01 April 2009

GO SAXONS!

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....it's 10:30pm! AH! But I just have to blog and brag about my track stars!!

Our track meet today went until 9:45pm, so crazy! The weather was awful- rainy, windy and soooo soooo COLD! But everyone did amazing - I am so proud of the little athletes that I help coach! Both Boys and Girls won against Sprague - wahoooooo!!!

No one complained too bad about the freezing weather or the pooly ran track meet.

My hurdler boys got 1-2-3 in the 100HH AND the 300H!!! WE SWEPT THE HURDLES - SO AMAZING! The girls did just as good, with 1-3-3 in the 100H and 1-2 in the 300H!!! And so many other sprinters did really well, it was GREAT! I'm impressed.

Even though I'm completely exhausted and have a million other things going on right now (work sample!) besides track - today was so much fun!!!!! I love coaching track amd helping those kids do the best they can!

25 March 2009

Seattle! Seattle!

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today: we are having a great time in seattle so far. tonight is our 2nd night. today included breakfast at pikes market. walking around the market sippying delicious frozen lemonade slushi that froze my fingertips off. no tossing of the fish! :( seattle aquarium (adorable sea otters included). antique shopping. people watching. monorail ride to the space needle. artsy photos. elevator ride to the top. beautiful sunny view of puget sound and the seattle cityscape. greasy cheap but good dinner. and back to our fancy, warm and cozy hotel. great day....

yesterday: drove to 3hrs to seattle. checked into swanky 'club' 4 star hotel that was a steal. walked around downtown seattle til our feet ached. spent hours trying to find a restaurant with a meal under $30. no such luck. ate at wild ginger - gorgeously tasty mango pork curry dish - sooooooo delicious and almost worth every penny (almost). walk home. minature neutrogena lotions. TV!!!! (those who know, we don't have one! so it was an extra treat!) relaxing...

PICTURES TO COME!

22 March 2009

Spring Break!!

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You do not know how badly we need this spring break! I am so grateful to have one week off from teaching and everything school related!!

We started off our spring break right by going out to get Vietnamese with some good school friends. Then we hung out at our house and played YAHTZEE and ate warm chocolate chip cookies. It was FUN!

On Saturday we spent time with Dan's family. We visited and had lunch at Baja Fresh and then headed up to Multnomah Falls for hiking. It was a little rainy - but we all got in a workout and had some fun. We also all laughed at Eddie and his hilarious frisbee skillz once we reached the bottom and the sun came out! We finished it up with 10 trips around Troutdale (trying to decide where to eat) and Shari's.

I also took out my 50mm for the first time. I had been playing with it at home, but I got a little discouraged because I was so used to using my automatic lens and using a manual focus lens in manual mode is pretty tricky! But I think I ended up doing a decent job with the 50 yesterday. The pictures are a little contrasty, but with the rain I didn't want to mess with the settings too much, otherwise the camera would have gotten soaked!

28 February 2009

The Good and the Bad

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It's been one of those strange weeks where the days move on SO slowly, but then all of a sudden it's Friday and the weekend.

As a teacher...I've become a little list happy, so here's my/our list

Good things that happened this week:
  • Dan found a new series to read, Eragon. He's almost finished with the last book - what a reader!
  • Track practice started at the high school I am studenting teaching at. There are some amazing athletes and it's nice to be part of a great coaching staff.
  • I had my first official observation in class and it went just ok in my opinion, but great in my supervisors opinions...I'm getting this teaching thing down! A student even told me yesterday that I was a really great teacher - yay!
  • I've held a lot of 'potential' critical incidences in my classes pretty well. And my students are actually coming in to make up work and there are hardly any F's now!!
  • Dan and I bought lots of delicious fresh food at the market and made a few decent meals this week!

Not so good things that happened this week:

  • My really great friend from Florida, Marla, passed away on Tuesday. I knew it was coming eventually, she had lung cancer....but still it made me cry all night. We worked at Target together every single day, people called us "Marlie" She was hilarious. I miss her.
  • Dan still felt kinda sick at the beginning of the week, it was sad.
  • Not one single workout...wait maybe Dan worked out. I definitely did not.
  • Our new 50mm lens is a bit difficult to work in full manual mode - it requires lots of practice and time :(
  • It snowed A LOT and I failed to get a nice pic of it because I had to get to school - lame!

So that's that! We don't have too many plans for the weekend. Just the usual. I am volunteering at Willamette's home track meets though. Today is the first meet of the season, so I better get going. I am helping officiate Javelin....which I don't know too much about, so we'll see how it goes!

22 February 2009

most awful week ever

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it's been a bad bad week....but thankfully, it's Sunday and we are determined to have a much better week.

Here's what we learned:
  • don't stay the night at virus infected houses - no exceptions!
  • when puking at school...make sure students are not in sight. 
  • you really can down an entire pepto bismol bottle in one night and STILL feel VERY sick
  • carlie-like a normal person-likes her back rubbed after throwing up...Dan HATES it, in fact don't even approach the bathroom door for the next 5 minutes EVER
  • don't watch The Office after hours of endless puking - it doesn't make your stomach feel very good.
  • have very detailed lesson plans ready ALWAYS for "just in case" 
So here are some of our goals to catch up this week:
  • carlie needs to catch up on her lesson plans and start planning her evolution unit!
  • practice practice practice shooting in full manual mode with our new 50mm lens
  • dan is going to get back to painting
  • make delicious dinners all this week


14 February 2009

New things

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I made it my first 2 weeks of student teaching!! Really, it wasn't too bad... :)

I really do love it so far - even though I am exhausted in a very weird way. Bedtimes this past week were around 7:30pm and 8:30pm!!! Teaching is pretty tiring! I think I'm just constantly thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking all day long - it's hard to explain! But my students are great and my class sizes are incredibly small (on Friday I had 7 students in 6th period!!!) so I get to work with my students one on one a lot, which is really great for them. 

Soon I'll get to start helping out with track practice...which I can't wait for! There are a lot of good athletes at the school I am working at, so I'm excited! 

Dan and I had a simple Valentines, nothing too dramatic! The most exciting part of the day was when I actually won my first eBay auction -haha!! I finally found a decent, cheap lens for our camera. I've been searching eBay for a 50mm for a long time and I finally found a Carl Zeiss for dirt dirt cheap. It's an m42 lens, which will fit the adaptor I just bought so....it's an oldie...but hopefully it'll arrive soon in the mail and make me very very happy! 

Hopefully, I'll get to practice with this lens during Spring Break. It looks like we are going to take a road trip with some of my MAT friends down the Cali coast and San Francisco - I can't wait!!!!

Anyways, this is a weird random update...but I hadn't posted anything for awhile, so I figured I would. Also, below are some pictures of some cute little friends. Dan and I don't have kids of our own, so we just take pictures of everyone else's kiddos! :)