I'll Be Home For Christmas!

I love coming home. This trip has been like therapy. I just needed to be home and surrounded by people I love... and the last three days have been nothing but that! Here are some pictures from Sunday: Family Christmas party at Aunt Betsy's, Monday: big Christmas Eve dinner (with all the trimmings) at home, and Tuesday: Christmas morning presents and then the afternoon at the Grandparents' houses...


Top: Sara, Brett, Bottom: Grandpa Snowball, Blake, Tasha and Brayden, and me (at Aunt Betsy's)


Mom and Sara at the Christmas Eve table as we were setting it. I LOVE our fancy dinner by candlelight.


Dad and I gearing up for the Christmas Eve program (favorite Christmas stories, classic Snowball songs and they Christmas hymns, Luke 2, Sees, and upstairs)


Surprise!! I had NO IDEA I was getting a sewing machine! I already have a slew of projects up my sleeve...


Paige and I after opening presents.


Everyone at Grandma and Grandpa Torgerson's. Aren't we a handsome bunch?


Grandma T, me, and Paige.


Sara is the little charmer and got Brayden (miraculously) to sleep. Paige and I (can you tell which is which?) came to give her some redhead lovin'


I just wanted to give a glimpse of the chaos at Grandma S's with all of us there. I think the count was 35 this year!

PS. I am sure this isn't the end of my Christmas-picture-postings... I have so many more good ones! Isn't Christmas the best??

"Seeing"

This term we have read a lot of transcendental nature writing, so my first question on my 11th grade final asked students to read the following passage from Annie Dillard's essay "Seeing," and explain the metaphor of the "tree with the lights in it." I have gotten such a WIDE range of responses I would like to see what you think.

“When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw ‘the tree with the lights in it.’ It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchard of summer, in the forest of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.”

1. What on earth is she talking about?

Don't worry, I won't mark you down for a wrong answer :)

Grading papers

is very uphill work.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Sunday morning snow-shine! Isn't it beautiful?

I only put this one in to show the treacherous water meter that attacked my car radiator. Can you believe my car was low enough to be damaged by that?

My favorite is the motorcycle! The dogs (in the fence) haven't been barking as much with the snow keeping them indoors--happy for them!

And the playground behind my house--I love the pink light in the trees. I spy San Juan High, do you?

I LOVE SNOW! I really really do. There is just something magical about it. Saturday it started, and I was able to spend all day inside: watching it float on down, grading papers, reading poetry, falling asleep on the couch. Sunday it continued (the pictures show what I woke up to) and today, it just kept on coming! These are from my front kitchen window and my balcony windows. I am surrounded!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

To one and all:
Life around here is hectic but good! I just can't seem to get enough sleep! And I just don't want to grade papers. I think I am as bad as my students (who don't want to write them!). I spent all weekend making gingerbread ornaments (my house still smells wonderfully of cinnamon and applesauce) and today (don't listen with your environmental ears and please forgive me) I got a Christmas tree! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the smell of real trees in my house at Christmas time. Heres the story of how I came to possess it:


In a small town like Blanding there are two ways to get a tree: 1. purchase a plastic one, 2. cut one down. Even if you go to someone's yard-sale mini tree mart, it is still of the "cut down" variety. You can imagine my horror at this discovery--remembering that I grew up in suburbia where Christmas trees are grown in "Christmas Tree Farms" and conveniently placed in every parking lot for miles around, starting right after Thanksgiving. I was, last week, in third period mentioning my deep sadness at the Blanding tree-predicament when two of my students very excitedly volunteered to "get" me a tree! Although I know there are not enough trees on this side of the state to cut any down, I couldn't bear to quell their excitment... especially since it was my only hope of getting a real tree this year (there is no way I would EVER cut my own). So, tonight, they brought me the most fantasticly lob-sided, fat, and squat, little Blue Mountain tree that I ever did see! I immediately put that sucker in a tree stand and have been tying my dozens of red bows to it since! I now have a beautiful little Christmas tree... and not a paper graded! The three guys who brought it over were a hoot--they first brought me a sad little dying stick with dead leaves hanging all over it... laughing hysterically. Next came a rather small little branch... and finally my darling little tree. I think it was more than worth the dozen or so molasses cookies that I paid them with. Please don't hate me forever for loving this pagan tradition! ps: please excuse the poor photography (number one) and the trailing lights in this picture (number two). I have an extension cord in my classroom I will bring home tomorrow!