Goals for 2010

I am going to post my goals for the year on my blog, so that I can look back on them next January and see how I did. Also, this will hopefully motivate me to look back on them regularly and maybe let you know how I'm doing.
1 - I want to use my Saturdays more productively. This past year I wasted too many of my weekends and would go to bed on Saturday night disappointed with myself. This year I want to have a specific list of things that I want to accomplish each weekend, and then actually do them. I started yesterday, and it felt great! I don't let myself watch any TV until I get my list done. This is what my parents tried to teach me when I was growing up and had to do Saturday chores. I know it's a bit late, but I feel like I'm finally starting to understand and value using my Saturdays productively.
2 - Kind of hand in hand with number 1, I also want to keep my house cleaner on a regular basis. This past year, I seem to let things slide for a few weeks, then I get in a cleaning mood and have to do some heavy duty cleaning. Usually, I'm motivated by having someone come over to my home, because I like to present a clean (or at least semi-clean) house. So this year I would like to make more of an effort to stay on top of daily and weekly cleaning and straightening so that it doesn't get so overwhelming. It feels nice to have a clean house, too!
3 - I hope to exercise on a more regular basis again. For a while, I was exercising in the morning with my co-workers. But we got out of the habit and never started up again. I know that I need to set some definite goals or it won't happen. I am open to suggestions, if anyone has any.
4 - I want to be better about planning date nights in advance. Jeff and I spend a lot of time together in the evenings and on the weekends, but we rarely plan ahead. Often, we sit at home and play kenken, watch TV, or play games. While I enjoy all of these activities, I would like to plan a specific date night at least twice a month. Once a week would be better, though.
5 - I have gotten too relaxed in going to the temple regularly. I have let illness and busy schedules get in the way of what is important. I want to get back in the habit of going at least once a month, but preferably twice a month. I know we can do it - we just need to make it a priority.

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.