Quick Successions: New Mexico Edition

After I returned from Washington DC I had about 36 hours at home. During that time, I exercised, did laundry and rented a car to drive to the annual meeting of the Council of Exceptional Children in St. Louis. The University of Kansas paid for me to rent a car because they have some deal with a rental company. When I got there to pick up my Chevy Malibu they didn't have one. So I took this RAM1500 instead. It was really a good truck to drive. I have never comfortable on a car drive before and I finally was.  Picking up the RAM. Stopping at Sonic on the way home to revel in the fact that I had a RAM.  The view of Busch stadium from my hotel room. Walking to the conference. Better view of the arch. I had been inside before so I didn't do that this time. Decided to take in a Cards game while I was there. They were playing the Reds.  Good game, actually. There were like about 8 home runs. Lots of cheering. Game didn't last too long. Brian ...

It's that time of the year again. The time when I put my life on hold and go to the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Last year, I profiled all of my experience at various AERA meetings. This year, I am going to give a day-by-day accounting. Wednesday, April 6 The conference didn't start until April 8, but that didn't stop me from getting on a plane at 5 a.m. to head to DC. I was slated to present my dissertation at noon during the mentoring session of the International Scholarly Association on Teacher Thinking (ISATT). The ISATT group was really wonderful--educational researchers from Portugal, Spain, China, and the United States in our group. This was amazingly good fun and lots of good meals together over the course of two days. Thursday, April 7 Together with my colleage from Germany, I presented research on preservice teachers uptake of technology during their preparation courses. This presentation occurred during a pre-conferenc...

Hannah and I want to go to LegoLand. So we got out the calculator and the Internet and priced out for a grand total of just under $4,000. No dice. We will never get there. I was really sad and so I started to see what people did to make it more affordable and I found out that in Kansas City there is a LegoLand Discovery Center. Not LegoLand, but an affordable experience. So I bought tickets and we went to Crown Center in Kansas City. I was very clear with her that this was not the amusement part and I did not intend for it to be a substitute experience in any way--just something fun to do. She was excited and was very well behaved. We rode the rides and saw a 4-D movie and she played all afternoon. Then we went and got food.  Here is she is riding the Harry Potter Lego ride. Taking all Saturday for the Lego Discovery center meant that we couldn't color eggs until Easter Sunday. Hannah didn't mind at all. She did a really good job minding the eggs and the colors turn...