November in a nutshell

So it's December in approximately two hours...figured I'd better squeeze one update for November in here. Whenever I haven't written for awhile, the task of trying to summarize just seems daunting, so I keep putting it off. But here I am, and it's already past my bedtime, so I'll see what I can do under pressure.

I uploaded some photos into my Picasa albums, so feel free to check them out for some of the highlights of the past month. I'll put a few here, with a bit of explanation, for a sneak preview.



Room 203: The project assigned to Abby and Frank and me during my first two weeks as a middle school paraprofessional. All the junk--textbook sets, office supplies, assessment materials, and literally thousands of novels--from the past number of years was transferred from the basement into this disaster zone. We were initially given two days to organize it. Ha. Just for perspective, this is what the place looked like after one full week of organizing.



Viola! And here you have it: the final product. Same view as before, but barely recognizable, eh? Each of those cabinets is filled with young adult novels, organized alphabetically and labeled with lists of all the book sets.

So now that that project's done, we've actually started working with students...but that is a subject for another day. For now, here are some other tidbits.



James and Emily observe sheep at the Georgetown Bighorn Sheep Festival. Or rather, Emily observes sheep; James observes Emily.



Greta and I hike around Red Rocks to celebrate my birthday. Believe me, I've never had weather like this for my birthday in Pennsylvania or Indiana. Awesome.



After watching a YouTube clip on how to carve a turkey, Charles and James go to work on our Thanksgiving dinner in Vail.



A walk in the park down the street. The first real snow of the season, and my first real winter in two years. I forgot how beautiful this was.

So there you have it: some glimpses into life in Colorado. More photos are in the albums; peruse at your leisure. And now it's time for me to get to bed...that 5:40 alarm clock will ring all too soon.