tonight, at 6:00 p.m. sharp, I'm leaving my office with a box of portfolios for the weekend and am off to watch little Audra's first Christmas program. She's starring as an Angel. My camera's ready to capture the moment. Things like this make me happy to be close to home.