I spent all day on Saturday working with apples.  I made apple butter in the crockpot first, then some apple bread (which was yummy!), and then began making applesauce.  I worked all day on it, spending a few minutes on other minor chores when I had a chance, but for the most part, I spent from 11-7 making and canning applesauce.  And when I stopped to clean up (I’d run out of jars), I was beat!

Thankfully, I had planned to stop to watch the OSU game at 8:00 anyway, so I spent the rest of the evening relaxing on the couch with my husband, watching the Buckeyes beat Penn State.  It was a very nice way to end the day!

Sunday was church, lunch, grad school reading, Basic grading, a stroll in the beautiful sunshine, a meeting at church, a trip to the store for pumpkins, and then a pumpkin carving party in the evening.  The social event was a great way to relax, and we had a good time.  Eric carved Tux, the Linux penguin, into his pumpkin.  I my geek!

Today is another full day of classes and grad school (sorry Terri!).  And I also am giving a Writing Center workshop on making good arguments this afternoon.  Should be interesting since I haven’t really looked at it since I did it last semester!    I’ll need to get to that sometime today…

Happy Monday to you all!

I am between Basic classes, and I just realized that I haven’t been on Xanga today…so here I am!

Yesterday, I graded Annotated Bibliographies for Comp, I made three batches of applesauce and canned two of them, and I ran errands/had meetings in the morning.  Eric got home about 10 from the hockey game with a strange pair of glasses that was their souvenir (something to do with a movie called Slapshot or something like that) and a pass to go bowling at the Bowling Palace on the corner of Cleveland and 161 (not likely to be palatial in any sense of the word…). 

So that was my day.  We also found out that our new cabinets will be delivered next Thursday, so this weekend, I get to work on more apples, clean/sort the loft in preparation for the arrival of our cabinets, grade, and go to meetings/rehearsals.  Wow…I’ll have a busy weekend!

Anyway…Happy Friday to you all!

I’m on my own today for the most part.  Eric is going straight from work to go to dinner and a hockey game with his brother. So I have the entire day to myself. 

On my to-do list today is to make lots of applesauce/apple things, clean up the house some, take the recyclables to the dumpster, and probably grade some.  I also have a meeting with our music minister at 11:00, so I will be getting out of the house…that’s a good thing, really. 

Yesterday wasn’t terribly interesting, sadly.  Just classes, lunch with Mom (shortened because she had a meeting), then class and home.  Karen called on my way home to share their “news” (see her site for more info).  After supper, Eric went to orchestra rehearsal, and I hung out until about 8:30.  Then I went to the church for drama rehearsal and got home about 10:00.  Then…bedtime!

Okay, so I’m really at a loss for anything to say today. If I think of anything else, I’ll add them later.

Happy Thursday!

But I’ve gotten myself totally caught back up on my Basic English work.  I love that feeling!

Yesterday, I didn’t move very fast, but I did get some things done.  I ran to WalMart, put gas in my car, got Eric more coffee, finished the main loads of laundry, and made enough applesauce to can 5 jars.  We also had pork chops, applesauce, and green bean casserole for dinner.  Yummy!

Other than that, I goofed around a lot, which was nice but sadly not terribly interesting!  Oh well.

Now I’m off to classes for the day.  Happy Wednesday!

Some highlights from the last few days:

• I found my car charger for my cell phone!  It was in the Jeep (would’ve never thought to look there!) and has probably been there since last fall when we drove to Connecticut.  So now I can talk all I want in my car!
• My friend Ghena let me go through her maternity clothes over the weekend and bring home whatever I thought Karen might be interested in.  Having been pregnant 5 times in the last 5 years, Ghena had lots of clothes, and I brought back 40 lbs. of clothes for Karen to look through.  She’s coming over tonight to see them.  How fun!
• Grad school wasn’t terrible last night.  The first half was actually interesting.  For the second half, we went to the Rare Books room of the library where a very old lady showed us around and ranted a lot about the things they didn’t have in their collections.  It was kind of strange!
• I slept in until 7:30 this morning.  I know that might not seem like very late to some of you, but with Eric getting up at 6:30 and leaving around 7:00, just not getting up was lovely!
• EDIT: I forgot one…my husband brought back apples from the orchard near their dairy farm for me.  I had 11 bags (5.5 bushels) of apples.  So far, I’ve given about 4 bags away, and today I’m going to try to focus enough to make (and maybe can) some applesauce.  Yummy!!  End Edit.

Anyway, as promised, here are some pictures from the weekend:

Here is a picture of the entire family (you can’t really see
the baby, but that’s okay).  The children are Eden (in the pink
blanket), Ave (pronounced “Ava”, the brunette), Thad (over by his dad),
Graecian (with the sprout, pronounced ‘gray-son’, but her nickname is
Gray), and Merce (the baby, pronounced “mercy”).

We spent a lot of time on the trampoline.  Eden and Thad enjoyed it the most.  Ave was avoiding it a bit because she fell off it on Friday.  This picture was taken on Saturday before Thad, too, fell off.  Notice the static in their hair!

And finally, some snow pictures for you all to enjoy.  Remember that the trampoline picture above was taken less than 24 hours before these snow pictures…crazy mountain weather!

See the full recap that I did not actually lose below.  I hate computers sometimes…

Wow…what a weekend!  I’m very tired, but I’m home, and I had a great time!  I will give a short version today and then post some pictures tomorrow.

Thursday:  The rain in the Midwest was causing problems in Chicago, so when the airline lady asked me to take a slightly later, direct flight to Denver (with $150 voucher added in), it worked to my benefit.  So even though I sat in the airport until noon and arrived in Denver an hour later than I’d originally thought, I didn’t have to worry about missing my connection in Chicago (which was looking more and more likely at 9:30 am on Thursday!).  Ghena (pronounced “Jenna”) picked me up at the airport, and we spent the rest of the day at her house.  We stayed up until 11:30 their time.

Friday: a trip to Cheyenne.  My friends just moved to Denver from Cheyenne, so we made an unplanned trip there so Ghena could see her chiropractor.  We had lunch at McDonalds, drove home, and played/talked/goofed off for the rest of the evening.  Ghena and I stayed up until almost 1:00 their time.

Saturday: French toast for breakfast, a “date” with just Ghena for lunch, bought gifts for the kids at WalMart, went to church with them, had McDonalds again after church, went home so the kids could open presents and then off to bed. The grown-ups chatted about the church, life (there was much laughter that night), and I went to bed at 10:30 (their time)!

Sunday: We woke up to 35 degree weather and 4 inches of snow.  I’m not even kidding.  The rest of the weekend had been close to 70 degrees, but between bedtime and breakfast, it started snowing.  So after breakfast, the kids bundled up and went out to play in the snow.  I took pictures of them, and then finished getting my stuff put together, and started the long trip home.  After gusty winds slowed everything down in and out of Chicago, I finally arrived in Columbus at about 8:30.  Eric picked me up, and we went home.  And that was my favorite part of the entire weekend!

I wasn’t sure I’d have time to write today, so I just typed
this up last night and pasted it into Xanga this morning.  Talk about creative blogging!

Yesterday was full with the preparations for my impending
vacation.  But I think I got everything I’ll
need into my carry-on (I’m sure Ghena will let me borrow something if I realize
I don’t have it when I get out there!), and I printed my boarding pass last night
(actually Eric printed it for me).  So
all I have to do this morning is show up at the airport, go through security and
find my gate.  Sounds so simple, right…

Other highlights of yesterday:

• Deb
  brought the girls over at lunch, so I got to see them.  They are too cute!
• I
  finished and printed my assignment for grad class on Monday already (sorry
  Terri!), so I shouldn’t have to worry about it when I get home.
• We had
  Greek food for dinner last night.  I
  love pita and hummus!

I might be able to get on Xanga while I’m gone, but if not,
I’ll be back on Monday.  And who knows…maybe
I’ll even have pictures! 

Just time for a quick update today…

• I drove to UD and back yesterday morning.  Three hours of driving for an hour’s worth of errands.
• I turned in a petition and syllabi that will, I hope, result in transfer credit from OSU towards this grad degree. If they accept both classes, I will be well on my way to the 24-ish hours I need to graduate.  I also found out last week that CU might be able to give me some financial assistance toward my degree.  How nice would that be!
• I ran to WalMart yesterday and left with some toiletries, some groceries, and some copy paper. 
• I was exhausted all day yesterday.  So we didn’t do too much last night.  It was very relaxing, and I got a good night’s sleep.  Yay!
• I leave tomorrow for Colorado.  I have a lot to do before I’m ready to go.  But at least I won’t have much to do while I’m there!
• Now I must get to grading.  Happy Wednesday!

So last night’s class was not as bad as I was expecting it to be.  I still think that doing a “workshop” in a grad level class is a bit odd, but it was fun to hear what everyone else was writing about and trying to think through.  The one really frustrating part of the evening was when I realized that, in the crunch to get the rough draft done for the workshop, I had forgotten to print off the finished assignment that was due yesterday.  Thankfully another girl had done a similar thing, and the professor had already given her permission to get it to her after class, so I got the same grace.  I was much annoyed at myself, but it isn’t surprising, I guess, that something fell through the cracks.  Oh well…

Sadly, I have decided that I really do need to go back to UD today to drop off my paper, go to the library and run some other errands.  I’m not looking forward to the drive again, but I guess it must be done.

Other than grad school, yesterday went well.  Classes were fine.  I had a meeting with our Dean (he’s new, so he’s meeting everyone just to chat), and talked to Karen on my way to UD.  I called my mom on the way home, and we chatted until my phone died.  Then home, email the paper to the prof, and then to bed.