A new girl cousin!

I have been slow about getting this up. But I have to share pictures of the newest Marler. Here is Taryn DeeAnn Marler, born March 30th to Carissa and Daniel Marler.

She is a sweet, beautiful baby. Alice has already taken to "mothering" her, trying to put blankets on her, and give her pacifiers. We hope the girls will be good friends.

Alice Update

I thought I would just share a few pictures of Alice, since she is now 18 months old, almost 19 actually. She has enough hair to put in pigtails, at least enough up on top. She walks well now and has started to try to talk. She says a few things, like downstairs, which is helpful to me in knowing when she wants to go down to play. And she loves shoes, so she tries to say that. Mostly it is just the "sh" sound. Which is also what she says when she wants lotion, so context is rather important for deciphering her "talking."

She loves to put on hats too. Mostly she just loves to accesorize. And she loves having her picture taken!

Sometimes ignorace is bliss

Joe and I watched "Waiting for Superman" the other day. It's a documentary about public education in our nation. It put me in a bad mood for a couple of days! Joe and I have had lots of discussions about education, seeing how he is an educator. It is interesting kind of being on both sides, the parent with kids in school, and the teacher. But the film certainly points out how broken the system is. The problem is no one seems to know how to fix it. And those that try meet so much resistance. I certainly don't have the answer, but it is really frustrating to know it needs to change. And right now things are going to get better, with the economy and all the budget shortfalls. Joe came home yesterday and said their district will have to cut 20 full time positions for the coming year. They are a small district, I don't know how many positions total, but that has to be a large percent. And that is on top of what they already cut last year. Joe should be safe because he is the only art teacher at the high school, but at the same time, it's an elective and if this trend continues, pretty soon all they will have are reading and math and maybe science teachers. Only the ones that have to teach what are on the dumb tests the kids have to take.

Ugh CSAP. My kid doesn't even have to take it yet, but I can't stand it. How can you measure progress comparing different kids each year? And if there is no student accountability, what makes them even try? I understand the need for assessment, in order to get federal funding, but why is my kid's elementary school on probation or whatever they call it, because they didn't meet AYP (annual yearly progress) because they missed my 1 percentage point in the category of second-language learner's English? So I get a letter at the beginning of the year that says I can choose to send my kid to a different school in the district, but why would I do that when those schools are sending out the same letter to the parents of kids at that school? If no one can seem to be proficient in these things, what does that say? Is it because the kids are too dumb? I think not. Bad teachers? At every school? Not likely. So what does that leave--the tests! Somehow the curriculum with more reading and less recess doesn't seem to be making a difference.

So that is my ranting on that. Just thinking about it makes me agitated. So I should stop. Sometimes I think I would just rather live in ignorance of it all. I feel so helpless. I know I can't fix the system and all the problems. I need to just do what I can. We all do. I suppose that is what "Waiting for Superman" was all about. Trying to prod people into being upset and trying to do something. I haven't figured out what it is I am going to do exactly. Have any ideas? I am sure this is something a lot of you out there have thought about.

Have you ever MADE money while shopping?

I did the other day. Woohoo! I have been trying to do the coupon thing for a little while, I am not an expert, like those people who get a whole basket of groceries for $5 or something. But I do like saving a buck here and there, and since the cost of everything seems to be going up, but our income is not, anything I can do to stretch what we have is a help. So I follow some blogs to help me find good deals. One deal I got was for some fabric softener sheets. There was a $3 off coupon for any Gain Fabric Softener, and over at Dollar General they had boxes of 60 for $2.75. I had 3 coupons, so when it rang up the display said "Due to cust $0.26." Sweet, right. Not only were they free I got 26 cents from the store. The cashier was a little skeptical, but she gave it to me anyway. I suppose most people would just buy other things so the total wouldn't be negative, but I just wanted the free things. Not all stores will give you money back, but when they do, it feels pretty great! Yeah for coupons!

Sunny San Diego

I had a rough fall. I am sure there were many contributing factors, but mostly it was just me. I think hormones may have played a part, and the whiney 1-year old (who was probably teething most of that time). Whatever it was, I decided I needed a break. A vacation from being Mommy. So that is what i wanted for Christmas, and thanks to my parents and Joe I got it. So a couple of weeks ago I went to San Diego with just my sister. Some fun girl time. It was very nice. We had a great time. We went to Coronado Island, on a whale watching trip, we saw the temple (but unfortunately it was closed for repairs), went to Old Town, and to Balboa Park. We kept no real time schedule (except when trying to catch the ferry or trolley), got up when we wanted (which was earlier that I had hoped, but somehow my body thought it was time to wake up!), went to bed when we wanted, ate when we wanted. It was refreshing and rejuvinating, and really hard to come home to snow! It was in the 60s and 70s while we were there. Only needed a jacket after the sun went down. But when we got to Denver, it was snowing!
Here are some pictures:

Balboa Park has some really cool architecture. It was originally built back in 1915 as a temporary celebration area, but people liked it so much, they kept it. They had to do some work though since the original facades were basically paper mache. Crazy, huh?


The palm tree canyon at Balboa Park. Over 450 types of palms. Wasn't quite warm enough that day to make me feel like I was back in Hawaii though.


One of the monument dedicated to "The Greatest Generation." It was over 30ft tall. Kind of cool.


The Mormon Batallion museum in Old Town was fun. And different that it was when I went over 12 years ago. (Jen and Jer you will have to go check it out sometime!) It was interactive and fun!

The San Diego Temple (of course)

In the Fiesta del Reyes marketplace in Old Town. Fun shopping and music. Great food at the Old Town Mexican Cafe!

Cool ship, the Star of India, down at the harbor.

The sunset on the beach at the Hotel del Coronado.

A grey whale tale.

I made yogurt

That's right. I made yogurt in my crockpot. How cool is that? And it is easy and cheap. You just need half a gallon of whole milk and a half cup of plain yogurt. I found the link on my friend's blog (thanks Bekah). http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html

I have been meaning to try it for a while, but finally did it last week. And then I did it again Saturday. I did strain it. I bought some coffee filters and lined my colanders (i used 2 so there wasn't so much in one and drained better.) Now I have Greek-style yogurt. I made some blueberry sauce with fresh blueberries to mix in it. Joe made some vanilla syrup with real vanilla beans. Yummy! It is really good, and I love not having any of that high-fructose corn syrup in my yogurt. You could make lots of flavors. The possibilities are plentiful. So if you are home all day, I definitely recommend trying it.

I'm freezing

How is I let the whole month of February go by with no posts? What a slacker I am. I have thought about posting many times, but never sat down to do it.

Just thought I would share a weather update for today. It was 40 some degrees warmer today than yesterday, and still not above freezing. That's right, yesterday as I took Eli to school at 7:30am, it was -17 degrees. And the high was -2. Yes, you read that right, NEGATIVE 2. I am glad it was in the 20s today, and then this afternoon it started to snow. I just hope it continues to warm up because negative temperatures are not nice. I don't like the cold. I am blaming it for my sluggishness and grumpiness. (Also because I was in San Diego last week and returned home on Monday to cold and snow. Ugh! It did not make me excited to come home. More about that trip later.)