My husband thinks I'm a freak...

> I watch TV and movies, not for the feeling it gives me, or the punch lines, or the story, necessarily. I watch shows expecting the writing to wow me!
> I have actually said the words, "That alliteration was incredible!" in regards to a line of a show.
> I am constantly looking for parallel structure in shows, especially when a they bring back a line or comment used in a very early episode.
> I comment on characterization, and often wish for additional air time for a character that needs to be developed.
> I audibly fill in lines that they "should've said" and wonder why they chose not to (because if I thought of it, obviously one of the show writers had to have thought it as well).
> I prefer to watch TV episodes in order because the plot line fits better in my head. It's even better if I can do marathon weekends with multiple episodes to remind me of the nuances and intricacies of the plot.
> I notice the smallest details of the set and camera work because I love that someone spent that time to include these perfect little additions.
> I am always watching for an example to use in class, whether it's the alliteration, hook, foreshadowing, etc.

For Christmas, Mark got me the best gift ever~ The West Wing Complete Series DVD box set. Speaking of incredible writing- it's a show that features writers and great writing! He has since been forced willingly watching The West Wing (how's that for alliteration)! 



So last night as we're watching West Wing, the episode where Bartlett announces he has MS and is preparing for the live interview, I noticed probably the smallest detail  I've ever noticed on a show, but it made an incredible difference, at least to me.

Usually when Bartlett is seen in the Oval Office, the scene is shot from a low angle, looking up at the President to give him a taller and larger appearance in such a huge room (since Martin Sheen is so short). But, during this episode, the point of view was shifted dramatically higher so that it made the President look smaller, highlighting the disease he was about to reveal.

         

     




How many of the millions of people who have seen this show noticed that shift? Was it just me? Am I the weirdo who appreciates the characterization that just a shift of a camera can create? Thank you West Wing for wowing me once again.

Like I said, my husband thinks I'm a freak. 

I have a confession to make...

Our Christmas decorations are still up. Yep, that's right, I said it. It is January 15th and we have not taken down a single decoration. I feel like we're the house on our old street that left their giant-sized multi-color flashing lights up all year- yeah, we're those people.

But really, there has to be some reasonable explanation why we are still looking at tinsel and lights weeks after the socially acceptable deadline has passed! It must be that we're crazy busy, or the boxes are in storage, or it's more fun to read blogs than take down garland, or, or, or....

Really, we just didn't feel like it. Our decorations have been up for 51 days. That may be a Guinness World Record! (Just so we're clear- our standard plan is Thanksgiving Day to New Years or the weekend right after it- 51 days is so not normal!) 

So rather than sit here for another week looking at the beauty old news that is our Christmas decorations, I'll put all the pictures up and make you look at them...I'm off to get some boxes out of storage.

Charlie's favorite spot

"Momma, why are you taking my tree away?"

Our Red and Gold Theme

Chicago's Christkindlmarkt candle find

Someday I will add our names...someday.

 And now, for my favorite part of our Christmas decorating...drum roll please!

Our Nativity set! (It is no longer made and took me almost a year to track down all the pieces on eBay, Amazon, and Christian bookstores, but I now have the complete set and I love it!) 

Shepherd and Sheep- the original piece of the Nativity

 Come to think of it, maybe my love for the Nativity is why we haven't taken our decorations down yet!

Sledding

Sledding sounds like fun, maybe we'll put the decorations away next week!

Today's Blog Post is brought to you by the number 5.

I can't believe it has been 5 months since I last wrote here. There are oh so many reasons why I haven't been able to blog (I feel a list coming on, that's another post, another time).

For me, New Year's Resolutions are like candy to a small child. They make me happy, fill my eyes with wonder and then leave me running around in a hyper state for longer than I'd like to admit. Lists are beautiful, checked lists are better, but no list might just be 'obedience' this year for me. How is that even possible??

Don't get me wrong, I definitely made a list, but rather than 'resolutions', my list turned in to a list of things I want to do this year, like buy a house again, be good at guitar again, BLOG, have an accountability friend to help me not make resolutions!

So as I sat down to write my 2012 Resolutions, I found the list becoming more of a to-do list, rather than a goals list. So, being the perfectionist I am and wanting to really nail it when it comes to a resolutions list, I grabbed a new piece of paper to scratch out some resolutions. I wanted 5, a nice number- my usual number, same ol' same ol'.

God had other plans...again. (Have I mentioned on here that I dubbed 2011 as "The Year That God Had Other Plans"? I'll add that to the list of future blog posts).

I was reading some of my favorite blogs over New Year's and I saw a trend of choosing a word to be your 'Word for the Year', like Awaken, Create, Splash. Pretty cool, I thought to my overly-wordy-nerdy-English-teacher-all-I-can-think-about-is-poetry-units-and-novel-discussions-self. Yeah, maybe 'no' on the whole one-word thing!

So I sat there frustrated, upset that I couldn't find some perfect word or even a list of 5 things- I'm not asking for much here God!

And then He handed me my resolution- over my bestie, Pandora, came this song:

I love this song. I love the message and I love the music.

I knew that moment that I can't do a New Year's word or a list (because those are MY typical behaviors), but in HIS typical behavior he spoke to me in a song.

So, my Song for 2012 is "Remind Me Who I Am" by Jason Gray.
This year, it is my desire to be the person God has created me to be regardless of what is going on around me. This will be the year that He reminds me who I am and who I was meant to be.

P.S. Don't worry the lists are still around- that's part of who he created when I came on the scene!

Genealogy Scavenger Hunt

Last night I decided to take a break from planning my lessons and instead thought I would waste some time doing some ancestry searching. I've done this before, a couple times actually, but last night I was again inspired. I watched "Who Do You Think You Are?", the TV show where they search for a celebrity's ancestors. They of course have next-to-unlimited resources and Ancestry.com as a sponsor, but I love the stories they learn about their family members. For me, it's fine to know the names and birthdates, but I'd rather know the stories, the personalities and the lives of these people.

Unfortunately, before I got to the good stuff, I had to figure out who these people are! So below is the very basic family tree on my mom's side- the German, but originally Italian, name Ernesti. I traced back through the fathers only, keeping with the Ernesti name, though I could've spent years tracing each of the wives.



And now for the stories...(to pay homage to my favorite show "How I Met Your Mother", I will call them Fun Facts...)

Fun Fact #1: I learned that every Ernesti in this list before the younger Carl was born in Haaren, Westphalen, Germany and was baptized at St. Vitus Catholic Church. Everyone before Philip was married and then buried at St. Vitus as well. Add that to my bucket list: see the records at St. Vitus Catholic Church, Haaren, Germany.

Fun Fact #2:  Seven of the nine children of Carl and Angela (my 3x great- grandparents) immigrated to the US around 1882. I know that Philip for sure came in 1882, and the tale goes that he wrote a letter to his brothers in Germany telling them to come to America and to bring women. This is documented in a book called Voices of the Prairie that chronicles some of the Ernesti stories, among many other families. I do want to find out if the seven all immigrated together because it looks like they might have come at different times. The two sons that stayed in Haaren, Germany (Ferdinand and Fritz) stayed because Ferdinand was the oldest and would inherit the farm, which he did, and Fritz was in the service.

Fun Fact #3: Another interesting fact was that all of the records I saw listed everyone as "farmer", and when they came to America they settled in Nebraska and became farmers. I still have relatives who live on farms. So, the love of farms and the land is something deeply rooted in our family, for generations, even though I've lived in the city my whole life.

Fun Fact #4: Friedrich and Anna (at the top of the tree) were given special permission by the church in Haaren to get married in Easter. They were married December 10, 1739. This is the farthest date I traced last night.

Fun Fact #5: The average number of children my family members had was 5. This was skewed a bit because there were three generations- my grandparents (Ambrose & Kathleen) and then my 2x great (Carl & Angela) and 3x great (Anton & Elisabeth) grandparents all had at least 8 children. Other than those three generations, everyone had 1-3 kids.

So, in about 3 hours time, I traveled all the way back to 1739. Now, if I was on the show "Who Do You Think You Are?", I would have hopped on a plane this morning for Haaren, Germany to discover more stories of my ancestors. Instead, I have to look at pictures. Here is what St. Vitus Catholic Church looks like now... it was rebuilt in 1861.

The point of ancestry searches is not to get a list of where you came from, but rather to learn who you are, underneath the layers of the present. So, what did I learn from my Fun Facts, you may ask?

1) I am German to the core...stubborn and strong.

2) I am independent...like Philip who immigrated to Nebraska. Not sure I'm independent enough to move to another country by myself, but I could at least visit!

3) I have just moved to a farming/urban community- I had to have a little of both and God knew that when he brought us here. I crave the perks of a city (population, activities) and the perks of a small town (community, farmer's markets).

4) My family has always tried to get around the rules, albeit in a law abiding way, but we like to go outside of the norm. I am no exception.

5) I want to have two kids. Having more than three kids is a fluke...it's only happened 3 times in the lineage I know of. That reaffirms my preference for having two kids, three at the absolute most!...someday...no this is NOT a pregnancy announcement(:

Summer Project #2

So, today I slept most of the day, stupid allergies. But, for dinner we made these yummy lettuce wraps and then this blueberry pie. Oh yum! It's not crafty (except the crust, I guess) or organizational, but it's going to count as my 2nd Summer Project.




Before Baking

 


Before Eating(:

 

Summer Projects Day 1

It's summer. I am on summer 'vacation' and I totally want to go back to work. I'm ready to start in my new classroom with my new students, teaching new material. And then I think about how little sleep I got my first year of teaching and I return to summer-mode with lightning speed. This year will be like my first year all over again, with hopefully a bit more sleep. A bit. So, since my summer is officially half over, I thought I'd work on my summer projects list. I don't have a physical list (though now that I say that I have the sudden OCD urge to make one), but regardless I have things I want to do with my summer. All year long I think, "I'll definitely have to do that this summer", and now it's half over and I've done none of those things...if I can even remember them. All I know is that there were a lot of crafty things and a lot of organization I had planned. If only I could remember what they were...



(I love Wordle!)



So, in an effort to jog my memory, I've decided to do one "Summer Project" a day for as long as I can/don't get overwhelmed with it. (I am SO not good at setting 30-day challenges or even 3-day challenges because I instantly feel that pressure, the stress that says, "you skipped a day and now your challenge is ruined!") So it's my "however-many-days-I-can summer projects challenge that includes crafty things and organization". Long title...I'll work on that. Acronym maybe? "HMDICSPCTICRAO" 

 

Or not.

Project #1: Organize all of the massive amounts of information I got at my Problem-Based Learning Teacher's Conference in Aurora, IL (July 11-15).

 


First let me say that I loved this conference, learned from this conference, and laughed at this conference...but the organization of the papers drove me crazy! We got this box, that actually had three-ring binder things inside, but they were thoroughly ignored. Instead, crammed inside the box, were seven separate books that were specially printed at some copy store, probably costly, and altogether annoying! The entire conference we had to flip through the "orange book, no wait, maybe it's in the purple book". All along I kept saying, if only it was loose paper neatly tab divided in a 2" binder, now that would be heavenly!

So I made it happen. Tonight, while Mark watched a movie and Charlie slept, I organized. This organization cost me $2.99. For the tabs. Cheapest summer project so far (especially since it's the first). I removed all the staples with a nail file (my staple remover is at school) and cut all of the beautiful (probably costly) books in half. Hey, they should have consulted an organizer before printing(:

And this is what the end product looks like now. It will fit perfectly next to my other 2" binders in my classroom that hold every note I ever took in an English class (no really, I kept them all...even from high school- and I've used them often to teach, well not often, but a few times).

   

  

So that is my first summer project. I think maybe tomorrow I'll tackle the utility closet, it's a nightmare.

Or maybe I'll make a cute banner to hang over our bedroom curtains like the one Alyssa Ann made on her cute blog.

More to come tomorrow, or maybe the next day(:

Time Out From Life....

This week I have been in Aurora, IL at a teacher's conference about Problem-Based Learning...very interesting...lots to process.

So, today I took a time out. It has been two months since we first were told we were leaving St. Louis and moving to Morton, IL. So much has happened this summer already...so much...

So, today instead of cleaning (though I did some loads of laundry) and instead of working on my curriculum, I decided to spend the afternoon catching up on some of the blogs I follow. My favorite part of reading people's blogs are the pictures. I think I'm becoming addicted to photography, especially this website of a professional photographer. I love to look at the unique ways professionals and iPhone-toters alike capture their lives. I wish I was good at it...I should take a class...or not...but my pictures have definitely improved since I've watched what others have done. So, for my own blog today, I thought I'd take a break from the task of compiling the pictures and stories of our Italy trip and just post some of my favorite, more artsy photos that we took.

Enjoy!