Happy Year End 2011

Dear family and friends, dear ones far and near

Come listen to my story (If you would like to hear):

This year began and ended in a state with lots of snow—

Yes, here I am writing from Colorado.

More snow indeed than I had in V-A,

And more of many other things soon came my way.

Early on found me in my ward’s primary

But now with my own class, of 4-5 year olds, extraordinary

My French work, too, continued, but in a different way.

Yes, to preschoolers I taught lots of new words to say

But soon came the time when other goals arose

And I had another opp to teach college English prose

So those are all the bland details--

The things you always ask

But of more than this my life entails

So now I’ll these unmask

I’ve 26 nephews and nieces now alive,

With ten of them near home,

But for Easter we had here 20.5

Yes, we were far from being alone

With that and other visits, I’ve had

Lots of fun being the favorite auntie,

In fact we had so much fun when clad

As princesses for my bday party!

In June I got to be niece again as well

When I rode out to Utah to stay for a spell

In Orem I saw Grandma W., Aunt Gayle, Uncle Al

And cousins, their kids, and a few old pals

Then on down to Ferron to share Adam’s baptism day

I did also do some hiking, and yes, even played.

And so the year has passed with many things sublime

Though I had my troubles too, just some from time to time

But these, the Lord Jesus has made me pass more happily  

Through His servants in the Church, friends, good doctors, and my family,

Now, I hope the rhythm of this poem hasn’t lulled you all to sleep

Or worse, driven you off the deep

But since you’re apparently still here, I’ll wish you all the peace

My Savior brings to me,

In this season of happiness, joy, and good memories.

                                                   Love,

                                                   Heidi Q.

20 years!

Yes, I graduated from high school 20 years ago. Am I really that old? Yes, I really am. And this weekend, my peer and I celebrated the landmark. I actually missed the biggest attended event, Saturday night, because I couldn't justify the money for a restaurant where I couldn't eat anything. But I went today to the park and was able to see some old friends and get a tour of the old stomping grounds, or uh, splashing grounds.

  Seriously, we toured just about the whole building, except the most important room--the newspaper room.
But since Chad and I were the only old newsies there, I guess we can forgive. I'm sure much, much has changed about how the put out the Insight anyway. We used lightboards where we literally cut and pasted our articles that we printed from the computer lab, which was in another hallway. The newspaper room itself had one solitary computer in the tiny office where some people were able to begin messing around with publishing software, but if any, only our last edition was published with it.

I wish I could have had pictures with more old friends, but if I had only one, I'm glad it was Chad. He was a great editor-in-chief to work with, and more importantly, a great friend.

Princess Birthday Party

For my birthday this week, I had the best theme ever, even since my own childhood. Early in the week, my mom called local family to see if they would like to come over and help me celebrate on Friday. (My actual birthday was Thursday, but that was a fun-filled day of work with stories for another time.) Well, as it turned out, my brother David and his son were going to go camping and so my niece was feeling sad and wanted to do something fun too. So, she and her mom had come up with the idea to have a princess party.  As a result, when my mom called, Sariah said, "Would it be all right if it were a princess party?" Well, of course! Mom actually called me to verify, since I was at work at that time. But that sounded fun to me. How many grown women get away with having a princess birthday party? Happily, mom called the other locals, and John's family were able to come, too. In fact, their little girl loves to dress up, as I thought she would.

On Friday night, as I was between sleep and awake from my nap, I decided I needed to dress up pretty fancy myself, and so I showered and pulled out an old bride's maid dress I had from 1999. I even put make up on, which I very rarely do, and capped off the costume with an actual cap--a tiara. Before long, my ladies arrived, almost all dressed very prettily. One, however, had to borrow a dress from Grandma, but it turned out to be an excellent opportunity to let us have an Indian princess amongst us. It's not often we get an Indian princess at great princess parties, you know.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a party without princes. We were quite happy to have the young men join us, too!

 And, of course, the King and Queen must be included as they threw the party for us all!

First Wednesday in June 2011

After two and a half months of intense weeks teaching four nights a week at Kaplan and two days at Montessori, I have the month of June off from Kaplan, leaving an interesting hole in my life. With the regular school year over for the summer, several of the Montessori kids are gone, and this week, quite a few more kids were gone on vacation, so even my Tuesdays and Thursdays had a bit of a hole. While I do feel relieved of some of the stresses, I'm also kind of missing the busyness, and more significantly, the kids. I found myself even sad about losing some of the more difficult children.  In any case, on Wednesday of this week, I had to do some finish-up paperwork at Kaplan, so I took advantage of the drive down to Denver and went to the temple, and then on the way home stopped by the lost ponds that my mom had mentioned to me last week. Then, in the mood, even took some more pictures in my own front yard. Going to the temple and enjoying the great outdoors really lifted my spirits, so here are some photos that might lift yours :). 

Here we go, Up and Down and Around and Around

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I actually wrote one but then found too soon after that what I was thinking was happening wasn't permanent. Long story. Anyway, so what has happened in the last five-six weeks? Some good, some bad.

First the good news: I was hired to teach a freshman composition class at NOVA, the nearest community college. And it's six credits, so kind of like two classes, but with only one group of students. Okay, technically it is two classes, but they're back to back and it's still the same students. But it's a three hour block twice a week. Fortunately, my other job, the temp job at NAHB, was willing to work with my schedule, so now I'm there on M,T,Th, and at NOVA on W,F. Pretty nice, huh? Classes started two weeks ago, so we've met four times now. And I have a pretty good group of students. Some better than others, and some better in different ways than others.

Now, there is bad news associated with that. Should I talk about that now or give you other good news first? Mm, let's stick to one subject at a time.

So maybe some more background. The students are mostly ESOL, immigrants from other countries, and English is not their first language.

(Guess I never finished this, might as well publish though it's a few months old. I guess the old date doesn't show up after I publish, but it was written in September.)

News from Colorado

So, you were thinking I'd given up on blogging. Well, you weren't far from the truth. I get the hankering from time to time, but I'm not even as good with my journal as I used to be.

Life has been pretty busy for the past couple months. Mostly good busy. At the end of January I got a job teaching French again, this time at a Montessori, to kids from 2 to 5. Quite, quite different from my last French-teaching experience. And also quite different from my last daycare/preschool experience. Fortunately I had a few songs up my sleeve, but it's been fun to try to find new French songs for children, as well as to learn new vocabulary. I've been translating picture books, putting my collection to good use, as well as translating some things already in the classroom. I guess I never thought I'd need to know the names of tools in French, but I'm sure it'll come in handy some day. I guess I can't escape the feeling that I'm still being prepared from later French needs. But in the meantime, I'm glad to keep my life filled with some variety as well as keeping up these talents tat I enjoy.

But the good news doesn't end there. On President's Day I was invited to an audition after I applied to teach Composition at Kaplan College. The audition consisted of a five-minute spiel on the five-paragraph essay. With three other competitors for this position, I was happily pleased to pass. The following night I was invited to an interview, and after I passed that, I had four weeks of training to pass (which involved more "audition"-type exercises, but using their actual curriculum) once per week, as well as some other training material. Then, on March 23, I began teaching composition again! This time I have two legitimate classes with different students in each (as opposed to NOVA's two classes which were the same students in both). However, the combined enrollment still is less than what I had at NOVA, so the stress of grading papers will be lessened. Also, their curriculum is set up to not have as many papers--only one full paper, actually, with assignments that build up to it. Pretty interesting, but I can definitely see the value to it.

So, with the preparing for teaching two different comp classes as well as some mini French lessons, and yes, even primary at Church, you can imagine I'm already a bit tired. But add to this that the Montessori is in Greeley, Kaplan is in Thornton, I live in Loveland, and I've not been able to kick a cold/flu/ not-so-good feeling since the end of January (shortly after I was hired at Montessori). Of course it's much better than when I originally got sick, but I've had a perpetual cough that didn't go away before I caught a cold that's been keeping me down. Now, add that I have family nearby, and you can see why I haven't been writing as much.

Let's not focus on the negative though. There are many good things going on. And I'm actually very glad to be close to my family. I get to see David's and John's families somewhat regularly, since they're in town. And a couple weeks ago I got to see a bit more of Nancy's family as she had her second baby! Yeah, and welcome to Dean to the world and the Quist, or Merkley family! Nancy had to have a C-section again, though, so she's needed a bit more help since Tessa's only 2, but I was glad my schedule permitted me to be in Ft. Lupton with her for a couple days to help out. I really felt a lot of peace being in her home helping.

Then, last weekend, Thom brought up his family since he had spring break. I even got to have Tailynne in my primary class! Technically, she's a Sunbeam, and I teach the CTR-4s, but it worked out easier that way. And even though she wasn't that much younger than my students, they were happy to caudal her like a baby. It made for a fun class. I felt the Spirit with them that day too.

And now, well, soon, I'll be heading over to spend some time with David's family as his birthday is coming up and it's time to celebrate!

There's a little catch up for you. Maybe pictures will follow. We'll see!