December 2011--and the serial posts keep coming

Were were lucky to have Steve's mom Sandy up for Christmas this year. Of course, the kids had their annual concerts--we were so impressed with Joshua. No stage fright this year!

And of course, some video :)

DSCN0498 from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

DSCN0497 from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

Untitled from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

We didn't have a white Christmas this year :( These are some pictures post Christmas but as you can see, we got very little snow

October/November 2011

Every October we take the kids to Rheault Farms for the fall festival. They always have pumpkins, pony rides, and crafts. It's become a family tradition.

For Halloween, Joshua was a cop and Whitney was Rapunzel. I made both costumes--Joshua's was easy, Whitney's was way more involved. Looking back I don't know how I had the time to sew that dress, but it turned out really cute.

Of course, Steve has his annual NCA Conference in Chicago, and of course, I become a slacker when in comes to making supper. Perogies, an old standby:

Life as an MFA student (Fall Semester 2011)

I have to say I really enjoy being a student. I love every aspect of it, even the homework. This semester was my second year (or so) of my Master's program, so fall semester I spent the majority of my (spare--ha!) time writing my thesis. I was really lucky because I got to take an indepenent study class with my advisor. Since I'm motivated by deadlines (my only motivation) we had a deal that I would turn in a chapter a week. We would meet and discuss each chapter, talk about where I wanted the story to go (which the majority of the time, I had no idea) and then we'd talk about how to head forward and things to keep in mind for revision. It was tough, but looking back I learned the most I ever had about the writing process. My advisor helped me see my project to the end and kept me from getting caught up in a revision cycle that would prevent me from getting there. This is snow baby. Snow baby is a joke we MFA students started. Two of my collegues were terrified of figurines (Hummels and Snow Babies in particular). Just as a side note, I'm terrified of clowns, and a porcelain clown showed up in our office too. Snow baby would disappear and then reappear in student offices and mailboxes. Along the way something happened to Snow Baby.

One day, Snow Baby showed up in my office with a message

Here is a picture I took of the side of my home computer. During this semester I drafted the first draft of my story, and with all of the story lines, I tried to keep track of the main tensions in the story. Having something "at stake" for your character is one of the most important things for your story. It is also the toughest thing for me to write. I don't write conflict well, so this was a friendly reminder for me. In fact, my first semester someone in workshop told me that I wrote like Nicholas Sparks or Nora Roberts. I cried every night for a week. Apparently, my husband filled in a conflict that I seemed to forget about too.

Catch-up Fall 2011

So I nearly gave up on this blog. Fall 2011 was the beginning of the year of the thesis and so all my resources were committed to family and graduation. And now I'm done. I've got my MFA (spoiler alert) and I'm adjuncting, so technically I have more time. But our computer crashed (right before graduation--good thing I had things backed up in 3 different locations) and it was just a pain to find pictures...anyways. I'm trying this again, because I look at old blog posts all the time, and it makes me grateful for my family and helps me remember the details of our life. So here's the Cliff notes version--to the best my memory serves me. Whitney our soccer girl:

Whitney is our little athlete, and the more she plays the better she gets. It's really fun to watch her. Steve is her coach :)

Whitney plays a lot of her games up by the airport. At least once during the game, a train will go by. This time home decided to roll through.

Fall in Fargo is gorgeous. I'm grateful we live in a neighbourhood with mature trees. The colours are amazing!

I also love the fact that I get to walk my kids to and from school. It's so fun to stomp on leaves with them!

Okay. Four month recap. Starting at Whitney's Birthday.

Whitney's birthday. Technically I guess that was five months ago. Let's just say the party was a little drama. We had originally planned a hair and nails makeover at the beauty school. Steve called the morning of to make sure that everything was still good to go--but it wasn't! They couldn't even squeeze us in because of a wedding. One of the students messed up the booking and we had no party. Steve started calling the usual birthday party venues in the area (Games Galore, Red River Dance, etc), while I frantically started looking up at home ideas online. We couldn't reschedule. It was a mess. We finally got into Chuck E. Cheese for an 11:00 party. The original party was supposed to be at one. We called all of the girls about the change and they could all make it. Phew!

A close up of the Hello Kitty Cake. Chuck E was impressed :)






Steve a little more relaxed getting his dance on

Whitney post

Whitney is such a cute girl

First Day of School

The first day of school FINALLY came. Whitney and Joshua love school. Whitney loves school so much that when I asked her how her day was when I picked her up, she said, "Ok...but I didn't get any math homework." What!? Whose child are you? You want MATH homework? I think we need to teach her the love for the liberal arts ;)



Here's some other good ones:







Hopefully this is my last year of school:) We'll see, this is the year of the thesis!!!

Summer's not over yet :)

This week school starts back up for me and Steve (well, at least the prep work) and next week the kids start. Before life gets crazy again, we're trying to make the summer last as long as possible. Our neighbour, Lisa, scored some free airsho tickets and gave some to us. We're not airsho people, but we had fun. It was a beautiful day (Fargo may have some rough winters, but we definitely have the BEST summers).

Okay, so this picture is pretty huge for Whitney. She's scared to death of mascots.



We all got to go inside and tour the inside of a FedEx plane. It's really interesting inside. It's essentially a plane without seats, and tracks and tracks of rollers to roll the pods on. The FedEx people let the kids sit in the cockpit. They both thought that was pretty darn awesome.







And here's my Maverick. With this haircut, he looks like he would fit right in with the Top Gun crew. We even saw people walking around with Top Gun quotes on their shirts.



And on a completely random note, I got my hair highlighted this week. It seriously is one of my favourite times of year. A couple of hours away from the kids while someone wants to just listen to what I have to say? And no interruptions? And a head massage? Sign me up!

Fishing Trip

Yesterday Steve's colleagues (husband and wife ps--there are a lot of husband and wife duos in academia) invited us to play at their lake house near Park Rapids, MN. It was the first time for the kids on a boat, and the first time they've ever gone fishing (well, let's be honest, I think I went once when I was like 5 years old so for all intents and purposes, that includes me too.) Let's just say, I caught the most fish (the first catch was eye opening; no one showed me how the pole worked so I essentially flung the fish from the lake into the boat.) As Judy said, it was lucky no one got hooked. It scared the heck out of Whitney because it landed near her feet. I thought in that moment a vegetarian might be born :) The kids ended up with their fair share of catches too.

Joshua's fish:







Whitney's "Pumpkin Seed"



Steve's catches:





And of course, Joshua and I are quite the catches too :)

End of the season

Well, Tuesday was the last day of Joshua's season with the Rockies, and probably the best game he's played. After, the coach brought Dilly Bars for the team (by the way, did you know that DQ was started in Minnesota? :)

Here are some pics and video of the last game to commemorate:

Playing pitcher (sort of, the college student is the real pitcher)-





First baseman-





And for the 2 minute replay:

Swing Batter! from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

And of course Whitney, the biggest Joshua fan :)




And a picture without sunflower seed shells on her face ;)



On a side note, I really dislike our camera. We bought it about a year ago to replace our Kodak Easyshare I dropped twice. Our Nikon Coolpix is so unpredictable, if the lighting is somewhat off, or someone flinches a millimeter, the whole picture is blurry. And it really has no zoom capability. Grr... I daydream of a really nice camera (or my old Easyshare back) though I have a running list of really nice things I'd like to get :) One thing at a time eh?