and then it was thanksgiving...

and we made it happen. turkey, ham, gravy, yams in halved oranges, yams and apples, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans with slice almonds, and rolls.

thankfully my cousin dan, who is a cook, and his wife nicholine were staying with us so they helped out a lot.

my mom and her sisters

yum.

my uncle sam carved the turkey and the ham.

and now that i look through the pics, i realize we don't have any photographic proof that i cooked a turkey...just witnesses. :) but i survived my first thanksgiving dinner with 17 people. next year? thanksgiving for 6 - 8? no problem.

here are a couple good pics from the rehearsal dinner of me and my grandma and aunts.

introducing matt and katie macdonald

what a beautiful day! the sun was shining, the ceremony was fantastic, the reception, great, and matt and katie are MARRIED!

my aunt laurie travelled with her outfit and bagpipes to pipe at the beginning of the wedding. so great.

i didn't have a camera with me so i rely on others. thanks to those whose photos i've borrowed.

oh fieldtrips!

today i sent my students on a very strange fieldtrip. this was a fieldtrip that "the grade 3 classes do" which is typical of the big school mentality...but i like it. this fieldtrip however was QUITE the planning. it was a car rally.

the car rally was in conjunction with the conclusion of our Mapping unit. the kids had to find their way around langley finding 5 different checkpoints. i'd made clues with the help of google maps from one house to the next. when they got to a checkpoint, someone would give them the clue to the next place. they would direct their parent driver to the next spot.

the reason it was strange - i didn't have to go. i stayed at the school! i had my cell phone and checkpoint parents were to call when all the cars had come by and driver parents were to call if anything went wrong. i got SO much marking done.

so after all my google mapping work, it turned out one clue was wrong. shoot. only a couple cars ended up making it to that checkpoint. the others skipped it since i'd give the drivers a master set of clues.

one checkpoint was TWU (where tim works) and the kids had to go into the building, ask where Mr. Shulba worked, and find his office to get their next clue. they were SO jazzed about meeting Mr. Shulba. tim called me when they'd all come by and said that there had been one huge group of about 17 and then a little group of 3. i asked him if they'd been quiet and polite and he reported that they HAD! yay.

the final report? one mom said that the kids in her car figured out that the numbers on the houses on one side of the street are even and the other are odd. another mom kept her kids on task by yelling, "hey! look at that!" every so often. one mom told me that as her group was walking into tim's building, the kids coming out were saying, "mr. shulba is so cute and nice."

hmm...

it's nice to see that this is a place that you can all connect and chat with each other in my comment section. i'm serious. it gives me great joy to see 9 comments...even when they are just a conversation amongst other people with very little relation to my blog.

winners...and jackets...

so since the jacket season hit, i've been at 4 winners. the first winners, i found a steve madden black wool jacket that was so cute but large. so off to other winners i went. to no avail. steve madden in any size smaller than large was just no where. i tried on maybe...40 jackets. no exaggeration. some twice because i'd forgotten i'd already tried a particular one on. the problem with winter jackets is you just can't anticipate the layers you'll be wearing under themon some january day. do you get the size that "fits" or the size that fits with a bulky sweater underneath? either way, a large wasn't cutting it.

winners workers must DREAD jacket season. jackets lend themselves to trying on in aisles. if one tries on 40 jackets, it's tempting to not re-hang but drape the jacket over the rack. and many, many people have given in to this temptation...

i just want you to know that if you only shop in white rock winners...it is THE WORST winners i have ever been in. it's the messiest. nothing is in the right spot. things are on the wrong size hanger so when you spot the tan little small sign around the hanger and run towards your long-searched for jacket with open arms only to find an XL! it brings shouts anger at strangers. look out. so fyi...shop the abbotsford winners...it's practically a regular store with all the sizes of one particular shirt on one rack sometimes.

and today at the abby winners, i searched for my steve madden jacket but it was not found. i gave up looking because everything is so neat there, there's really no digging required. off i went to the boot section, picked up some pumas, wandered around in clearance, spent some time in the dressing rooms and as i was walking towards the check-out...i spotted a few lone jackets on a rack in the petite section. i paused. and then i dug down to the black one at the very back...i recognized the buttons! i saw the steve madden tag! IT WAS A MEDIUM! i put it on - love it.

BUT then...i recognized the classic impulsivness of my buy. so i found a big, fat sweater, put it on, and THEN tried on the jacket. yep...it works. and i ran to the cashier. i couldn't contain my excitement so i told her the story. she smiled politely. i wanted to wear it out of the store...but it was 24 C out today - it couldn't be justified.

(umm...you're maybe wishing to see a pic but i'm alone at home with no one to take my picture...hold that thought.)

give me 5 days...it'll probably get returned. haha.

whaaat?

This are done a little differently in a bigger school (think going from 55 kids to 400 kids). Today I got the hot lunch form. At Agassiz, we filled out our little hot dog form a day or two before hot lunch day. Sometimes I didn't even order until the morning of but I always got my hot dog. Today, this form has ALL the things to order for the next 3 months. It includes 4 different kinds of pizza, Booster Juice smoothies, Sun chips AND Lays (2 flavours), as well as Krispy Kreme donuts. Woah. Then in small print at the bottom it says, "To comply with the new nutrition standards for the food and beverage items being sold in schools from the Ministry of Health and Education guidelines we have changed our pizza and chip selection." WHAT? I just want to know what they changed it FROM! how does Krispy Kremes make it through the loops?

I have to say though...with all the nutrition in schools things that are changing these days...I'm glad I still have the option of really looking forward to pizza and booster juice on Hot Lunch!

(only 6 more days of the cleanse left...)

sigh. where has all the blogging gone?

i don't know. you'd think with no facebook in the house here at school, i'd be madly looking for something else to waste my time! but alas...i seem to have turned over a new leaf. i work. weird, i know.

i think of lots of things to blog about in a day but i have been spending very little time at the computer lately...sometimes going a whole evening without even logging in.

my life is a little consumed with a cleanse right now. i'm on day 9. of 21. dr. joshi cleanse (i don't know the real name for it). everything you eat is gluten-free, dairy-free, no sugar, fruit (except bananas), red meat, tomatoes, potatoes, or caffiene. so that means i eat a lot of vegetables, brown rice, chicken and fish (but no tuna). that's not so bad, right? ugh. it's only not so bad if you're alone in your house at all times. but this weekend was quite the hurdle. i was in tacoma (more on that soon) and then had to resist judy's chili, homemade bread, and pumpkin roll. WORST. tim fell off the wagon for the chili. he's now no longer on the cleanse. i'm getting by but not without wondering to myself each day, "why am i doing this?".


one might ask, "do you feel better?". but i never felt that bad! i definitely feel healthier. I had pretty low energy the first few days but after that, i've been back to normal.

one thing i found yesterday that will decidedly keep me on the cleanse until the end was Riceworks rice chips. umm...maybe it's cheating because are they processed? i guess so, right? but there's no artificial flavouring or additives so who knows. but seriously, they're a small cheat without cheating. i'd eat these over doritos or potato chips anyday. i recommend you try the sweet chili.

SYTYCD...C?

so i thought maybe adding another letter to that already ridiculously long acronym was not going to be worth it...[insert mary voice] BUT IT SO WAS WORTH IT!!! WOOOOOO!!!!!

wow. canada. i'm so glad that we did it right. i was nervous. often it takes us a couple seasons but wow - first big night and it was awesome. was there only 2 people who didn't make it either to the finals or to choreography? yes. there was two. this is what i WANT - to watch some dancing! it was great.

AND another episode again in 3 days? yes, in canada, sometimes we get it right.

[and as an aside to all the mary-haters...the maters, i think i'll call them...can you honestly say that it would have been SYTYCD without her? no. those other two judges were lame. thankgoodness mary was there.]

it's official...

facebook has been banned at school. shoot. :)

7 days in?

so. school has begun. i've been teaching at the new place for 7 full days.

last night i got 8 full hours of sleep but woke up tired. my throat was a little sore. i took some cold fx to no avail. i went to school and my throat got a little sore-er and my nose started to run. i'm still tired.

WHAT? only seven days and i'm sick?

you know you've encountered new germs when...

don't worry - it's not call-in-sick yet but i'll be taking my vitamin c and going to bed early tonight for sure. meet the teacher night tomorrow!

oh koodo...i love you

so i'm back in the land of the cellphones again. i've been pretty hard to get a hold of for many moons and then i found koodo. sure, the commercials are totally strange and annoying. but their plans are not. they're fantastic! [raise hands above head] "c'est fantastique!" (yes, i've started teaching french again....) i walked out future shop with a fantastic phone, low monthly bill, paid nothing, and don't have a contract! i have a tab. i love it. i love the way that i could pick the features of my plan. there are no system access fees. every plan has unlimited evenings and weekends from 7pm on (and you can pay an extra $5 for evenings to start at 5pm) AND all plans include text. and now i'm a texting fiend. (if you're wishing i would text you, check my number on FB.) if you're looking for a new plan/carrier...i recommend.

in funnier cell phone news, i thought that i would sell my old fido (which isn't even that old) on craigslist for $30. it doesn't have a charger (which is why i fell out of cell phone land) and apparently they're now hard to find plus to re-activate was going to be at least $35 so i figured - get rid of it. but seriously, who's going to buy a phone with no charger for $30? well...someone in abbotsford in the worst looking but running truck i've ever seen. i was feeling bad for selling it to them but when she said that she had a motorola charger, i even said, "do you want to check the phone with the charger first to see if they're the same?" and she said no. so i made $30.

now i'm looking for other things that i can sell on craigslist! haha.

sigh...

that's how i'm feeling. and that's maybe how most teachers feel their first week back to school. there's so much to do but sometimes no matter how much you do, nothing more can happen until those kiddos arrive and fill up the classroom with reasons for teaching. but nonetheless, there is this panic-y feeling that fills me the weekend before school begins. "i have to do something great this weekend!" i think. "tim! we need to do something fun this weekend!" i say. "it's my LAST weekend!" i shout.

sometimes i forget it's not my last weekend. there will be another one next week.

last summer at this time?

days of summer: 6

abbotsford blueberries

10 lbs.

washed and bagged for my freezer

*sigh* joshua?

two comments on the last post? there must be more SYTYCD fans reading this blog that have something to say now that it's all said and done!

well i thought that i'd be okay with either katee or joshua...but then katee got kicked out. and i was sad. consoled a little that josh won and not twitch (though, don't get me wrong, i do love twitch) but it should have been katee. this is what happens when we leave the voting to american highschool girls. haha.

highlight of the finale: all the old SYTYCD dancers in the big final dance. i was watching the show with 3 boys (one who's a hater) and 1 girl who's watched this whole season but not the past ones as wholeheartedly as me. which is all fine and good...but i scared them all when the finale dance came on - screaming out peoples' names, "there's benji! i love you dominic! i hate you neil!" stuff like this. at the end, i looked around and everyone was looking at me. hmm...

yay for SYTYCD live in september!

ahh...the finale

so there we have it. the last chance for courtney, twitch, joshua, and katee to bring it. it was pretty good.

katee just seems so far and away the winner - she's such a wonderful dancer. i really felt it even more when they did the little clip of her journey through the competition and the clips were all dances i really remembered. that's a sign of good dances - the ones we remember. and when she's in ALL of them? how can she not come out on top? ...umm...usually that's when they don't come out on top, isn't it? shoot. maybe i've ruined it for her. ;)

joshua is amazing. he also could win it.

i've loved twitch since the audition. and he never lost that lovable quality (which mandy moore so poorly put it as the "sparkle in his eyes"...i'm sure his home boys are loving that) if he won it though, i don't think it would be deserved in comparison to katee. but i think he's made his mark (just as nigel so fantastically put it) on this competition.

and courtney? i can't believe she made it this far. sure, i've liked her all along but top 4? apparently i'm not the only one who feels this way because the judges just kept saying it over and over which must be strange for her to keep hearing.

i was suprised by the first hiphop dance and the kudos that it got from the judges. sure, mandy moore was miss positive, no criticism tonight but the other two? it was not deserving of the scream. it looked like they missed some major moves but tried to mask it? did anyone else feel like that? i was shocked by the positivity from the judges afterwards.

i love wade robson. i was SO excited that he came and choreographed a dance for tonight and it was a great great dance. and i was also happy that they gave us the reason as to where he's been all season because every wednesday i say, "but where's wade robson been?" yay.

strange number for the final 4. i was pretty pumped for it - mia? oh yeah. but then i had mixed feelings. i wish i had tivo (or just recorded it on the vcr) to play it back and re-assess. kilts? there was so much going on and i'm often yelling at the camera angles that miss people and felt like they played into my lack of excitement for it. i feel fairly strongly about season 2's final 4 finale and i rewatched that one tonight to figure out why. i think i just loved all those dancers more than the seasons 3 & 4. hmm...

at least i'll get to see lots of these dances again LIVE in september when tim and i (and liz and darian) go see SYTYCD on TOUR! what what!?!?

prediction for winner? katee.

"welcome home!"

said my forgotten sweet potato...

the julie/julia project

so i was thinking that at the end of august, i'd post all the books that i read this summer and write a blurb about them. well...this one was too good to wait...and heck - who doesn't need a good book to read by the pool/beach in the sunshine, right? or in your bed curled up during a thunderstorm?

here it is: Julie and Julia : 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen : how one girl risked her marriage, her job, and her sanity to master the art of living - by Julie Powell

this 29 year old woman, living in NY, hating her string of temp jobs, and feeling distraught about turning 30 and having nothing accomplished in life gets this random idea that she'll cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1...in one year. waaay back in 2002 when everyone didn't have their own blog, she began blogging her cooking fiascos. alyssa had mentioned this book a month or so ago and i can't remember if she'd read it or just heard about it. i remember saying, "how could that be a whole book?" well it is.

i feel like this is a random idea that I'D get and blog about and wish that i hadn't started but have to finish because i said i would...which is exactly how julie feels. and when you hear the premise of the book, you think that it must be chapter after chapter of recipe after recipe but it's not. it's a lot about her life with some cooking thrown in. and the things that she makes are crazy. and julie is hilarious - very much like a friend that you know. you probably have an instant picture in mind of what type of person is taking on this cooking project, right? i did. my picture was kind of an (unsuccessful) rachel synchyshyn - you know, ulimate multi-tasker, love for food and talent for cooking, clean, measures ingredients carefully, enjoys good cookware... but she's crass and not rachel at all. doesn't hold back the honesty in the crazy that this project made her: the mean things that she said to her husband, the screaming profanity breakdowns, or the number of times she'd have to try to make something over and over until it was halfway decent. (she's not much of a perfectionist)

i'd definitely recommend the read - there were many lines i wanted to write down and quote here but didn't...and then couldn't find the page again. i checked out the FVRL library website and all but one copy is "in library"...apparently only one other person besides me in the lower mainland is reading this book. however...a disclaimer to my rave reviews: there are references to things of a sexual nature (she often equates cooking to sex)...and as mentioned earlier, more swearing than you'd expect from a book like this (she says her sailor mouth comes from her mom) so you know...beware. i think as i was reading, it was a "yeah...this is pretty good" but as it comes to the end, you're sad to see it finished and want to read more. and julie powell ends it well - poignant but with a laugh.

travel collections...

when we were on the east coast, we took lots of photos. we were usually disappointed with our sad little camera's performance but at least we could document our trip. there are lots of boats. lots of churches. lots of lighthouses. eventually when we would see one of these three things and wonder if we should take a picture, we'd say, "nah, we already have lots." but apparently, we couldn't hold back because when i went through our pics today, i had to laugh at how many of each we have. and now you get to see them in my final travel blog posts...good OR bad.

travel collections: boats

travel collections: churches

travel collections: lighthouses

SYTYCD

top 6. it's intense. it was finally a show where every dance was just so phenomenal. when i heard that will was out (i was really hoping he wouldn't make it to the final 4) i was thinking - mark and courtney - so out. then they're paired together? oh man - a death sentence. and then the first song was okay. and then the second song? SO GOOD. i don't think anyone else could have done that dance as well as those two. well done mark and courtney.

twitch. okay, we love you. and you start 4 real. we think it's cool. it spreads to all the dancers. it's seems a little less cool. but you didn't do it once this episode. you wear the T t-shirts. first time - hey that's cool. second time - you have more than one colour - nice. third, fourth, fifth time - really? hmm... but then you don't wear the T t-shirt for your solo. you're smart. you're creating a brand...letting it catch on but right as we're almost sick of it - you stop. i'm intrigued.
cat. remember when the show was new (well...i only started watching second season, but you know what i mean) and we were like, "who is this cat deely?" i think tonight was her best episode yet. taking the gold out of twitch's mouth and putting it in her own? she's going out on a limb here. i love her. and the way she gets along with all the dancers? are they hanging out in their spare time?

aren't you thinking katee is going to win? man, she's great. and i have to say - there are some bad dance clothes out there and even favourites in the past have worn the weird brightly coloured sports bras in their solos but not katee. great outfits.

anyways - the show plays at 10pm here but now it's over and it's only 7pm BC time. i'm heading to bed and coming back tomorrow. but i still think mark and courtney are out.