Jennifer's Blog

Museum Day

2011-10-18T20:21:00.003-05:00

A few weekends ago....Ok a month or so ago Shalene and I took her kids done town for the free day at the Museum. We first went to the Health Museum. The kids had fun looking at what all the different stations were. Then we stopped off at the Children's Museum for a few moment's before the kids were burnt out.

Seriously love this cute kid!!!!!

Alaina had fun imitating the people.

When you peddaled the Skeleton peddled too. Alaina thought it was pretty cool.

Where do all the organs go????? Jonny Figuring out the puzzle.

Of course Cody was in Heaven with all the buttons there was to push!

Happy Birthday Shalene!

2011-09-17T14:18:00.002-05:00

Happy 30th Birthday Shalene!!!!

Good thing we only put 20 candles on the cake!

Love this picture of Alaina and Shalene!

Coldstones gift card from Jonny!

Yeah for presents!!!!

Puppet Show

2011-09-17T14:06:00.004-05:00

A few Sunday's ago Alaina put on a puppet show for us. The boys had to join in the fun. It was very entertaining.

After the puppet show mom pulled out her accordian to play for us. She is so talented.

I don't know what was more entertaining: Alaina telling the story of a giraff looking for someone to marry or Cody laughing at the show.

Jonny is gettign in on the puppet show action! The croud is anxiously awaiting the show.

TOO FUNNY!!!! The stage was behind the couch

We were eating dinner and I look over and see Jonny. He's not asleep, but almost! Doesn't look very comfortable.

Mom and Dad got a trampoline in their back yard. Shalene's kids love it! I love this picture of Alaina.

Cody has the best run on the trampoline. His legs are so short.

August Update

2011-09-17T13:40:00.003-05:00

A friend from college got married in August. Here are all my dear Aggie friends at Ben and Holly's reception. We always sing the Aggie War hymn. It was so fun to see everyone again.

Nefelinda, Breanne and I at the wedding reception! What fun good memories. Thanks Lisa for coming with me.

Cody is so dang cute! Shalene moved in next door to my parents. I LOVE having them here.

Alaina, Jonny and I all went out for ice cream one day after school!

Fun activities!!!!!!

New School Year!

2011-09-05T20:37:00.003-05:00

This will be my 7th year teaching at Maplebrook and my 6th year teaching PPCD - (Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities). Since my 4 cinder block dolls can be really gray and boring I decided to make it a little more colorful. I found some puppets and used our play blocks to hold them up. Yes that is a ball pit!

I also decided to be more of a "teacher" and actually put up bulletin boards this year. I was hoping for a picture of a beautiful beach and some palms trees, but I'll settle for colors and shapes.
Our play area with very minimal toys out for First Day Fest.

Our fun circle time area. I love the block chairs!

The school year started off great! I have a great class!

Prince Edward Island

2011-07-29T21:07:00.007-05:00

What a trip! I can't tell you how much fun this trip was.....Well once I got there. For the first time ever I missed my connecting flight from Montreal to Halifax due to the rare appearence of rain in Houston.

Lisa and I met in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We stayed at Kim Olvera's (co-worker)mom's house. It is a beautful house and it was extremely nice of her to let two strangers stay the night. On Wednesday morning Gloria(Kim's Mom) took us out to breakfast and then we drove her out to her cottage, which is an hour away from PEI. YOu can see her ocean view in the slideshow. I've never seen so many shades of green in my life! Pictures just can't do Canada justice.
On the way to the cottage we stopped off in Tatamagouche. They converted an old train station into a Bed and Breakfast. The train cars are actually motel rooms. The station has rooms upstairs a kitchen and trading post downstairs. It was a really cool idea.

To get to PEI we had to cross Confederation Bridge. It is an 8mile long bridge and it took us longer than 12min. to get acroos. Once we got to PEI we stayed in New London Bay Motel. We went down the street to Lucy Maud Montgomery's (wrote Anne of Green Gables)birthplace. Her mother died when she was young so she was raised by her grandparents. Who Marilla and Mathew are based on. Pictured in the slide show is a Hutch from her house. This is where she had an imaginary friend Katie. This inspired Anne's window friend when she lived with the Hamiltons and at the orphanage. The mantel is where LMM was married. Of course you can't miss the Lake of Shinning waters. A beautiful place infront of her grandparents house.
Wednesday night we went to a Celtic show put on by the Sky family. They are amazingly talented. Great music and dancing.

Wednesday - how to create a free slideshow

Thursday was just as much fun. We got up and went for a walk around the fields next to our hotel. We had lots of fun talking tons of pictures of the nature around us. So many different types of flowers. It's a good thing we went on a walk, because I realized my camera battery was dying. We went back to the hotel and charged it before heading to Green Gables. I could hardly contain my excitment and I think Lisa got a huge laugh out of me. At Green Gables we took a tour around the lot before heading into the Haunted Woods. The woods don't seem so haunted when there is a golf course right in the middle of them. The Green Gables in the film is obviously not the original, I believe they said it was a hotel somewhere. The inside of the house in the movie is a sound stage. Green Gables is actually where LMM's cousins lived. She would walk through the Haunted woods to get to their place. The woods were beautiful as well. I kind of joked we took three steps take a picture, walk another three steps take a picture etc.

If you walk out the front door of G.G. you walk straight down the path into the haunted woods. Placecards are scattered throughout the woods with quotes from LMM journal. Some are also from in the book.

LMM's homestead is no longer standing. It's just the brick surrounding the foundation that is there. It is here that she wrote Anne of Green Gables (G.G.)

Rachel Lynn "I once heard of an orphan that put striknine in the wheel, killed the whole family Marilla." That well is on the homestead property.

Next we toured G.G. Anne's room includes a puff sleeved dress and the slaight broken over Gilbets head. Marilla's room is nicely decorated and very neat. Mathew's room is off the kitchen as it was in the book. The stove in the kitchen is the same one they used in the film.

Behind G.G. is Lover's Lane. It is featured in the movie when Anne is walking through the woods reading a book on her way back to Mrs. Hamilton's house, with the 3 sets of twins. It again is ruined by a golf course cutting through.

That night we went to "Anne and Gilbert Musical" It was really cute. Its more about how Anne and Gilbert got together and follows the books more closely..... IF you've read the books you'll know Morgan Harris is not a main character at all.

Thursday - Free Slideshow Maker

Friday we got up and road bikes along the beach shore line..... Well kind of they have paths like the greenbelts in Kingwood, Tx you ride on. It was a beautiful mornign and even better.... We could wear a sweater! LOVED IT!!!!!!

We drove back to Halifax and took several pictures on the way home. One was of a sign that says half way between the North Pole and the equator. We stopped for lunch in a place with the largest blueberry farm. Lisa and I also chuckled at the speed limit signs. once in Halifax went to Citadel Hill. It's a really cool fort and Lisa and I had tons of fun talking pictures. The fort took 28 years to build. It was an active military post through two world wars up until 1952 when it was declared a national historic site. Next we made a stop off at a cemetary where some of the Titanic victims are buried. Then went went back to Gloria's house and went to sleep. Our plan left at 5:45am.

Friday - how to make a free slideshow

At last the trip had to come to an end sometime. :( Canada is beautiful and I enjoyed the trip a ton. I can't telling Lisa "I can't believe we are actually here!" It's true! I never thougth I would go there, but it was tons of fun!

Canada or Bust

2011-07-16T23:06:00.003-05:00

Lisa and I are heading to Prince Edward Island next week. I can hardly contain my excitement. I've wanted to go for so long. Sad we aren't staying very long, but too excited to see all the sights from my favorite childhood movie. I always wanted red hair like Anne Shirley. I want to be on the plane right now.

LONG TIME!

2011-07-16T22:41:00.002-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything. Here are just a few highlights. Alicia's family came and visited for two weeks. It was fun to have them here for my birthday. We had a great family BBQ. We made homemade rootbeer with dry ice. I love watching the kids get all excited when we put the dry ice in the rootbeer. Claudia became a US citizen! I took the day off to go. We were very glad she made it through the ceremony with out going into Labor. Claudia and Dannen welcomed their new daughter Brooke into the world. She is very cute and I love to holdh her during church every Sunday. It has been alot of fun to have their family so close.

I also went to my first hockey game. I was disappointed. I actually love the game hockey, with the slamming up against the wall to get the puck. Unfortunately they also hirer players that are trained fighters. The game would stop so to players could take over their gear and duke it out on the ice. It was sad to see all the children yelling "fight".

Birthdays and Family Fun!!!

2011-03-15T14:17:00.007-05:00

While mom was in California visiting Shalene, Dad and I went to the Humble Rodeo. It was kind of cold, but it was fun. The riders were good and the kids chasing the calfs was a lot of fun to watch too. Would you belive this is the same arena I graduated high School in?

I'm proud to be an American. I love our Flag and give thanks to those who fight for my freedom.

Mom's Birthday was a lot of fun. We went and looked at paint for the house and then dad made a pinapple upside down cake to celebrate. Happy Birthday to the Greatest mom!

This is one of my favorite pictures of my parents. I love to see the fun personalities they both have.

Blow out the Candles on your cake and make a wish! Serve everybodies favorite dish!

We also pulled out the fire pit for her birthday and roasted Hot dogs and had smores. It was alot of fun have Jason's family in town. Landon and Abby are so much fun to be with.

Landon was having a grand time eating smores. He's hands got pretty dirty.

Abby looks very excited to be roasting a marshmellow.

These two play very well together. Landon was singing for us. He sounds just like Jason did on some of our family home videos.

I love his blue eyes!

YUMMY!!!!

I think Landon enjoyed the nights activities.

Abby's birthday was just right after mom's. She couldn't decide on an Elmo cake or Scooby Doo. Dadra asked me to make a cake for her. Just so happens that we managed to get both in one cake. Abby loved it! The design of the cake pan is Scooby eating a Hamburger, so we made a minor change to Elmo, which made it a lot easier to decorate too.

Abby opening her presents and Landon loved them too.

Dannon and Claudia came over. Abby got a new out fit from them.

Abby got alittle laptop for her bithday. It was so fun to watch them all play on it.

Must have been a great afternoon. Jason, Dadra, Landon, Abby, Kyla and Dad all enjoying the day.

Still enjoying the games! Happy 5th Birthday Abby! She is excited she gets to go to school next year.

Kristen and Jared's Wedding.

2011-03-15T13:46:00.005-05:00

Kristen was our roommate for about 6 months. She and Jared were sealed on Feb. 26, 2011. President Johnson sealed them. It was pretty cool, because he was also Jared's mission president. Bev (Jared's mom) Alona and I hosted a Bridal shower for Kristen. Alona left town that weekend to go visit family in Idaho so she couldn't attend. She did make some really fun games for the event. We missed having her there since she is an expert and documenting occassions with pictures. I am not, which is why we only have a few pictures for the occassion. Sorry Kristin!

Sister Chappell, Kristin's sister and her mother-in-law, Carrie Paige

Jennifer Norman and her adorable son Alex, Sister CookYeah for presents! Kristin had a each person assigned a room and they were to buy something to help decorate her new house.

I love making cakes and volunteered to make their wedding cake. I was all excited until the week before I got the flu and just as I was getting over that I got few poisoning just a few days before their wedding. I was getting really nervous that I was not going to be able to make the cake. Thank goodness for the Priesthood and a Dad who is worthy to hold it. He and Josh stopped by and gave me a blessing. I was perfectly fine by Friday and it only took me 6 hours to bake everything. My favorite part of the whole cake was the LEGO cake topper. I even had some white LEGO from school that Kristin found to make a stand for the cupcake to sit on. ( Doesn't the pool in the background look inviting?)

This is halfway through decorating them. The brown cupcakes were white marble and the red ones were cherry chip. I had a lot of fun making this one. I love her colors.

Would you believe that I still had to make more frosting to finish decorating all 200 cupcakes?

Jared and his sister Julie love porcupines. Apparently they would try and catch them when they lived in Alaska. I was a little nervous about making the groom's cake, but I love it. The quils are shoestring potato chips. It was 100 times easier to make than I thought it would be. I don't have a picture of the little porcupine cupcakes that went with it, but they were cute.

Jared's Family

Painting

2011-03-15T13:38:00.003-05:00

Jason and Dadra come into town for mom's birthday. Her birthday wish was to pick out paint colors for the house. Some people from our ward came and rebuilt the fireplace and painted the trim in the TV room. I love the colors we picked out. Mom and Jason did most of the painting. I helped with a few walls. I didn't have much energy since I had got sick right before they came into town.

Finished product. Can you tell we had some very fun visitors?

I think this wall has been taped about 4 times from painting the molding to painting the wall. It looks good though!

I Love the frame the blue paint made above the mantle.

Christmas

2010-12-27T16:00:00.006-06:00

Santa had a few helpers this year. It's tradition that Santa puts balloons on our tree every Christmas.

It's always nice to have family home for Christmas.

Every year Santa gives everyone an apple and an orange in their stocking. This year since I got to Help Santa out I put two oranges in my stocking along with the Candy mom had divided. Unfortunately some younger twin of mine decided to be funny and changed out the two oranges for to apples. Pretty funny!

The long awaited moment where Shalene opened her gift. I had her family this year and decided to make her a book of pictures with all her children's funny quotes. Believe me there are a lot. I'm glad she liked it.

Jonny, Alaina and Cody made Christmas much more fun this year. It is so much fun to watch young kids get all excited for their gifts.

Christmas Eve matching PJ picture!

I'd say Cody was done!

Beautiful Mary!

They did a great job acting out Mary and Joseph. It was nice to have them here this year.

Santa was good to us all this year.

We went looking at Christmas lights near the temple. When we were done we stopped off at the temple so that we could see the Manger Scene. Cody stopped long enough to pose for a picture with me.

Alaina and Jonny had fun looking at the water too.

Jonny tried to get out of the picture.

Can you get much cuter than this?

Manger Scene at the Temple! It's beautiful.

Alaina's all read for Santa!

Catch up

2010-12-22T13:39:00.005-06:00

Ok so I down loaded these first two in the wrong order, but oh well. Our school had a sock hop night for our PIE night (Parents Involved in Education). We got to dress up 50's style all day. It was kind of fun. For the month leading up to the sock hop parents could check out books to read with their child that were popular when they were young.

Liz Ray, Me, Lindsey Rousseou all dressed up for the night.

Jill Ainsworth and I spent two hours of the night dishing up Culver's Custard for the night. It was a lot of fun.

Claudia, Baily and Kyla at the ward halloween party. It was a lot of fun, but very crowed.

I love it when Shanna wears her hair in ringlets. Kyla had fun with all the candy there.

Carson loves "New" Mario brothers on the Wii. I visiting teach his mother who is the Primary President in our ward. Her husband is also a councilor in the Bishopric, so I get to go over once a month and babysit he and his brother while they are at Ward Council meetings. It's lost of fun.

I love Claudia's custom!

Bailey did not like this hat very much so we had to snap a very quick picture with her wearing it. Ok so the candy bribe didn't hurt either. I love having the Bushman's in our ward.

Raggedy Ann and Tigger. Somehow I don't mind being the one to watch all the kids while the mom's go and get something to eat. Can you blame me?

Did you know there are "Mountains" In Texas? Dec. 9th I flew to El Paso to Present at Region 19 "Together for Autism Conference" We snapped this picture on our way back to the airport. Andrea Cherry and Heidi also presented.

I have never met a nicer group of people than I did in El Paso. They were all so polite and helpful in getting set up for the conference.

Christmas Vacation is never complete unless you are baking. So I'm catching up with all my cupcake decorating. I found these snowman in a magizine and just had to make them. It was a lot of fun. They are marble cupcakes. My roommate Kristen is getting married Feb. 26th 2011 and asked for me to make her cake. She want's marble cupcakes so I had to try them out first.

I also have been dying to make a cupcake wreath. I bought a book three years ago from our school book fair. I've wanted to make it ever since. The leaves are chocolate and the cherries are red gumballs. It took a long time to make but I think it turned out ok.

The leaves kept breaking as I tried to put them on the cupcakes. It took lots of patience.

Gig'em Aggies and Friends Reunion

2010-12-22T13:18:00.004-06:00

Last month was a great month. I had reunions with several old friends and families I worked for. Made me miss my days in College Station!

Arzu and her family came to visit first. It was great to see them I was impressed that Shayan remembered what CD's we use to listen to in our car when he earned RT time. We went and had Chinese food together. Unfortunately I deleted the picture of Arzu, Reza and I.

Next came my good ol' aggie friends. Ben's 30th birthday was last month and his girlfriend Holly tried to have a surprise birthday party for him. They were all in town for Crystal's Wedding the day before. Holly sent out FB invites out to everyone, but two days before the party Ben sent his own invites out to everyone. We all kind of laughed at him. We met up at Goode's BBQ. We had such a fun group of people at A&M when I was there. It was nice to catch up with everyone.

Ashleigh, Katherine, Ben, Jennifer, Nefilinda, Daniel, Jacob, Bryan and his wife.

Gig'em Aggies!!!!!!!

Autism Conference

2010-10-17T17:28:00.002-05:00

Texas State Autism Conference was held in Corpus Christie on Oct. 7-9. I presented on Saturday for two sessions. It was a lot of fun! Alona's School sent her and it was nice to have someone to hang out with at night.

I had two Sessions on Saturday. I think the first one went a lot better than the second one. I had lots of people who want to buy copies of my Picture Activity Schedules. I've made about a hundered of them now. I'm just waiting for the Sales tax permit to come so I don't get in trouble.

The room was huge. It seated about 500 people. Don't worry not that many showed up. I had about 40 -50 in each session though. Last year there were several fights amongst attendees that this year they decided not to have make and take sessions. Instead the presenter did a demonstration on how to make each item. That's not nearly as fun and to talk for 90 min on how to make a little book is rather hard. Needless to say we got out early :) I don't think people minded though since it was the last day of the conference. We all wanted to go home. There was not nearly the attendance as there was last year.

One night we went out to eat with a few people from Alona's school. I think I'll just say it was an experience. Teachers can get kind of crazy when they are not at work.

Harry Potter Piano Theme

2010-10-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

Family Reunion - DC & Gettysburg, Family Photos

2010-09-05T19:18:00.006-05:00

We went and watched the changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown in Arlington. It was the HOTEST day of the summer. I think it got up to 109. I've never sweated so much in my life. My Uncle Don met us there and spent the day with us. He is a marine and had some really intersting stories to tell. Story 1: Arlington National cemetary got started because Robert E. Lee coudn't decide which side to fight on, the North or the South during the Civil War. He decided to join the Confederate, the North got mad. In hopes that he would not return home they buried soliders (who fought for the north) in his front yard. The cemtary grew into what it is today
Story 2: We had lunch at Iwa Jima that after noon. Uncle Don told us that Grandma Clarice, who is also a marine was one of the first to see the photo when it was sent to DC for approval to be printed. She worked in the office that recieved all of the journalist photos when someone in the office opened up the photo and said "Oh this one will be famous." Her and several others gathered around to look at it.

We went and spent part of the day at Gettysburg. My camera battery died for part of it. We saw a short film on Gettysburg and then just drove around the battle field. The kids were getting hungry and tired. It was a really pretty day.

I must admit one of my most favorite parts about the whole reunion was playing games. We got some games of the "Minute to win it" website. They were absolutely hilarious. I'll spare myself the wrath of my siblings and not post any videos of us doing them, but here are a few pictures. Abby and Alaina put on a puppet show for us. I'm not sure what it was about, but they had lots of fun.

And what is a family reunion with out family photos. It's a little hard to get everyone looking at the camera at the same time. We walked down the street from Jason and Dadra's house to have their Relief Society President take the pictures. Her kids were jumping on the trampoline while we took photos. Can you guess which direction the trampoline was. :)

Family Reunion Continued - Antietam

2010-09-05T19:06:00.002-05:00

We went to eat lunch at the Pennsylvania Dutch Market. The Amish come and sell food there and they make some pretty good BBQ.

After Lunch some of us drove up to Antietam and visited Burnside Bridge. It was amazing to think about how much history took place in this area and how it shaped our country. Grateful for those who fought for what the believed in.... OUR FREEDOM!

Family Reunion Continued

2010-09-05T18:21:00.007-05:00

Thursday Morning dad made us the best egg burritos. He really does make the best I've tasted.

After Breakfast we all loaded up to hike part of the Appalachian trail. It was really pretty and the cousins had fun chasing each other up the trail. They were fun to watch.

Landon having fun.

Grandpa had fun with his grandkids. I love this picture!

We stopped at a monument for a little rest.

Landon, Tanner, Brayden and Abby

You had to walk up a stairs to get to the top of the monument. Brayden and Tanner were kind enough to pose for me on the way down. They loved letting me take pictures of them.

After stopping at the monument some of us continued to hike while others went back with the kids. It was a really beautiful hike and nice to have time to visit.

Family Reunion

2010-08-15T20:12:00.002-05:00

Dadra and Jason did a great job planning the reunion.... well other than ordering some really hot weather. :) Those Houstonians, must have brought it with them. We went to an Ag. expo. The grandkids had fun seeing the animals. We even watched pig races and cows being milked.

Darrell Call Family Reunion

2010-07-26T16:44:00.002-05:00

This year Jason and Dadra hosted our family Reunion in Maryland. Mom, Dad and I drove up. We made several fun stops on the way. We stayed the night In Tennessee and went to Ruby Falls. It's a 40 foot under ground waterfall. It was a lot of fun. Then we stopped in Virgina and stayed the night with my friend Allison. Allison works at Virgina Tech. She gave us a tour of her campus (past all the gray buildings). We stopped at the memorial for those who died from the shooting there on campus. It was very pretty and one student puts letters and a flower on the stone when it is that persons birthday. I thought that was pretty cool. She told us of a great place to hike called Cascade Falls. The trail was kind of muddy, but it was a lot of fun and very pretty.

Curtains

2010-07-17T13:54:00.005-05:00

I have a very talented mom. She made these curtains for her bedroom. She did an awesome job.

She had just enough material to make curtains for each of her windows. I love them.

Peaches

2010-07-17T13:41:00.002-05:00

Mom and I ordered a bushel of peaches this week. We decided to bottle most of them. We froze a few and made a peach crisp out of the rest.

I believe in all we bottled about a 100 peaches.

First we scaled the peaches so we could remove the skin. I'll admit I love it when the skin came off in one piece. Mom got a good laugh out of me when they came off perfect.

What a mess, but it sure was a lot of fun!!!!

We could seal seven bottles at a time. They didn't tak as long as canning chicken did.

We ended up with about 14 jars each, plus what we froze, ones used for the peach crisp, and the few we kept out to eat. It was a lot of fun.

100,000 Miles

2010-07-17T13:33:00.004-05:00

I've had my Toyota since 2003. Seven years later I hit 100,000 miles! I had to pull over to take the picture. I was so scared that I was going to miss it.

I love patterns on the odometer. I know I'm weird.100,ooo miles a new clutch, transmission, drive wheel axel and passenger side mirror. I've put that car through a lot.

Happy Birthday

2010-06-20T21:51:00.003-05:00

Well as you can tell I didn't take these pictures. Unfortunately while looking at all my fun pictures on my camera tonight, they all seem to have disappeared. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. I'm very sad about it, but thought I would document this last week anyways.

The Thursday before my birthday I was running to a FEAT (families for effective autism treatment) meeting across town. I was very excited that I finally got to go and grad. school was not in the way. Well somehow the side of the garage jumped over into my space and took of the passenger side mirror. It was dangling by the wires. So imagine the next couple of pics. as if they were a silver toyota corolla and you basically have what my car looked like.

Needless to say I didn't make it to my meeting that night.

For my birthday I had a few friends from the ward over as well as my cousins that live in the area for a BBQ. The highlight of my day was making homemade root beer using dry ice to carbonate the drink. 16 cups of sugar a whole bottle of Root beer concentrate, water and some dry ice makes for a lot of excited kids. The Jeffery and Josey kids had so much fun watching the fog that comes once you put in the dry ice. (so sad those pictures are gone too) They all had to sit right around the container of root beer while they ate to watch it. It was a lot of fun.

We made about 5 gallons of root beer so if anyone is looking for some come on over I have tons left over.
I loved watching the kids get all excited. It made my day!

Graduation!

2010-05-15T19:59:00.005-05:00

Jennifer Call M.EdIt's official I'm an Alumni of Sam Houston State University. Master of Education! Now with a lot more prayer and studying I can pass the certification test in November and be Jennifer Call M.Ed, BCBA!

Mom and Dad came to the graduation at Sam Houston State University!

Dad a few years ago helped me see the benefits of furthing my education, then continued to give me good advice as I worked my way through the program. Thanks Dad!!!

Mom, spent many hours helping me calm down and keep focused and continue pushing through! She even drove me to Sam Houston University (hour and half drive) shortly after I had surgery so I wouldn't miss class and grade points! Thanks for all your help and faith in me! This degree is as much yours as it is mine!

Sam Houston Statue on campus.

Oops wrong school! What can I say once an Aggie, always an Aggie! WHOOP!

In keeping with tradition we went to Cheddar's for dinner, unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of my friends that joined for the celebration.

Crying Game

2010-02-09T17:53:00.003-06:00

I have some pretty cute kids this year in school. I wish it was legal to post videos of them. Since I can't this is the next best thing. One student is having a very hard time transitioning. When you ask them to check their schedule they fall to the floor. We decided to ignore it and walk away when it happens. The student followed us around the room. If I sat at my desk, they would walk over fall down behind my chair and start crying. So I got up and walked across the room keeping my back to them the whole time. Did the exact same thing. It was so funny... well as funny as listening to one kid scream for three hours straight. At least it was a little entertaining today.

Update

2010-01-17T12:54:00.005-06:00

After presenting at the Texas State Autism Conference I have recieved tons of emails asking for my lego books. The activity books teach students how to build lego structures one step at a time.

I have tons of these books, but the pictures are not very good. Once students master building one lego at a time we move to books where each picture has two or three legos added at a time. I also incorporate turn taking skills with all of this.

This is a very small picture of one of my books.

This duck is one of my favorites. Here are all the different structures I built over christmas break. I'm getting a little tired of taking them all apart one lego at a time and taking pictures of them, but there are about 42 Lego books I will have by the time I finish all of this.

Sure glad Susannah left the ping pong table so I could spread everything out over it. This summer I'm presenting at Region 4, doing a make and take workshop for 100 teachers. In preperation for all of this I need to finish all of these lego books, along with Mr. Potatoe Head, Lincoln Logs, Nuts and Bolts building set, Bristle blocks, Doll house- with scenerios to teach students. YIKES! I'm actually hoping that I can get all of this published. Would be nice to have a little extra income.

Texas State Autism Conference

2009-12-06T10:34:00.007-06:00

Andrea Cherry, Heidi Bassesst and I presented at the Texas State Autism Conference this last week in Corpus Christi. It was a lot of fun. I wasn't to nervous since the other two presenters had presented last year and both are very knowledgable. However, when we picked up our badges and I had to add he presenter sticker too it I must admit a little fear did creep in.

Some how I got lucky and got to stay on the 18th floor of our Hotel which was the excutive floor. I had to use my room key to get to the floor. Andrea and Heidi shared a room two floors down from me. At night they would come in and turn down my bedsheets, leave me ice water, and snacks on my desk. Talk about being pampered. They also turned on my tv to some nice quiet music. Scared me the first time I came in because I thought I had walked into someone elses room.

This is a view from my window. We were right on the beach. The blue light in the center top of the picture is the USS Lexington. It looked really pretty lite up at night although you really can't tell in this picture.

Here's my room. You can see the ship through the window.

This is the day view out my window/ on my balcony. The white building just under the bridge is were we presented. It's called the American Bank Center. It was a very nice facility.

Another view from the balcony.

The pictures didn't turn out to good, but this is our second presentation on Thrusday afternoon. the room was packed!!!!! We presented twice -two three hour presentations. Once in the morning and then another one in the afternoon. From left to right, Heidi, Jennifer, Andrea

Me answering questions. We only had one person that did not like what we presented.

The first session was on Target Generalization: Integrating ABA and TEACCH in the classroom

The afternoon session that day was Structured Centers to Maximize Learning & Generalization for Students with ASD.

The second presentation was basically explaining my classroom setup and how I teach play skills that generalize to the general ed. classroom. Must admit after standing the first three hours I was getting a little tired of standing. There were lots of good questions and several people asked if we could come to there districts or if they could come visit my classroom.

I think so far we are going to do trainings for Abiline ISD, San Antonio, Region 4 possibly Corpus. Friday we didn't present so I was able to go to a few sessions. Laughed my head off when I sat down in one and the lady next to me asked why I was there. She had been to our two presentations the day before and she said I already knew everything. She couldn't understand why I was sitting in the session. At break I was going to go back to the hotel and get some headach medicine. It took me 20 minutes to get out of the room b/c people kept coming up and asking me question. It made me feel really good.
No trip is ever complete without a few mess ups. I turned on my mic for the second presentations and hit some button that made a very loud noise. You know the ones that are almost as bad as fingernails on a chalk board. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened. When we were checking into the hotel I dropped my purse and everything fell out. Oh well good stories.
This is the few from the Conference center, just outside of the Ballroom that we were presenting in.
Saturday we did a make and take session on Academic and Vocational Jigs. We had to turn away some people because we didn't have enough materials for everyone. Our facilitator was a little nervous to tell people the session was close. Apparently the day before they closed a make and take session and a brawl broke out. One lady was very upset she couldn't get in. I'm surprised at how adults act sometimes.

Dr. Temple Grandin was the keynote speaker. She was really good. I was excited to finally hear her speak. She is a very famous person with ASD. They are actually making a movie about her life that comes out in Feb. I'm very excited. She talked about how she has learned how to sell her product since she doesn't have the best social skills. Check out her website.http://www.templegrandin.com/templehome.html

She's pretty amazing and a very good public speaker.

Autism Conference

2009-11-23T21:33:00.003-06:00

I was at work today and my co-worker came in and started talking about the Autism Conference we are going to Dec. 3-5. Two other district Autism facilitators and I are presenting four sessions at the conference this year. I was excited simply because it will look good on a resume and I think the set up the district has for my class is very unique and effective. I'm wish more would go to this set up we have.

Anyways she mentioned that she saw my name in the program. I hadn't even thought about that. Nor for some reason did I realize that this was the Texas STATE Autism Conference. I know if I'm presenting you think I would realize what I was presenting at.

I had to get online and look at the program and there in small print was my name Five times!!!
I even got listed with all of the really cool, knowledgable Autism ladies that I always wish I could be more like.(still all their years of experience and knowledge.) It made me really excited. I feel slightly important at the moment. :)

The link to the program (not that you really care) is:
http://autism.esc2.net/Conference/documents/program.pdf

Gonna be a Bear!!!

2009-11-11T17:24:00.002-06:00

Click on the picture and it will come up so you can read it! TOO FUNNY!

Happy Halloween

2009-11-02T18:22:00.002-06:00

Our school carnival was on Friday as well. They always ask me to bake something for the cake walk. So I descided to try something new. The Aliens are made from a cupcake,marshmellow, donut hole and frosting. They were fun to make, but would have done better if they would have been eaten right way.

Then I made pumpkin cupcakes. The stem is a green licorce.

I must say I have the best Paraprofessional to work with! She's awesome! Kim to one for the team on Friday at our school carnival. Actually I should say she took several for the team.
She volunteered to have pies thrown in her face for 45min. Brave soul! (don't ask me what I'm doing in this pic.????)

This is right after I hit her with one. She is such a good sport and a hard worker.

Not only did I throw a pie in her face (actually a plate of some really good tasting whip cream), but her daughter smashed the whole plate in her face.

Here's her son shawn in action as well.

Another good shot. This actually stuck to her face long enough for me to hunt for my camera in my purse, pull it out and then take picture.

Kim is a brave soul and one of the best people I have ever worked with. She's very talented with the students and is always keeping me going. Thanks KIM!!!

Crazy Hat day

2009-11-02T18:04:00.004-06:00

Friday was crazy hat day. I actually was wearing a hat that said boss on it. I thought that fit me pretty well personallity wise. HA Anyways one of my coworks came in and told me I had to wear a different had. Before she showed me what it was she made me promise I would wear it. This is what I got myself into. Apparently they all think I should be married and they want to make sure everyone knows. I actually thought it was pretty funny.

The funny part is that I agreed to wear it to breakfast in the morning. Besides its only prek that goes to breakfast at the time so no one else is in the cafeteria. WRONG!!! It was a rewards day for the other grade levels. A fellow teacher that started the same year as me was in there dancing with the other students. I ignored her first attempts to ask if I was engaged. I shouldn't have. I left with my two students to walk back to class. I passed four PTO parents and they had some cake questions to ask. Andrea came running out of the cafeteria and yelled at the top of her lungs.... "ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED!"

I was a little embarrassed about all the attention, but my teammates just laughed. I smiled and said no it's crazy hat day and this is definitly crazy for me.

Kim was having to much fun taking pictures of me. It was a very funny day.
Next time I'll stick to being the BOSS.
Good laughs though!

I got my trash kicked by a four year old!

2009-09-27T19:04:00.004-05:00

Well I might need to start wearing one of these to work. Friday while working with a student on the floor I got head butted in the mouth. Unfortunately for me we were sitting right in front of the white board. It was not prevoked and I'm not really sure what brought it on. All I know is that the student got me really good. My head flew back and hit the whiteboard right in the center of head. I have a good busted lip that swelled up pretty quick and I had the wind knocked out of me for a few minutes.

I didn't actually pass out, but it took me a few minutes to realize what had happened and to see clearly. My vision got very blurry for a few moments. I'm surprised she didn't knock a tooth out. After gaining composure, as much as possible anyways, I walked down to the nurses office. I was pretty dizzy still and my head was killing. She had a coupld of kids in there so I just asked if I could have an ice pack. I was standing right in front of the fridge, but I couldn't think of where in the nurse's office and ice pack would be. NOT GOOD! I took some excedrin too and went back to class. After an hour I still felt dizzy,weak and extremely nauses so I went back to the nurse who wouldn't let me leave her office until mom came and picked me up. Boy am I glad she lives close. We went to the doctor who left me alone in the room for about 45 min. Made me laugh... hey she has a head injury lets leave her alone. DUH. Anyways he said I had a concussion and gave me some muscle relaxers to take at night. (Does that sound odd to anyone) no headache medicine just muscle relaxers. I stayed at mom's for a couple of hours and then went and picked up my car. I still have a headache and a little light headed. Guess its back to the doctor tomorrow after work.

Don't worry I won't sit on the floor in front of the white board again.

OOPS! Early bird catches the...ZZZZZZ

2009-09-14T19:05:00.002-05:00

So I've been trying to get up early and study before school, because by the time I get home I'm so tired from chasing kids all day that school work is the last thing I want to do. Well yesterday I got into bed about 8:30. I was so excited, but had to change my alarm back to 4:00am. WRONG thing to do. I was so excited when the alarm went off this morning and I hopped right up. I started typing and reading away when I realized the computer clock said 3:22am. That was a little confusing so I grabbed my phone. Yep it said 3:22am as well. I must have changed my time clock while trying to fix my alarm. Oh well. I finished what I needed, but couldn't go back to sleep so I started another project. Needless to say I am very tired now.

Heather and Shelly's birthday

2009-09-13T13:08:00.004-05:00

Heather and Shelly let me live with them over the summer. It was awesome! I saved gas and travel time to school everyday. I came back to Alona's house on the weekend to sleep in my own bed and then went back to the Burnham's on Monday. I loved it!

For their birthday in August we all went bowling. It was a lot of fun and there was a good turn out. There was a little difficulty with getting our lanes at first since the bowling alley messed up on our reservation, but it all turned out to be great fun. I made them a hippo cake since they love them.

Melissa, Mark, Shelley, Alona, Daniel, Ed

Jaimee, Carla, Nikki, Jennifer

Katherine, Alona, Kim, Heather

Ed and Melissa

Heather, Nikki, Cordell

Maryland

2009-09-13T12:16:00.003-05:00

So I just figured out where all my pictures went (on another SD card). In August I spent a few very fun day with Jason and Dadra in Maryland. It was fun to visit them and to get a way from school. I made sure that no homework came with me. It was great! We went to the zoo, Aquarium, saw a dolphin show, went to the National Mall, Arlington Cemetary and watched the changing of the guard. Jason and Dadra were kind enough to let me take one of their cars and visit the family I use to nanny for. The boys are all grown up and one is a Sophmore in College now. (YIKES)

Abby is hilarious and loves to play dress up. She's got her cat walk down. Landon has the best laugh. It was nice to get away! They have some beautiful parks there that we spent alot of time at. I also can officially say I've stepped foot in W. Virginia now. :) We went hiking one day down this beautiful path. Jason will have to remind me the name, but it is a 150mile trail that is beautiful. I would love to bike it one day. Any one want to join me?

McCall Brynn Hemming

2009-09-07T20:38:00.003-05:00

I thought I would jump a head a little from previous things that has happened (I'm not sure where all my pictures went.)

I took a quick (and I do mean quick) break from studying this weekend and flew out to Rexburg ID for the blessing of the 8th grandchild in our family. McCall Brynn Hemming was born August 15 2009. They blessed her yesterday in church. I was lucky enough that it was a 3 day weekend due to Labor Day so flew out Saturday morning to Salt Lake, drove to Rexburg with my parents and brother that night. We went to the blessing Sunday and drove back to Salt lake that night so I could catch a plane back to Texas this morning and not miss any work. I even got a few things done on my thesis on the plane ride.

McCall is so cute and it was fun to see Tanner and Brayden again. Here are a few pictures from the trip. I might mention that my sister Alicia made her blessing dress. She did an awesome job.

Behavior Change Project

2009-07-29T10:21:00.008-05:00

In a year from now I will graduate from Sam Houston with my Masters degree. Many of you know I've been studying Autism and Low incidence disabilities. What some of you don't know is that the major emphasis in this program is on analyzing behavior. Obviously this is mostly taught in the area of changing the behaviors of students with disabilities, but the principals can be applied to anyone. Every semester we have to do a behavior change project, keep data, graph the data and write a huge paper on it.
I decided I would go out on a limb this time and try one on myself rather the on one of my students. This is were I need you help and I'm opening up to a lot in my own personal life. As many of you reading this know I have hard time remaining positive all the time. Although I feel I've come a long way since high school I still have a long was to go. I've also noticed that it gets harder the more time I spend by myself - inside stuying all the time, and I have less free time to be around others. Where I can not change some of my circumstances (ie the number of hours I need to study) I can change some of my thoughts during those long hours.

What I need from you if you choose to help me is to leave positive statements about me or funny- happy times we have had together. Just click on the word comment at the bottom of this post and leave me a message. I'll then record these statements on my MP3 and play them as I drive back and forth to school or on study breaks while i'm working out. My goal is to be able to feel these idle times up with happy/ funny things to think about instead of what I'm frustrated about. Just click on the comments box at the bottom of this post. A page will come up to leave me a comment on something positive for me to focus on.

Thanks in advance for your help with this project. Hopefully you'll be able to tell the positive effects it has. I thought I would share a few of my favorite times and happy memories as well. If you don't want to leave them in the comment section you an email me. I'm addicted to email - maybe that's my next behavior change project. :)

For my birthday Lisa gave me a chest full of 30 items that had some memory attached to it. They made me laugh remember all the things we've been through.

Teaching has been a big strenght to me. There is nothing more gratifying to me then seeing them accomplish a task they could not do before.

Cake decorating with friends. Can't get much better for me. Thanks for the room this summer Ladies.

Youtube or Homework... that is the question

2009-07-21T19:30:00.002-05:00

So I needed a little break from studing and kept singing Amazing Grace in my head so I decided to go and look on youtube for a good version. I found Hayley and I had to listen to much more then just Amazing Grace. She is from New Zealand and has an amazing voice. Enjoy!

Phantom Of the Opera

2009-07-17T10:14:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday My dad took me to go see Phantom of the Opera! It was lots of fun to be with Dad. Especially since he and mom had been gone for a couple of weeks. I love living close to my parents and being able to do stuff with them. I must say I was blessed with the best parents ever! They've helped me a lot. I love our "Daddy daughter dates"

Goodbye Dr. Ruth Debar

2009-07-11T10:38:00.003-05:00

My Favorite(actually all of our favorite) professor decided to leave Texas for New Jersey. Not very happy, but its a great move for her. The whole cohort met at Main Event last Monday and to celebrate her and wish her luck. We have one girl missing from the pictures (she's on a family vacation.)

Erin, Heather, Ruth, Saritha ,Me, Fara, Jan, Jennifer, Samatha, Julie, Hope Katie

Jan's Husband came to party with us. We went after class and the first thing we had to do was eat dinner. It was nice to eat before 8:00 at night for a change.

Katie, Ruth, Jennifer
Me, Fara, Hope Saritha (or her profile anyways)

Best of luck Ruth! We are going to totally miss your expertise in the field of ABA and Autism.

Happy 4th of July

2009-07-05T10:20:00.007-05:00

A group of us went down to watch the fireworks in the Woodlands. We just parked the car at a bowling alley and put our lawn chairs up on the side of the road (I-45 feeder). The fireworks were across the freeway, but we had a great view. It was lots of fun. After the show we sat around and waited for all the traffic to die down. People had pulled over everywhere to watch the show.

Nikki, Kim, Adena, Stacie, Heather, Cordell, Scott, Alona, Shelley Ed, Tatum, Jennifer, Bobby

IF you can't tell I love firework shots!

Just to show you how close we were to the freeway, here is a video clip. I had my camera turned for the first part until I remembered you can't turn video's once you down load them. OOPS!

Kate Leon Washburn

2009-06-28T12:08:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday I had to chance to go to my cousins Baby blessing. Daciana and Mark Washburn welcomed Kate Leon on June 14,2009. Daciana and I grew up together in Midland, went to the same elementary school and drove our parents crazy. We would never tell them what house we were going to after school. So one of our parents would always worry when we didn't come home. I was super excited when they moved to the Woodlands just 45 minutes from me.

I love her dress! She is so tiny, but very beautiful.

What a great family! She's very blessed to have wonderful parents.

The joy of having family close. This is the Bushman side of the family that was able to make it.

Diona, Delisa, My mom Me, my dad, Aunt darla and Uncle Darrell(Daciana's parents) Kate, Daciana, Mark, Our cousin Eric and his family (Cecily, Lauren, Brandt and Wendy)

They blessed Kate in their home because Daciana's parents are leaving on a mission soon and needed to get back to Midland to finish up last minute things.

Tagged

2009-06-17T23:57:00.002-05:00

I was tagged by my cousin Andrea to name six things that are unimportant that make me happy. Well I have to think about this only six.

1. Cake pans...ok anything to do with cakes. I love it all. I love making them, decorating them, buying the newest little gadget. Ex. Cake Release! Ever tried it. that stuff is amazing. Your cake won't stick at all to the pan. That stuff is amazing. It's found in the cake decorating isle at Walmart. HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! then I love to watch peoples faces as they see the cakes. That makes me estremely happy too.

2.When you wash your bed sheets and then take a shower right before you climb into bed. It's like being doubly clean. LOVE IT.

3. Biking 20 miles- feels great once I'm done especially if I biked it faster than the first time.

4. My garden and watching it grow. Picking the tomatoes off of it and eating them all (ok and giving some away. Let's face it there were tons this year) Actually I have to check on my garden every day when I come home from work.

5. Parking my car in a garage made me extremely happy tonight. I didn't have to run from the front door to turn off the alarm.

6. Ok I'll admit it.... Getting homework done before my classmate gets hers done. She always seems to be so far a head of me.

THE CAKE!!!!!!

2009-06-07T11:32:00.003-05:00

Here it is in more views then you could possibly want. I love it though. It took 6 hours to bake all the cakes 5 hours for me to get the frosting and fondant on. It's my first one so hopefully next time won't take as long. I had a friend help arrange the flowers since I'm not very good at that part of decoratin.

Shanna helped out tons in taking the cake to the reception and then staying and running back and forth to the car in cleaning things up. THANKS SHANNA.

The final touches!

Ribbon can cover up a lot of mistakes.

I'M DONE!!! Happy day! Lets cut it now.

Yeah for the Happy Couple!

SHE'S MARRIED!

2009-06-07T11:02:00.006-05:00

Adam and Susannah got married yesterday. It was a beautiful day and she looked gorgeous! I love her dress. They are a perfect couple and wish them the best. Don't want to steal all her thunder so check her blog out in a few weeks to see more of the beautiful day.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Seana, Alona, Suannah, Me

Roommates we actually have one more roommate,but I'm not quite sure where she was at the moment

Shanna, Brayden, tanner, Me, Seana at the reception.

All of my mom's brothers and their wives got to come to the wedding. It was a little mini reunion!

These were her flower arrangements at the wedding.

Backyard photos

2009-06-07T10:53:00.002-05:00

Susannah took a lot of fun pictures last Sunday. She has a really good camera. It has been a lot of fun to have so much family in town. I wish my nieces and nephews lived closer. They are all so much fun.

Dad's birthday Part 2

2009-06-07T10:35:00.001-05:00

Here are some more fun pictures from a very fun day!

Girl Fun!

2009-06-01T18:04:00.003-05:00

My sisters are all in town for the weekend so we decided to have some picture fun. Although I must say the pictures are not complete without my sister in law Dadra.

Our nieces and nephews can't tell us apart. One day Shanna was getting ready and Alaina called Shanna, "Jen". She tried to explain that she was not Jen, but aunt Shanna. Alaina went and told her mom that Aunt Jen was saying she was Aunt Shanna,but that Alaina knew she was just teasing.
A little silly.- Here we are in reverse order of age.

Alicia wanted to know if Sue could make it so she didn't look pregnant in these pictures. I think Shalene gave it away. What I really love about this picture is my mom's smile. It captured one of my favorite smiles perfectly.

Sue took these for us out in our backyard.

Shanna, Me, Mom, Shalene and Alicia

Happy Birthday DAD!

2009-05-31T10:05:00.009-05:00

Happy Birthday to the Greatest Dad in the World! I took the day off from work on Thursday for my dad's birthday since Shalene and her family are here in town visiting. We went to Angel Miracle Park and had lunch and then went down to the Butterfly Muesem. It was lots of fun. The weather couldn't have been better

Shalene and Jonny at the park.

My beautiful mom.

Happy Birthday dad! Shanna and Cody (Shalene's Youngest)

The Canning Family! Chris, Alaina, Jonny, Shalene and Cody

It was lots of fun chasing Shalene's kids around the park and swinging them. It actually was really good weather for houston too.

I'll have more pictures of the park soon. Cody took some really cute ones.

Wedding Cake

2009-05-16T16:35:00.004-05:00

Susannah asked me to make her wedding cake. I'm a little nervous because the cake is the biggest I've ever made and I've never made a tiered cake before. I had to do a test run of the cake before the actual day so I would have time to work out some trouble spots and to make sure I could actually make it. I made the middle layer first with the frosting that Susannah really likes. HAHA it looked horrible the frosting isn't the best for putting fondant on. So then I made some for the bottom layer and used buttercream frosting. MUCH BETTER!

She is using real floweres that are green and purple, but we had to see what it looked like with some flowers on it. I like the colors.
I like it even better with the purple ribbon on it. As you can tell I didn't finish decorating the top layer. It's not real cake and i only needed to see what it would look like from one view.

Just a few minor things to fix and it will be a cool cake! I'm way excited. Anyone what to eat some cake? We have plenty.

Happy Birthday Lisa!

2009-05-16T16:19:00.003-05:00

Allison came into town for Mother's Day so I we had to get together and celebrate Lisa turning 30. I had fun making a cake and decorting it using fondante. It was tons of fun to see both Lisa and Allison. We went and had dinner at Los Cucos and then came back and turned on a movie and talked the whole way through it. It's what we always do. We have tons to catch up on.

Lisa playing Mr. Wilson.

Look at all those lights! WOW!! :) We didn't even set off the smoke alarm.

This is the first time I've ever tried using fondant. Happy Birthday Lisa! I hope its a great year.

Garden Time!

2009-05-03T11:40:00.003-05:00

We have had lots of rain lately and I think it is getting to my tomatoe plant. I was afraid that the tomatoes wouldn't ripen, but they have. The poor plant is gone though.

The other plants have lots of tomoatoess on them.
Make me really sad. It wa the first one to have tomatoes on it and I was so excited. Then I came home one day and it looked like this. At least I get a few rewards off of it.

First tomatoe this year.

Here is everything I picked today. I hadn't been out to look at it in a while since I've had tons of school work. I think that is the most normal looking strawberry we've had in two years. To much fun. I'm way excited. Gardens are awesome!

International Festival

2009-04-26T10:38:00.005-05:00

Plans foiled again, but still tons of fun. Every year Houston host an International Festival. This year the featured country was Ireland. I bought tickets a month in advance and planned all my homework around taking this saturday off. My luck it decideds to rain and thunder all day. The Burnham sisters, Lisa and I all decided to give it ago anyways, because they hadn't cancelled the event. We got drenched, which is why you don't see any pictures of us.

The Castle had all sorts of information on Ireland in it and some pictures that you could see from the sidewalk. However we did not stomp though the puddles in the grass to go look at it. I thought was pretty cool looking.

The sky looked pretty cool to me.

Yes that's Hail you see!

We gave up on the rain and went to the Aquarium for lunch. This is the big fish tank we sat in front off. A little creepy those fish sat and stared most of the time we were eating lunch. It was a lot of fun. As we drove home the roads were flooded and you couldn't drive on the feeder roads. I was amazed at how much rain there has been.

Bottled Chicken

2009-04-26T10:33:00.003-05:00

Since I'm in grad. school spring break offered little fun to me. Mostly just homework , which was a 20 page lit. review. Really not all that fun. However, I did take one day off of homework for some fun with my mom. We bottled 18 jars of chicken and made several containers of strawberry jam. Here is all of our hard work. I'm ready for hurricane season now.

Hail Storm

2009-03-29T09:49:00.003-05:00

Friday we had this huge hail storm come and go before you could blink your eyes. It was kind of crazy. It lasted about 15 minutes and then was gone, but it dropped some pretty good size pieces of hail.

This is what I collected from our backyard once it slowed down a little.

They said golfball size was reported at the airport, but we had close to ping pong size at our house. Kind of crazy.

I took this from our garage. It looks a little like snow and a tiny river running between our house and the neighbors.

Garden

2009-03-22T10:51:00.003-05:00

My little garden is starting to grow. It makes me very happy! I still have to go outside every day and look at it. I've already gotten to eat one strawberry from the plant we had last year. One of my favorite things about this garden is watching the pepper plant turn green again. It's the big tall brown plant in the center of the garden. Sue planted it last year and it weathered the winter and Hurricane IKE. I was going to pull it up and plant something else until I noticed that the bottom of it is starting to turn green. Each week more and more of the plant is coming alive again. I think it is pretty cool.

Spring Break Part 2

2009-03-21T11:38:00.007-05:00

Did I mention my paper is finally finished? Five days and a lot of typing, but it is finally finished. Now there are just two more papers I have to write by Wednesday. Sometimes I wonder why I decided to do grad. school again. However, I am learning a lot and the info is helpong a lot with my class at work.

After we stopped off at the Blue Bell factory we went to take pictures in the bluebonnets. We found a place called Antique Rose and we stopped to take a walk around. I had fun with the foliage botton on my camera. Of course we had to take some more funny pictures as well.

The Church was locked so we couldn't go in, but the pciture looks pretty cool. It was the perfect day to be out and about. The weather couldn't have been better.

Still in love with cool trees.

There were a lot of beautifull flowers!

The house reminds me of Anne of Green Gables.

Lisa enjoying the weather and beautiful scenenary.

Small little creek!

I'm not sure what the significance of this tree and the bottles is, but it was really cool.

I LOVE THE BLUEBONNETS!!!!

There not as big as I've seen them in the past, but we haven't had much rain either.

This is Kayleen that came with us.

I love the two colors together!

Spring Break

2009-03-21T11:25:00.004-05:00

Well after spending most of spring break writing a research paper and doing other homework I decided to take Thursday off and go to Brenham. Lisa and her friend Kayleen came along. We stopped by the Blue Bell Creamie, but the tours were all full. So we decided to take crazy pictures instead.

Ok so we had everybody watching us. We aren't exactly the young little kids climbing on the cow. What can I say I've been swamped with homework all week. Had to have some fun somewhere.
The stinckin' cow just wouldn't move.

That's a lot of ice cream I'm tellin' you!

I still don't know what was so important about that clipboard.

Bats at school

2009-03-20T10:57:00.003-05:00

I'm usually at work by 6:30am to get things done before everyone comes in and wants to talk or needs something from me. Well the one day I don't show up until 7am I miss some excitement. Actually I probably got there at the perfect time I missed the scare and came in for the excitement. As I was turning the corner to my room I hear all of this commotion. Just up the hall from my classroom this is what I saw.

Apparently when the fifth grade teachers got to school they heard all of this squealing noise and couldn't figure out what it all was, until Mr. Burton found a bat sitting on the wall outside the computer lab.
So he trapped it with a net. Then the AP and science coach put a tupperware container over it to hold it in place and taped everything to the wall so that there was no way the bat could escape. It was a great group effort and district personnel came quickly to remove the bat before the mass of students arrived.

Here's what the finished product looked like. Of course I had to grab my camera and document the moment. We closed off all the doors leading to that hallway and only teachers were allowed anywhere near it.

Poor little guy his elbow was bleeding once the district guy got him. He was shaking.

Isn't he cute? Ok cute because he is in a container and not flying around. About a year or more ago a high schooler died from rabies after being bitten by a bat at his house. So we take finding any bat in a public place very seriously. The district guy said that once they are found in schools or homes they are tested for rabies and they never survive the tests. So sad. Bats can be very helpful in ridding our community from mosquitoes so I'm not going to complain to bad when I see them flying around. Just hope never to get bitten by one.

Baby Shower

2009-03-20T10:46:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago I had the chance to go back to College station for a baby shower for Mic and Hollie Place. Hollie and I were visiting teaching companions when I was at A&M after my mission. It was tons of fun to see people again. College Station is a great place!

Mic and Hollie had a contest on who could change a babies diaper the fastes. Hollie won!

Mic was a good sport for putting up with a bunch of women!

Not only did he have to change a diaper, but he had to drink root beer from a bottle. Hollie won again! What can I say its the power of being a mom.

Here are some of my great friends from CS. from Left to right, Ashleigh Nagel, Lesley Gardner, Nefalinda Barrios, Hollie and Mic Place and Me.
Ashleigh, Nef, and Hollie were all roommates while at A&M. Nef is getting married April 30 and we are very excited for her.

Idle Thoughts of a Wandering Mind

2009-03-15T00:34:00.002-05:00

Idle Thoughts of a Retiree's Wandering Mind

I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.

I had amnesia once -- or twice.

I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart. ; Now what?

Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

If the world were a logical place, men would be the ones who ride side saddle.

What is a 'free' gift? Aren't all gifts free?

Someone told me I was gullible and I believed them.

Teach a child to be polite and courteous and, when he grows up, he'll never be able to merge his car onto the freeway.

Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.

One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.

My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

The high cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.

How can there be self-help 'groups'?

If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?

Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.

Is it just me -- or do buffalo wings really taste like chicken?

Garden Time!

2009-02-22T09:16:00.003-06:00

This is what our garden looked like before. must say I'm actually pretty impressed with the strawberry, green pepper and blackberry plants that all survied a hurricane and snow. The strawberry plant is already starting to bloom as well. Needless to say the garden needs a little work and some new plants.

Saturday I went and got new dirt and a few plants. I had tons of homework to do that day and not a lot of motivations. So the garden helped me out. When I got home I had to read four pages before I could put the dirt in. Then I had to read four more pages before I could plant something else. Actually I was kind of waiting for my roommates to get home so they could plant some as well since its all of ours.

This is what it looks like now. Still needs some more plants, but its a start. Right now we have the strawberries, two tomatoe plants, blackberries, cucumbers and flowers to keep the bugs away. It looks much better and I'm already excited to watch it grow. Its so rewarding to see the plants get taller and start to produce, not to mention eating the fruits of your labors.

Pupcakes

2009-02-22T09:09:00.003-06:00

A lady at work asked me to make some puppy cupcakes for her little girls birthday party. Luckly it was on a Thursday after I had finished all my classes so I had time. These were pretty easy to make and lots of fun. Just M&M's and Milano cookies for the ears.

I haven't had much time for decorating since school started. It was nice to have a small project again. Its a good stress reliever for me.

SURPRISE!

2009-02-14T14:22:00.004-06:00

The school day started out pretty normal. I was reading notes from the parents and taking attendance while Kim was doing circle time with the students. All of a sudden she screamed really loud. I has afraid one of our students had gotten hurt. No kim had seen a little critter crawl acroos the floor. Fortunately for us the school district had laid some traps a few months ago when we had seen some run in the hallway. Poor little guy never stood a chance. He just ran right into the trap. Of course I didn't have the guts to touch the guy so we had the custodian come and throw it away.

Come What May and Love it Part 2

2009-02-14T14:01:00.004-06:00

Well I may not be sleeping beauty, but this is usually how I sleep, on my back. Since surgery I usually have to wake up brace myself for rolling over or moving. Tuesday morning I was slightly awake, just enough to be barely aware of my surroundings. Before I knew it I rolled over without completely waking up. All of a sudden I realized what I had done and was completely awake with excitement. I had moved and it had not hurt. YEAH!!! Then the next day I went to work and dropped one of the kids schedules on the floor. Again without thinking I bent down and picked it up. NO PAIN!!!! I didn't even look like a women who is nine months pregnant. So needless to say I am feeling much better! I still have a little pain here and there, but not much.

Come what may and love it!

2009-01-12T09:06:00.007-06:00

Well I'm not quite sure I can say I love it yet, but it has been nice to at least eat food and not be in major pain after I eat. There are a few things I am however very grateful for.

1. Going to the bathroom all by myself

2. Sleeping through the night without pain killers

3. Rolling over in bed with out much pain

4. Walking around the house at faster then snails pace

5. Being able to eat food again.

6. A dad who holds the priesthood

7. AND MOST OF ALL MY MOTHER!

There's much more than what I have listed, but you get the general picture. Man we take things for granted. I pay attention now to every little air pocket I feel, movement etc. It's crazy.

This all started off around Thanksgiving time early Dec. when I started having pains shortly after I ate. Then the pain started to be just about every day. Well I hate doctors so I refused to go and get checked out. Bad decision on my part looking back at it. On Jan. 2 I finally decided I better go in. She said it was probably my gallbladder, but to go get blood work and an ultrasound. That Sunday was fast Sunday so I didn't eat all day. I wasn't even hungry really. On Monday I didn't eat because I had the blood test right after work and you have to be fasting. I had a few crackers when I got home, again not very hungry. Tuesday monrning I had an ultrasound and two hours after I left the doctor called and left a message on my home phone saying I needed to come back ASAP. By the time I got the message the office was already closed. I wasn't hardly in any pain since I hadn't eaten in a few days. I went to work Wednesday and called the doctor when the office opened. She freaked me out by saying they wanted me in there yesterday by 4:15 and that I needed immediate surgery and how soon could I get there. That scared me to death, but I told I was already at work and couldn't just leave (like my priorities?!)

I ended up leaving right then and went and picked up mom and headed to the doctors, Where she told me I had an obstructed gall stone that was really inflamed and blocking the duct where bile flows through.

Since there were no beds in the hospital they admitted me through the ER and for the next 4+ hours this is what I stared at.I was in the hallway with an IV (YUCK!!!!!!!!) Every once in a while someone would come by and ask for more blood. I HATE NEEDLES!!!!!!! I can't say that enough. After the nurse put the IV in me I didn't move that arm again.

Did I mention I hate needles or anything poking inside of me. I made the nurse wrap my arm so that I couldn't see the tubing going in me. Every nurse after that had heard how much I didn't like it and took extra care when they came and moved me. :) I finally got a room about 4:30 or so and the surgery was Thursday morning at 11:00.

The Surgery was two hours long because my gallbladder was so inflamed. The doctor took a longer time getting it out so that she wouldn't have to cut me open and I could return to work sooner. I'm very gratefull for that. I was in enough pain after the surgery with only four small inscions made. Don't want more. Your gallbladder is suppose to be pink and you can see above mine definitely is bright red.

The next few days proved to be very painful and I'm grateful to have parents so close and a mom who is a great nurse. She has taken very good care of me, helping me get up and out of bed, making me walk around to help the pain. She's very wise and I really admire her even more after all of this. THANKS MOM!!!!!!

I'm up and moving around now and hope to go back to work on Friday just over a week after the surgery.

On Sunday I went to the Humble Ward and it was High Council Sunday. The topic of Sacrament meeting was based on Elder Worthlins talk "Come what may and Love it" It really made me smile (to scared laughing will hurt) So I'm learning to love having down time, spending time with mom and being able to move more and more each day with less pain! I've also been blessed with some really great people I work with. The two aides that work in my class have called or text messaged every day. They are keeping my class in good order until I can go back. Alona, Kirsten and Susannah stopped by Thursday night when I got home from the Hospital (although I'm not sure what I said to them) Shelley and Heather Burnham came over Saturday night and stayed a couple of hours with me just visiting, though I still hurt pretty good that night it was nice to have company for a few hours.

New Year's Day

2009-01-04T10:31:00.007-06:00

As much as I hate to say it school starts again soon and this will probably be my last real blog for awhile. However the pictures are kind of cool. On New Years day I went to my friend Beth's house for a bombfire-- maybe I should say trash fire. Either way it was a lot of fun to see her again. We ate, roosted marshmellows and lite off fire works.

Beth's Family ownes a couple of cows so we went and fed them some bread as well. Have you ever seen a cow run? It's hilarious.

We didn't start looking for wood early enough to have a huge fire, but we did have fun burning a few trash items. Beth is getting it started for us.

I discovered a fireworks button on my camera so I decided to try it out. I got some really fun shots. these are actually people with sparklers.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-04T10:11:00.002-06:00

I didn't do anything big to ring in the new year actually my friends had to make sure I stayed awake. I did however get together with my two best friends. It seems that no matter how long it has been since we've seen each other we pick up right where we left off. We met in College Station when some how I talked Lisa (on the right) in to being my roommate for a year after she graduated from BYU. Lisa and I know live in different parts of Houston and Allison decided she had to be different and moved clear to Virginia. However her family still lives in the Houston area so we get visits every holiday. YEAH!!!

We got together before Christmas just to have dinner and catch up. We talked for 14 hours. I knew girls could talk, but I didn't know we could talk that long and still be laughing our heads off. I'm not one for staying up late. 1opm is now the middle of the night for me, but some how I made it until 3am and didn't even notice the time.

We got together on new years and made predictions for the coming year. Lisa was our scribe. Some predictions are a tad odd like meeting a random stranger on a Tuesday in July. Some are serious (not telling those ones).

Allison took notes on the predictions for Lisa so she couldn't erase the ones she didn't like. ( I think she managed to anyways. : ) ). After predictions we all sat around and told stories. Of course this is the point in which though I was really interested I couldn't stay awake. Very sad. I missed some pretty good laughs. None the less its great to have good friends that no matter how long its been since you talked you still have tons to say.

We had pizza for dinner and Lisa and I went to pick it up. This Exxon station was right next to pizza hut. I had to snap a picture. I never thought I would see gas prices this low again. Yippee.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-27T12:01:00.006-06:00

I didn't take any pictures on Christmas, but it was great day. Our Family tradition is to have a big breakfast. We had the sister missionaries and a couple missionaries over for breakfast. The sister's got to call their families from our house. It brought back memories from the mission. You are all excited to talk to them and you start the conversation of laughing and end the conversation with crying.

My dad got a Wii fit for Christmas here are a few videos of the fun! Lance tried it out for all of us. The first time he tried the fit was a lot more funny.

There was a time in my parents house that we all argued to get on the comupter. At that point in time it was usually to play Dark Castle or some other game like that. We had no idea what the internet really was. Now look at us! No argueing to get on the computer all three of us have laptops and are downloading music. CRAZY!

Yesterday we went down to Galveston to go the Festival of lights at Moody Gardens. We stopped off at Stewart Beach- or what was Stewart beach before the Hurricane. There is still lots of work to be done in the matter of cleaning up still. It looks much better then what it did when a group of us went to clean up right after the Hurricane.

That was almost a good picture. Goofy Lance! notice the piles of sand in the background. It looked like they were bringing in lots of sand to spread around.

Three musketeers!

The cute couple!

Here comes Santa, Here Comes Santa!

Lance and his buddy santa!

The lights were really pretty! Really funny name of the station.

Cake Decorating with the Burnham's

2008-12-24T13:39:00.000-06:00

Heather and Shelley needed some help( so they say, their already pros) decorating a cake for their Dad's birthday. They did an awesome job.

It was a lot fun to decorate the cake and have three people to help. It goes so much faster. Actually it took a little longer then normal, because we kept taking breaks. Heather and Shelley are both very talented in musically. They let me borrow a violin for a little while and came over to tune it. Then we sat around the piano and sang hymns and some different songs that they had brought over. Hopefully I'll remember how to play so that we can have a trio.

Sleigh rides with the Kay Family

2008-12-24T13:27:00.001-06:00

This family has kind of become a second family to me. Dec. 4 we went to the Stake Nativity to veiw 442 Nativities. It was a lot of fun.On the way home we take a sleight detour to the Kingwood FFA Barns. I know I crossed the river to hang out in Kingwood. We went on a sleigh ride around the FFA park and listened to Christmas music.

Matt, Jennifer, Nancy Chris. Chris has a great version of Jingle Bells.

Jennifer loves all the attention she can get. I wish I had her hair. It's beautiful.

Santa was actually a lot happier then he looks. I didn't realize he looked so mean.
Chris and Jennifer were so excited to see him.

You have to trick Chris to get a picture with him. He is one of the most loveable people I've ever met. Even better he finally learned my name is Ms. Call and not Good Morning. :)

I promise I still bleed purple not blue. I felt bad for the mustangs having to dress up in blue.

Jennifer loved the horses. She followed them everywhere.

Thanksgiving Camping Trip

2008-12-24T09:47:00.000-06:00

Over the Thanksgiving break a bunch of us went camping at Garner State Park and then Climbed Enchanted Rock.

Friday we hicked up and around Garner State Park. The view was beautiful.

Garon and Katherine. Katherine is the one that set this camping trip up. Love the face Garon!

This is one of my favorite Shots. (I didn't take it though.)

My love for trees continues even afte Hawaii. I didn't hike to the top of the rock, because of my sticking fear of hights. I sat right by this try and enjoyed the beautiful view. I watched a kid com running down from the top and then started skidding on the rocks and only stopped from going over the edge by hitting this tree. This is why I didn't hike to the top. The teenager was pretty embarrassed, but he hopped up and walked away as quickly as possible.

When we were driving back to the camp sight we passed several armadillos on the way. Julie Martin was so excited and chased one down to get a close shot. I wish I would have taken a picture of her all excited.

We had tin foil dinners that night. It was probably was the best tin foil dinner I have ever had. I don't know what made them so good, but they were good.

Julie did a great job of getting our fire started. To Katherine disguse we actually had to go and buy some wood because you can't pick up any wood from a national forest. Katherine was actully hoping we would find some on the way, but we didn't.

Jason Read, Katherine Thom and Anike Arnie did an awesome job of cooking dinner.

What's a camping trip with out smores?

This is Julie's version of a smore! It's now my favorite! Couldn't get it any better than this.

Enchanted Rock!

I can finally say I've been to Enchanted Rock.

This is why I didn't hike to the top of it! Darn fear of hights!

I sat under this cool tree (I know back to cool trees) and waited for everyone to hike back down. It was a beautiful day. Couldn't of asked for a better one.

The crew! Jason Read, Julie Martin, Katherine Thom, Garon Lear, Stacie Mullin, Anike Arnie and Me.

By the end of the trip I conquered a little bit of my fear and started to climb around. Actually as long as I couldn't see how far up I was getting and a fall was always blocked by a big boulder I'm fine. It's when I have a clear shot of how far my fall could actually be, that's when the real fear kicks in.

Anike, Stacie, Katherine and I. They were all great at helping my down from here. All of this was really easy to climb.

The cute couple! Katherine and Garon

After Enchanted Rock we went to the River Walk for dinner. We actually got into a restraurant on a Saturday night without having to wait in line. It was amazing. You can't go to San Antonio without stopping of by the Alamo. REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

Anita Renfroe

2008-12-24T09:15:00.000-06:00

Allison Dunn is back in town for the Holiday's so we got together at Lisa's house to exchange givts and catch up. It's the best to have friends that no matter how long its been since you've seen each other you can pick up as if you saw each other every day. Our conversations are hilarious since they bounce from one subject to another and back again.

We fewed a few funny youtube video's I have become a fan of Anita Renfroe. She is the comedian that wrote the mom song to the tune of William Tell's Overture.(posted in the last post) Here are a few other video's that we found. They are more hilarious if you are a country music fan.

Before I Eat!

Don't Breathe
<

Mom's Song and Dadsense

2008-12-23T22:39:00.000-06:00

Can you relate to either one of these songs? Hilarious!

If you loved the Mom song you'll laugh hilariously at her version for dad.

Snow in Houston TEXAS!!!

2008-12-10T21:59:00.000-06:00

Can You believe this? It's so pretty? What do you call all this white stuff?

It all started about 3:15 today with a little bit of rain that turned into snow flurries and ice pellets. I was driving to school in the Woodlands and the closer I got to school the more it snowed. There were cars that it was starting to stick too. By the time I came out from class it was really snowing. Our Professor, who is from Ohio, thought it was hilarious we were all hoping for a snow day tomorrow. She doesn't understand that Texan can't drive in the snow,just rain. Don't worry its suppose to jump back up to 66 tomorrow afternoon.

When I got home from school I went for a walk around the neighborhood. It was a lot of fun to see kids running up and down the street. Our neighbors across the street were having a snowball fight. Everyone was out talking pictures and I just had to join in the fun.

Here's my small Texas snowman. Born and raised Texan. :)

I love snow on trees. As I drove home I kept wanting to stop at all the Christmas tree lots and take pictures of them all. They are so pretty.

Susannah out in the snow. I might add with no coat and slippers on. Can you tell we are excited?

This is our neighbors house. I thought it looked so pretty with the snow.

Our poor garden. Don't think it will survive the snow. Who knows though it survived hurricane Ike.

This didn't turn out so well. The sign has wreaths on both sides of it and actually looked really pretty. Just use your imagination.

This is my roommates Seana's car. This is how much snow we got.

Did you know?????

2008-11-27T11:25:00.001-06:00

I thought this was really interesting. Amazing what we have been able to do in the last few years with Technology. A friend of mine sent this to me so I looked it up on you.tube. It's from a meeting in Rome.

Family Fun

2008-11-23T20:44:00.000-06:00

Alicia and Mo came to visit many moons ago.(sorry grad. school :) ) Here is a fun slide show of their visit. We spent a day at the Houston Zoo. It was a lot of fun to watch her boys see the animals. I believe the highlight of the trip though was playing in the water. I love talking to Tanner on Oovoo. He always shares food with me. He's got a good imagination. I wish all of my nieces and nephews lived closer. I believe I have the best ones ever.

Racket Ball

2008-11-23T19:36:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not there is a reason you were goggles while playing racket ball. Here's proof. This actually happened when lance was here last for a visit in August. I know I'm real slow at posting some things, but hey I'm in grad. school. At least that is my excuse for everything for the next year and a half.

I'm a member of a gym and Lance and his friend, Aaron, got guest passes for a week so Lance and I could play racketball. He took a class at BYU during the summer and was teaching me a few tricks. (I still need a lot of help, but I love the game)

They gym didn't have enough goggles to were so I don't think Lance or Aaron had goggles on. (OOPS!) Aaron hit the ball smack into Lance's eye. Needless to say that was the end of our game that day. I was afraid Lance might have some damage done to his eye. Thankfully he did not.

However, he did have a really good bump on his check and it was pretty red. No worries its been a few months and he can still see out of it.

Ways to Procrastinate homework!

2008-11-21T20:21:00.000-06:00

Our school had a carnival last week. We were suppose to have an October Fest, but due to the wonderful hurricane it was postponed and scaled down. I heard they were having a cake walk I got a little to excited. I found this fun little turkey design online and just had to make them. I decorated 3 dozen of them one night along with some cupcakes that aren't nearly as cute.

I used double stuffed oreos , reeses peanut butter cups, woppers, candy corn for the feathers and the white tip of the candy corn for the beak. The feet are frosting and it is all glued together with frosting. I had way to much fun making them.

This is a candy corn cake I made for halloween this year. If you cut a piece, I dyed the cake mix to match the frosting so it really does look like a candy corn. This is all way to much fun for me!

Coolest You Tube Sight

2008-11-16T12:05:00.000-06:00

I was looking for a flute duet for Christmas and stumbled across this youtube. It place the accompaniment for you. It's so cool, kind of funny at the same time, but now I don't have to find someone to play the piano for me. They've got lots of songs on there.

Reinforcement

2008-11-02T12:11:00.000-06:00

positive reinforcement- is addition of something to the environment that causes future increase in the rate of probability of the behavior. IT"S NOT A BRIBE

A reinforcer for me is a paycheck! I go to work so that I can get a paycheck and pay my bills.

A little extra cash is not a bad thing either!

My students like to work for Goldfish! They finish a task they may get a goldfish.

I also love ice cream! You may work really hard out in the yard getting it looking so nice and then reinforce yourself with an ice cream. To cool down.

These are not bribes. It is set out before a behavior is ever observed what they are working for. A bribe is when an undesirable behavior is occurring and you give them something to make them stop.

Classic example.Your driving in the car and the child is screaming. You say "We'll go to McDonalds if you'll be quiet." Bribery! Not a good tool!

Reinforcers can be any thing-Verbal praise, eatables, preferred activities, Social, tangibles(toys, puzzles) Phyiscal contact- hug, tickles, manicure, hand holding, massage the list goes on.

Negative Reinforcement is the removal of something that causes an increase in the future rate or probability of a behavior. Usually the removal of something unpleasant. The person acts to remove or avoid something aversive.

ex: Scratching to remove an itch, drinking to remove thirst, taking out the trash to stop nagging from spouse, Studying for a test to avoid a failing grade. (And you thought this all had to do with autism didn't you:) )

Now to really confuse you. See if you can follow along- Shopping in Walmart. Child cries and whines. He wants candy. Parent gives child candy, Child stops crying.

Which one is it positive or negative reinforced.
Well both. The child behavior of crying was reinforced because he got the candy. The parent's behavior of giving the child a candy bar was negatively reinforced because it removed the screaming.

Here' s one to get you thinking. Remember how I said what you consider to be a reinforcer may not be what others consider to be a reinforcer? I think this is a good example of what we sometimes do when disciplining children.

A child is tired of watching videos. Moom is gone for the weekend. Dad is in the office working with minimal interactions with the child. The child climbs the sofa, jumps up and hangs on the ceiling fan blade until it breaks.Dad comes running into the the room, yells, makes the child pick up the ceiling fan blade and sternly tells the child to sit and watch videos. Dad returns to work. Ten minutes later, the child breaks another ceiling fan.

Dad intended for his yelling, etc to serve as a punisher. In reality it served as a positive reinforcer, because the child got attention.

Lots of times we get frustrated and tired of dealing with something so we yell. To us we think it is a punishment to the child. In reality if they are wanting our attention, then no matter how bad the attention may be that they are getting we are still positively reinforcing what they are doing by yelling at them, because they have our attention.

The strategy then comes to what way can I reinforce the child by giving attention in a good way. So that they don't have to act out. Its tricky!!

School- ABA

2008-11-02T10:56:00.000-06:00

I've been asked a lot lately how school is going! It's great. I have A's in both classes and I love what I'm learning. So I thought I would share a little bit of what I am learning. ABA or Applied Behavior Analysis is not just good therapy for children with autism its also good therapy for all of us.When you understand the concepts behind ABA you become a better person who can change behaviors not only in yourself, but also those around you. Here are a few things I've learned and I'll include examples both from my classroom and everyday life. It really is quite interesting.

Reinforcer- any event that follows a behavior that increases the rate of that behavior.

Reinforcement- procedure of using a reinforcer to increase the rate of a behavior.

Example- Remember growing up and you had those awful vegetables your mom made you eat. If you ate the vegetable then you got dessert (or got to leave the table) If this increased the likely hood of you eating that vegetable the next time around then the dessert was a reinforcer. The act of giving you the dessert every time you ate your vegetables is considered reinforcement.

The trick is to find things that are reinforcing to the person you are trying to change. For example one student loves lemons. He'd do any thing just to lick a lemon. That does nothing for me. Reinforcers are different for everyone. I hate chocolate milk. It's like drinking mud to me. However to most people it is something that is very well liked and could be used as a reinforcer.

The Little Mermaid

2008-11-02T10:39:00.000-06:00

This is becoming the theme song of my classroom this year. I have a little girl who loves this song. Even more than that, she loves it when I sing it. AHHH! I could sing this song all day to her and she would be smiling. She is one of the more difficult students I have had. She cries for almost the four hours she is in school. So we came up with a plan to help decrease the crying. I got tired of singing it over and over so we tape recorded me singing it about 500 times. I'm not kidding! The tape starts playing when we get her out of the car. The minute she starts to cry we turn the tape off. The first time we tried this she came in quiet and was quiet for a whole 20mins. Not only that she was very compliant with anything we ask her to do. We were all so excited. So thanks Disney for coming out with a great teaching tool.

Vocals: Jodi Benson (Ariel)
Running time: 3:15

[Maybe he's right]
[Maybe there is something the matter with me]
[I just don't see how a world]
[That makes such wonderful things]
[Could be bad]

Look at this stuff, isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?

Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here, you'd think
Sure, she's got everything

I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got who's-its and what's-its galore
You want thing-a-mabobs?
I've got twenty
But who cares? No big deal. I want more

I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see 'em dancin'
walkin' around on those
Whaddya call 'em? Oh, feet

Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumpin', dancin'
Strollin' along down the
What's that word again? Street
Up where they walk
Up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free, wish I could be
Part of that world

What would I give if I could live
Outta these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day
Warm on the sand?

Betcha on land they understand
Bet they don't reprimand their daughters
Bright young women, sick of swimmin'
Ready to stand

And ready to know what the people know
Ask 'em my questions and get some answers
What's a fire, and why does it
What's the word? Burn

When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love?
Love to explore that shore up above
Out of the sea, wish I could be

Part of that world

I have decided though that I do not like this song very much anymore. The nice thing is that she can now work with the paraprofessionals in the room. It frees me up to work with other students and I can cut down on the Exceedrin Migrain. Slowly she is getting to be easier to work with and less and less crying. YEAH!!!! I must admit she loves the tune more then the song and at first I didn't know very many of the words. So I made up my own. We came up with some pretty funny versions. Maybe that is what I should have recorded.

Halloween Carnival

2008-10-23T20:27:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I g0t a call from one of my former student's parents seeing if I wanted to go to a Halloween Carnival with them. We have become good friends, even after they moved to a different school. Funny thing is that I met them at their house and then drove over with them. As we head over there, I asked where the carnival was. They replied at some LDS church on Northpark Dr. I started laughing! Every year the Kingwood Texas Stake puts on a halloween carnival and dance for children with disabilities. It is a put on by the young men and young women in the stake and is a great activity for all involved. We had tons of fun and I even got to have several missionary opportunities.

Two of my favorite kids; Chris and Jennifer

Super Woman! Some one there that night told me my daughter was cute. I wish I had one.

Jennifer and her dad, tossing a frog across the gym.

Chris was one of my very first students. He calls me good morning. I made him say that to me every morning when he got of the bus. Now its become my name.

Wonder Women Jennifer who kept insisting she was superman. We had to do the cake walk several times so that she could win.

They had tons of activities for them to do. Fishing, drawing a face on a pumpkin, ring toss, and a cake walk were all part of the fun.

Each child was assigned several "helpers" to take them around to each of the activities. It was pretty well organized.

Crazy Japanese Marbles

2008-10-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

So I'm not sure what this had to do with my class on Applied Behavior Analysis, but I thought it was pretty cool. Not sure what they are saying though. Any one speak Japanese?

BISHOP CALL

2008-09-22T10:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a big day in Humble Texas. First of the church still doesn't have power so we had church by flashlight. Everyone was told to bring their own light source. The children had fun shinning the flashlights on the chapel ceiling. I wish I could have taken a picture of it all. I held the flashlight so that Stacy Mouton could see the piano music she was playing. I think we should have sang the hymn "The Lord is my Light" or something. It was a little hot, but not to bad.

The other big news in the Humble Ward is that Bishop Thorne was released and my dad was made Bishop. I hope that the fact he was sustained in the dark does not mean he will be Bishop through "dark- times." He is a great man and will be a good Bishop. I'm proud to say he is my dad. Plus because he is my dad he already has lots of patience. The Thorns are moving to Alpine Utah after living here for 25 years. Humble will really miss them!

I was looking for a picture of just my dad, but I don't have one. I'll have to fix that soon. So here are a few favorits of mine. It is nice to live so close to home an be able to stop by any time. I spent a lot of time after the hurricane over at my parents house.

Love You DAD!!!!

Electricity

2008-09-21T19:59:00.000-05:00

The most amazing thing happened tonight at 7:30. WE GOT ELECTRICITY!!!! It has been 8 days since the power went out It was so nice to walk into my room flipped the light switch and the light came on. OH HOW NICE!!!

So here is a list of things to do now that we are out of the dark ages:

1. Make toast

2.Enjoy my fan (yeah)

3. vacuum

4.Flip the light switches on and off and watch in amazement

5. print my papers

6. sit in air conditioning

7. Use my oven

8. Drink a class of cold milk

9. pop popcorn (use my microwave)

10. Take a warm Shower

The things you miss while you have now power. The nicest thing of all of this was pulling up into the drive way, opening the car door and not hearing a generator. They are nice to have, but they are so extremely loud.

Hurricane Fun

2008-09-18T20:17:00.001-05:00

Well since we don't get to go back to work until Wednesday I'm running out of things to do. So I'm leaving this up to you to complete: Send me ideas make them good, funny, or at least entertaining.

10. Clean up your house all except for vaccuming
9. Watch all the reporters on TV (got to love generators) try and come up with something new to say about the storm. One reporter was so kind to point out that the picture of green grass that we were looking at was actually grass. Go Figure!
8. Continue to flip on all the light switches- just in case
7. Study, study, study
6. Take a dell computer box full of extra boxes down to the recycle place and have your roommate carry you back in the wheelbarrell.
5. Go for lots of bike rides
4. Pray the humidity doesn't come back- its getting more humid- YUCK!
3.
2.
1.

More Hurricane

2008-09-18T20:17:00.000-05:00

So some of my favorite signs I've seen lately say: We hate Ike, YMCA closed; Ouch Ike hurt (the place had their roof cave in); Just like Tina we are recovering from Ike. Here are a few more pictures from our area. This is nothing compared to Galeveston. For those of you that are familiar with the the area, Crystal beach is no longer there as of the moment.

Playing cards play flashlight

Poor baby squirrel didn't make it through the hurricane
Cleaning up after the storm.
My Dad isn't he great!!!
Fingers Furniture Sign. Good thing the store is closing. The storm took down the sign for them.

Deerbrook Mall right in front of Sears, Macy was severly water damaged. The store will be closed up to four months as they real build.

Lots of Billboard signs were wripped to shreds.

You can barely see the rainbow in the background. This is on the bridge into Kingwood.

Lake Houston coming from Kingwood into Humble.

Pretty shot of the moon. I'm telling you going around and taking pictures takes up a lot of our time since we don't have electricity.

Top ten things to do with out electricty

2008-09-16T10:53:00.000-05:00

10. Drive around in a parking garage honking your car horn on each level (some teenagers)
9. Handwrite all your papers for graduate school by hand. :)
8. Clean up after the storm

7. Sit out side and enjoy cool weather (beleive it or not this did happen in Houston)

6. Play cards by flash light
5. Update your blog using your parents Generator
4. Stroll the streets of town taking pictures of all the damage
3. See how fast you can get in and out of your freezer without letting to much cold air out.
2. Catch up on all your scrapbooking you haven't done in years
1. Turn a light switch on in each room you come to thinking (wishing) the power is on. Then laugh at yourself because you know the power is out.

We helped clean our neighbors yard up since they are 1st responders. We found a baby squirrel that didn't make it through the storm. So Sad!

Sunday we hooked the generator up to the microwave and popped popcorn and played card games. It was fun. Then watched Music and The Spoken Word on the satelite. We are really roughing it down here. Actually I must say I give thanks everyday that it was not worse and pray for those that lost everything. We may be without power, but a cool front has come through and we can sleep with our windows open and enjoy a cool breeze at night.

I may not agree with all of the political sides that Houston Mayer Bill White takes, but he has done an amazing job of leading the city through this disaster and how prepared he is.

Aftermath

2008-09-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

Well this is the aftermath of what happened in our area. It was a long night with lots of wind and no air conditioning, but we survived. Here is my parents house. They lost the fence in the back yard and tree branches in the front, the chimney leaked, but other then that we are good. Now we have the generator on so we can get on the internet and watch the news. Our sattelite still works through the generator.

Don't worry Unlce Art the gate to your house is still there, for free access.

This is a new bank that just opened. They lost all of the tiles from the roof.
The 24 hours fitness sign I can't believe is still standing. I'm sure it will come down soon just out of safety concerns.
I thought this was a cool tree. It is amazing what can happen when you have winds come from several different directions.
Mulligans on 1960 lost most of their roof. It is a favorite sports bar among teachers. Not any more.

As were were driving around the Atascocita north we saw a trampoline lying in the middle of the street. It had to of been flipped over someones fence because all of the fences around it were still standing. The legs to the trampoline were further down the street.

This is laying across Upper lake heading west.

A tree and fence across the street from Maplebrook Elementary

This is at the Bishops house of the Humble ward. We stopped by so my dad could report on all the families he was in charge of. Sister Thorn came to the door singing "Master the Tempest is Raging" That made us laugh real hard.

Tree across Timber Forest

Another house on Upper Lake Dr. near our house. I'll show more pictures of galveston once we get electricty restored at our house.

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-12T15:21:00.001-05:00

For me the worst part of a Hurricane are the hours and hours you wait for it to come. School was cancelled on Friday which made it nice to have time to write papers for School, few chapters read in the text book and of course clean house, not to mention writing lesson plans. The rest of the time most people are glued to the TV soaking in all the pictures and watching as the storm inches closer. When you get bored of doing all that you tour the neighborhood to look at what other people have done to prepare.

Take a HIKE IKE! This house is around the corner from my parents. Someone usually has some funny sign up that provides entainment on a day like today.

You can't see the sign on this house but it says protected by God and guns.

Another house not to far from my parents. I like those coverings.

They've got the right idea, only board up half the windows.

This is a picture from the Sea Wall in Galveston. The storm hasn't even hit yet and still has a couple of hours to get here and there is already major flooding from the storm surge and people needing to be rescued. I never understood those that stayed when they are under manditory evacuation. At that point whether you're in your house or not you are in danger.

I thought this shot was AWESOME! The sea wall in Galveston is 16 feet high and the waves are already crashing over it. There have been lots of good video taken of the waves crashing. It is kind of cool to see, but I'm gratefull I'm watching a TV and not on Sea Wall Boulvard.

And just in case you didn't know what you were swimming in while at Galveston beach here you go. Don't worry after Hurricane Ike we should have pretty clean water since everything has officially washed ashore. : )

This is a restrauant that sits out in the gulf. Its pier is now gone, probably all the depri in the earlier picture. I'll be interested to see if the restrauant/shop is still standing after the hurricane.

Charlie Bit Me

2008-09-07T11:05:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a friend the other night about a previous post I had done for Lisa which said the last time I had cried was last Wednesday (who knows why) He asked me two questions. 1. How often to do I cry 2. How often do women in general cry. I was given the option to not answer the first one. I explained though that when I get frustrated about something (usually something I can't change) and I talk about it I almost always have tears that come along when I talk. So I said probably once or twice a month. Not that they are huge crying fits, just counting when tears drop. After I hung up I thought back a little bit and thought it was a bit high. So since I am in school studying behavior I decided to take data on how often I cry. Then I was going to report back to him. Well I didn't even make it a day.

Thursday I got called down to the office because a student was having a REALLY hard day. No one could calm him down. I'm not even sure what started the whole thing. The principal was just hoping that with my background I would know what to do. When I walked in he was screaming and kicking and trying to bit himself. Some how in calming him down and trying not to let him injure himself my hand got in the way. It looks a lot better in the pictures then it did right after it happened. Around the bit actually swelled up about an inch or more and was almost completely black. I just didn't have a camera. I sat in the office with him for two hours waiting for his grandma to come. Then I rushed back to my room which was really crazy since I had been gone. One of our administrators came back to help. Bless her heart! I have the toughest group of kids I have ever had. One scratches, pinches, another throws chairs, all of them scream most of the day. Although it is getting much better and they are all doing wonderful considering they have never been in school. Even my one student that was so horrible during summer school, they hired and extra para for our classroom. Ok back to the story.

After school I had to go down to insurance and fill out all the paper work (which is why I hate reporting things) They sent me to Nova health clinic to get a shot. YUCK! I HATE NEEDLES!!! This is where it all went down hill. Instead of just giving me a tetnis (sp?) shot (which is what i went for and never actually got) they poked me 7 times trying to take blood so that I can be tested for Hepatitis and HIV. YEAH! I have very small veins which make taking blood painful. I told them how other doctors have taken, blood, but they didn't want to listen. After five pokes and three different doctors trying I finally had to run my hand under hot water for 10min. Then the doctor came in and pulled the skin on my hand tight so that the nurse would have a better shot at the vein. When they did finally get the blood and they were cleaning up the nurse turned to me and said "when you come next week, tell who ever does the blood work our trick and that they have to stick the needle all the way in." WHAT???? Yep that's right only the tip of the needle had one in the vein the other 6 times. I was mad! And to think I get to do this at least 3 more times.

I had to run out of the clinic to make it to a workshop I was suppose to be attending. On the way there, the traffic came to a dead hault because of a serious accident. I called my friend Allison to tell her how dumb this whole thing was and yep I started to cry. Which immediately turned into laughter when I realized I hadn't even made it a day. I had made it through all of that with out crying, but talking about it, gets me. Don't understand.

The whole right side of my had is blue from bruising. Actually I had to wrap my hand up really good on Friday at work because one of my students kept poking their finger nail into the bite mark. Which added to all my bruising I'm sure.

Singing

2008-09-01T21:16:00.001-05:00

A few months ago we were asked to sing in Church. We found this beautiful arrangement of "Joseph Smith's First Prayer". We had fun dressing all in the same colors, brown, green and white. Though a few from the group have gotten married and moved out of the ward, for the most part we are the original group. This last Sunday we sang a song called "Those who came before us" The theme of sacrament meeting was temples. The song was very pretty arrangement. Here's a picture of our group.

From Left to right starting on the back row: Kim, Susannah, Alona,Heather, Lesley,Shelley.

Front row: Stephanie(pianist) Leah, Jennifer

Of course we all had to match again(red, white, black, gray) Most of us match more in our accessories, still it was fun.What is a fun group with out some fun pictures as well. It is mostly the Relief Society Presidency/former presidency and roommates. These girls have some amazing voices. We are already planning what song we want to sing next. Any suggestions? While we're at it how about suggestions on a name for this group?

Saturday Night

2008-09-01T21:05:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I went to Ikea with Kim and Lisa. Such a store can be dangerous for us, but we actually did great at staying to what we came for and not for what looked enticing to us. On the way home I notice my odometer. I love to watch for pattens on the odometer, but always seem to look right before they happen or right after. So Kim and I drove around for a little while so we could catch all the numbers in descending order. I'm telling miles go much fast driving down the freeway then they do driving around the neighborhood.

While driving around an older neighborhood off of 1960 and 45 we saw the most misfit house I've ever seen. Most of the houses in this area look really old. You could tell they had been weathered down. It was a beautiful area though with lots of trees. It was a beautiful drive. THen all of a sudden we saw the biggest house. Notice the walkway from the second floor main house over to the garage apartment/house. It looks like a house that should be in a gated community not in a run down neighborhood.

J. Harold Family Reunion

2008-08-31T10:12:00.000-05:00

This summer after our immediate family reunion we went up the street to my dad's family reunion. We started off at Heber Park for lunch and a big family photo. Then we headed up to Heber Valley Camp and did a challenge course. They had a swing that you harnassed into and then someone would pull you up in the air and then you let go of the rope and swung back. IT was fun. Even my 84 year old grandma did it. Ok with a little pressure from all of us. My nephew tanner (3years old) went all the way up in the tree. Brave boy! There wawas also a few other trust games that you had to do. ONe you had to fit 8 people on a tiny wood circle and get everyone acroos safely. If your feet touch the ground you were then blind folded. It was funny to watch. My cousin was getting married a few weeks after the reunion and brought his fiance up. What a way to be welcomed into the family.
Friday night we watched a slide show of old pictures and listend to them tell stories. On Saturday morning we hicked down to the lake and played in the sand. It was a beautiful day. I hadn't seen most of my cousin on that side for a while. Many have had several kids since I saw them so forgive me if there are not a lot of labels on the pictures. However we now have a really good photographer in the family n he got some great shots of people. I'm a fan of his work.
One thing that was really funny to me was My cousin matt who is about to get married introduced me to his fiance. Who happens to be the sister of the Elder Quoroms President in our ward. It's a small world. WE called him up on the phone and had a little fun confusing him on who he was talking too.

Go Bearkats!!!!

2008-08-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

Well the time has come to go back to school to get a Masters of Arts in Low incident Disabilities and Autism at Sam Houston State University. At the end of the course I will be able to take the test to become a BCBA. This will allow me to do work in private therapy and not only in the school districts. I'm not to thrilled about writing a thesis although I've heard they are not as scary as they sound. But I've heard some pretty tough stories.

Don't worry I'm still working full time in the Severe Communication Disorder class at school. I have my work cut out for me this year, but am excited that they all relate to each other.

Although the school is closer then Texas A&M, and has the autsim classes I want, I must say I'm still not in love with the color orange. As if the school colors should determine whether or not I like to school or not.I do kind of like the logo.
Don't worry I'm still an Aggie fan and hope to make it to at least one football game this season.
What town has a huge statue like this? Actually this is on the side of Highway 45 as you head into Huntsville. You got to love Texas. Just in case you are wondering who it is. It's the Famous Sam Houston, who helped win Texas Independence. If you want to know more look it up I can't remember. :)

Despite it all I am excited to be learning more about autism. I am not much of reader....ok so I hate reading, so it will have its challenges, but non-the-less, I have enjoyed the first few classes. My first class was on the same day that the students came back to school. It was a long day, but I learned a few tricks at school that helped me at work. So no complaining.

Darrell Call Family Reunion- 1st of Many!!!

2008-08-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

My family rented a cabin in Heber City for a few days. It was tons of fun. We playe,d Wii, visited, hiked and enjoyed each others company. There weren't really any trails to hike down, but we had fun hiking down the road. Family pictures is always a task when you have so many young kids who don't like pictures being taken, but they turned out really well. My friend Allison, who lives in Virginia right now, happened to be in Utah visiting her grandparents and was able to come down and visit for a day. It was good to see her again. On Wednesday night we went to Nephi and saw a pioneer pagent. We ran into some Bushman cousins while we were parking. It was kind of fun to see them. Alicia scared as she screamed "there are the bushman's" We sate by them and enjoyed visiting before and after the pagent. The cabin was perfect for all of us. It had several bedrooms, a huge tv, pool table and several toys for the kids.