Christmas Tree oh Christmas Tree

Yesterday my sister, Chelsey; her husband, Robert; my husband, Robbie, and I went to pick out our Christmas tree. We went up to Robert's land to find the perfect tree. We spent about an hour looking high and low and finally found the one my sister was happy with. Once we got it home we realized we couldn't find the tree decorations, the tree stand, or the lights. So, we ventured over to Kmart to make our purchases and headed home to decorate. As we were putting up the Christmas tree we realized that the lights we bought weren't long enough. Naturally Chelsey and I sent Robbie and Robert back to Kmart to get more. This was probably the biggest mistake ever because of course they screwed it up! They not only came back with the wrong type of lights, but they also came back with 4 pairs of footed pajamas and a brilliant idea to take our Christmas photo in them. I must admit that the footed pajama idea was awesome but they got the wrong sizes so they had to return the lights and return the pajamas for the right size. It was turning in to a long night for just decorating a Christmas tree. When they finally got back from the store, for the third time, it was almost eight o'clock and we started decorating at six. Needless to say we got the tree decorated and our footed pajama Christmas photo was a success.

Creature of habbit

I am a creature of habit.  I like to have a routine and when that routine is disrupted it throws everything out of wack.  I like going to the same store to buy groceries, I like dinning at the same restaurants, I like setting my alarm for twenty minutes before I get up so I can hit the snooze button twice.  Routine comforts me.  Some may call it boring, but I call it steady and reliable.  So when change does happen in my life, I hate it, most of the time anyway.  I work at Hot Shot espresso and we are opening up our third store this Wednesday.  I didn't think I was going to get moved down to the new store, but I just found out that I did.  Of course I am not ecstatic about this because I like my same old routine at the store I always work at. Hopefully it will be a good change, but time will tell.

Teaching

I wrote a blog recently expressing my concerns about whether or not I wanted to be a teacher. I had my interview to get into the Elementary Education program on Friday, and I think it helped ease my mind a bit.  The interview was conducted by three retired teachers and they really asked questions that made me think about why I wanted to become a teacher. As I was answering the questions I started to feel a little bit better about teaching and excited to continue on with my degree.  Plus Lori from the Division of Education made cookies and other snacks that made my day even better!

Haunted

I enter this building made of brick

They say it housed people ill and sick

Faces are painted to make a fright

The halls are narrow with little light

Spooky objects move and jump around

There are some that never make a sound

I verge on through the dark, narrow halls

Almost to the end the chain saw calls

I ran and ran but I never fell

I made it through the Nightmare on Grelle

 

 

 

 

 

Silverstein Poems

Bear In There

There's a Polar Bear
In our Fridgidaire-
He lIkes it' cuase it's cold in there.
Whit his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there-
That Polary Bear
In Our Fridgitydaire.

Blame

I wrote such a beautiful book for you
'Bout rainbows and sunshine
And dreams that come true.
(You knew that he would),
So I wrote you another one
Fast as I could.
Of Course it could never be
Nearly as great
As that beautiful book
That the silly goat ate.
So if you don't like
This new book I just wrote-
Blame the goat.
But the goat went and ate it

Peckin'

The saddest thing I ever did see
Was a woodpecker peckin' at a plastic tree.
He looks at me, and "Friend," says he,
"Things ain't as sweet as they used to be."

The Oak and The Rose

An oak tree and a rosebush grew,
Young and green together,
Talking the talk of growing things-
Wind and water and weather.
And while the rosebush sweetly bloomed
The oak tree grew so high
that now it spoke of new things-
Eagles, mountain peaks and sky.
"I guess you think you're pretty great,"
The rose was heard to cry,
Screaming as loud as it possibly could
To the treetop in the sky.
"And you have no time for flower talk,
Now that you've grown so tall."
"It's not so much that I've grown," said the tree.
"It's just that you've stayed so small."

When I Grow Up

You know those people who just knew from the time they were in preschool that they wanted to be a nurse, a doctor, a mechanic, an engineer, etc.? I envy those people.  How do they just know that is what they are suppose to do with their life? A few years ago I taught a sports fitness class to preschoolers and I thought, this is what I am suppose to do, I am meant to be a teacher.  That year I signed up for classes at LCSC for elementary education and I have been taking classes ever since. Lately I have been wondering is teaching really my calling?  I am currently taking Math Methods and I am learning how to teach mathematics to elementary age students.  This concept frightens me because the way I think about math and compute math is exactly the opposite of how they are suppose to be taught. When I mention to people about being unsure of teaching, they say you're just having a bad day, something good will happen to make you realise this is what you're meant to do.  I hope that something will happen soon because I am very discouraged!

Boxed pasta

In my Natural Science 172 class last week we were talking about bugs that get into food products. People mentioned the bugs that get into baking flour, which I knew about, but then someone brought up boxed pasta.  Apparently boxed pasta is really easy for bugs to get into.  My teacher said there are these little white things that float up to the top of the water when the pasta is boiling, he said that those are the sheddings of bugs! I just thought that was broken pasta. I forgot about this conversation until I boilded some spaghetti noodles toinght.  Guess where my pasta came from? Yep, a box. Guess what floated to the top of the water? Yep, white bug sheddings! So moral of the story: never buy boxed pasta!

When

Do you ever wish you could be a kid again?
When cellphones didn't interrupt your day to day.
When Saturday mornings consisted of cartoons and pancakes.
When evenings were spent racing through homework to ride bikes with the neighbor kids.
When playing four square at recess was the highlight of your day.
When your favorite meal was mac-n-cheese, just how mom makes it.
When you begged mom or dad to stay the night at a friends house.
When Halloween costumes were scary and awesome not slutty and skanky.
When mom baked cupcakes for your birthday party.
When boxes still made great forts.
When..........

Sydney the goldfish

A few days ago my sister called and asked me to go buy a gold fish, a can of mandarin oranges and bring them to her at work. She said it was for a game she was planning for her youth group kids that night.  So I went to Safeway for the mandarin oranges then Petco for the fish and headed up to my sister's work.  When I got there I was so confused why she needed a fish and some mandarin oranges for a game.  She explained that you take a few volunteers and tell them that they are all going to be blindfolded and that they are all going to drink a cup of water.  But, one of those cups will have a goldfish in it.  However, once they are blindfolded you take the fish away and put mandarin oranges in all there cups. The fun part is seeing them gag and squirm as they drink their cup. Eventually they start to realize they're not drinking a goldfish, it's just an orange.  But, what do I do with this goldfish?  I can't just flush it down the toilet, what a sorry excuse of a fish life!  So I went back to Petco and got a fish bowl, fish food, and some bowl accessories and now I have a pet fish names Sydney.

Pizza Makes it Better

So yesterday I had a terrible day teaching math out at Asotin in a second grade classroom.  I pretty much walked away feeling defeated and unsure of myself.  I went home to work on school work and after sitting there unfocused and worring about things, my dad showed up.  He was dropping off some hunting thing for my brother inlaw, but since he was there I asked him if he wanted to go to Fazzari's for pizza.  So my dad called up my mom and all three of us went to Fazzari's.  Somewhere between driving there, eating delicious pizza, enjoying good conversation, and driving home, I realized my day wasn't so bad. I just needed to get my mind off of things for awhile. Moral of the story good food, good conversation, and good people just make things better!

Seattle

I realize it's been almost a week since my Seattle trip, but better late than never......

So for those of you who do not know, I work at Hot Shot Espresso :)  Every year my boss takes four employees with her and her husband to Seattle for Coffee Fest.  I was lucky enough to go this year, and it was awesome!  We left Lewiston on Thursday and arrived in Seattle at about eight o'clock and immediately went to this really cool Italian restaurant called Buca's.  This restaurant is crazy. The layout is very easy to get lost in because it has all these crazy hallways and separate rooms.  The walls are covered in hilarious photographs and they even have a table called "The Pope's Table." "The Pope's Table" has a wax head of the Pope sitting on a lazy susan in the middle of the table. After we ate dinner we went back to the hotel to get a good nights rest before a long day of Coffee Fest.  So we woke up the next day at 6 am to be in the hotel lobby by 7.  After we all meet up we drove to this really cool coffee house called Vivacci.  Vivacci is a sit down coffee house that roasts their own coffee beans and is famous for their latte art.  It was amazingly delicious! After Vivacci we went the convention center down town and attended about four hours worth of seminars about running coffee businesses, making coffee, training employees, new techniques, etc. Then we headed across the street to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch; the food was delicious.  Then the fun stuff started.  We headed back over to the convention center and toured the vending floor.  The vending floor is a gigantic room full of coffee product vendors.  All these people are here showing off their new coffee roasts, bottled flavors, grinders, espresso machines, teas, smoothies, fridges, coffee mugs, cups, etc.  You basically walk around and taste samples of products and get free merchandise from vendors.  This was just one day, you wake up and get to do the same thing all over again on Saturday, but take different classes and check out different vendors.  Another fun thing we got to do while we were over there was walk down on Pike Street and visit the first Starbucks ever established.  It was kind of a whole in the wall if you ask me. We also ate at a very fancy seafood restaurant one night.  The majority of the meals costs $30 and the most expensive item was $96!  Thankfully our boss pays for all of our meals while we are there. I still felt bad and ate a $9 salad :) Oh and one really weird thing I noticed about Seattle was that when you go into a lot of public buildings there are computerized door locks on the bathrooms.  In order to use the restroom you have to go up to the front counter, buy their product and ask for a pin code to type into a door lock. So weird!!

Fall

I love fall.  I love all the colors and smells that come with fall. It's that perfect time of year where it's just chilly enough to wear a jacket, but you're not freezing your buns off walking outside.  Fall is when coffee shops start selling pumpkin, gingerbread, and apple cider drinks! Ooohh and Costco starts making their pumpkin crumble muffins! Who doesn't love pumpkin? Fall is when kids get to go on field trips to pumpkin patches where they pick out the PERFECT pumpkin, take it home, and carve it out with their parents. It's also that time of year when awesome Halloween movies are played over and over again on the Disney channel and ABC Family. I think the best Halloween movie ever made is Hocus Pocus. There are just so many fun activities that go on during the fall: corn mazes, haunted houses, pumpkin carving contests, raking leaves and jumping in the piles. The list goes on and on!

Birthdays

I went shopping for a 3 year olds birthday present this weekend and it made me think about birthday presents I received when I was younger.  When my twin sister and I were 7 my parents got us pogo sticks. Awesome!  I was so excited while I was unwrapping the present, I couldn't wait to try it out. Unfortunately when we went to stand on the pegs we were too short to be able to bounce properly, or so my mom said.  I really think she realized how dangerous they were and came up with that excuse to return them. I can not remember being more bummed about a present. Having a kick ass present taken away like that is much worse than when my grandma gave me a Barbie for Christmas........when I was fifteen. I'm not making that up, complete one hundred percent truth, Barbie.

Identity

We were born on the very same day.
A bond no one understands but us.
Best friends, yet enemies in many ways.
Who is smarter, prettier, more likable.
Achievements, struggles, imperfections.
Always being compared and contrasted.
Trying to find an identity is not easy.
We were born on the very same day.

Busted

I have always been that person that never locks anything.  I never lock my car or my house, and I have always been a firm believer that if they really want to get in, they'll get in.  So why not just leave it unlocked so they wont damage my door or window, right?  Well this morning I woke up to someone knocking on my door at 6 am.  I answered it to find my neighbor explaining that my pickup had been broken into and my driver side window was completely shattered. Ughhhhh!  I pull a sweatshirt on, slip on some shoes and head outside.  There is glass everywhere!  Nothing was taken: luckily I brought my computer and backpack in that night for homework.  If the dumb ass would have just tried the handle he could have ransacked my pickup without the mess and probably would have looked a lot less conspicuous doing so.  What have I learned from this experience?  Well, there really is no proof that locking your doors and windows keeps robbers out.  Some robbers don't even check to see if it's open, they just have at it.

Getting pulled over in Asotin

I had the idea to write about this story in Holly's class today, Tuesday the fourth. I had this epiphany because Andrea kept saying my last name wrong, well my maiden name, and it somehow reminded me of when I got pulled over for speeding in Asotin, Washington.  So here we go...... I moved to Houston, Texas in 2009 and I came home to visit my family that summer. We all decided to go out on the river so I was driving around Asotin looking for the boat ramp my parents were unloading our wave runner at. I had completely forgotten that the speed limit was 25 around the baseball field out there, rather than 35 like it use to be.  I believe when I was pulled over I was going 34 or so.  When he pulled me over I was driving my mom's car which is trashed with paperwork, Pepsi cans, water bottles, you name it.  Her car is always a mess.  So when the officer got up to my window he looked in my car and gave me a look like what they heck are you living out of this thing.  I knew that is what he was thinking so I explained that this was my mom's car, I'm just in town visiting and I forgot that they had changed the speed limit to 25.  I also threw in there I am not use to driving and automatic, that my car was a manual so I didn't realize I was speeding. He pretty much  stopped me right then and there and said I was getting a ticket no matter what I said so he would be right back with my paperwork.  My sister was in the car with me and once the officer was out of earshot I said a few choice words and may or may not have started to cry as a last chance plea.  When the officer returned with my paperwork he told me not to cry it's not that big of a deal and then he mentioned my last name.  He said that had noticed my last name was Winkler.  He then asked me if I was related to Henry Winkler, who played Fonzie on the TV show Happy Days.  I then asked him if we were related would that get me out of the ticket, and he laughed and said no. So then I told the truth and said no.  I bet if I had the last name of a more famous person like Clooney, Pitt, Witherspoon, Sandler, or Bullock I could have gotten out of the ticket!

Coffee!

Since I have never had a blog before I am going to start out with a little poem about coffee......


Deep in the forest there is a small bean that grows
Once roasted and ground it keeps me on my toes
It smells so good when I first get up
I always pour it in my favorite cup
There are many ways to prepare this drink
Mochas and lattes are wonderful I think
No matter the season cold or hot
Coffee is delicious, it hits the spot