Thanksgiving Eve

Well, so far half the house is clean and laundry load #1 is in the wash. Our room is immaculate. Amazing!! We still have to clean the bathroom and laundry room and mop the kitchen floor. We're going to get a jump on cooking and make cranberry fluff, broccoli rice casserole, sweet potatoes, and key lime pie tonight. The only question is where we're going to put it after we make it. Our fridge is full of left overs!

Sondra is spending the night tonight. We're going to watch a movie, make turkey place cards, and have a slumber party. Then we're getting up early tomorrow to get the turkey in the oven and head to the 10am service at church. Then we're coming home and cooking the rest of the meal (while praying we figure out how to make gravy), eat Thanksgiving dinner, watch football and Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and play fun games like Scrabble, Sequence, Cranium (which is made in Seattle!), and the good ol' Dutch favorite, Rummikub. Can't wait!!

My mom called this morning. Daisy Mae, my cockatiel, is hurt. Something is wrong with her wing. I told my mom how to nurse her back to health while waiting until Friday to take her to the vet. I hope she's going to be okay, poor thing! My mom also mentioned that they already have over six inches of snow. Not fair! All we have out here at the moment is a flash flood watch. I'd personally rather have the snow.

Roomie and I are off to run some more errands and get back to the cooking and cleaning. But first, a Starbucks run!

Rainy Day...

It's a pretty gross, rainy Saturday in Seattle today - typical for November, although we haven't gotten nearly as much rain this fall as we did last year. I remember a Monday last year when we got 13in of rain in about 7 hours. eeew.

Not much on the schedule for this weekend. I have massive amounts of homework due next week in my ED classes. It's unbelievable! I don't have much to read at all in Women in Christianity, which is a nice change for that class. So I am going to be stuck inside throughout this gross weekend, writing my Philosophy of Ed paper and working on my Teacher Competency Plan. I guess it could be worse...it could be lesson plans!!! (sick)

Laura Boerema and I are currently working on our own personal cross-country mail order service. It's quite fun. We're IMing eachother at the moment, requesting various things from one another. Example: I'm burning all my country and Nickel Creek cd's for her and she's buying me the newest Hope Chapel cd and sending me copies of camp pictures that were stolen from my car. What a great trade!

I've been volunteering in a 4th/5th grade class at the Salmon Bay School, an alternative public school across the canal in Ballard. This past Thursday was really great. It was only my second day with them, but I feel like I'm connecting with them and actually remembering most of their names. I administered a spelling test to a bunch of them and I realized that people on the West Coast can't hear the difference between the words "cot" and "caught." It's really interesting. I said "Word number 6 is caught." They all looked at me really confused, so I used it in a sentence: "He threw me the ball and I caught it." They then knew what I meant, but repeated "caught" in the same sentence, but using "cot" instead. I quickly figured out that out here, "cot" and "caught" are one in the same. Weird!!! Umm, so maybe I really do have an accent afterall, eh? :) Then there's Mitch, who called me a tit out-of-the-blue. He was quite proud of himself for doing so, and I was quite confused, so he explained that I am a Teacher In Training. Ahhh, I get it. And he didn't understand that it was slightly inappropriate, so I let it go. Hopefully he won't remember it next week. There's also a fantastic boy named Louis in this class, who reminds me of Ron from Harry Potter. He has bright red hair that is kinda messy and seems to find himself in bits of trouble a lot. He's one of my favorites :)

I had coffee Thursday morning with Rev. Lynne Faris, the pastor of outreach at Bethany Pres. I had never formally met her before, so that was really great. We discussed women in ministry, ordination, and some other general stuff. She's hoping to sit in on one of my Women in Christianity class periods. It'd be good to get her input, especially when we discuss women and ordination. I'm looking forward to having coffee with her again soon!