Praxis Exam

For those of you who may not know, after three years of teaching you have to renew or upgrade your teaching license. My teaching license will expire in June of 2010, so I've been looking at the requirements for the past few months. I'm going to try to upgrade to a Level 2 license. The biggest benefit is that I will get 5 years to renew my license instead of only 3. I'm planning on keeping a current teaching license even when I'm not using it, so that I could fall back on it if I needed to.
One of the things that I have to do is take a Praxis exam. To get my teaching license initially, I took a math content Praxis exam. But to get my Level 2 license, I also need to take another Praxis exam that tests me on the Principles of Learning and Teaching.
At least, that's what the test makers claim. The test is made up of 24 multiple-choice questions and 4 case studies with three essay questions each. And you only have 2 hours to take the test. Basically, to pass the test you have to become familiar with the concepts and key words that they're looking for, and try to write really fast.
I took the exam last month at the University of Utah. Fortunately, I left myself plenty of time, because I'm only moderately familiar with the campus and thought I might get lost. Which I did. There was some construction that confused me and made it difficult for me to find the right building, even though I knew the general area where it should be. So after driving around campus for a good 20-30 minutes, I finally made it in to the test room right as they were shutting the door.
It was a miserable test. At the end of the 2 hours I had an awful headache and a horrible hand cramp. But it was over. I managed to answer every question, but I knew some of my essays were pretty pathetic.
I had to wait a month to find out my score and see if I passed with a high enough grade. I REALLY didn't want to have to take it again. But this past week I found out that I passed! I needed 160 out of 200, and I scored a 182. HORRAY!!!
And let me tell you, I am SO glad that I don't have to take it again. Now I just need to work on the paperwork for my Level 2 license. I have until June, but I'm going to try to get it out of the way earlier.

The Saga of the Sweater

I have simple tastes when it comes to clothes. I'm not big into fashion or designer labels, and I enjoy wearing the same clothes for a decade or longer. I still have some clothes and shoes from elementary school.
I like having a few simple cardigans as part of my wardrobe. They can be either button-up or have a zipper. I usually like to have three: black, white, and cream/tan. They help me to expand my wardrobe in the winter, because I can still wear a short-sleeved shirt with the cardigan on top. They also help me stay warm, providing an extra layer of clothing so I don't have to wear my coat all day (I get cold really easily).
Well, the white sweater that I currently have is comfortable but a little thin and see-through, and doesn't provide much warmth. So I don't wear it very often. I have now stained my cream colored sweater multiple times and it's starting to look kind of ratty. This left my black sweater, which I wore all the time - up until a few weeks ago, that is.
That was when I noticed that I had a hole in the elbow of my sweater. Sometimes I'll still wear clothes when they have small holes or stains, but this hole is pretty noticable.
It's been really difficult not having a cardigan to wear. So for the past few weeks, as we've been out Christmas shopping, I've been looking for a replacement sweater. I especially want a black one, but I wouldn't mind getting a cream or white one as well.
I had NO IDEA that it would be so difficult to find a simple cardigan! I've run into the following problems in my search:
Hoodies (I want it to be nicer, something I can wear to church)
Shawls
Really big necks
Ties that go around the bottom (what do I need them for)
Too short (I want it to cover the shirt I'm wearing underneath)
Too long (looks more like a coat - not what I'm looking for)
Buttons that only go halfway
Writing or designs (I want a solid color)
Too big (is it too much to ask that it be in my size?)
Too tight (the sleeves of the shirt underneath would look bunchy)

Am I being too picky? I just want a simple, solid colored sweater to wear over my clothes. It should be long enough to cover my shirt, but not so long that it looks like a small dress. It can be either button-up or have a zipper. I don't want anything fancy or super fashionable - just a simple cardigan! Apparently, I am asking for the impossible. And any time I find something that comes close, they don't have it in my size.
I'm open to ideas, if you have any. But I don't want to order anything off of the Internet - I want to be able to try it on first.

It's a Small World After All

There was a baby blessing in our ward today. I didn't think too much about it, other than noting that there were several rows of visitors there.
As I was leaving the chapel after Sacrament Meeting, I was making my normal rounds of stopping to make faces at cute kids. Near the door I came across a man holding a cute little boy. I didn't recognize either of them (and I know all of the kids in the ward), so I figured that they were visiting due to the baby blessing. The man acted like he knew me and asked me how I was doing. We stopped and chatted for a minute, and then he asked me what my name was. I told him, but he still looked puzzled. He said that I reminded him of a family that he knows, and when I asked him the name of the family, he said Alford!
After I told him that I was indeed an Alford, I asked him how he knew my family. He told me that his name was Dave, and that his wife Kathy was my dad's cousin. They were aunt and uncle to the mother of the baby being blessed today. So I've actually been in a ward with a second cousin for over a year now and didn't even know it! Her name is Heidi Simmons, and her mother Leslie is Kathy's sister. Kathy and Dave actually came to our wedding last year. I wouldn't have recognized them, but he recognized me.
So we were invited over to their home for munching and mingling. It was fun to visit with my extended family and find out a little more about them. I also discovered that Heidi has been researching the Alford family line and has been gathering and scanning photographs. She's going to give me a copy of the information that she has, and then I'll be able to pass it on to my family members. And I'm going to introduce her to Great-Aunt Ruth, who's she's heard about but never met.
It's funny. I was actually reading an article in the Ensign just this morning about the importance of being personally involved in geneology. I felt a real desire to study and learn more about my ancestors, and stop telling myself that "someone else has already done it." And now Heavenly Father has provided a way for me to learn more about the Alford side of the family. Turns out I didn't have to search farther than my own ward!

This and That

I feel like nothing really big has been happening lately. So I'm just going to post a few little stories from the past week or two.

Today our ward choir sang in church (just a reminder in case you've forgotten or didn't know, I'm the choir director). We sang hymn #82, For All the Saints. It's a powerful hymn that we don't sing very often in church. I think it went pretty well. Jeff said that he got goosebumps a few times while we were singing. I'm really grateful that we've gotten several new members to come these past couple of weeks and boost our numbers. It really made a difference.
Next up, we'll be singing a Grateful hymn medley the week before Thanksgiving. For Christmas, the choir will be singing two numbers - Still, Still, Still and Night of All Nights - and I'm going to put together a small women's group to sing a song called Christ Child, Christ Child.

This past week I had a small cooking fiasco. I was starting to get tired of the meals that I seem to make over and over because they're easy and I'm familiar with them. So I pulled out my recipe book and looked through it, and decided to make Hawaiian Meatballs. For those of you unfamiliar with the dish, it's made up of small meatballs in a sweet sauce with pineapple and peppers (but I leave out the peppers because I don't like them) served over rice.
I first tried to make the meal on Wednesday night after leaving the hamburger to thaw for a day in the fridge. Sadly, the meat was still too frozen to make the meatballs, even after I tried thawing it under running water for 20-30 minutes.
So I put the meat back in the fridge to finish thawing and tried making the meal on Thursday night instead. I mixed up the sauce, started cooking the rice, then got out the meat from the fridge ... only to discover that it was a sick greenish-grey color and smelled horrible. Because I had the rest of the meal prepared and ready to go, minus the meatballs, I decided to try to thaw another bag of hamburger in the microwave (I usually hate doing that because parts of it will thaw, parts of it will start cooking, and other parts will remain frozen). However, I discovered that ALL of my frozen hamburger had that same nasty greenish-grey coloring. Jeff and I spent a few minutes googling descriptions of spoiled meat to try and determine if it was still safe to eat, but the universal advice we found was: when in doubt, throw it out.
I was super sad, not only for my meal, but also for the wasted meat. This was actually the first hamburger I had bought since Jeff and I were married, because it never seems to be on sale. And now it looks like we have to throw it all out. I vaguely remember that when we were bagging the hamburger the day we bought it, it was discolored underneath where the sticker was. If anyone has any tips about buying and storing hamburger, I would love for you to share.
Well, back to my meal: there I was with rice and sauce and no meatballs. So we had rice with sweet sauce and pineapple, and it wasn't a very well-rounded meal. We had a lot left over, so we decided to add chicken to it the second night and make it kind of a sweet and sour chicken meal. It turned out really well, actually, and since I find it easier to cook chicken than meatballs, I'll probably make it this way in the future. So my fiasco turned into a blessing in the end.

In the past week or two I've been feeling a bit stressed at work. There were a couple of different things that were contributing to it, but I decided that a major factor was my attitude. So for the past couple of days I've tried harder to focus on the positive and try to have a good attitude, and it really made a difference. I was a lot happier and found myself enjoying work a lot more. I've always been a big believer in the power of positive thinking - I just had to challenge myself to live up to my beliefs.

I have a confession: Jeff and I haven't been great about cleaning our home on a regular basis. Without kids, sometimes things don't get dirty very often. Well, and a large part has also been laziness, too. So for FHE this past week Jeff and I tackled a couple of cleaning jobs that we had been neglecting. We cleaned out the fridge and scrubbed the microwave (for the first time since we've been married), wiped down the kitchen counters and sink, scrubbed the tub (I bought a new cleaner, Lime-Away, and I LOVE it) and bathroom sink, and straightened up the house here and there. It felt really good when we were done. I have a renewed desire to set weekly and monthly cleaning goals - if anyone has any tips to share, please do.
As a reward for doing our cleaning, we went to Iceberg Drive-Inn down the street for a peppermint shake. If you've never been to Iceberg, I highly recommend their shakes. Their fries are good, too. The one by us is always busy. It was even busy on Monday night when we went, in the middle of a cold and heavy rain.

Rolling Valley Ward Get-Together

When people ask me where I'm from, I tend to give a variety of answers. My most common response is that I'm a military brat who moved around, but I mostly grew up in Virginia and New York. For those of you who don't know, I spent 7 years in each state, though neither was consecutive. But if I had to choose between the two, I would say that I'm from Virginia.

This is because each time that we moved to Virginia, we lived in the same house on Gillings Road (when we were gone on other assignments, my parents rented it out). For a military brat, it provided stability and a sense of home.

When we lived in Virginia, we were members of the Rolling Valley Ward. I loved our ward and the people in it. Over time, many of the members of the ward and/or their kids have moved out here to Utah. Some are going to BYU, some are going to other colleges, and some (like me) have finished school and are still living nearby.

Last night we had our second annual Rolling Valley Ward get-together. It's a gathering of the kids who were members of the Rolling Valley Ward at some point (because there are others like us who were there for a year here or a year there). My parents came up with the idea and have hosted it at their house each fall since they moved out here.

It was a lot of fun seeing everyone. There was quite a range of ages there, from college freshman up through those approaching their 30s. I had fun wandering from group to group catching up with people or just saying hello. I found myself in the unique position of being in the middle age-wise, so I knew everyone there. One of my highlights of the evening was goofing around with my brother Kenneth and throwing M&m's into his mouth.

I will always feel a special camaraderie with members of the Rolling Valley Ward. When I see them, it feels like coming home.

You Know You're a Teacher When...

So I wanted to share something from work that makes me happy.
This is my third year teaching at La Europa (wow, where has the time gone?). I teach all four main high school math subjects: Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Pre-Calculus. For the first year, they had the Pre-Calculus students do an online course. I think they did this because a previous math teacher wasn't very confident in teaching Pre-Calculus, and the online course provided instant feedback on their assignments. Well, it was a real pain to use, actually. There were a few upsides, like the fact that I didn't have any lessons to prepare for that class period, as well as being able to use the class as a prep period when students didn't have any questions. But overall it was a pain. I won't go into all of my complaints against it, but here are a few of the inconveniences it caused:

-When students first come to La Europa, they're not allowed to get on the computer right away, so I would have to print out their assignments and grade them by hand.
-I had a hard time coming up with what to base their grades on, because they would complete 2 huge chapters each term (which they had a hard time getting through) and take a test at the end of each chapter. So, basically, if they did poorly on the test, it totally killed their grade. It took me a little while to figure out what to do as a first year teacher.
-Of course, it was an online class, which meant that the website was frequently down. So I had to print out all of the assignments as a back-up, and then grade them by hand without an answer key. Ugh!

Hopefully, you get the picture. It was not fun.
Now, begin year two. By this time I had perfected the pacing and grading somewhat, so we kept using the online course. But the system was down even more frequently than the previous year. So I decided halfway through the year to get everyone caught up to the same point and then teach them all at once. I didn't have any textbooks, so I used the printouts from the website and gave them copies of the exercises. I had to make answer keys as I went, as well as quizzes, but I felt that the students got a lot more out of the class. However, this was not the solution, either. We needed textbooks!

Well, you know you're a teacher when you get excited about getting new textbooks. I got a class set of 5 (our Pre-Calculus class usually isn't very big, and I had a limited budget, so I figured they could share if the class got bigger than 5 - I currently have 4 students in that class), a teacher's edition textbook (which I found out afterwords is an earlier edition than the student books, and a couple of things are different - oh, well), and several teacher resources.

It was great being able to pick out my own textbooks. Some of the textbooks that we have for my other classes don't match very well with my teaching style, so it was fun being able to pick out books that do. Some of my favorite features are: the vocabulary in each section is both highlighted and in bold, there are several good examples in the text, there are a lot of practice problems, there are ACT/SAT Prep questions in each section, and there are calculator notes in the back of the textbook that give them step-by-step instructions for doing things on their graphing calculators. Plus, in each section there are a few "communicating mathematics" questions that are perfect for their journal entries (for each of my classes this year, I try to come up with a short, meaningful journal assignment to help them think about and understand the concepts that they are learning - and the textbook already has the questions for me!).

Even though the textbooks themselves are great, the teacher resources are definitely my favorite part. I have a Resource Masters booklet for each chapter in the book. Each Resource Master comes with: an alphabetic list of vocabulary for the chapter (that I have them fill out as we go), notes (which will be great for Home Passes, when I have to send the girls home with the work they're going to miss), worksheets (which I use for homework), enrichment worksheets (which are quite challenging and perfect for my honors students), quizzes (yay, I don't have to write them!), and 6 different versions of the chapter test - 3 multiple choice (which I could give out as a study guide) and 3 regular (I use one of these as their test, and then I have others on hand if a student fails the test and needs to take a re-test). These Resource Masters are WONDERFUL and will save me hours of work this year.

I cannot say enough of how much I am enjoying teaching Pre-Calculus this year. It is a completely different experience from the previous two years. It's now my favorite class, and I really look forward to teaching it.
Well, I hope I didn't bore you with the details of what excites me as a teacher. I just felt like sharing.

Living Room Curtains

I've been meaning to post a picture of our living room curtains for a while now. This was my project for several months. My sister Suzanne came up to Salt Lake to help me pick out the curtains a while ago. Then it took me another month or so to buy the curtain rod. Then a couple more weeks passed before we got around to putting them up. But here they are.

It was a little tricky arranging the curtain on the rod without any clips - the material is pretty silky/slippery. But I'm pleased with the finished product. It adds a little color to a room that was predominately green and black. And now the window doesn't look so sad and bare. :)

OUCH!!!

So some of you may not know of the ongoing ordeal with my right wrist. It all started about 3 months ago. After a long work week, my wrist was hurting. I then noticed a rather peculiar bump on my wrist. I wasn't sure what it was. I asked a few coworkers and they didn't really know, either.
To make a long story short, after several visits to the physical therapist that treated Christine last year (when she broke her pinkie), I decided to see a hand doctor because the bump was still there. The doctor informed me that the bump is called a ganglion cyst. Apparently, it's quite common. They're not completely sure what causes them, and they're not always painful like mine.
The doctor first treated it by draining the cyst. He told me there was a 50/50 chance it would come back. Sure enough, two weeks later, it was back and slightly larger. So back to the doctor's office I went.
The options I faced were: live with it, or have surgery. Because I use my hand so much, I opted for surgery. For the past three months I haven't been able to play the piano, play volleyball, or work with a mouse (I've been using my left hand at work).
So two Wednesdays ago was the big day. The nurses were all very friendly. One nurse even had a cyst on her wrist and was very interested in my treatment.
After the surgery, I wore a splint with an ace bandage on my wrist for a week. A lot of people mistook it for a cast. So this is what my wrist looks like now:
The doctor says it may take a few weeks to heal. Right now I wear a brace that keeps me from overusing my wrist while it heals. One time, when I wasn't wearing the brace, I slipped and caught myself with my right hand. It hurt so bad I cried out in pain.
Each day it gets a little better. I look forward to playing the piano again, as well as returning to other daily activities.

Trip To Zions National Park

I spent this past Wednesday through Friday in Zions National Park. I went there with a group from La Europa. They take the girls on short trips every couple of months, and I always wanted to go on one. So this past month, I did. I went as a staff member, so I was in charge of two of the girls - knowing where they were at all times and making sure they were safe. But my room and board were all paid for, which was great.

On Wednesday we hiked the Narrows. For those that don't know, the first part of this hike is a sandy trail next to a river.

Then you leave the trail and actually hike through the river. You weave back and forth from bank to bank, first upriver and then back downriver. I wore my bathing suit under my shirt and my swimming shorts, because I knew that there would be parts that got waist deep.

Funny story: when I got to the deepest part of the river, where it was only supposed to go up to my waist, I was a little ways behind the rest of my group (probably a combination of stopping to take pictures like the one below - the deepest part was right past this bend - and the fact that I wasn't wearing the best pair of shoes - my sandals completely died by the end of the hike and I ended up throwing them away). So I didn't get to observe which part of the river everyone else crossed at. Result: I picked the deepest part to wade through and got in up to my neck! It was a little crazy for a minute there, but I made it through. At least the people coming behind me learned from my mistake and waded on the other side of the river at that point.

When you're hiking through the water, you watch your feet pretty closely. I happened to notice that someone had etched the word "HI" into a rock. I thought it was cool so I took a picture.

Towards the end of the hike two deer decided to join us. They got pretty close to us.

Now, unfortunately, I dropped my camera in the water on the way back through the Narrows, and I was afraid it was ruined. I took out the batteries and left it to dry that night, but the next morning it still wasn't taking pictures properly. So I don't have any other pictures from the other two days. Sorry. But when I checked my camera again today, lo and behold it was working! Yay! So, at least you got to see my pictures from the first day.

On the second day I went canyoneering. It was AWESOME!!! The first thing we did was rappel down into the canyon. I'd only been rappelling once or twice at West Point when I was in high school. I really loved it and couldn't wait to do it again. This time it was even better. One of the rappels was about 100 feet down a cliff side. I bounced off of the rock on my way down rather than just walking down the cliff face, and it was SO MUCH FUN!!! The girls were surprised/impressed that I enjoyed it so much and had some experience doing it.

We then hiked through the canyon, surmounting obstacles along the way. It was very taxing but a lot of fun. I would love to do it again sometime. And our girls did really well. They worked together, listened to the guides, and had a lot of fun.

On the third day I was with a group that did a few small hikes. We drove through the east part of Zions, went on a short hike to a waterfall, and pulled off at a random spot and hiked some of the sandstone. The trip to the waterfall was everyone's favorite. We followed a stream to a secluded, shaded pool of water that had a small waterfall feeding into it. Some of the girls decided that they wanted to go swimming in their clothes. They also jumped off of a cliff about 8-10 feet high into a spot of water about 7 feet deep. I captured it on video on my phone. (Side note - does anyone know how to get pictures and/or videos off of their phone if they don't have a data plan? Is there some kind of software I can buy to transfer it from my memory card to my computer?)

We also found a flat rock overlooking the stream where we had a yoga class. One of the staff that was with us is a yoga instructor, and the girls do yoga a lot a La Europa. I'd never done it before, but I decided to give it a try. It was the perfect setting in the middle of a canyon with blue skies, hawks circling on the cliffs above, and the sound of running water below us. It was very relaxing.

Overall it was a great trip. I arrived home Friday evening sore and tired, but happy. The activities were fun, but the main reason I went was to bond with the girls, and I was able to have some good conversations and fun times with many of them. I'm really glad I went.

I'm Grateful for Running Water

Sometimes you don't realize how grateful you are for the little things in life until they're taken away.

Well, we had a little excitement on Friday night. Right around dinner time, we discovered that we had no running water in our condo. We had noticed some construction going on down the street when we drove home, so I walked down there to find out what was going on. They told me that our water should be back on in about an hour. I thought that sounded a little optimistic given that they were completely digging up the street, but I was at least hopeful that it would be fixed that night.

I was able to make dinner without any water, but it felt really wrong to leave the dishes in the sink without rinsing them.

After dinner Jeff and I went to see a movie - Julie and Julia, in case any of you are curious. (It was ... ok. They definately had more language and "content" than they needed to. I thought it was a shame, because it would have been a lot better without all that.) We came home to discover that our water was still off.

At that point, I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do that night or the next day that involved water:

Dishes
Cooking
Using the toilet
Washing my hands
Brushing my teeth
Showering
Laundry


We got by on a few of those things with some of our water storage, but I started to get a good idea of how inadequate it is.

Fortunately, our water came back on at 11:30 - yes, we were still up. I was just getting ready to brush my teeth and climb in to bed when I heard the pipes gurgling. And lo and behold - we had our water back. Yay!

So, I know, we were only without water for a few hours. It could have been a lot worse. One thing that I gained from this experience is a renewed determination to increase our water supply. If anyone has any tips, let me know. And I have an increased appreciation for running water.

Hiking

So here are some pictures from earlier in the summer when we went hiking. We took the Mill B South trail, which is located in the Big Cottonwood Canyon. The trail was short, shaded, and followed a stream.

I thought this was a cool bend in the stream.

What a stud.
I loved hiking next to the water.
The sound of water running in a stream is one of my favorite sounds in the world.
The shade was nice, too.

There was another trail that branched off of the Mill B South trail and led to Lake Blanche. We decided to try it, or at least go a little ways along the trail.

We didn't even make it halfway to the lake before we got tuckered out and decided to turn back. But it was still fun.
The trail took us up higher, though, and the views were really pretty.

We might go hiking tomorrow. If we do, I promise to post some pictures, and I'll try to do it sooner.

First Wedding Anniversary

Earlier this month, Jeff and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We spent the Friday before (July 31st) at Johnson's Mill, the bed and breakfast in Midway where we spent our honeymoon. We were planning on going hiking on Saturday, but it turned out to be a pretty hot afternoon, so we just came back and relaxed at home.
This is the Mount Timpanogos room, where we stayed last year and this year.

Here's a side shot of Johnson Mill.

You can walk around on the grounds and see sights like this. There are also deer on the grounds, but I didn't get a good picture.

This is the porch where they serve you breakfast in the morning.

As gifts, Jeff and I gave each other pictures. Jeff painted a picture of the Bountiful Temple. It is pictured below - I apologize that my computer chose to rotate it. Isn't he amazingly talented?

I hired Jill Buckmiller, the art teacher at La Europa, to draw the picture below. It is based on a photograph (also below) taken at our wedding that Jeff and I both love. But, as you can see in the photograph, there were several things in the background that detracted from the picture. So I thought it would be cool to have the picture drawn of just us. It turned out really well.

All in all, it was a wonderful first anniversary, just like it's been a wonderful first year.

Catch-Up

Well, the official summer is coming to a close, and I realized that we haven't really blogged about what we've been up to lately. So this will be a hodgepodge catch-up post.

The summer term at La Europa went pretty well for me. I got to teach my NUMB3RS class again, which was my favorite. The Da Vinci Code class that I team taught with the English teacher Kelli also went well. It was fun teaching the girls about different kinds of codes. For their final project, we sent them on a scavenger hunt throughout the school. My favorite clue that I came up with read (after it was decoded): You seek the median on the left side of the place where you can find what it means to be disliked, disgusting and dismal. Think about it for a few minutes - I'll post the solution in a comment.

For Jeff, the second half of the summer came with unique challenges at work. This was due to the fact that about 6 weeks ago he developed an odd bump on his right wrist. In addition to a sore wrist, the pain sometimes traveled up to his elbow and down to his fingertips. He went to see a physical therapist. While it helped to relieve some of the pain, the bump remained. At first, we thought that it might have been caused by over-using his mouse at work. In an attempt to relieve the pain and avoid problems in the future, he went through several different mice, tried out three new desk chairs, changed his desk, got a wrist pad, and got a new keyboard. After all that, his bump still wasn't going away, so he went to go see a doctor. He found out that he had a ganglion cyst (cause unknown - possibly an old injury from volleyball or playing the piano that was aggravated by work). So last week the doctor drained the cyst and he's wearing a splint for a few weeks to help it heal and avoid injuring it further. If it ends up coming back, he'll need to have surgery.

My brother Kenneth came home from his mission last month! I was really excited for him to meet Jeff. He was home for a few days, then went to Virginia to visit with friends for a week or two. He got back in town this past week. He'll be going to BYU this fall, and I look forward to having him close by.

In addition to my brother being back, my sister Marie is also in town this week with her two kids Evelyn and Edison. On Wednesday I went to the airport when they flew in. On Thursday Jeff and I drove down to Provo and went to a few classes at Education Week (which were awesome!) with Marie and Suzanne. On Friday we went with my mom, Marie and her kids, and my sister Suzanne and her kids to the Children's Museum (I think it's called Discovery Gateway) downtown. I had a ton of fun, and so did the kids. Then yesterday we got together for family pictures, lunch, and an afternoon session in the Provo temple. It was the first time our entire family was able to go through the temple together. And then tonight we're getting together for a dinner.

News Article about La Europa

Here is a copy of a news article that was printed in the Salt Lake Tribune about La Europa Academy, the place where I work. It doesn't talk much about the school, but I thought you guys would enjoy reading about where I work. And if you haven't checked out La Europa's website, I highly recommend it (the link is at the bottom).

Live-in school in Murray helps girls deal with issues

By Jennifer W. Sanchez
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 07/22/2009 05:49:45 PM MDT

Patti tried everything -- school counselors, psychologists and hospital programs -- to help her teenage daughter, Shannon, with drug addiction and emotional problems.

Nothing worked. A counselor suggested Patti put Shannon into a long-term residential treatment center. After much research, Patti enrolled Shannon last summer in La Europa Academy in Murray -- about 400 miles from their hometown of Las Vegas.

Now, after seeing the improvements in Shannon, Patti is glad she sent Shannon to La Europa when she did.

"I can sleep at night," said Patti, who declined to use her last name. "It's wonderful; they contributed to saving my daughter's life."

La Europa administrative offices sit along a main road in Murray and the school and a residential campus are both secretly tucked among a nearby residential neighborhood.

The residential treatment and education center opened more than four years ago for girls ages 14 to 17 who deal with issues, such as depression, eating disorders and substance abuse, said Richard Long, the academy's program director.

The maximum number of students at the academy is 32; it currently has 21 -- none is a Utah resident. The average stay for treatment is about nine months. And it costs some $10,000 a month per student, Long said.

Shannon, who also declined to use her last name, said she "was totally taken [to the academy] against my will," but is now thankful her mom helped get her the needed help.

Shannon -- who started experimenting with prescription pills in the ninth grade and later used heroin and cocaine -- said she started giving the academy a chance when she noticed the counselors and staffers were a different sort from those she had dealt with in the past.

"Everyone really reaches out to you and doesn't judge you for your problems," she said. "They really try to help you live your life again."

Shannon, who graduated last month from the program, said its best parts were the supportive staff and residents; the art and recreational therapy; and volunteering in the community. She determined issues that played into her addiction and how to deal with them.

"We're in connection with the world," she said. "We're not in a lock-down facility."

The treatment program uses fine arts and recreation, from painting to yoga, to help the girls control their emotional issues, Long said. Each week, he said the girls undergo 11 hours of therapy, including individual and group.

At most, there are six students per counselor, he said.

"Everything we do has a therapeutic purpose," Long said. "We want them to learn to live life in a new way -- something they've been doing hasn't worked."

For Patti, the roughly $100,000 she paid La Europa was worth every cent.

She liked the academy's location in a metro area versus a rural community, its "beautiful campus" and the people. Patti said she's elated with Shannon's new look on life and the 24-hour care she received at the academy.

So far, Shannon said she's been clean for 14 months. She's living in the Salt Lake City area, volunteering with teens, looking for a job and plans to enroll in college next month.

"[La Europa] helped our family a lot," Patti said.

Web site » www.laeuropaacademy.com

Mixing Work With Pleasure

Recently at work, the yard surrounding the schoolhouse was becoming very overgrown and unkempt. We thought that this reflected poorly on our school and on La Europa in general, so we decided to dedicate one class period to pulling weeds.
We had the girls form into teams and compete with each other to pull the most weeds. We offered a pass to get out of P.E. (which means the girls could sleep in for one morning) and another pass to get out of 5th period as incentives. Both the girls and the teachers joined in on th weeding. Unfortunately, about half of the girls gave up halfway through and just sat around talking. It was sad, but I guess not unexpected.
What they didn't know was that we had other surprises in store for them. Did they really expect us to make them weed out in the hot sun and only reward a few?
While we were weeding, the staff was in the house next door filling 500 water balloons. The weeding ended in a huge water fight, complete with balloons, a hose, and buckets of water. It was a ton of fun. At first I stayed around the edges of the fight and just threw a few balloons. But then one of the students smashed a balloon on my head, so I chased her around and made sure I nailed her with a few balloons. I thought that was the end of it, and I started going around picking up the rubber remains of the balloons. But then this student came back with some friends and they dumped two buckets of water on my head!
Then it was war. I ran after her, determined to get her back. Almost all of the balloons were used up, so I wrestled the hose away from another girl and chased down my prey, returning the favor and getting her drenched from head to toe. It was great. The other girls were laughing and screaming and egging us on.
We also gave them popsicles after lunch, after they cleaned up the bits of rubber that were scattered all over the lawn. I think we all had a good time, and the yard looks a lot better than it did. It's fun mixing work with pleasure!

Geneology, I am Doing It!

Yes, I know that they changed the words in the Children's Hymnbook to "Family history, I am doing it," but I still like the original words.
So, I've been thinking lately about how blessed I am right now in my life. I have a great job, a wonderful husband, a lovely home, and great friends and family. I'm also blessed with a lot of free time in the evenings and on weekends. So I decided that I wanted to give something back, to find a way to serve.
One thing that came to mind was family history. I felt compelled to be more active in helping with family history. I want to combine the training I received from the Family History class I took at BYU with the time that I've been blessed with. So this past week I started indexing records on-line.
You go to FamilySearch.org (there's a link to it from the lds.org website) and there's a tab at the top of the page for Indexing Records. If you've never done it before, they have some tutorials on-line, as well as help tabs while you're doing it.
I've done this off and on in the past, and I'll warn you that it can be addicting. But that's a good thing! As I was picking it up again, I found that I was a little worried that I might index something incorrectly. Some of the handwriting is hard to read, and it can be difficult to make out what the record is saying. But you just do your best and type it as you see it - they actually have two people index every record. Then, if there are any discrepencies, a third person checks both transcriptions and the original record and determines what it should say. This relieved my worries that I would type in a name incorrectly and make it difficult for someone who is trying to find their ancestor.
After the indexing has been cross-checked and corrected (if necessary), they post the information for free on FamilySearch.org so that anyone can have access to it.
I highly encourage everyone to give indexing a try. It's very user friendly. It doesn't take a lot of time- it usally takes me about 20-30 minutes to do one record. And you don't have to sit down and do a batch all at once - you can download it to your computer and work on it when you have time.

Finishing Touches

As an addition to my previous post, I wanted to mention another small improvement that we made to our living room.

Those who lived in our condo before us had a large couch that covered the A/C unit that is sticking out of the wall. So when they painted the walls of the living room green, they didn't take much care in painting around the A/C unit (since it didn't show). This is what it looked like:

Well, when we were looking at redecorating the living room, we decided to move the piano in front of the A/C unit, because it hid it more effectively than the bookcase we were using (and it looks nicer on the center of the wall rather than in the corner). However, with the white trim around the edge of the unit, it was still noticeable.

Our solution was to paint the trim green, so that the part you could see sticking out behind the piano would blend in better with the wall and be less noticable. Fortunately, when Jeff bought our condo he asked the owners to leave behind a can paint for each wall color, so we didn't have to go out and buy any paint. Unfortunately, the original paint color doesn't match what's on the wall exactly (as you can see below), but it's close enough that it doesn't really matter.

Before (lovely paint job, huh?)

After (not quite the same color, but close enough)

Here you can see how it blends into the wall much nicer, and I can also use it as a hidden shelf for flower vases.

Living Room Facelift

Jeff and I decided that our living room was too cluttered. In addition to our couch, two ottomans, and entertainment center, we also had two video rocker chairs with nowhere to go and two bookcases taking up wall space. One bookcase was full of piano music, magazines, and games, and the second bookcase was full of DVDs. And our old entertainment center was too small to hold the subwoofer and digital audio control system (for the surround sound), so they were just sitting on the floor. Later in my post, you'll see some Before and After pictures. Unfortunately, I never did get a picture of when we had two bookcases, but they sat side by side next to the piano with the plant stand in between. And the video rocker chairs would sit in front of our porch door (unfortunately, we don't really use our porch, because our neighbors smoke).

So we decided to go shopping for a new entertainment center. We wanted something that wasn't too big - it had to fit on our 7-foot wall space between the fireplace and sliding door leading to the porch. But it needed to be big enough to fit our 40-inch TV, all of our equipment, and we also wanted to fit all of the DVDs, games, piano music, and magazines as well so that we could de-clutter.

We shopped around a bit, and finally found a solution at IKEA! It is my new favorite store. They have a wide selection, and they're quite affordable, too. We found a 6x6 foot black/brown Expedit entertainment center. The space for the TV was barely big enough, but it worked (yay!). Surrounding the space for the TV and equipment underneath are 16 boxes that are each 13x13 inches large. We customized ours by adding in a set of drawers on each side, where we put remotes, chords, manuals, and some of our smaller card games. And everything fit with room to spare!

These two pictures show how it was a tight fit getting the boxes in our car. I'm really grateful our back seat folds down to extend our trunk!

The chaos: before assembly (here you can see both of our bookshelves, but that's not where they went).

It took us about five hours to put everything together. We did it on Monday night for our Family Night. We decided to stay up and finish it all in one shot, so we were up 'til midnight. About 30 minutes of the 5 hours was spent trying to remove the base from our TV. We didn't have the right screwdriver, and it took FOREVER. And then it took a while at the end to connect all of the cables. But we got it all done! (Well, actually, I ended up assembling the drawers the next day, which took me a couple of hours.)

Here's a picture of the finished product.

(Note of interest: these square shelves really aren't made with DVD storage in mind. Our solution, which you can see on the second set of shelves, was to have a second row of DVDs behind the first that were elevated so you could still read the titles. We set the second row of DVDs up on foam blocks that we got from Jeff's work.)

These next pictures show the before and after shots of our living room, so you can see how the whole room changed.

Before: entertainment center too small, with equipment sitting on the floor.

After: everything fits!

Before: was even more cluttered with the video rockers in front of the porch door.

And this entertainment center jutted out further into the room than our new one.

After: nice and clean and organized.

Before: was even more cluttered with a second bookcase in front of the old A/C unit.

After: the piano is now the focus of this end of the room, instead of just being stuck in the corner.

The A/C unit is more effectively hidden, and the video rockers have a place to go.

All in all, we're very pleased with our new living room. And while I'm in a mood to redecorate, does anyone have any ideas on curtains for this window (color, style)?

Now our only concern is... how the heck are we going to move this piece of furniture? I REALLY don't want to take it apart and have to assemble it again... but I guess that's a worry for another day.

Current Anderson Fad: Kenken Puzzles

So Jeff and I seem to find an activity that we enjoy, and then we do it all the time. Past fads include Text Twist (a game on Jeff's palm where you rearrange letters to spell words), Set (a card game), and Ticket to Ride (a board game). While we still enjoy these games and play them every once in a while, we seem to focus primarily on one game at a time.

Our current favorite pasttime is Kenken puzzles. They're not as popular as Sudoku puzzles (yet), but they appeared in The Reader's Digest in October of last year, as well as the New York Times on Thanksgiving. And you can buy Kenken books at Borders and Barnes and Nobles.

Here are the rules for playing (posted on the official website http://www.kenken.com/, my comments are italisized):

1. Choose a grid size.

2. Fill in the numbers from 1 to grid size. (Ex: 1 through 4 for a 4x4)

3. Do not repeat a number in any row or column. (Similar to Sudoku)

4. The numbers in each heavily outlined set of squares, called cages, must combine (in any order) to produce the target number in the top corner using the mathematical operation indicated.

5. Cages with just one square should be filled in with the target number in the top corner.

6. A number can be repeated within a cage as long as it is not in the same row or column.

Jeff and I like playing for free on-line on the kenken website, where they post a new set of puzzles every day, ranging from 4x4 to 9x9. You can also find puzzles on the NY Times and Reader's Digest websites. We play just about every day, and it's fun to see how we're getting better. We like playing together, because we have different strengths in our logic and check each other's thinking.

I encourage you to try it out! It's a great exercise for your brain. If you only want to play for a few minutes, do one of the smaller puzzles, like a 4x4. But if you get hooked and are up for a challenge, work your way up to a 9x9 (when we first started, we couldn't complete the 9x9; then it would take us about an hour to finish; today, we completed one in 26 min).

Summer is here!!!

Well, Christine and I haven't written lately and its about time. I have to say we have definitely enjoyed the nice weather recently. We are trying to take advantage of this nice weather because you never know when it might snow again. [shudder] So we had some fun outdoors this past week.
Monday we had a little family home evening at the park. We decided to go play bocce ball. We got a bocce ball set at Christine's bridal shower and hadn't played with the set since we got it. So we headed over to the park and had a great time playing. It was fun when people would stop with a question about the game or say how much fun the game is. It is not very often that people play bocce ball in the park. It was a close game with a come from behind victory (I won). It was definitely loads of fun.
Then after we got home, I checked a message on my cell and found out that some of our friends were playing volleyball that night so we ran over to their apartment complex and played sand volleyball for about an hour. People were impressed by my jump serving and overall playing ability. People are often suprised because they don't expect much from a short guy, I guess. Anyway it is always fun to impress friends who haven't seen me play before.
We also enjoyed the weather on Friday evening. Some friends of ours invited us to go up the canyon and roast hot dogs and marshmallows and have smores. It was loads of fun getting to know some of our fellow ward couples with no kids. We did a little hiking and playing a game around the camp fire. There was little creek next to our camp and a nice little waterfall not far from the camp fire. Christine decided she would cross a branch that had fallen across the creek. Then she crossed a different branch on the way back - one that was really slippery and sure enough took a few steps in the creek. It was all fine because she just took her shoes & socks off when we got back to camp and dryed them out by the fire. We played a fun game where you ask silly questions and everyone answers secretly and the person asking the question tries to guess which person wrote which response. We weren't very good at guessing, but we both got each other's right.
All in all, we hope to do a lot of fun things this summer. We look forward to doing some day hikes and getting some good outdoors time.

Mormon Women

I got this poem in an e-mail from a friend of mine. I felt like sharing it after my sister-in-law Rachel posted her thoughts and insights from a Women's Conference that she attended last week.
If you, or someone you know has ever felt overwhelmed by all they feel they need to do, Vickie Gunther of Redlands, California, wrote this hilarious poem, Dr Seuss style, about how much LDS women try to take on. David B Marsh used it at Women's Conference and Vickie gave permission to share it.
Even if you've read it before, it's fun to read again. I know that sometimes I feel like this, too.

The Girl in a Whirl
By "Dr.Sue" (a.k.a. Vicke Gunther)

Look at me, look at me, look at me now!
You could do what I do if you only knew how.
I study the scriptures one hour each day;
I bake, I upholster, I scrub, and I pray.
I always keep all the commandments completely;
I speak to my little ones gently and sweetly.
I help in their classroom! I sew all they wear!
I drive them to practice! I cut all their hair!
I memorize the names of the General Authorities,
I focus on things to be done by priorities.
I play the piano! I bless with my talents!
My toilets all sparkle! My check books all balance!
Each week each child gets a one-on-one date;
I attend all my meetings (on time! never late!)
I'm taking a class on the teachings of Paul,
But, that is not all! Oh no, That is not all.

I track my bad habits 'till each is abolished;
Our T-shirts are ironed! My toe nails are polished!
Our family home evenings are always delightful;
The lessons I give are both fun and insightful.
I do genealogy faithfully, too,
It's easy to do all the things I have to do!
I rise each day early, refreshed and awake;
I know all the names of each youth in the stake!
I read to my children! I help all my neighbors!
I bless the community, too with my labors.
I exercise and I cook menus gourmet;
My visiting teaching is done the first day!
(I also go do it for someone who missed hers.
It's the least I can do for my cherished ward Sisters.)
I chart resolutions and check off each goal;
I seek each "lost lamb" on my Primary roll.
I can home-grown produce each summer and fall.
But that is not all! Oh, no. That is not all.

I write in my journal! I sing in the choir!
Each day, I write "thank yous" to those I admire.
My sons were all Eagles when they were fourteen!
My kids got straight A's! and their bedrooms are clean.
I have a home business to help make some money;
I always look beautiful groomed for my honey.
I go to the temple at least once a week;
I change the car's tires! I fix the sink's leak!
I grind my own wheat and bake all our bread;
I have all our meals planned out six months ahead.
I make sure I rotate our two-year supply
My shopping for Christmas is done by July!
These things are not hard; 'tis good if you do them;
You can if you try! Just set goals and pursue them!
It's easy to do all the things that I do!
If you plan and work smart, you can do them all, too!
"It's easy!" she said and then she dropped dead!

Strawberry Lemonade

Ok, maybe this idea has already occurred to the rest of you, but even so, it made me happy and I wanted to share.

A week or two ago I bought a container of strawberries because they were a great price. I don't usually eat a container before they go bad, so I could never justify the price before. But these were too good to pass up, and I figured that we could finish them between the two of us.

Well, the reason they were such a good price, of course, is that they were fairly ripe and close to going bad. So a day or two after buying them, it looked like they were going to rot before we ate them all.

So Jeff had a great idea to freeze them to keep them from going bad. And I decided that, after they were frozen, it would be easy to blend them up and add them to a pitcher of lemonade to make strawberry lemonade. I got this idea from Ben and Hilary, who added raspberries (I think they were frozen) to their lemonade when we were visiting over Easter.

I always love it when I go out to a restaurant and order strawberry lemonade, and they use real strawberries instead of the syrup. It's so much better!

NOTE: if you have never done this before, learn from my mistake and remove the leaves before freezing the strawberries. They were very annoying to remove after they were frozen.

Well, we made strawberry lemonade tonight, and it was a success! I was so happy with our fancy drink that I got out our fancy glasses for dinner (see picture).

If you've never done this before, I highly recommend it for strawberries that are getting to be past their prime. And we ended up with more strawberries than we needed for our lemonade, so I mixed up the rest with some vanilla-fudge-twirl icecream and milk for dessert. It ended up tasting like Neopolitan icecream when it melts and all the flavors mix together. Yum!

Visiting Great-Aunt Ruth

Yesterday Jeff and I visited my Great-Aunt Ruth. Or maybe she's my Great-Great-Aunt Ruth. I think that she's my Opa's (for those who don't know, that's grandpa in German; he's my dad's dad - we call those grandparents Oma and Opa) Aunt, if my memory serves me correctly. But I could be wrong. But I know she's related to Opa.

This month she turned 97, and she is very with it for her age. Her memory is incredible, and she's a lot of fun to talk to. She's fairly cheerful and almost always smiling.

She's less than 5 minutes away from where Jeff and I live. I found this out a few months ago when I visited her with Oma and Opa. I've been meaning to pay her a visit since then, but either she, I, or Jeff have been sick most of that time, and it never seemed a good time to visit.

For Marie and Suzanne, I just wanted to say that I think it would be cool if you brought your kids to visit her and got to take some pictures. She'd enjoy it, and it's not often you get to take pictures with a family member so many generations removed from you.

Christine's New Church Calling

I am now the Ward Choir Director! It's a calling that I've always secretly wanted, but never had. I love singing, I took a conducting class in college (for my music minor), and I had some experience running choir practices a few times in high school. I'm really looking forward to it!
My first goal is going to be recruiting. We have some talented singers in our ward who don't make it to choir on a regular basis, and I hope that will change. I know that part of the difficulty is that our church is at 1:00 and we've been holding our choir rehearsals at noon, which leaves no time for lunch! I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. Maybe I should have us practice earlier, like 10 - 11?
But I'm definately going to have to find a way to get more people to come. Because for the past month or two I've been the lone alto. And now that I'm going to be conducting, it definately poses a problem...
Well, it's a challenge I'm looking forward to undertaking!

Easter Weekend

Sorry that we didn't post last week, but we were out of town. I had the Monday and Tuesday after Easter off of work, so Jeff and I decided to spend a few days down in Cedar City with Jeff's brother Ben and his family.

First of all, a huge public THANK YOU to Ben and Hilary for letting us stay with you guys. It was a ton of fun!

We drove down on Saturday morning/afternoon. That was the longest time that Jeff and I had spent in the car together. We brought a bunch of CDs to listen to, as well as some food to munch on. We found that it was fun to give each other jelly beans and try to guess what flavor they were. Neither of us were very good at it, but it kept us entertained.

Our Saturday evening and Sunday were fairly uneventful and relaxing - nice vacation days. We watched the kids (Benji, Kendra, and Lindy - pictured below) on Saturday night so that Ben and Hilary could go out on a date, as our way of saying thanks for letting us visit.

Monday was my favorite day. We went to Zion's National Park - it was my first time there. We met up with Jeff's sister Rachel and her family and we all went hiking in the afternoon. The first hike we went on was to Observation Point. The view at the end was gorgeous.

I loved climbing up a bunch of rocks that were next to the cliff. Don't let this picture fool you - it's not a drop-off on the other side. But let's just say that I did get up close and personal with the edge (but not when Jeff was looking). I LOVE heights!

On our way from driving from the first hike to the second, Lindy and Kendra were pretty tired and totally zonked out.

In between hikes we took a bathroom break, and a few of us were waiting outside. Hilary chased Jeff around with Lindy's stroller, and Lindy loved it.

It was fun being with family and hiking in such a beautiful area. And the cousins had fun spending time together. The second picture shows Benji, Audrey, and Kendra getting up close and personal with the red dirt (which really stains your clothes) that was on the hiking trail.

The two youngest cousins, Lindy and Olivia, got to ride in style on their dad's backs.

On Tuesday Jeff and I thought about going to St. George, but we decided to just relax at Ben and Hilary's and make an early start for home. It was a fun trip. I'd love to go back down to Zion's and do some more of the hikes someday.