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!

Modestly Yours

For those who haven't yet checked it out, there is a great blog titled "Modestly Yours" (see my links to the right) that advocates modesty, family, and abstinence, organized by Wendy Shalit (author of Girls Gone Mild--a book I haven't yet read, but hope to soon!). The latest posting is of a news report on abstinence that I thought was well done. Check it out!

Tag... I'm it!

After much internal struggle to not give in to the tagging war... here goes:

Jobs I've had:
High School English teacher (11th, 12th grade, AP)
MTC teacher (English, Welfare, ESL, RC, TEC)
Freshman Academy Peer Mentor
Sees Candy (sample giver, box packer, smilier)

Places I've Lived:
Westminster, California
Provo, Utah
Honduras (Jesus de Otoro, Talanga, Catacamas, Loarque)
Blanding, Utah

Favorite TV Shows:
I don't own a TV...
But for my list of favorite books, look to the right!

Favorite Food:
peas (sometimes with spaghetti sauce--don't get grossed out!)
raisins (mmmm...)
Albertson's Southwest Salsa (with wheat thins, triscuits, saltines, chips, peas)
current addiction: popcorn (the 98% fat free kind, just a few seconds too long in the microwave)

Places I'd Rather be:
Home
Tasha's
Sara's
Honduras
Reading a book

Places I'd like to visit:
Home (anywhere with family!)
VIRGINIA (where I have always wanted to--and someday will--live)
Honduras (of course)
Africa (it seems so filled with fascinating people)
India (I don't know why, but really, I do)
Norway (to understand my roots; although, I am from six different European countries; perhaps I choose Norway because it's where my last name comes from)

I tag:
no one!

Back at it!

Horray for home! I loved, loved, loved being home for Thanksgiving. I think it is my favorite holiday--because it always includes family and is a little less stressful. Don't get me wrong, I love the stress of Christmas too... anyhow, I think you know what I mean! It went too fast this year, however. Doesn't it always? I loved seeing Tasha and the boys, I loved slumber parties with Paige, sleeping in, all day at Aunt Chris', good books, Christmas shopping, sleeping in, walking with Mom. I love going home.

Somehow, however, I am back in Blanding! I was texting Paige earlier tonight and she said she thinks she is going to be on a homework frenzy until Christmas. I texted back that I am on a grading frenzy until then! I don't know how I am going to catch up! We are back in full swing around here... starting Act IV of Hamlet (today we performed scenes), finishing up Transcendentalism and gearing up for Huck Finn, and working on literary analysis in AP Lang and Comp. Time flies when you are having fun :). I am actually looking forward to the next four weeks. At the end is Christmas (whoo hoo!) and end of term (half way mark!). I am hoping to do some really fun things in the meantime. Not to mention basketball season starting :). I am posting some more pictures Nick took when he was here. They, of course, are of my classroom. It is sort of a sad little room (lacking in decor and windows) but I call it home. Have I mentioned that I love teaching English yet? I do. I love these kids. They are so good. I went to the first home boys bb game tonight. I love seeing them in their element (not always an English classroom, so sad). They have so much personality and life. I feel privileged to be here with them in this grand adventure of living!

Ok, well, I am rambling and putting off lesson planning... so away I go!! Cheers.

Home Sweet Home

Well, I had a good friend here about a week ago... and he took some fun pictures with his digital camara, so I finally get to post pictures of where I live!!

This is my little living room (and my Oranges in Oil painting by Nick Stephens) The light coming in is from the French doors and not-quite-done balcony

My favorite place to read (right across from the couch)...

My cute red kitchen with the morning light streaming in...

My big red bed (and another Nick painting)

"I become a transparent eyeball..."

Horray for transcendentalism! I don't mean to make this blog a travelogue of my teaching adventures, but I just can't help it, as they seems to consume my life! This week we started the fantastic transcendentalists... Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Alcott. Does it get any better? I just love the nature writers; they are so inspiring! I think my students officially think I am crazy. After reading aloud Chapter 1 of Nature by Emerson, I had one student come in after school and tell me I should be a drama teacher. I guess my out-loud reading skills are just that good. They seem to be enjoying it (perhaps not as much as I do, but hey, every bit counts!). I rarely give homework, but told them their assignment this weekend is to go out into nature for at least an hour: take a pen and some paper and observe. I got a few astonished looks at that one, but not too many complaints. I am hoping for some original nature writing and transcendent experiences--Annie Dillard style. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to take an hour or two myself and go see some of the natural wonders of southern Utah this weekend. And, it has also given me an excuse to start reading Little Women again. I tell you what, life is good!

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden Pond