Wednesday, April 18, 2007

home living

well it turns out living in a home is quite different than an apartment. many evenings and a lot of time on weekends are spent working around the house...its high maintenance! we are very fortunate however that ross is quite the handy man and can handle most all the tasks himself...well maybe with a little help from home de pot. our back porch hangout/gym area is about 75% complete. we've worked out several times back there and now just need to get some bamboo blinds purchased and hung. the kitchen sink is a continual thorn in our side as it seems to have issues constantly. pictures and artwork are slowly making their way onto the walls. ross busted out the riding lawn mower last week and did a little work on our 'jungle' as i like to refer to it. he showed me how to drive it but i was promptly relieved of these duties. we've had 2 sets of visitors so far: jfer came into town for the Easter weekend. She and I went to the movies and of course the mall and worked on my wedding album. All of us went to church (where Chris Tomlin led worship!) and in general just had good times. Our outdoor adventures were postponed to her next visit due to the freezing (quite literally--sleet on Easter!) weather. Our other visitors you can see below: 5 deer that like to hang out in our yard sometimes! Our third set of visitors are due next week and we can't wait!



Monday, April 16, 2007

am i smarter than a 5th grader?

for whatever reason ross and i have watched this show 'are you smarter than a 5th grader' the past 2 weeks. aside from annoying theme music, overly dramatic people, awfully smug children, jeff foxworthy, and excessive commercial breaks...we find this show entertaining for some reason. i think we enjoy knowing so many more answers than the contestants that it makes us feel good about ourselves. i do think, however, that their selection of contestants in not equally weighted. we have yet to see a professional like a doctor, lawyer, computer programmer on the show...one could argue they don't need more money, but i'm just saying that i think they would do well. but mostly i would like to see a teacher on the show, like a 5th grade teacher, because i'm sure she would blast that game apart. but i guess it wouldn't be as 'entertaining' if the contestants were 'smarter' than a 5th grader. if, of course, you are silly enough to believe that answering random questions from a school textbook correctly makes you 'smarter' than another person.

i however have been engaging in my own reality show of 'am i smarter than a 5th grader' the past month as i've been studying to take the TExES exam to be 'highly qualified' to teach 4th-8th grade mathematics. this requires me to have mastery over certain competencies that i shall be required to teach students on the TAKS test. Some sample questions are provided, but not really enough to practice with. So I looked online and found that you can take released TAKS tests for all ages here. so beginning with 3rd grade and going up through 11th grade, i took all the TAKS math tests. i sighed with relief when the 3rd grade test was no problem and was somewhat pleased when i was able to complete all tests easily in less than 1 hour each. i'm not sure if the excitement was justifiable, as i am a college graduate, but nonetheless at least i do know how to do what i am to teach students to do. of course, doing it well and teaching it well are far from the same.

i also took the 8th grade social studies just to see, and was pleased to execute that one flawlessly as well. try them out! it will let you know if 'you're smarter than a 5th grader', according to the state of Texas.

Monday, April 02, 2007

home de pot

being married apparently requires lots of trips to the home depot(or as i affectionately refer to it: the home de pot), as i have been there more times this month than i think i have been in the rest of my entire life combined. this sunday afternoon found us in the hardware aisle finding numerous different sized bolts required to put together a weight set. it also included a trip to the pvc pipe aisle for parts for ross to install our dishwasher. the dishwasher that was supposed to be fun to go pick up in corpus christi because we were going to camp on the beach. but due to rainy weather (i refuse to call it bad weather, because i heart it) our dishwasher trip disintegrated into a boring marathon 12hr trip of a saturday. so while we were at the home depot buying things, then ross bought me something! a plant. the cashier appeared mortified while ringing it up and said 'what IS that?', it rang up as 'carnivorous.' haha, thats because we bought a venus fly trap! it is currently uninteresting looking, but as soon as it grows the characteristic 'trap' then i will post a picture of it.