More Seattle

Shots from the Space Needle....

Mt. Ranier in the background...

walking up to the Space Needle...


Sunset from atop the Space Needle...


My handsome husband and I...

Leaving the Space Needle... check out the moon

and the moon again... sweet, huh?!

This was an absolutely gorgeous day! Thanks for cooperating Seattle!

Toe Painting

One Sunday afternoon while hanging out with my nephew, I decided it very important to paint my toenails. You know, sandal season is here... and these babies ain't painting themselves.

While painting, Junior rushed over to see what he was missing. Then, with his adorable face and soft whisper said, "please!". When those handsome eyes look up at you with such soft words as "please" its all over.

I happily obliged.


It started with just the big toenail and his mother laughing it off. Then she left the room, and I got to work. Two minutes later, we had matching pedi's. While Junior helped blow on his toenails for a quick dry, mom entered the room. Let me just say she absolutely loved the toe transformation (please insert adequate amount of sarcasm here. Now multiply it by ten. And by ten again, and you will understand how truly excited she was.)


What can I say, they will look great in the photo album at his High School graduation!

Easter Chicks....

Oh Bakerella, how I wish I possessed your talent. You're creativity is endless!

Aren't these adorable?

Mine pale in comparison in both looks and execution, but they taste delicious nonetheless. Here's proof.




Can you taste them?? Deliciouso!

Anyway, I love spring, and love how the season always makes everyone happier. In life we all have our ups and downs, but a sunny day always brings a smile across a once frowning face. For the first year school psych grad students, this semester is pretty tough. Not only are you having to acclimate yourself to a full load of grad classes, but are faced with both assessment and statistics. This is the semester where one learns how to really prioritize and persevere. After all, grad school is 90% perseverance and 10% training. Okay, so my breakdown may be a bit off, but that's definitely how it feels sometimes. Because of this, I really felt that our program was lacking a mentoring system, and I set out to change that this year, helping to create a mentoring committee; pairing first year students with second and third year students. This year has been a big success. Throughout the year, we try and meet with our mentoree's- grab a coffee, dinner, or whatever, and find out how things are going and how they need support. Sometimes its just bending an ear, sometimes its just providing reassurance that "it" can be done, other times its brightening their day by leaving a card or goodies in their mailbox. This time, I made these cute Easter pops and gave them to everyone right before the dreaded stats test #2.

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. ~Walter Elliott

Baby Showers

This weekend I helped throw a babyshower for one of Mike's coworkers. Her and her husband have been trying and trying for years, and have finally had success. I can hardly wait to meet this bundle of joy! The parents have chosen not to know the sex of the baby, and will not share names with others; the suspense is killing me! (On a related note, I am terrible about waiting... I am dying over here!!!)

The shower was very small, and the food was delicious. My friend Jill made this wonderful chicken salad with an amazing dressing. She also made this wonderful "pull apart bread" that took every ounce of restraint to not eat the entire thing. Lastly, there were melt away sugar cookies and baby cake pops.

Yes, that's right, more cake pops. I have mentioned my admiration for Bakerella in previous posts, but I just cannot get enough of her creativity. Expanding on her vast list of creative ways to use an ordinary cake mix and can of frosting, I sketched out an idea for making them into babies. I am sure I have probably seen this elsewhere, and its not an original idea. However, I would like to speak to the person whose original idea this was- because these were incredibly time consuming. I consider myself a patient person, but man alive, did these take a long time to make. Nonetheless, they were very yummy, and of course, super cute.

Here's the materials (and pardon the blurriness, I apparently didn't check the photo before using the products!)


I baked the cake according to the box and let it cool. Once cooled, I crumbled the cake and mixed in the can of frosting. I put this mixture into the freezer to make the mixture moldable. After about 45 minutes, I rolled the mixture into ovals and put the mixture back into the freezer. In the meantime, I melted white almond bark to make the diaper. Then I dipped one end of the oval cake ball into the almond bark and put the sucker stick into the the cake ball and put it into styrafoam.


I allowed the almond bark to set, and dipped the top end into the corresponding color, either pink or blue. Once this set, I used icing to draw faces and to stick the flower sprinkes to the cheeks.

Next time, I would use an edible pen to draw faces, but I just couldn't find one in time. The gel icing never set, so I couldn't individually wrap the cake balls. That made it a little difficult to present them nicely, but thankfully, no one seemed to mind!



These were a hit at the party! There is a lot "cleaning up" I need to do to make them look amazing.

Seattle

My husband is a high school band director at a nearby high school. He is forever surrounded by students who work hard, and look up to him on a daily basis. He strives to continually provide his student's with musical experiences that will inspire them to achieve their best. When everyone's patience is fried, Mike can find a positive and relate to the student. Teaching isn't a job to Mike.

Every 2 years, Mike takes his students on a band trip. Two years ago was Chicago. This year, Seattle. What's in Seattle, you ask? Everything! The students had three jam packed days in Seattle performing and sight seeing.

With the economy being the way that it is, busing was the only realistic option for travel. From school to Seattle, it was a 36 hour bus ride. Yes, I volunteered to chaperone. On our way out to Seattle, we experienced snow, and lots of it. At 4am we rolled into Sundance, WY to a blizzard. The interstate was shut down and were were stranded at a gas station for 4.5 hours! Thank goodness Smoothie Island was located inside- this entertained students for a long time. You know what the coolest part of being stranded in Sundace, WY was? The students. Why? Because their optimism was contagious. Just when I was feeling my patience begin to dwindle, a student would find excitement in our predicament. This was absolutely contagious! I am confident that our caravan of three charter buses will keep that little gas station open for the next 10 years... no stimulus money necessary. We FINALLY arrived in Seattle around 4am, pacific time- just in time for breakfast and to start our day! Here are a few fun pictures from our trip...

Safeco Field



The student's Performance


My roomie and I...


Downtown Seattle

Easter...

What a busy time of year! How I love spring!

This year, Easter was held at my house. Because of time, I opted for a finger foods and desserts. As always, there was more food than necessary, but no one ever argues to left overs.

Junior is getting to an age where hunting for things is fun. Of course, hunting for things is way cooler when your Uncle Mike is not far behind. I video'ed the easter egg hunt, so these pictures are from Aunt Jess. What a fun day had by all!

"Look, I found another!"

"WOW!"

" C'mon my mommy Mike!"

(Junior call's his uncle Mike, my mommy Mike! Too cute!)

After all that work, there better be something good in here!

Mom and son- aren't they beautiful?!

Hanging with family in New Mexio!

This semester has been overwhelming in so many ways. I have grown sentimental as I watch my educational career come to an end, and and begun to embrace the idea of not spending all my moments writing papers, reading for class, or studying for exams. I am ready for a lifelong career of helping all students succeed in school. Sure, there will be bad days, but the good moments will surpass those day's without batting an eye.

To get away and give myself some much needed R&R, I opted to ride with my in-laws to New Mexico to visit my brother in-law (Brian) and sister-in-law (Zemmie) and adorable nephew William for a few days. The drive is long (14 hours!), however, it gave me time to read for pleasure, and listen to great music as the scenery passed me by.

Sadly, we don't get the opportunity to see William often. The last time I held him was when they were back for my wedding in July. Boy oh boy is he growing quickly! William runs around non-stop and is talking up a storm! My heart melts whenever those big brown eyes look up at me! How could you not fall in love with this kid everytime you see him. And trust me, despite what his parents say, he can do no wrong :) Here are some candid shots of my handsome nephew. Warning- your heart will melt; he's a flirt too = )

Here's William taking a break from running around the back yard to pose for the camera!

Who knew a garden hose could be so fun!


Another break from playing! He loves being outdoors.

Has your heart melt yet? Because mine is gooshing all over!

Mothers, watch your daughters- he's gonna be a heartbreaker!!

More Cupcakes

I will be doing a lot of baking this week, and I am excited to be doing it! Today was one of my professor's birthday, and since we have her class on Tuesday nights, we thought it would be appropriate to throw her a food party. Little did we know she had the flu over the weekend, so she still wasn't back to 100%. We enjoyed the food anyway!

Here are the cupcakes I made, and let me just say- delicious! I am not creative enough (yet) to come up with original ideas- but I love trying new recipes. These were easy to make- and all the ingredients were hanging out in my pantry (well except for vanilla frosting- but that was easy enough!)

Here's what you need...

I took the easy way out and bought cookie decorating frosting for this... It made the job go by quickly, but I cut the tip on the blue in the wrong location and didn't have the fine line I wanted.


Next the frosting. I really loved this... maybe even better than ganache. The jury is still out on that. The recipe recommends dipping them in the frosting, but I tired of that pretty quickly.


Now decorating. I may not surprise many when I say I am not artist. I envision great things when it comes to decorating, but fail miserably :) Here are my failed attempt at flowers (or oddly constructed geometrical blobs), a flower I salvaged into a butterfly, my fail-safe design and a smiley face. Oh, and the pitchfork looking thing is a symbol representing Psychology. Geeky. I know.


And the final product....

and the delicious inside...


Of course I sampled this one :)

Next up... cupcakes for Grandpa's birthday! I am pretty excited to share my treats with my family.

Boston

Last week I had the really wonderful opportunity to travel to Boston for the annual National Association of School Psychologist Conference. More than 5,000 School Psychologists from across the country were present, taking over three hotels.

While there, I presented my research which looked at Online Aggression (cyberbullying) and how it impacts schools. As I have mentioned previously, this project was a large undertaking, and I poured my heart into writing this manuscript and creating a research project that I am very proud of. Geeky, yes.

Adequate time was spent at the conference- but sight seeing was high on my list. While there, we walked Newberry St, saw Quincy Market and Fennel Hall (pronounced Fenuall) and saw many of the stops along the Freedom Trail. We also had our own Boston Tea party equipt with "New Orleans Long Island 's" on Mardi Gras. This was immediate followed by a "cheer off" between a friend and I and a long journey to find more adult beverages. We also visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which was really cool.

I spent the entire trip frustrated that I didn't bring my "good" camera in an effort to conserve space in my carry on, but I am pleased that my pictures turned out alright. I guess its hard to screw up buildings and architecture... its doesn't change much!

I had a great time with friends from school, and enjoyed meeting other school psychologists from across the US.

Here are the highlights with captions :)

Myself, Brian (my advisor), Megan and Trina in front a poster we worked on together.

Myself in front of my EdS Poster which I presented on Thursday.

This was taken from inside the Boston Library out to a church. I am terrible at remembering names... so I am not sure what church, except that it was a tourist attraction!

Newberry St. A fun afternoon of shopping.

On Boston Commons.




Standouts at the Museum of Fine Arts.

At the beginning of the Freedom Trail. This is the first public park.

Another view at the start of our trek

State house.


View of the public park on our trek back to the hotel. As you can see the weather changed drastically from 50's and gorgeous to 30's and cloudy/windy.

Here is the church I showed earlier (the shot taken from inside the Boston Public Library).

Inside the Boston Public Library.

Inside Quincy Market.

Boston- night scene.