#39 Refinance my House

This is kind of a dumb one, but I hate doing things like this.  These kind of things and buying tires really sometimes wish I was married so I didn't have to deal with it.  I had been given some advice by my brother and then different people to refinance.  I wasn't going to do it until I read an article in a travel magazine about the benefits so then I am was like "oh alright I will do it".  I got a letter from Zions offering special rates, of course, so I finally made the call and it is in progress right now.  I am supposed to be getting the paper work in the next couple of days.  I will sign and send them back and then I hope it is done.  It will make my payments less, so I hope to do some improvements around here and pay off some other things and pay for going back to school.  I got a better interest rate and in the long run it is a good idea.  So I have finished it all the way but it is a few signatures away from being a done deal.

#35 Go back to School

This post kinda goes with 34.  Last spring I got an email from Southern Utah University advertising maters degrees.  We get those all the time so I don't know why I just didn't delete it.  I didn't and over the summer looked into it a little.  A few summers ago there was a geography seminar at SUU and I really enjoyed the seminar and the school and facilities.  I knew that if I continued in teaching then I needed to get a masters to get paid more but then I am half way in my career and felt like I needed a change.  Changing schools is a big change but honestly since our school moved out of Albion, into Cottonwood Heights (me moved into  Butler) and then moved back to our new school, really everything was already packed.  Still is actually.  Boxes in my garage, posters under my bed, it won't be a big deal besides leaving the people.  I regress....so I looked into SUU.  It sounded good and felt right.  So during the process of applying to high schools I also applied for entrance to SUU to get a Masters in Education with an Administrative License.  I was accepted and have started in January.  I am doing my first administrative internship at Albion right now and will start classes in the summer.  I am excited to have a goal to aim toward.  I didn't ever think I would want to be an administrator, but I couldn't see myself teaching for 15-20 more years either.  I hope to be finished in two years from next fall so two and a half years I guess.  I would like to eventually be a principal at an elementary school.  I guess I will see where this all will take me but like I said it is good for me to have a goal to work on.   Go Thunderbirds....I should take a trip to Cedar and buy a sweatshirt or something.   

#34 Get a Job for 2013-14

This is kinda a weird one, but it wasn't really fun or anything but it had to be done.  I have been working at Albion Middle School for 15 years.  Canyons District is realigning and all the 9th grade kids are going to go to high schools now and not middle schools.  I teach mostly 9th grade so had to make a choice if I wanted to stay and teach younger kids or move to a high school.  It was a hard decision because Albion has been my home, and I can't even entertain the thoughts in my mind of not working with those people who have grown to be my family there because I am even tearing up writing this.  However I teach Geography and that is a 9th grade class and if I stayed in middle school it would really limit my options and choices in my career.  Whereas if I went to a high school I could still teach geography but all the high school history classes as well.  So I knew it was right to go to a high school.  So the process was to apply to the high schools that you were interested in.  I applied initially to the new high school as the dept. head for social studies.  It was considered a critical position after all the coaches were hired.  I didn't get the job.  It was offered to a lady with 4 years teaching experience and cheerleading or dance experience to be the advisor for that.  Just a note....I have been dept. head for probably 10 years at Albion but yes my cheerleading probably has suffered development.  I am sure she is a fantastic teacher and person, but I thought at that point, if that is what they are looking for then maybe that is not the school I want to be in.  So then the high school teaching positions opened up and I applied for the new high school, the HS where most of our students go to, and Hillcrest.  My first interview was with the new high school and it was a fine interview but just whatever, the second interview was with Hillcrest and the ss dept. head, who was interviewing me, worked at Albion before and his dad also had worked there when I first started.  The conversation was so easy and we joked back and forth and were on the same page academically.  I knew that it went well.  Then I have one more interview in which I thought went well and actually thought about maybe having that one as my first choice.  So as we left the district offices after the day of interviewing we had to rate which school we would prefer first, second, third, etc...My goal since day one had been the new high school, but I knew that the Hillcrest interview had gone so much better and if any school was to offer me a job it would be them.  But it is hard to decide in 2 minutes as you are filling out the paper, so I tied the two and put the last interviewer as third.  Then the next week got a call from Hillcrest.  I knew it was the right choice for me, so I accepted.  I am so excited to go there.  I think it is going to really fit my personality well.  So I start next school year.  I don't know what I will be teaching because they did hire 3 geography teachers, but I will be happy with teaching whatever they need me to.  In telling this story I do have to say, that I hated the process.  Going through the formalities of applying to jobs from the employer you have been with for 15 years really sucked.  Because of this as well as some other things I had to deal with from the district this year I had felt really insecure and vulnerable about myself and questioned if I am a good teacher or if this is what I want to continue doing.  Honestly those are feelings I haven't really dealt with a lot in my life.  It was really really really stressful.  When Hillcrest offered me the job a huge relief came over me that I didn't have to think or worry about my situation anymore.  And the other issue I am dealing with from the district wasn't so significant because I wasn't looking for a job from them anymore so didn't have to go through the hoops that I felt like I needed to before I was hired.   Now everyone wants to know what 'situation' I am referring to.  In short my AP scores were the lowest in the district and I was reprimanded for it.  But last year I physically was at a whole other school than my colleagues at Albion, while our school was being redone.  My students had to walk 10 minutes to get to my class.  Most days I had 30 minutes to teach the kids what they needed to know for the AP test.  Adding that up on a daily, weekly, and yearly scale it was 2/3 of the time the other teachers had to teach the same subject in the other middle school.  My scores were still above national average and I had close to 70 students where some schools had less than 25 students.  Had I known I wouldn't have taught it last year, but I didn't know and just hoped for the best.  I am hoping that my 85 students this year, yes I picked up a whole other class of it so it couldn't have been so bad, clean up on the test and then I better have some kind of floral arrangement delivered to my house the first week of July as the test scores come out staying Ms. Roberts, you are great and the district appreciates you putting in so much time and effort on behalf of the APHG students at Albion.  So sorry this post was so long but I did get a job for next year so check.  (And I will let you know how my students do on the test).  

#10 Beat Danielle at Ping Pong

Ping Pong with Friends

Table Tennis...Ping Pong or whatever you may call it is one of my families favorite sports.  It is fun for all ages and talent ranges.  We have tournaments where usually in my family it comes down to my dad and Alison, my sister as first place.  I got a ping pong table a few years ago and Danielle and I enjoy a summer evening of challenging each other on our ping pong skills.  Two summers ago she really just cleaned up on me.  I would get frustrated and then not really try because I lost every time, so this year my original goal was to beat her 5 times in a row.  I unfortunately did not beat her 5 times in a row but did beat her 3 times in a row, so I am counting it.  I beat her at least five times if not way more but not in a row.  She really has some mad ping pong skills.   I was happy with the 3 wins in a row.  I had planned to pull the table out again this winter and finish it off, but it has been so cold that I couldn't stand the thought of being in the garage for any length of time.  So I am going to check this one off because I semi-accomplished it.  I look forward to when the sun comes out again and we can set up the ping pong table, I will bring home from school the mini-fridge and find the lawn chairs and once again lounge in the garage with the company of friends, family, and neighbors (they can hear us playing and it tends to gather the hood) and really beat the crap out of her at ping pong.

#9 Zen Garden

Well it is one week until my birthday and I am realizing that I didn't accomoplish my whole list.  But as in this one Build a Zen Garden, I did most of it, just didn't finish before the summer was over.  I had put more summer activities on than I had time for.  So to build a zen garden, I did buy a Buddha and put curbing around the area that is to be the garden.  I shopped all summer for the perfect Buddha.  I wanted a traditional southeast Asia one and not the fat one. I finally found one at Ross I think.  He has been sitting out there since about July.  Then early in the summer I put curbing around all the flower beds in my back yard and where the zen garden will be.  I love it.  I wish I had done it earlier.  I am excited for summer to come so I can plant some flowers in the flower beds.  I did buy a couple of bushes and perrinals and planted them but it will need some more flowers to fill it up.  I kinda like the nature look.  So with the zen garden, I need to dig it out a little and then fill it up with sand and get a wooden rake and maybe a little wooden platform to sit on and zen and it will be done.  So not fully finished but half way there.

Number 23: Read Some Classics

I decided that I wanted to read a couple of classics.  It started with Dracula.  I don't know why.  I think it was around Halloween and it was free on my Kindle so I thought why not.  So I started to read it.  It was alright but I learned a couple of things.  When writers wrote in the 1800's they really take a long time to tell the story.  There are things in the book that you think will be important in the future of the book and then those things don't really come up again.  With Dracula, the first was REALLY scary, when Dracula held the guy in his broken down castle and then the guy saw him climbing up and down the outside walls, that was seriously a little scary.  Then the book travels to England and a couple of women get infected and then there is a crazy guy as part of the story and it takes forever to develop.  When they figure out that it is Dracula and follow him back to Transylvania I am thinking that there will be a big climax and scene where they capture and kill Dracula.  So another endless amount of pages about the journey and following Dracula to his castle, then in about two pages they find Dracula in his coffin asleep and stab him with no problems and Dracula was gone.  I wasn't impressed.  I did learn that Stephanie Meyers did really stay close with the original characteristics of a vampire though. 

The next classic I read was Frankenstein.  I did read this one in high school and remembered feeling really sorry for Frankenstein trying to live and love in a society that abhorred him.  So I was interested again to read that.  I have to say the second time, I still felt really sad for Frankenstein but he was more violent that I remembered against the guy who made him.  I regress, Frankenstein was the guy who created him and he was just a monster without a name.  I did enjoy the book.  It really gives a perspective of a situation that a person can create in which they have no control once they make that initial choice.  Then the monster wanted acceptance and love even from his creator and never being able to obtain that.  Really kinda a tragedy but I liked it.  I am always fascinated that it was written by a women too.  I wonder what inspired her to write it.  

The third was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  I have never read this one and actually hated the story.  The only version I can stand to watch is the muppets.  It was a choice of Phyllis at book club for December.  I came to find out later that she wanted it because her other book club was doing it and she wanted to double dip so to speak.  She also compared it to Elder Uchtdorf's talk about no regrets.  I will make the comparison at the end of the post.  Anyway so I though why not.  So I started it and it is really good.  I love the written story about a million times more than any movie version of it.   Dickens is a really fabulous writer.  He just captures the human spirit.   I found myself wanting to highlight and remember certain passages of it and I hardly ever do that anymore.  I am going to read more of his works just because I loved A Christmas Carol and his writing so much.  

Going back to Elder Uchtdorf's talk of No Regrets in comparison to A Christmas Carol.  The three things that Scrooge needed to do were the three things that Elder Uchtdorf said we should do in life.  Scrooge needed to spend time with people who he loved.  He needed to get to know his nephew and nephew's family.  Scrooge needed to live up to his potential.  He had all this money but wasn't doing anything with it.  He wasn't being who he could be.  Third, Scrooge needed to let himself be happy.  He was always just being Scrooge and not allowing himself to enjoy life and the people around him.  So it was a great book to read and start out the Christmas season for me.  I wish I could claim the credit for coming up with the Uchtdorf comparison but I have to give Phyllis the credit for that.  In her other book club she make up book markers and printed off a bound copy of the General Conference with that particular talk.  She really went all out as only Phyllis can do.   Number 23....check!

Number 31 Learn to make Pumpkin Pie

My mom makes really good pumpkin pies and I really have never had to know the skill.  However I figured that I am now old enough to see if I could do it.  So during Thanksgiving I asked for crust making lessons.  My mom has made so many pies that her lesson is to put about 'this much shortening in' and then 'about this much flour' and then cold water.  The cold water is 'hold the bowl under the faucet' and 'one time in, two times in, and a third time in and that is about right'.  So needless to say it is hard to duplicate her crusts.  My home teacher, Bro Ange, said that his wife loves pumpkin pies and they usually just get the frozen ones, which in my mind is as gross as you can get, because pumpkin happens to be my favorite and I can't even eat the Costco ones, just the homemade for me and really just my moms.   So I thought I am going to make him and her a pie.  So I got all the ingredients and went for it.  The crust as I was making it looked about right so put it in the pie pan and put the filling in and started baking it.  I had quite a bit of the crust dough left so make crust, which is the leftover dough flattened out and then butter and sugar and cinnamon and bake it.  So that baked and I pulled it out and to me it didn't taste good so I thought the pie would be a flop to.  So the pie finished baking and I pulled it out but I didn't try it because I was disappointed because I thought that the crust didn't work out.  Then the next day I thought I should try the pie just to see if the filling at least tasted good.  So I cut a small piece out and ate the pie crust included, and miracle of miracles, it tasted good.  The crust even did.  I was so excited.  Now it wasn't as good as my moms but it was tasty and held together and everything.  So I cut two big pieces out and ran it over to Bro Ange and his wife to try.  I told them I am going to keep practicing and give them a better one when I perfect my crusts.  They were fine with that idea.  

The reason that it took me so long to try to learn to make crusts is when I was about 12ish, my mom wanted me to learn to make bread.  I wasn't really into it and she was so insistent about it.  I kept asking why all the sudden I needed to learn.  She would say because someday she wouldn't be there to make bread and it was something I needed to learn.  I will come back to that story in a minute.  

When I was really young and we read in schools  out of the reader books in a group there was a story about a Navajo kid who needed to finish weaving a cloth, however she didn't want to finish because she knew that when the cloth was finished her grandma would die because the girl would have learned the skill of weaving.  Somehow in my mind the day my mom wanted me to learn to make bread and her insisting that I learn in my mind was the same as that story.  So I figure that if I didn't learn how then she would be there forever.  That thinking continued to other skills that my mom had like making pies.  If I couldn't do it then she would always have to and stay around forever.   I am still a little paranoid but am trying to get beyond it.  I think the lesson I take away from this is some stories that teachers make kids read are not healthy and give kids phobias they spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome.  Unfortunately one story that might effect one kid, another kid probably doesn't even remember.   Through all of this I did make a really tasty pumpkin pie.   So Number 31, make a pumpkin pie...check.