Quick Successions: New Mexico Edition

Hannah woke up on Easter with the sense that it was an important day, but sure about why or how. She came down our stairs with much anticipation.   As she looked through her basket she kept saying"that Easter bunny is so nice." My mom sent her some items and I gave them to Hannah in her basket. She also sent some books that I gave Hannah later in the day and told her were from her Grandma Aldred. We went to church and nursery teachers talked about Easter so when she came home she wanted to read the Easter children's book I had.  Then we had an egg hunt in our backyard. I ran around with her showing her how to hold her basket and pick up the eggs. She wanted to leave her basket in one place and keep running back to it. She had no problem however seeing eggs and grabbing them.  The worst part of Easter was the post-hunt nap.

  I had not colored eggs in over 15 years, so since Hannah seemed old enough to try, we threw caution to the wind and I set everything up while she was still asleep and then when she woke up I brought her to the kitchen and we colored eggs while Brian was at the university. Hannah demonstrated herself to be a capable handler of Easter eggs and dye. I am impressed with her coordination and patience. We only cracked one shell.     When we finished, I had a pretty girl AND some pretty eggs. 

We did some yard work yesterday. I took this picture of Hannah with her little dog and it reminded me of the Holly Hobbie pictures from the 1960s/1970s. Both Hannah and Holly appear below.     The purpose of being outside was to re-do the mulch around our house. Brian lifted the bags and Hannah alternated between tamping it down and helping her father pour the bags.   Here Hannah is helping her dad with the bag.  When I looked online for the other Holly Hobbie I found out that she (or one of her friends) was a gardener.  My job was to rake the mulch and get it spread around evenly.  Hannah ran up and down the sidewalk pointing our where I needed to rake more. Here's my favorite picture of the day. I love her pretty smile and her happy eyes and the wonderful dimple on her cheek.  And that was our Saturday. It's amazing what you can do in the good weather.

This year I had one pre-conference presentation and one large group presentation, two small group presentations, and a recognition session for emerging scholars. We flew to Philadelphia on Monday night and by Tuesday morning Hannah was a little sick. By Wednesday evening she was very sick. She had a fever, complete with sweating, mild dehydration, vomiting, and thick throat mucous. Since she is 2 there are not over the counter remedies in abundance that she can have safely, but I was able to give her Tylanol/Advil combinations to keep her fever from getting to high. Brian and I traded places staying in the hotel room with her while the other went to sessions. I had planned to leave her in daycare for a few hours each day, but I decided not to leave her there sick and I would hope they would have refused to take her anyway. The hotel staff became irritated with my constant insistence on deeper cleanings, new bedding, and more towels to prevent spreading what she had to us.  Brian ...

The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association is always in the spring around this time of year. I decided to write an account of my yearly adventures there. It is usually quite an interesting time.  Chicago 2007 I was eating French fries at a little diner in Provo, Utah with my supervisor from BYU where I was an adjunct instructor when she invited me to come to AERA in Chicago with her. She wanted me to come and meet other scholars to see if I wanted to go back to school to get my master’s degree. I went to the conference and presented at a pre-conference session about some work I had done with my junior high students. The people that I met there were very kind. I got invited to a party at the house of a professor in Chicago where I got to meet a lot of people from all over the work. I also went out to dinner at a Spanish restaurant with another group of people and had tapas for the first time. During the week, I walked through the downtown area a...