More from the Garden

This was one of my garden harvests. I was too impatient and unsure of weather conditions to leave my peppers on the bush until they turned orange. They kind of got a late start this year but now the slugs are out. The powdery mildew destroyed my pumpkin patch and 5 of my pumpkins did not survive leaving me disappointed with only 2, oh well.

I was skimming through a book of my moms about growing food on a 1/4 of an acre. It recommended using raised beds for gardening. I am considering building them for next year because it will look nicer, keep down weeds, and could possibly be a selling feature of our house. We have all winter think about it.

One of my many tomato, squash, eggplant harvests

The rest of my carrots

One of my only surviving pumpkins :(Raspberries are finally producingBiggest pepper I have grown (so far)

Week 1

School started on Wednesday, September 8th and it has already been a crazy, crazy week! There were some events that happened this week (before school even started!) that has created a lot of distraction for all of the staff. Technically, I don't think I am allowed to share what is going on yet...but I will definitely update when the cost is clear.

If you put that aside, my first week has been better than I expected. I have 28 4th graders in my class. And yes, everyone was right who told me fourth graders are just big first graders, they really aren't that scary. My class reminds me a little of my fourth grade year (only I hope to be a more exciting teacher). We are boy heavy, and there are a number of students that have behavior problems, that is to be expected now days. I also have a handful of girls (and a couple boys) who are pleasers, and want to do extra work or read me everything they write. So far it has been pretty fun. I only teach for about 2.5 hours a day so it has also been fairly easy. Even if I have behavior problems I know I can walk away from it at 12. I have a feeling it will get more stressful as the year goes on because I do not have the flexibility of finishing a project up after lunch or keeping kids in from recess. I teach math and writing everyday for the most part and that means lots of assessing and lots of grading, but I am hoping to make it a fun positive year for all of them. My biggest struggle right now is what to do about spelling when they are writing. I think I will need to give a lesson on using dictionaries and I have some kids who I am pretty sure won't even be able to do that... Right now I have a pile of math assessments (with no key) that I need to grade. I hope week 2 goes as smoothly!

Newport

We went to Newport for the weekend before school started to set up the apartment. Near by is Agate Beach. We went there for the first time and it was really quiet amazing. I don't know what caused it and if it is always like this, but there are lots of mini sand dunes. It was really fun to play on (and my legs got really sore from walking up and down them). Previously, I had only been to Nye beach and the wharf. We are working on scouting out some new areas and restaurants. We found a cafe by Nye beach that serves a lot of vegetarian and vegan food and of course we couldn't pass up saltwater taffy and caramel corn from the Candy Shoppe on the wharf. I'm looking forward to trying out the drive in the outback. It should be much better in a new car with a working defrost and mist setting on my windshield wipers!

Subaru

Well, it finally happened and I still can't believe it! For the past 6 years I have been looking at every Subaru on the road (mainly outbacks) and dreaming about how someday I would own one. I always imagined that I would get a used 2000-2004 outback. But I noticed that the price of them never really got cheaper and they were getting older. Erik convinced me last year to think about getting a new Subaru outback since they were not all that much more expensive then the old ones. I said that I would consider it, but that I really wanted to test drive them. Now if you have seen my Geo Prizm, you would know I was getting really anxious for a newer car. The Geo was a bare bones 1995 that we bought for $2,200. It now has 199,000 miles, no AC, and a cracked windshield, needs new breaks and new tires. We were hoping to sell it for $500-$1000 on craigslist if we were lucky. With winter coming and frequent visits to the beach, we decided it was time to start test driving Subaru's (plural?). I wanted to look at Carr Subaru in Beaverton because they are "salary salesmen". Last weekend Erik and I drove up there and test drove a 2011 Subaru outback in graphite grey. It had 6 miles on it, a moonroof, backup camera, and the all weather package. To be expected I fell in love. The problem: the price. They would not take my Geo as a trade in and they also could not get the car in our price range. The salesman was great, the sales manager not so great. He would not let us leave and I was starting to panic! Finally, after 3 hours of being there,I stood up and said we couldn't do it (he knew I was the one in love and a push over). We left empty handed and a little discouraged. However, Erik had made us an appointment at Capital Subaru to talk to the Costco sales rep. (If you didn't know Costco can give you some good deals on cars). Well it turns out Capital Subaru is also salary and everyone there is nice (and not pushy) their cars are also more reasonably priced. It just so happened they had a 2011 graphite grey Subaru outback with a moonroof, backup camera, and the all weather package with only 4 miles on it! It was meant to be. I was the first customer to ever drive the car :) Capital also traded in our Geo for $500!!! While we were in the process of getting the car Carr Subaru called and left a message saying they would take the Geo for $1000 if we bought the outback today. Guess somebody was desperate. We went with Capital for many reasons: they were nice, cheaper, and closer to home. So now Erik and I are proud Subaru owners and I have a feeling I will be a Subaru owner for life!

Isn't she a beauty?All wheel drive and partial zero emissions
Excited to go for a drive
Yay! First time new car buyers and so happy with our outback!

Update on Teaching

I finally got a hold of the teacher that I will be teaching with. We met in our (weird) classroom on Monday night. The classroom is kind of small but it has a great storage closet that we share with the neighboring teacher so that makes up for it. I think I am going to get a long with Debbie really well, although it was a little awkward since it was the first time we had met and there was SO much to discuss. She has a 2 month old baby boy and will be teaching in the afternoons while I teach in the mornings. Because of the school schedule there wasn't much say in what subjects I am going to teach. Get ready for it... Math, Spelling, and Writing! Quite possibly my three weakest subjects! The good news is she wanted to know if I would teach Art once a week and they have a kiln! I also have to teach a very scripted bullying program. But back to the main subjects. The math program they use is called Invisions and looks horribly confusing. There are a bazillion teaching manuals that are very wordy with few examples. Help! The writing tools they have are not as straight forward and easy to follow as Lucy Calkins was, but they also allow for a little more creativity. All I know is that I am really glad I am only teaching part time so I can have the rest of the day to plan/ prep/ and read all these manuals! Next week on the 24th-27th I start my beginning teacher mentor program and then inservice the following week. School starts on September 8 and I am already nervous! I was hoping to feel more confident and that the classroom was mine too, but right now I feel like a sub and that I am just visiting. The upside, my name is already on the mailbox! My goal for the rest of this week is to read over the material Debbie gave me and do some research so that I can go into this feeling a little more prepared!

One year :)

Sunday we celebrated our first year of marriage and it has been quite a year! Erik and I like making celebrations into weekend long events so we started off on Saturday with an interesting trip to Lincoln City (where Erik proposed to me). It was going to be 98 degrees in the valley and so I figured it was the perfect day to take off to the beach. I checked the weather and Lincoln City was going to be 79 and sunny! So off we went in our t-shirts and shorts to hang out and picnic on the beach...

Apparently everyone in the valley had the same idea and traffic was awful in my little unair-conditioned car. After almost two hours we made it to Lincoln City to find a very heavy layer of fog hanging over the town and ocean, not to mention it was FREEZING! We stopped at a little grocery store to buy some food and get a park pass to go hiking. The cashier told us the trail was closed (and they don't sell the passes there anyway). I had a back up plan and decided we would hike Cascade Head, a 4.5 mile round trip 1,200 ft gain with spectacular views.

We ate our picnic in the parking lot of the trail head and then began a very fun steep hike (with no views). The fog was so thick you couldn't see very far, but it still was beautiful. When we got to the top we were sitting in the sunshine above the fog layer looking out at the ocean but all we could see was a thick blanket of fog. We decided we will have to come back and do the hike on a clear day because the views would have been amazing!

When we got home I made us a delicious fondue dinner and we had our wedding cake for dessert. Not the frozen freezer-burnt year old wedding cake, but a fresher version of it I picked up from the Konditorei.


On Sunday we had waffles with strawberries (I had picked earlier this summer) and whipped cream. Yum Yum! Erik made us reservations at Portland City Grill for dinner so we got dressed up and drove to Portland. They had reserved us a table with a great view of the city, we could see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams. The table was sprinkled with rose petals and heart glitter, then the waiter brought us delicious champagne. It was definitely a once in a life time celebration!

Erik in Alaska

Erik went on a fishing trip to Alaska with some of his coworkers last week. He had a wonderful time and came home with 100 lbs of fish! He also caught some monsters.
These two pictures are hanging on the lodge wall for the trophy fish. I can't remember what type of salmon the first one is, I think it is a Coho and is 15 lbs. The second one is a King Salmon and it is 25 lbs.