Look at these cuties!

It's confirmed!

He came back today and actually came over to our side of the pond. It is definitely a Blue Heron. I took about 50 pictures of him. I kept waiting for him to fly away so I could get a shot of his wing span, but he never did... until after I put the camera away. I did get a couple of him catching his dinner though...

I wonder why our grass won't grow....

This spring we had to plant grass seed in a large section of the back yard. We've been very dilligent at watering twice a day and were very perplexed why we weren't seeing any results. Well, right here are a few of the culprits. The geese keep bringing their goslings to our yard to feed on all of our grass seed. There are at least two families of geese that frequent our yard all throughout the day. Not only do they take our grass seed, they leave their own deposits to show us their thanks. I'm already cleaning up the yard after a dog, but now I've got two families of geese to clean up after as well.


In other news, we've both been very, very busy lately (thus the long lapse in blogging). David's been working like a maniac trying to get everything together for the Hudson, WI campus that the church will be starting in September. I've got less than three weeks left of school before summer break. I've enjoyed my year and my students, but I'm excited about having a break. I have an online class that I need to take in order to get my Minnesota teaching license, but other than that it should be a pretty relaxing summer. (Knock on wood...)

I have to confess, I've become a bit of a bird watcher lately. With the pond in the back yard, there's a lot of wildlife around that we've never been used to seeing before. Last night we were on the phone with David's sister, Julie, and it was like "Animal Planet" all of a sudden. There was this ENORMOUS bird that appeared in the pond. I tried to take some pictures of it, but I was zoomed in so far, they didn't turn out that great. After some research in my new Minnesota Bird Guide (I'm a geek), I've decided that it was either a Sandhill Crane or a Blue Heron. I'm leaning towards the Blue Heron. I keep watching for it to come back so I can hopefully get a better look at it. I got a pretty good picture of our Egret. He's a regular in our backyard pond.

A Card-Carrying Member

Is it bad that I've been living here in Woodbury since the middle of July and I only just made my first visit to the public library?

I've been in a reading phase lately, where I can't seem to stop reading. So, spring break seemed like the perfect opportunity to go feed my new hobby. We were really impressed with how technologically advanced our library is. Perhaps this is a common thing, and we just don't get to the library enough to realize that it's not that big of a deal, but our library has a self-checkout system. Just like at the grocery store, you swipe your own books and library card, and you're out the door, without ever having to interact with anyone.

My first job in high school was working at the Sturgis Public Library. I remember the days when you had to check each book out manually, stamping cards with the loud, ka-chunk noise. We've come a long way. Back then I couldn't wait for my hour behind the circulation desk, giving me a break from the boring task of shelving books. I'm glad things were a little simpler back then.

Christmas is now complete!

One of the things that's been on my wish list for a while has been a trip to see the musical, "Wicked". My parents and my brother and sister-in-law saw it a couple of years ago and it seems that's all they ever talked about when we would get together. I had to see what they were raving about. Well, David surprised me this Christmas with tickets to see "Wicked" in Chicago, but up-ed the anty by arranging to meet our friends, Mike and Laurel (from Michigan) for the weekend. Working around my school schedule meant I had to wait to enjoy my biggest Christmas present, but it also gave me something to look forward to, to get me through a long, cold, Minnesota winter.

So, this past weekend we drove down to Chicago to meet Mike and Laurel for a couple of days of fun.

Mom Gafford found us a good deal on a hotel, so we were able to stay right on Michigan Avenue (right next to Water Tower) at the Allerton Hotel. We had such a great time.

Wicked!

What can I say? This was absolutely incredible. I will never watch "The Wizard of Oz" the same. I love going to the theater, and up until now, "Phantom" has been my favorite. But I confess, I do believe that "Wicked" has slipped into first place for me. The Chicago cast was incredibly gifted. I could go back again, and again, and again. Definitely 5 stars!

Navy Pier

We spent a very windy morning at Navy Pier. It was INSANELY windy and yet, we still decided to take a ride on the ferris wheel. It was all fine though, the cars are mostly enclosed so we were pretty protected from the wind.

Mike and Laurel on the ferris wheel at Navy Pier

David and Melissa on the ferris wheel at Navy Pier

We had lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern and Grill on our way out of Navy Pier. Some of you may remember the SNL skit that originated here...

We tried the cheeseburger, of course. It was good:-)

The Museum of Science and Industry

Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry was a bit of a disappointment for us. I hadn't been back since a youth group trip in high school, and I don't think a single thing has been changed or updated in the 12 years that I've been away. Compared to the other museums that Chicago has to offer, this Museum only gets 2 stars.


The only redeeming quality was the U-505 Submarine exhibit that we paid $5 extra to visit. It was pretty interesting and our tourguide, Sean was very knowledgable on his subject. (A little too passionate about his subject, perhaps, but still knowledgable.)

The Weber Grill Restaurant

Naturally, we'd heard about this restaurant on the Food Network, and had to try it out for ourselves. We were not at all disappointed. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was great as well. They have about 8-10 ENORMOUS Weber grills in the kitchen that they cook the food on. We gave it 5 stars and were so impressed that we decided to go back for the breakfast buffet in the morning. While the breakfast was very good as well, we were disappointed to find that it wasn't being cooked on a grill. We also didn't think the selection was worth the price paid. We'd go back to the Weber Grill Restaurant for dinner in a heartbeat, but we'll save our breakfast plans for an IHOP or Denny's next time :-)

In like a lion...

March definitely lived up to its reputation this year by making a pretty wicked entrance. February went out with a bang, giving us about a foot of snow last weekend. And then March followed up with another foot and a half on Thursday/Friday. No harm done though; I finally got my snow day (and a half)!

Transformation

Before:

After:

I've got spirit!

This picture if from a couple of weeks ago, but this is the first chance I've had to post it. We had "Spirit Week" at school and one of the days was class theme day. It was up to the class to decide what our theme would be. We decided to do "Teacher/Student Swap Day". I found a uniform jumper (left over from the used uniform sale in the summer) that fit, put the hair in pigtails, and the kids dressed like teachers. It was amazing how many of them chose to come as P.E. teachers (their one chance to wear sweats instead of a uniform!), but here I am with a couple of my best dressed teachers. They both brought a brief case and Zach had his travel mug of hot cocoa in the morning. It was fun. I had to be sure to wear my teacher badge to make it clear that I WAS still one of the teachers. It's freaky how young I looked. During chapel the principal introduced me as a new fourth grade student.

A Teacher's Day

It was 2:10 p.m. and I looked out over my classroom and only found 6 students in a sea of empty desks. Where were all of my children? I had to actually put pen to paper to figure it all out.

6 students in the classroom, busily working away.
2 students in the bathroom.
2 students at a special choir practice.
2 students in the library taking AR tests.
1 student at the nurse.
2 students home sick.
1 student left early for a doctor's appointment.
1 student out on vacation.

Do the math, and yup; all 17 students accounted for, but only 6 were present. What am I supposed to do with only 6 students? Good thing we were only 20 minutes from the end of the day!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

...And those words are spoken with chattering teeth, because it's STINKING COLD UP HERE!!!!

This morning before I left for work....


Tonight on the way home from small group....

Christmas Pictures

We obviously made it to Rochester to celebrate Christmas with my family (minus Mike, Jen, and the kids in Arizona). We had a fun time, watched several movies, spent an evening looking through old slides (yes, slides!) and home movies. We've all agreed that Matt looked like Chris Farley when he was a baby. Boy, was that kid chubby! We had good times together.

We flew home early Friday morning to be greeted by David's parents (at our house). Allie soon returned to us from her stay at Doggie camp (Thanks, Greg and Rita!). She was WIPED OUT after spending 4 days playing non-stop with three other dogs. She had just enough energy to try on her new Christmas accessory from "Grandma and Grandpa Gafford" and then she crashed on David's lap for the remainder of our festivities. David just had to open his presents around her because she wasn't about to move.

Not quite the Christmas we had planned....

David and I celebrated our Christmas yesterday, anticipating spending the day today traveling to New York to visit my parents. So this morning when we woke up, we got right to work packing and getting the dog's things together to drop her off at the sitters' house. We were within 15 minutes of loading the car and leaving when I noticed a voice mail on my cel phone. I wasn't surprised; when booking with Orbitz, I'm used to receiving a phone call a few hours before my flight. Only this time the voice mail was different. It was supposed to say something along the lines of "Orbitz is calling to inform you that your flight to Rochester, NY is on time and will be boarding at gate such-and-such." Only that's not what it said. It said, "Orbitz is calling to inform you that your flight to Rochester, NY has been cancelled and you're going to need to sit around the house and pick your nose all day because you're not going to be in Rochester until 10:00 tonight. So you can forget about a nice Christmas dinner with your family. But have a nice flight." (Ok, I realize that this probably wasn't what the message said exactly, but it was something to that effect...) It was just kind of disappointing... not what we had planned for the day. I'm sure we'll get there eventually. (Hopefully at least by 10:00 tonight!) And I'm sure we'll have a great time once we're there. I just hate it when plans have to change like that.

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

(Jenn Swift, will you be in Rochester this week? We should get together...)

It's official

We are no longer home owners in Michigan! The closing yesterday was a success (which was a relief because we were a little concerned that we might have missed a place where we were supposed to sign and they'd have to send the paper work back and delay the closing.) Now we're just waiting for the money to show up in our bank account.....

Worship Arts Christmas Open House

Friday night we invited all of our worship arts volunteers over for a Christmas open house. This included any one involved with music, drama, sound, video, and probably other areas that I forgot. We had a good time getting to know those that help us each weekend and the families that support them.



Our senior pastor, Henry enjoyed spending his evening playing the Nintendo Wii.

Field trip to the Bakken Museum

We took the fourth grade class to the Bakken museum on Thursday. They learned all about static electricity, which was especially fun since I've been teaching electricity in science for the last few weeks. The kids had a great time, as the day was greatly hands-on. They really enjoyed all of the experiments and especially getting to shock each other.

Here the kids were testing different materials to see which conducted static electricity the best.

Here, the kids have made generators and Leyden jars to store up static electricity in order to be able to shock each other. It's amazing the fun you can have with a few styrofoam plates, cups, and an empty film canister!

It's amazing how much enjoyment my students got out of watching their teacher electrocute herself.

It was a fun day for all!

The long awaited Thanksgiving photos!

The Gafford Clan

Yes, we're still alive...

Busy. Just very, very, busy.

We took a nice trip to Indiana for Thanksgiving. It was good to see all the family, many of which we haven't seen for a very long time. I'd post a picture, but I'm on the wrong computer for that. They're on David's laptop. I'll have to do it later.

I was surfing around on everyone's blogs this morning and it just hit me that we haven't announced yet that we've finally sold our house....mostly. We haven't closed on it yet; hopefully in the next couple of weeks. It's something we're very relieved about. It will be nice to not have to worry about it anymore. But I can't say that we've been terribly excited about it, because we're selling it for less than we bought it for. Much less, in our eyes. So it's exciting in a disappointing kind of way. But the sooner we can stop flushing our mortgage payment down the toilet, the sooner we can begin saving it for the next house. We'll just be relieved when it's all over with. That will be nice.

It's extremely cold here. I don't think it's gotten warmer than 25 all week. In fact, my thermometer's spent most of the week in the teens. Windchill got down to zero a few days ago. Our pond's completely frozen over. Brrr!

More free tickets!

The ticket fairy came to the Gafford household again! This time we had the opportunity to go to a Minnesota Timberwolves game. I've never been to an NBA game and was actually very excited about it. (Those of you who know me well are probably shocked!) But the thing that made it all the more fun was the fact that our seats were Row 9, seats 1 & 2! ROW 9! Not even in the middle of row 9, but the end! We were so close to the court that there were actually waiters and waitresses coming to take orders so you wouldn't have to leave the game for your concessions. You can see in these next few pictures how incredible our view was (and also the fact that it's hard to take clear pictures of NBA action!)




We thoroughly enjoyed the half time show provided to us by the Twin Cities Jazzercise group. It consisted of about 80 women, 4 little girls, and 1 man. Very entertaining!


Unfortunately, the Timberwolves lost this game, but we had a VERY fun experience anyway! Thanks so much, Terri for the tickets!

Fun at the MOA

David's parents flew into town on Saturday and after David and I picked them up from the airport we decided to swing over to the Mall of America for a while since it's pretty much right across the street. We took the opportunity to visit the world's largest underwater aquarium, Underwater Adventures. It was really cool. You go through these glass tunnels with fish, sharks, stingray, turtles, you-name-it, swimming all around and over you. It was very entertaining.

David got to pet a stingray. He said it felt really smooth.



I think our favorite part was the tank of coral. It was really cool to see the incredible variety!

Minnesota Wild

Yes, we are WAY behind on posts. We've been a little busy lately as you'll be able to see in the next few posts.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my students' moms came in to help grade papers and offered to take us to a hockey game while she was there. We're not known for turning down free tickets, so we agreed to join them. We had a great time! They kept me out a little later than I like to on a school night, but it was worth it!