MASSIVE UPDATE!!!!1!1!!

It's time for a massive update. There are three things that we need to let you know about.

Update #1

Ingrid and Sonja just visited us from Winnipeg. They stayed with us for a week and we had a great time with them. We even got to walk them through their first experience with a tornado warning. The first day they were here, there was a line of thunderstorms that was pounding us pretty much all day. We did have to go down to the basement for about half an hour when a funnel cloud was sighted about a mile away from us. It did not touch down.

We also had a sushi night.As you can see, along with the sushi we had a huge bowl of delicious barbecued meat. Thanks, Ingrid.

Sonja, Ben, Andrea, Ingrid, Kate and Nick.

Update #2

Andrea and I had a little bit of time to work on the garden today before it started raining.

These will be green beans.

Lettuce and Spinach - the only things we had already planted.

Update # 3

It's a cute-off. A cute-off is not a competition, but just a situation where there are two cute things. Everyone wins a cute-off because everyone gets to see two cute things.

First we have our nephew Luke, and second is our nephew Airo.

Congratulations. You just won the cute-off.

Easter in Newton

I decided to attempt Paska. I actually had a friend teach me to make it last year, but she mostly did the work and I watched. It turned out pretty well today---but now I need to learn how to make that cottage cheese spread.

The recipe was huge, so I shared it with some others on my street.

We have some great neighbors here on 6th street. Jane is a lovely 92 year old who still gardens and has a great sense of humor. We invite each other over for tea every once in a while. She gave me her tomato cages last year. Adjacent our backyard lives an older (70s) couple who think we're hippie-farmers because we hang laundry, grow vegetables and have dandelions---but I think we've managed to convince them that we're not crazy. Then there is the lovely sweet (deaf) widow from our church, the family from church across the street who take in our mail when we're gone, and the younger couple next door with whom we share garden tools, groceries and invited us to be part of "cow-share" milk cooperative. There's a lot of sharing and give-and-take on our block. It's nice to have a little community around you like that. I always took good neighbors for granted on Helmsdale growing up. Anyway, that doesn't really have a lot to do with Easter ...or does it?

Tornadoes and Woodchucks

This weekend was Andrea's first tornado warning. A tornado warning means that a tornado has been sighted somewhere in your county. Sometimes close, sometimes quite far away. In this case, the tornado was quite far away, and it wasn't really even that stormy in Newton. I was actually walking home from the movie store when the siren went off, and the voice calmly shouted "Tornado... Warning... Take... Shelter... Immediately."

Everyone of course ran outside to see the tornado, but they were all disappointed.

This is what it looked like outside our sun room window. Except without the tornado.

I was about a half mile away from home, and I had to decide if I was going to run or not. On one hand, running would make me look like a moron. On the other hand, I knew that Andrea had never experienced a real tornado warning before and I wasn't sure if it would scare her or not. So I tried to run casually, like I just happened to be out for a jog in jeans and a flannel shirt. I believe most people were fooled.

Andrea was fine, and had already taken some blankets, a flashlight, and her visa documents to the basement. We hung out down there until they sounded the "All Clear" siren.

The next day, we awoke to see a woodchuck in our garden shed. Neither of us had ever seen a woodchuck before. This is what it looked like:

***insert woodchuck joke***

January showers bring February flowers?

Even though we've lived here for almost 3 years, waking up to blooming daffodils in February freaks me out.

Heart Day

Ben made these for us for breakfast on Valentine's day...


Awwwwww.... What a sweetie.

He also made me this lovely card....

Luckily, this was only the first page. (;

Work & Learning

I figured I should write a post on what takes up quite a bit of my life these days, which is my job, and learning how to do my job. For the past year, and for another year and half to come, I will be taking several credits of courses each semester to learn how to become a better teacher of students with visual impairments. This is my study chair on our porch. I spend most Saturday mornings here:

My school district was nice enough (and desperate enough) to take the risk of hiring me as the district "expert" on vision impairments in the classroom. I have 14 students. 3 of whom I teach and work with in braille. My office is at Slate Creek Elementary and I work there, with one of my primary students, most of the time. It's great school and I feel really at home there. (You can click on the picture to move around.)
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This is a deck of beginner-braille flashcards I recently made for one of my students in first grade who is going blind quickly, but can still read print. Her teacher told me that she remembers things best when they're "pretty" and I knew she sees green on yellow best.



Come June, I will be in Winnipeg again for 7 weeks, as I continue to take graduate classes at the North Dakota School for the Blind (near UND) in Grand Forks. I write up my research project over the winter 2009-2010 and hope to graduate in May 2010.

Cashing In and Checking Out

Ben here.

I'm in a little bluegrass band right now called "The Book of Jebb". We've been playing together for about a year now and mostly just do covers of other bluegrass artists. Recently, though, we've decided to try to practice a little more regularly and expand our repertoire. This opens up some time to work on original tunes, which is exciting.

My first submission to the band is a little swing tune I wrote called "Cashing In and Checking Out". I don't know if we'll do it or not, but I made a little video of it anyway so you can hear it. The melody is pretty short, as it's meant to be a jam tune that people take turns improvising over. What you'll hear in the video is just the introduction and one time through the melody.

Here it is: