My other blog....

As a side note if you want to see about my classroom life, curriculum, kids, field trips and more, go to:

http://firstgradeinformation.weebly.com/sra-aronson.html

First Big Snow

So as we speak it is snowing up a storm.... We've got about 6 inches on the ground and it's supposed to snow all day, it's beautiful! We just got done hiking through the woods by our house and it's amazing how beautiful the area becomes, like a magical place, with everything covered in white. We are so thankful that it is snowing today, and that tomorrow the roads shouldn't be nearly as bad (although the high is 11..) 

Other than a beautiful snowy December it is a quick December! I can't believe it's already here! We are finally starting to really feel settled here in MN. We both are enjoying our jobs, I'm feeling like I really understand my first graders and the curriculum. I know I need to appreciate this time that should be chaotic, but which has actually been quite calm and fun decorating, because the new year is going to bring a lot of travel and business!

January: I'll be in NC the first week, and then two weeks later my dad ventures into the coldest/snowiest time in MN :)

February: Either I'll be heading to NC to celebrate Cammie's bachelorette, or I will have a visit from some KC friends

March: Headed to Texas with a possible visit from my mother at Spring Break.

April/May: Trip to Charleston to celebrate Nicole's bachelorette, and then Cammie's wedding in Colorado! (Did I mention I am in 4 weddings within a one year span? with 4 other weddings to attend as well?)

June: NC for NICOLE'S wedding, at the end of the month Afton for our friend Charlie and Shelby's wedding.

July: Hopeful visit from my parents to MN! And at the end of the month our last wedding for the year in Nebraska :)

Needless to say things are busy, and I'm traveling like it's my job, but that's part of what makes life fun. Knowing so many different people in so many different places gives you things to look forward to, things to be excited about and new places to visit and call a home away from home.

Breaks Make You Think...

So tonight I had a 3 hour class... in this class this phenomenal speaker spoke a PHd in Psychology spoke about cognitive psychology and how it impacts your affect (your feelings) which impact your actions. It made me miss psychology a lot and realize that as much as teaching has been a huge part of my life, it's not going to be the final thing.
-This is not to say I don't love my school, or my students, I just don't see myself as a teacher forever.

So I started thinking about options. There were a few different ways I could see things going.


With a Masters in Education I can:
1. Stay Teaching
2. Become an educational consultant
3. Become an instructional coach
4. Pursue a Doctorate

I can see pursuing a Doctorate in Psychology or Education.
Pros for education-much easier to get into the schools, pass tests because that has been my speciality.
Pros for psychology-room for further advancement, ability to practice as a psychologist.

Ultimately my perfect life would be
1. Mark and I buy a house, in a perfect location for under 200k :)
2. A few more years in teaching ( to perfect the craft of course)
3. Have a kid
4. Start my new career/educational pursuit. 

Of course like all things, this will happen, because life always occurs according to plan. :) Excited to see it all unfold!

It finally slows down (warning 3 weeks of craziness)

The past few weeks have been non-stop. Traveling every other weekend to weddings and to visit family have been so wonderful, but I'm glad for it to finally slow down!

It all started with Julie's wedding, in Pella, IA. Small dutch town, known for Pella Windows, tulips and windmills. It was a neat reunion with a few Kansas City friends and an excuse for my new husband and I :) to go to our first wedding together! Food was great, bride was beautiful, dancing was fun and 4 hr drive there not bad at all.

Weekend after that I got to my first Minnesota sporting event, we got a free ticket to see the MN Golden Gophers play football and went with a few friends. It was neat to be at a college football game (even it if wasn't the Deacs) and lucky for us they killed Purdue, so aside from being a tad chilly (a nice 40 degrees) it was a fun time! We grilled out with the friends afterwards at our place, so it was really nice to finally have a place bigger than a box so that we could host people for a second week in a row!


The next week flew by and I headed to NC to have the first visit with my family since I had been married! Of course, I left Mark at home :) I got to see my brother's new house, walk and play games with the family, we headed to the Blue Ridge to catch the last bits of fall colors (mainly brown) and visited with my Grandmother. Even though the weekend was short, it was wonderful to get to spend the time with my family. (My dad took some better pictures... I can't find them right now but they were good !)

The next week was one of the craziest weeks of my time here in MN! I got into the MN airport Monday afternoon, took public transportation (light rail + bus) into our little Minneapolis neighborhood and slept the day away because I had woken up at 3:30 to get to the airport! Then Tuesday night I had my first "grad' school class I'm taking with my district. Wednesday was Halloween and we went Trick-or-treating with Max and went to Pizza Nea for a last minute groupon date night! (about to expire of course). Thursday night and Friday morning were parent teacher conferences and Friday afternoon I left for Denver to go to CATHY's wedding!

Wow, it was such a neat time. I enjoyed my wedding of course, but there is something about being in wedding with some of your best friends, not having to worry if everything is going to go right, or about logistics, that is just fun and care-free! Cathy looked beautiful, we went for a hike in Boulder, had snuggle and giggle time on beds, and danced the night away. It was just perfect!

 Andrea and I like to be silly model poses :)


Luckily this week things finally slowed down (aside from the election-which went exactly how I wanted it in MN!). I was able to get back into normal routine, gym, clean house, cook, walk dog, watch silly reality tv, and we enjoyed a pretty relaxing weekend! Last night we went to celebrate a friend's end of being on campaign, but today another day of lazy do nothing but cook and watch football :) It's snowing which I still find exciting, but tomorrow's high is 29, so we'll see how much I like MN winter in a few months :)

neat view from our walk this week of skyline

Suffice it to say, I'm excited to do nothing the rest of the day, and may finish the leftovers from this morning's "Steve Aronson" breakfast for lunch with some homemade soup!

                            black bean and butternut squash soup

bacon, eggs and potatoes

His friends...My Friends

So this weekend we finallly hosted a "house-warming" party at our new little rental house for "Mark's" friends. It was funny.... because I said this to my parents, and then thought about it and realized when you're married a weird thing happens. Instead of it being, my friends and his friends, things start to combine. When you have someone who you care about, and respect, you WANT to know their friends and in the process they become your friends too. So this weekend we had a party with OUR friends. I wish I had taken some pictures, I made Halloween Cupcakes (AKA vanilla cupcakes with halloween sprinkles) finally used our chip/dip tray and had a nice little grill out. Of course the boys stayed up too late... of course we were exhausted the next day but it was  great time!

Next day Mark and I came up with a fair compromise.. he wanted to go out to brunch and I had been begging to go to an apple orchard and go apple picking (a tradition that is not very common in NC! There we pick strawberries :)) Anyways, we had a lovely little brunch on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Uptown; that only cost us $140....thanks to a silly parking ticket for not having my front license plate posted. We've been meaning to do it, but the car was bought in KS where they don't have front license plates, and we've been afraid to drill into the car, but this may be the catalyst. Mark looked in his "hardware" haha... and he did not have the screws we needed. So we will be getting those soon. Luckily to cheer us up we had our precious nephew Max come over... yes we are wearing our beautiful sweats.

Luckily, the apple orchard was much more successful. We made it to a less comercialized one in Stillwater, where there was no entrance cost and $7 for 1/4 peck... not a bad price for 15-20 apples!  We made it there on their last apple picking day, and Cici ate enough apples off of the ground to pay for double what we got. I've been hoping to make something with the apples, but after making all the cupcakes this weekend (I also made some GF pumpkin cupcakes..recipe below! So good Mark ate them!) I don't feel like I should make anything else yet!

I'm looking forward to a nice three-day week up ahead. Heading to NC on Thursday :) and looking forward to a weekend of Wake Forest Football Game with some suities, seeing fall happen all over again, walks with my family, visiting relatives, potential trip to the mountains, Thanksgiving dinner and getting to see the full-grown pup! Can't wait and the only thing that would make it better would be to be bringing along the man. I guess I'll just leave him here to have fun and hang out with "his" friends.


GF Pumpkin Cupcakes:
Ingredients
For cupcakes:
1/3 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup nondairy milk (soy, almond, or rice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup chocolate chips
For glaze:
1/4 cup brown rice syrup or honey
1 tablespoon margarine or coconut oil, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch ground cinnamon (optional)
Directions

1. To make cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk together oil, sugar, nondairy milk, and vanilla. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gently whisk flour mixture until well combined. Fold in pumpkin, but do not overstir or the batter will become gummy. Fold in chocolate chips.
3. Fill liners two-thirds full. Bake for 24-26 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to let cool completely.
4. To make icing: Whisk together rice syrup, margarine, vanilla extract, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a fork, drizzle icing atop completely cooled cupcakes.

It's 60 degrees...inside my house!

Well, I'm a Minnesotan now right? So 60 degrees is warm? I guess relative to the high of 49 it was today, as well as the 39 degrees Cici and I just went for an hour walk in ;) Cold scmold, I've been told this is nothing! My brother wants to visit this winter, which I'd love... I just don't think us North Carolinians know what we are in for.

On the bright side it is BEAUTIFUL out right now, fall colors everywhere! It reminds me of fall things, football games, pumpkin foods, trick-or-treating, jumping in leaves, bonfires. I'm excited to experience a new fall thing tomorrow, my friend Julie's WEDDING! Fall brings many great things :)

For example... Fall brings locking your keys in your house and opportunities to enjoy the weather, kind of. Thursday after being out for two days at a conference I woke up early and was excited to get to school earlier than normal to get everything back together after a sub. I was ready quickly out the door, shut it an immediately turned around and tried to open it again...I had locked my keys inside. What happened next? What do you think, I broke down in hysterical tears and called Mark, who was already 30 min away (one way) and 1.5 hours away (the other direction). After frantically running around the house, blubbering to him on the phone for 5 minutes my intelligent self kicked in and a wonderful co-worker came to pick me up. Needless to say, my first graders could have said "Sra. Aronson, act your age!" Luckily while I waited for a ride I was able to enjoy the views of fall....

Otoño ha llegado!

Another week in MN :) It's getting pretty!
This has been such a beautiful start of fall. This past week started warming up, with this weekend being in the high 70s! That'll be nice before the high is 45 on Friday. The fall colors are starting to show up, and has gotten me motivated to make pumpkin and fall foods: pumpkin pancakes, squash/quinoa pilaf, etc :)

As far as work goes, this week was pretty normal, however, we had some excitement in the neighborhood department. For some background, we live an a neighborhood called Brynn Mawr; houses are nice, mortgages are expensive, people are friendly and crime is scarce. Unfortunately, there was a mass shooting at a local business that is in our exact neighborhood. It was a small signage company that only employed about 28 people, 6 of which are now dead or in critical condition. It was strange for it to happen in our peaceful area; seeing swarms of police, swat teams, news vans and police tape on our daily walk was quite a shock. As was seeing the same the following morning. We are thankful that we are safe, but obviously it is something that is quite a surprise. The location is only 3 blocks from our house, below you will see the view of the building from the end of our street (luckily we live on a col-de-sac)

Luckily, the intensity was spared for our weekend. This weekend was pretty laid-back for us. Did a couple of crafts, started sewing an apron (pictures probably to come in two weeks) and painted a cute little momento from our wedding (super lame in Mark's terms :)) We of course watched the Vikes play, and because we had a friend come, we won THANKS MIKE :) Even though he didn't bring a veggie tray, he inspired me to make home-made pizza, something I haven't done since we moved to MN!

Looking forward to next weekend heading to see a friend get married :) and then in 2 weeks heading back to NC for my fall break! First time since I've been married. Overall, enjoying the start of fall, and getting excited about trips that are to come.