Education Seminar

So now that I am working in the education field, I was invited to a seminar for my morning job. The exciting thing to me about the seminar was the location -- Cowboys Stadium with free parking! I knew that I would probably never have the opportunity to go to the stadium especially with free parking again. That is a magnificent building. We also had lunch served to us and it was delicious, served on real plates with real silverware!

The seminar was to go over technology in education. One thing I learned is that we can each have a windows.live account and we all have 25 GB of storage in "the cloud". Wow -- so I set up my windows live account and stored a picture. In Microsoft Office 2010 it is possible to save directly to your own "skydrive". You can also choose which files are private and which your network can see. Your network is the friends you choose to be in your network. Seems pretty handy to me.

Another website that I learned about is last.fm It's a cool website where you can choose your own music and make playlists. I might make one for "working on the computer music" and one for "cleaning house music". (The second one won't be used much). I really don't know how to make the playlists -- I haven't played with it yet.

We had some good speakers and I probably learned a lot -- some useful and some not so much. I did get a tour of the stadium and got to go into the locker room where each locker cost between 9 and 10 thousand dollars! We were not allowed to touch them. They said that this room is the most rented out room in the building. People have cocktail parties in there -- and some have proposed in front of their favorite cowboy's locker! There is no odor -- no equipment is actually stored in this building!! It is brought over before the game and then taken back to the other place afterwards!

I'm growing up and going to seminars again!


Few days later -- played with last.fm awhile and still like it, but I won't be making any track lists because that option costs $3 a month which isn't worth it to me. So I just pick a "station" and see what happens. I did find that unlike some people, I can't concentrate if music is playing loudly!

Who the Heck am I?

I've been trying to figure that out. I am ...
a Christian, a wife, a mother to adult children, an owner of dogs and cats, a friend, a tutor, a math geek, a reader, a scrapbooker, a computer user, an instructor to adults learning about computers, a napper, a tv watcher, and many other things.

I've been through many stages in my life....childhood, teenage years, college, career woman, early marriage, kids at home, substitute teacher, PTA mom, homeschool mom, and now empty nest....I wish I could figure out now what/where I am supposed to be. Maybe this is it for now, but God isn't finished with me yet.

Was I a Helicopter Mom?

I wonder if I was a helicopter mom. I certainly went to enough parent/teacher meetings to know the teachers and administrators on a first name basis. That was until I didn't want to know them anymore at all and I became the teacher and I slept with the administrator.

Then my students went off to college and I may have given them some advice but I never called a professor or administrator of a college.

But it was made very clear to me last week that I was not an overly protective mom. Last week, I heard sirens coming down my street around 8:00 pm. They turned on the side street next to my house and out of curiosity I walked over. There was an ambulance, a fire truck, and a police car. There was also a neighbor girl sitting on the sidewalk. Other neighbors came out also and I heard the story...they had been rollerskating and this little girl fell and broke her arm. I watched as they loaded her onto the gurney and prepared to rush her to the hospital.

About 10 or 11 years ago, I had just begun homeschooling and my son and I decided to go for a bike ride. (PE class I guess). Well he rode into a parked car and hurt himself. We rode back and he told me that his wrist hurt. I gave him some advil and told him to take a bath -- I was going to Dallas to meet some friends for lunch. I came home a couple hours later and he told he that it still hurt. I probably gave him some more advil. A couple hours later, when he was still complaining about it, I took him to the emergency room where after an x-ray, they told me that he had a broken wrist!

He didn't get any sirens, he didn't get to ride in an ambulance. He got to sit at home while his mom went to lunch and then he finally got to ride in my Honda Accord to the hospital.

Helicopter mom -- definitely not! Neglectful -- not always!

It's a New Year

It's a new year and a new decade. I've heard many of the arguments of how to say this year -- Twenty Ten, Two Thousand Ten, or O-Ten. My preferred way is to say twenty ten and to write MMX.

This year, Mark and I will probably be finding a new church home. It is somewhat difficult to leave a church you have been involved in for over 25 years, but it is time to move on. We may have already found a place, but we will wait until some things at our older church have changed. It is scary and exciting at the same time. Mark and I are very ELCA Lutheran in our thinking, believing, and worshiping. Our current church is not.

I'm going to try to read at least 26 books this year. I really need to make more time to read. I also want to finish Kev's Texas Tech scrapbook as well as start and finish the 2008 and 2009 books. They will probably be a hybrid -- some old fashioned scrapbook pages as well as some digital pages. Of course, I need to start my walking dvd's again.

I'll check back in a few months and see how I'm doing!

The Audacity of Individuality

In the past few weeks, while my kids were in town and I talked to other parents of similarly aged kids, I realized again that my kids are "different".

When talking about all the social aspects of college, I realize that Kathryn just isn't a "normal" college freshman. She didn't want to go greek, she likes going to class, she loves learning new things, she doesn't always wear the standard college attire, she usually gets about 8 hours of sleep each night, and most of her social life is at the Canterbury Center and at church. I suppose she was never the "normal" high school student either, but since she didn't go to high school, it wasn't as noticeable. Everyone who knows Kevin, knows that he is a proud nonconformist.

Today, I was reading an article in the Dallas Morning News about Chris Howard, who is now the first black president of Hampden-Sydney College, a predominantly while all-male school in Virginia. The article is well written and I'm sure he is a great man. But one of his quotes made me go 'aha' -- that's the definition of my kids. I'm quoting the DMN (article by Jessica Meyers) which is quoting him -- (no plagiarism for me) .

"He's started telling his cadre of male students to stub their toes, be humbled by the complexity and subtlety of experiences, and to embrace ambiguity. 'I call it the audacity of individuality,' he said. 'So many people tell you what you should be. Follow your passions first and acquire sets of skills that empower.'"

So that's my Kevin and my Kathryn -- they each have the audacity of individuality!

Woohoo -- I'm so proud of them!

Year end wrap up

2009 is just a few hours away from ending. This year, both my kids graduated and went on to other pursuits. Kev graduated from college and entered grad school; Kat graduated from high school and entered college.

I went to work at TCC parttime in the Continuing Educ department. I think I would like a full time job someday.

Mark spent about 135 nights in a Marriott hotel! Just shows how much he travels.

Right now, Kev and Mark are at a Boy Scout leadership camp but they will be home before midnight. In the next week, Kev will return to Ohio and then Kat to Oklahoma. I will go back to work and "normal" life will resume.

Next year, I plan to read more books. I think I have gotten out of the habit of reading. I picked one up recently at the library by Jonathan Kellerman who is one of my favorite authors. I finished the book, "True Detectives", but I certainly didn't think it was one of his better ones. Anyway, I am going to get back into reading.

Melancholy and Decorating

I have bunco this week. So today I was out running errands to get ready for bunco, fill the little communion cups for tomorrow, and grocery shop. One of my stops was Walgreens. Walgreens is at the same location that used to be a Burrus Grocery Store. I hardly ever shopped there. However, as I pulled into the parking lot of Walgreens, I remembered going to Burrus one time with Kevin who was probably around 5. He had left Bunny Honey in the car and when we came out, Bunny Honey was sitting on the dashboard. Either he came alive while we were in there or Mark drove by and did it. We'll never know because Mark never confessed, and I'm sure he has forgotten by now. Anyway, the remembrance didn't so much make me sad as it made me go -- where did the years go? My little boy is now a man in graduate school!

On decorating, I always think others are judging me on my lack of making my house a showcase. It is a home, but it is frequently messy, pet hair everywhere, and I don't really like cleaning it. Does this make me a bad mother -- sometimes it feels like it does. I want to shout to those that are judging me (who probably aren't really) hey, I homeschooled my kids, I went back to work to help pay for college -- cut me some slack. In reality, it is me who needs to cut me some slack! But please, someone, explain to me why part of my living room decor has to be ugly green boxes of ammo!