time flies

I can't believe it's the end of October. I've been a lousy blogger. It was really busy earlier in the month at school as I had to grade all 750+ of my students. Then, from October 14th to the 21st, I went on vacation back to Minnesota. I will try to get some pictures up of that in this post.

This week was back to reality and back to work. It wasn't so hard working but it was definitely hard getting up at 6.00a again. Curt and I are also training for the Rock and Roll half-marathon in January, so we have started running more for that. The evenings are getting to be perfect for running. It is getting dark here around 6-6.15 now. We won't be doing daylight savings time next weekend - we stay on the same time year round. That means we will only be one hour behind Minnesota, which is kind of nice.

This morning, Curt was at work so I walked downtown to the Phoenix Public Market. I bought some vine-ripened tomatoes, mixed greens, butternut squash and a little loaf of banana nut bread. I stopped at a coffeeshop on the way back and had some quiche and an iced chai. The coffeeshop is cool - it is a 'cafe/gallery', and everything in it is free trade. They have art and cool things for sale in addition to coffee, sandwiches and snacks. There is also a yoga studio in the building that I may start frequenting.

Not much is going on in the next few months. Curt started a new job in sales on Thursday. He will be working Tuesday-Saturday, slightly later hours (9 or 10 to 6 or 7) so that will be different. We may have some CouchSurfers staying with us this week which would be fun. It is my birthday next Saturday but I don't think I'll do anything too crazy. We are having people from my school over tomorrow night for the October "Family Dinner." Once a month, people take turns hosting and having people over to their house or at a restaurant. We'll have a small gathering but it should be fun. We are going to hang out down by the pool, eat, drink and then we reserved the mini-movie theater to watch "Shaun of the Dead", which is a hilarious spoof zombie-movie. :)

For your viewing enjoyment, here are some pictures of my trip.




Pat and Jack

Trina and Jack with the sling I made for them

Granny Annie and Jack

Andrea!

Ayden (Andrea's son)

high school friends: Sveah, Katie, me and Jen

Jack-o-lantern

Shirley came to visit Jack :)

silly Segway riders

my Kari!

view from the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis

the one day I had good weather on my trip...Minneapolis still loves me

my nephew

Jack Mathias Pierson
born September 28th, 2007
7.13p
8 pounds, 1 ounce
20 inches

Grand Canyon

Sky flew in from Minneapolis Thursday night. Today we drove up to the Grand Canyon. Curt flew over it in a helicopter when his family was here last month, but Sky and I had never seen it. By the way, if you haven't noticed, Blogger crops any horizontal pictures.





a late breakfast at IHOP



Curt did all of the driving today...



Grand Canyon #1



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Sky is supposed to be in this one too but it got cropped



#7



me

my classroom

i thought you might like to see some pictures of my classroom.











my desk and computer





they are supposed to come take these old computers away, but haven't yet.



attempting to broaden their horizons with the Bob Dylan poster. :)





the view from my piano.

one downside of my room: no windows! there really aren't windows anywhere on campus, because the classrooms are housed in small buildings. there are probably 8-10 buildings all together.

camping photos

If all goes well, this post should have plenty of photos.





the view from our campsite towards the mountains



more of our campsite



curt in our huge tent!



some local foliage



the hill behind our campsite



more of the mountains



we stayed in the Red Tail Hawk Loop



the view from Jerome



us in Jerome



some curiosities beside a gallery in Jerome



the whole town looks like this! needless to say, I fell in love with it



Curt trying some grapes at the winery - their classic sparkling was delicious!



me in the zoo that was Sedona over Labor Day Weekend. pretty rocks, though. :)