Thanksgiving

For all of you who need to know more of what we are all up to out here in Colorado, you should join Facebook. Seriously, check it out! There are many pictures posted and even a video of Eric and Blayne plucking their nose hairs with their fingers.
This Thanksgiving was a fun one, with lots of food and friends. Eric and I ran the Turkey Trot in our goal times and then he started grilling the turkey. We went over to the Chastains and sat around on computers and watched football. A nice relaxing holiday!

Beer & Biofuels!

Colorado has a great selection of breweries- there's Crabtree here in Greeley, and then the more well known Anheuser-Busch and Coors, and that means CO2. Good old carbon dioxide. We love it in soda, use it as dry ice, need it to brew beer, but read about it these days with conflicting feelings. Isn't it what's accumulating in the atmosphere and reaching concentrations of over 380 parts per million, which is causing climate change? Yep.

I love beer and also love the idea that excess carbon dioxide from brewing beer could be a way to feed CO2 loving algae. Why algae? There's a company right here in Colorado that is using the excess CO2 from breweries and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)-a wast from industry- to grow algae because that's what they use to grow! Some algae photosynthesize and produce copious amounts of oil. They are really efficient at this and don't take any land from food crops, such as corn and soybeans, because they can be grown in small places within labs. No worries about soils being used or having shortages of food crops for this oil which is a great biofuel. Even better the carbohydrates that are waste products can be used to make ethanol or animal feed. If you are a nerd like me, check out SOLIX and read more. Now, if we can just convince scientists to figure out a way to use Kudzu as biofuel...you'd see southerners hacking away at those vines night and day!

Interesting Facts

I had a great week teaching. If you've ever taught you know that the occasional great day, the kind where kids listen, interact, come up with new ideas, ask amazing questions, and they THINK.. is something to celebrate, so an entire week is quite a memorable experience. I speculate the reason for the students response this week has been my enthusiasm. I'm teaching 7th graders about energy resources (renewable and nonrenewable, CO2 footprints) and 6th graders about the circulatory system. If you know me you know I LOVE those subjects and know a lot about them.

What I did to prepare for my lessons was read, read more, and then read even more. I read their textbooks, got online, and then went to the library and started reading magazines and newspapers on the content I was teaching. I ran across an article in Scientific American and got hooked on the entire magazine. I figure if there isn't anything exciting happening around here I'll just post facts from what I'm reading that you might find interesting and might get YOU thinking like my students :-) So here goes.

This is a seed vault in Norway, specifically on the Svalbard islands, where scientists store seeds of crops and other plants. As I was reading I thought of how we all have these million gigabyte computers and external hard drives to "backup" our precious information. So if you think it's crazy for a government to spend $9 million on a seed vault deep within permafrost to protect & backup the genetic diversity of plants, think about how you feel about your digital pictures and documents. Losing those is nothing to losing the genetic diversity that exists on earth. The vaults purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters, as well as climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may get wiped out. This is a real possibility, considering the evidence for climate change (no matter what you think, climate is changing, and it doesn't matter if you think it's human caused or a natural cycle, either way there will be consequences). In fact, there are other seed vaults-1,400 around the world-so someone has already put a lot of thought into this. Climate change will affect crops, among other things, and that means food on your plate. Scientists don't have the doomsday mindset like you may think. They are trying to find solutions to problems, just like scientists have always done. Now, if we could just get politicians to look at data, listen to scientists, and then think- just like my students did this week. Something to ponder...

Pumpkins, Fall, and Happenings around Here...

Last weekend Deborah called to ask if I would like to go get pumpkins with them, so off we went to Eaton. The pumpkins were as big as Erin! We had a lot of fun, though Deborah isn't doing so great, getting dizzy and tired in her first trimester.




I went biking that same weekend, with Sarah, while Eric and Mark took care of baby Lily. Sarah is amazing-Lily is 6 weeks old and this was the first major exercise Sarah has done in months and she made it from Drake to the top of the mountains up the road through Glenhaven. For those of you who have driven that route, you know the feat that trek is on a bike-even without having given birth in the last two months.


My dad was out last week, hunting elk on the western slope. He did fill his tag and on the way back home he dropped by and gave Eric some elk tenderloin and burger. Eric was very happy and said it was "like wrapping Christmas presents" as he cut and wrapped the elk in freezer paper. We are thinking about getting a tag next year and trying our hand at hunting.


We love fall, and I especially like our maple trees when they turn brilliant red.

A Good Reminder

Each Thursday night I watch Erin while the choir practices at the Chastain's loft. We play, then get "soapy", and then we play some more. This week Erin squealed and smiled in the tub, playing with her letters and surprising me with her accuracy to identify all the letters and numbers floating in the water. She's so sweet and fun. It was then that I was reminded that at one time, each of my little mutant 6th grade students was a baby like Erin, squealing and smiling in a bathtub. I thought about how that time wasn't long ago (maybe 10 years, the time that has passed since I finished at Winthrop)and that the parents of these children feel the same way about them as I do Erin-and of course they love their own children even more. At least I hope they do, since I have seen the effects good, bad, and non-existent parenting in this community. I've seen parenting that doesn't reflect love and I get sad when I think of the parents who shame their students in front of me, or those who don't care about the life they brought into the world. It pains me most however, when I see parents enable their children to the point of creating students who can't function independently. Usually its the adult who has the issues, not the child. For example, there is a 7th grade student I teach who is walked to their locker every morning by their mom. I don't think the student wants their mom to do this, but mom is super protective. I want to scream at the mom, "let them go and become independent-you are making your child a target for bullies" but I know it's not my place. Enabling is a difficult conversation to strike up with a parent, since I don't have a child of my own. But I want to since I see it cause emotional trauma to students, and how it makes my job a living hell! I have graded homework that I KNOW was done by a parent-and when I called them to ask about it they admitted they did the work and they said it was ok to grade the work as the students...wow, what's wrong with that picture? It's the reason I call some of my students mutants, or pains, or simply unteachable. They know mom or dad will always rescue them and I feel like I can reach my students only when they realize that learning is up to them-not mom or dad, or anyone else-just them. I'll just have to keep that picture of Erin in the bath fresh in my mind, and try to help my students become independent young adults-with or without the help of their parents.

Changing Colors

When I first moved out here I didn't think much of the highly tauted "fall colors" in Estes. I came from a place where fall meant more than yellow, and included hillsides full of reds, yellows, oranges, and greens. But now that I've been out here for a few years I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I'll admit, the flaming yellows within dark greens were pretty amazing. But no, it still doesn't compare to back east.
Kathy and I drove up to Estes through Glenhaven and took some nice pictures of the fall colors.






I wish I had known that it was "Elk Fest" downtown before we got caught in the traffic. We managed to get cotton candy and a cookie for Eric despite feeling like cattle being herded. And as you saw above, the dogs had to enjoy the day from the confines of the Subaru-No Dogs Allowed in RMNP.



Dogs from an Asian perspective...

Our Community

This has been a great week to remind us (that is, Jeneric) why we decided to stay in Greeley. Sometimes the smell, the reputation, the lack of cultural happenings, the state of the school district, poverty, and the racial tension that defines Greeley gets to you. Your friends who live in Windsor and Ft. Collins openly ask you why you live there, and you begin to wonder. Then you go to Oktoberfest...

Last night was Greeley's celebration and it was a lovely time. We drank, ate, and were merry until dusk. Eric and I love our friends and feel like we belong to a community of people who challenge us and accept us for what we are-crazy.
There's the Mash clan, little Cecily was sporting some awesome temporary Crabtree Brewery tattoos...


Then Everette was spitting peas with Kathy...

When we are all together, we just take care of the kids like we were one big family. It's a lot of fun until Eric begins introducing them to beverages like beer and wine...


Kathy started feeding Erin a hot dog and it was pretty funny watching her open her mouth like a dog waiting for Kathy to give it to her.


Erin sure does love alcohol. Today she went up to the communion table with Deborah and audibly said "wine, drink it?" It's all cute until the congregation starts wondering if Erin drinks beer and wine on a regular basis. But even though many feel like Christians who drink beer and wine are "bad" we believe that beer and wine bring people together in real community. You should read the article Michael, our pastor, wrote about our church brewing beer. He says it better than I do. Oktoberfest was a perfect example of what Michael was saying.

It's good to be in Greeley and belong to a community like ours. At least until the smell comes back...

On a funny note, I want to share with you what Kathy drew on my iPhone this morning during church. She usually doodles on paper while she listens, so I went to the iPhone App store and got this free drawing program. She has quite the knack for cute pictures!

Cache

Ok, so many of you saw my post on Facebook about my dog Cache and were a bit concerned. Ah, having a dog...

I went to the pound in 2003 to get a dog because I was lonely. Blayne went with me and said that Cache looked like a winner and I should get her. Why did I listen to Blayne? Who knows, but I got Cache and we went home. She turned out to be quite the handful, on the neurotic side, and energetic. I worked with her and today her behavior is much better. During this time Eric and I started dating (the first time) and he really liked Cache. After we broke up, he would still come over and take her for walks and play with her. Since he was lonely, he decided he should get his own dog-that's where Audrey, the incontinent stubborn bitch comes in. So there we are, single and lonely, each with a weird dog. Then we end up dating again and you know the rest of the story. So since we weren't lonely anymore we were stuck with two dogs-who HATE each other. I mean HATE. There are times when they fight and draw blood, and if Eric didn't physically launch himself on both of them they would fight until death. We are working on this with them, but it's been frustrating. So then they start chewing and getting into things while we were at work, so we begin kennel training them for their own good. That goes just fine until Cache starts vomiting and having other "issues" in the kennel. On more than one occasion I would come home to a mess and spend the evening cleaning the kennel and area around it. NOT FUN.
So last week I came home and there was a very bad mess and this time it looked like blood. I took her outside and she continued to be sick, from both ends, and it looked like pure blood. She kept looking at me with these big eyes and I knew something was wrong. So we took her into the vet and they were concerned it was a rupture in her digestive tract of some sort of puncture from something she ate. So we end up running all these tests...lots of $$$ worth of tests... The vet calls me and says they can't find anything. So they sent us home with antibiotics and dog food for a sensitive stomach. I wasn't sure whether to be happy or not-it's always better when you can figure out what the problem is.

So Cache has been ok since, though we now have her on a very bland diet and she is not allowed to have any other food, at all, ever. We'll see if that stops the mess. That's my not-so-interesting story of what happened to Cache.

Party at the Parrish's

We have finally exhausted our back porch insurance claim. Now that we see the final product, we are glad that the big snowstorm of 2006 destroyed our back porch!

Next year we are going to try to add a pergola to the area, along with enclosing the screened in portion. However, we are very happy with what we have at this point and as soon as the final coat of sealant can take traffic we plan to have a party.



It's been a very busy time with school starting. Some of you know that I do a lot of extra work through a program called GK 12 and that has started again. I'll be writing grants and proposals, as well as planning new projects for our school. This is all separate from our normal school curriculum, but it gives me opportunities like doing research on the prairie and taking trips to present this research. Since our middle school is only 1 year old I have a lot I want to see happen in the next few years- so yes, that means I really like my new job. Along with the projects there have been funds alloted for teachers to take graduate courses online and on weekends so I'm going to find some that sound interesting. So if you don't hear from me that's why.

Happenings lately...

It's been a busy time for us, me with a new job and Eric thinking about what he really wants to do as a career. So here are some fun pictures of what we've been up to.
Here's our favorite "chebot" baby. (That's how Erin says ketchup phonetically)

Here's our "favorite" neighbor trying to shoot squirrels out of his tree. We aren't sure if this is legal, and this morning there was a squirrel in a trap beneath his tree. Would you call the city? For those of you who do not live in Greeley, this is the neighbor who calls the city for watering on the wrong day, dogs barking in homes while owners are away, and hedges that are higher than code allows.

Here's little Lily Bruemmer! Mark and Sarah had their baby last Friday and she is super cute. We spent some time at their house today. Big news about the green dump-apparently the lights were on all night last week, so someone is either illegally breaking in or it was sold. More details to come!

Lastly, this is a picture of my first flower garden. Mom, be sure to show this to dad since this is the area he kept trying to step in and throw shingles on! See, there was something other than weeds growing there.

13.1 miles-The Last Hoorah

Yep, it's time to train for another race. This time I'm going to be a little more serious in my training and start early and slow. None of the jumping into running 5 miles at a time after no running for a year. It is going to help to have a training partner...Eric! You read that right, Eric is going to run the race too. He seems kind of excited about it, but a little apprehensive about all the training. We've decided to do a lot of treadmill running in the evenings when the weather is too cold to run outside. We'll throw in some biking, swimming, cross-training, and weight lifting in between the runs. Personally I think Eric could probably go out tomorrow and run 13 miles faster than I will after 33 weeks of training, but he will keep me motivated and push me hard. There's nothing like competing with someone! It's my last hoorah-the final event for my tired old bones and joints...after this there will only be biking and swimming for me.
Anyone interested in joining us?

Oh, FYI Mark and Sarah had their baby-a little girl. I hope they can move into their house soon!

Helping near the Green Dump

Eric and I had the chance to escape to the mountains last Saturday and what a glorious day it turned out to be. We went to Mark and Sarah's place, which is well on it's way to being livable! That is exciting news, since I remember last spring when the foundation was poured. The siding is going up and that's what the guys worked on all day while the girls relaxed inside. You see, Amy and I risked our lives pushing plywood up to the rafters over the summer so we felt entitled to sit back and read a little. Seriously, there was a little accident and we were both very lucky to escape with just a few scratches. We got back on the horse and helped shingle after the incident. But Mark has made SO much progress since then. I'll let the pictures show you.





And someone be sure to tell dad (aka Ed) about this picture of a bull elk in Mark's front yard...

Don't feed the baby...

NONUTS!



These pictures show that it is inadvisable to feed Erin too many "nonuts."

However, while she was in our care we did take her to have "nonuts" since we could give her back. And rumor was that Kathy took her to Winchell's Donuts the day before...note that she took her first steps about 3 hours after these pictures, so I think it was the extra energy from two consecutive days of the fat-laden, high calorie "nonuts" that enabled her to take her first steps. Eric was the first person to introduce her to "nonuts" and there have been times when instead of saying "Eric" she'll look at him and start chanting "nonuts." Ah how cute!

Instant Baby

About a year ago, when baby Erin was 6 or 7 months old, Deborah and I talked about when she would be able to leave her new baby overnight. Having experience with babies (I took care of my niece Sam from age 3 months to 2 years) I offered to be the first person to have Erin overnight. Deborah and Blayne always wanted to do something special for their 10th anniversary, so they took me up on the offer and we made plans to watch Erin for a few nights in August of the following year.
You guessed it, that's this weekend! I didn't think about school starting and having a new job in all this, but it's been great. We got Erin Thursday evening and had fun playing with her in the yard.




She had a lot of fun in the water and sitting in her chair with her own special place for goldfish and apple juice.
After getting soaked and filthy, we gave her a bath. We gave her an Oktoberfest mug to splash around with and she was content. After bath time and pajamas, she started saying, "night night" and rubbing her eyes. It was only 7:30 and Eric and I were in shock. We had heard all the stories of kids fighting bedtime. Not Erin! We put her down and that was it.

Friday Kathy watched Erin while Eric and I went to work.

Ok, don't go call social services on us! Erin LOVED putting herself in our dog kennels and when we asked her to come out she defiantly stated "no, in!" and would go in and out of each kennel. The dogs just sat and watched her with interest.

After another bath we decided to watch a little of her favorite DVD, "Wiggles." I was familiar with Raffi but not the Wiggles. Here is Eric watching the Wiggles sing and dance with Henry the Octopus...


Erin went to my staff party and I told everyone (so I thought) that we were just watching her for the weekend...so when someone asked me how old she was I said, "ah, I think 17 or 18 months, I'm not really sure." I got this look like, "wow, seriously you don't know how old your child is?" I realized this and explained the situation and we had a good laugh. Erin was cute as usual, impressing everyone with her large vocabulary. It started raining and she yelled "raining" and everyone was in disbelief. There were other kids her age there and none of them were naming everything they saw or pointing to name what people were doing. Oh no, they were running around playing! (for those of you who don't know Erin isn't too keen on walking yet).

She loves to be tickled and her laugh is the cutest thing ever.
She's a cutie and I think we are in love with her. I will be sad to give her back, but it will be nice to have a clean house and time to shower.

Eric's New Wheels

Eric and I were debating whether to buy a second car because I have to be at work much earlier than last year and dropping Eric off at work or having me drop him off wasn't going to work. We love just having one car payment and the low insurance cost of just one car, so we started thinking about scooters. Eric could ride one in the winter when the roads were clear (when they aren't he'll just go into work early when I do), and I could take the car. We researched the Honda's and really wanted a Metropolitan (Gothic color scheme) but if any of you have looked into getting a scooter you know that they are back ordered and Honda can't make them fast enough. So we started looking on eBay, but had no luck. The rain last weekend forced us to go shopping in Fort Collins so we stopped at the Honda dealership to put our name on the waiting list for the Metropolitan. When we got there they had a 2007 Honda Elite in stock. After seeing that it seats two and is pretty sharp looking we decided to purchase it. The downfall is that it has a 80cc engine which means we have to register it and get a class M endorsement (for motorcycles) on our drivers licenses. We figured it would be worth it and Eric drove it home on Saturday.

I won't lie, it's really fun! Here's Eric in the parking lot practicing.



Kathy got to go for a ride before we went out to celebrate her birthday.

They are twins...it is scary.