Baby Photo #2

I think you've seen this photo already, but thought I would add it to the collection! Here's our little boy or girl, with his/her hand waving hello at us!

Only 10 more days until we get more information on the little girl or boy in there! The baby weighs about 5 ounces at this point and could fit in the palm of your hand.

So exciting!

First Flowers

First flower that bloomed in my yard this spring...a crocus!

It was so exciting to see the flowers pop out of the cold ground.

I will be posting more pictures soon of how my garden looks now - so much is out!

How's your garden looking, V?

Wedding Invitations!

Hey Girls,
I know I've been really bad with blogging, but as you can see from the pics, Boo and I have been pretty busy! :) Last week we made the invitations and discovered that Boo loves paper cement...I'm not sure if it was the glue or the high-inducing scent, but he was totally fascinated with it! You'll be getting your invitation in a couple of weeks! Miss you girls.
Jenn & Boo

Here's the earliest photo of Baby Martin! Soon (maybe early June) I'll have a much more matured baby photo to share, as well as an idea of whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Any predictions??

Gotta Love Winter

I thought you'd enjoy this funny picture from a recent trip we took to a lake in Maine!
I'm "saving" Tyler from slipping on the ice (in reality, it was definitely me who needed the extra ice support!)

Hope you're both doing well! Can you believe - 6 months until the big event in August??!

~Andrea

BABY!!!

Hi Girls,
This is Finn, Erik's nephew (and my nephew-to-be). Isn't he the cutest thing ever?!?

Life updates!

Hi Ladies,
It's been a big week! I'm super pumped about running the whole 5k on Thanksgiving. It felt really good (okay not for 1 minute afterwards, but I'll ignore that part!) We're in the midst of our first snow that will stick around a while. Dodge and I have been relaxing and bumming around the house all weekend which is so nice! A guy who I went on a date with last week (not really interested, but I'm waiting to see if we ease into it after 3 or 4 dates) got last minute tickets to see Wicked - front row! It was amazing!
The guy who I like and told you about - Mark - is going to take me tailgating and to the Vikings/Bears game today. It'll be a late night (game starts at 7:30) but it should be a lot of fun!
Here are some long overdue photos of my humble abode and my new furry friend. Dodge has been so fantastic. He doesn't seem bothered at all about his surgeries and was super playful when I got him home from the vet! My friend Sarah R. (old college roommate) came over and he just cuddled with her for hours. He is a very good host!

Our Blog

Hey girls,
So, I changed the color scheme for our blog - what do you think?
I also want to encourage you both to keep blogging! I know it can get hard with school going to keep up with it, and I struggle with finding time, too, but I think it would be great if we can all keep adding posts to stay in touch that much better :)
I also wanted to let you know that each time you write a post, you can also give it a label so that things of similar categories are grouped together. You can see on the main page some of the labels I already started. Feel free to group your post in one of these categories if it fits or make your own!
Ciao,
Andrea

5K baby!

So, I need your moral support here! I'm trying to get psychologically ready for my first 5K race that will be this weekend in the form of the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Race for a Cure held in good old Bangor, Maine. I'm doing it with my friend Becky from school, also an English teacher, but I'm somewhat scared about how I can run for that long! I know you have done it before, Jenn. Any words of advice???

Portland

Here's a photo from the evening in Portland we had last Friday. Heather surprised Adrian for his 30th birthday with a three-hour harbor cruise...only around 100 of his friends and family were there :) It was such a blast!

This dress, which you helped me find long ago at H&M, Vienna, received many compliments. So, thank you for helping me look classy!

Hope you both are doing well and enjoying the start of your school year!

The Brain Trust

Well ladies, back we go to school school school. Let the fun begin. I'm actually really excited to go back through the posts we did earlier about cool teaching ideas and actually use them. We should think up a few more to share as we do some new things. I'm working on my Heroes class so Andrea, I'll definitely have some mythology stuff to shoot your way. Can you send me the Heroes assignment? Jenn, if you have Catcher in the Rye materials I could definitely make good use of them!

New wheels

We bought a replacement for the Audi station wagon yesterday. It's a 2006 Subaru Outback - do you like it? I'm psyched about it! It's all black and has tons of room in the back for transporting dogs, groceries, etc. It is also officially, even at 2 years old, the newest car we've ever purchased :) I guess the only downfall is adding a car payment to our month bills...

Hedda!

Did either of you see this week's Project Runway episode? The designers had to design an outfit for a drag queen, and one of them was Hedda Lettuce! Do you remember her from the show we saw when we went to P-Town? I thought that was kind of cool to see :)

Island Life

We just came home from an amazing weekend on Duck Island, about 30 minutes off the coast of Acadia National Park! Adrian & Heather took us to the house they had rented for the week. It was a weekend of seeing seals, hiking on the rocky shore, eating delicious food, riding the crazy waves, and relaxing on this gorgeous island. This house was the only one on the island, making it quite the experience!

Adrian drives his boat while Tyler and I relax in the sun.










This was the beautiful view we awoke to on Sunday





Here is the house on Duck Island

The house I'm buying!

So, I've found the house! My offer was accepted yesterday and the inspection is Monday morning, with a closing date set for Sept. 26th! I'm so excited! It's had the same owners since 1960 (built in 1949) and when the parents passed away recently, the daughter who is a real estate agent redid up the whole place. The roof, siding, lawn, kitchen, bathroom, appliances and garage were all redone in the last few months. It's in NE (a 5 minute drive from downtown and just 20 minutes to work). I drove around the neighborhood in the evening and in the middle of the night on Thursday and all seems quiet and good. Of course my mom is nervous about me having a house with a detached garage - she wanted me to get a condo with attached parking so there were people around, but nothing was just right. The front and back yards are both fenced in and really well lit so I'm not worried. It's a two bedroom with hardwood floors and is really close to some very cool spots in NE!

Fun with Cars

Here's a photo of the back end of my car, sans blinker & brake light :)

Titles

Hey ladies - Here's an interesting activity I read about in this month's English Journal. It is a lesson that helps students see how titles can affect a reader's perspective of a work of literature. It sounds interesting and I think I might use it :)

Link: "The Importance of Titles: From Big Blank Space to Small Good Thing"

Comment Philosophy

I've been reading an article today by Nancy Sommers titled "Responding to Student Writing" published in College Composition and Communication. I found it quite enlightening because the errors that she found teachers make in responding to student essays are errors that I feel I make all the time! I don't know about you, but one of the most challenging parts of being an English teacher, I feel, is making the assessment of writing meaningful for both me and the student. I feel that sometimes I make comments just to make comments and that they're often not really the most amazing pieces of advice I could be giving students.

So, here are some snippets from her article that I found interesting:

"We read (student papers) with our preconceptions and preoccupations, expecting to find errors, and the result is that we find errors and misread our students' texts. We find what we look for; instead of reading and responding to the meaning of a text, we correct our students' writing. We need to reverse this approach. Instead of finding errors or showing students how to patch up parts of their texts, we need to sabotage our students' conviction that the drafts they have written are complete and coherent. Our comments need to offer students revision tasks of a different order of complexity and sophistication from the ones that they themselves identify, by forcing students back into the chaos, back to the point where they are shaping and restructuring their meaning."

She also said this:

"What is said in the comments and what is done in the classroom mutually reinforce each other." We should be giving "comments which will provide an inherent reason for students to revise."

So, after reading this article, it did make me want to evaluate how I evaluate and really come up with an awesome plan of action for this year! One strategy that I've always wanted to actually do but have been too lazy to enact is to have students keep an Error Log. This would be a place where after every writing they do, they write the original sentence, fix it, and identify what type of mistake they made. I think this would help make writing more individualized.

I also think that I will try to do more conferencing and do more drafts of essays so that students see a quality piece of writing does take revision.

I know that many teachers now are using rubrics as the sole place where students can get teacher feedback, but I really think this is a backwards approach. It does seem like teachers need to get much more individualized than rubrics allow.

What do you both think? Any ideas and strategies that you find work??

Our Pottery--Finally!

Ipicked up our pottery several weeks ago, but I've been so lazy with uploading my pictures that I just now did it. Here are the fruits of our labor. The photos do not do your work justice. Once you see them in person you both will see how attractive they came out. You both created gorgeous pieces. I can't wait to see you both to give them to you!