Winter Wonderland!!

Hi all:

Dad and I just got back from Bismarck, where I attended a Prairie Public Radio Council board meeting. We were able to have brunch with Jenn and Travis and had dessert with Molly and Tyler. Dad highly recommends the caramel apple pie at the Homesteader in Minot. I concur as I got a couple of bites of it, too. I recommend their oatmeal raisin cookies, too. Since we saw two of our daughters today, we did toy with the thought of getting on an airplane in Minot to see Sara and Evan. However, common sense overtook us and we headed home---if Sara and Evan were living in Florida or Hawaii or somewhere else where the grass is green--it would have been more tempting!!!

Dad and I have had a bit of reversal of roles as he has been on the road bopping around the state much more than I have the past few months. I could not believe the amount of snow in Minot as well as Bismarck and points between. The snow spills over the ditches and there are parts where the snow is piled so high on each side of the highway that it looks like a five foot wall...Amazing! Haven't seen snow like that since I was growing up in Grand Forks.

We have lots of snow up here, but it is much less than what the rest of the state has. Our yard is pretty full, but the nice maintainer man has kept the driveway cleaned out for us. Dad "paid" him with some deer sausage.

I am enjoying my new job as well as teaching the Intro to Education class. It takes a lot of time to prepare for the class and I have a nice group of kids to work with so I hope I do a good job. I am slowly getting the hang of the library duties. One challenge has been getting the student workers' schedules set. We thought he had it settled before semester break but some of the kids have changed their schedules so we are doing some juggling. They are a good bunch of kids, though. Only one is a freshman, though, so I will have to recruit and train new workers next fall. The library is pretty busy since we have a computer lab in it and a conversation area with chairs by the newspapers and magazines. Terri has been very helpful and patient with my many questions. My one big thing was purchasing a new time clock and getting that set up---it is digital and will reset its time automatically when we have time changes. I hope to set up a blog and put our main reference resources on a toolbar on all of the library computers, but have been busy working on editing and digitizing a self study document for the MSU-Bottineau accreditation visit in the spring. I'm back working with Peg again, which is fun.

Heading to St. Ann's tomorrow to work in the library and then on to celebrate Nevida's 97th birthday at the Good Sam. Wow! That is worth celebrating!

Here are a couple of pics from our Christmas celebration. Sara, please send the ones you took or I'll post the ones of you using the Wii Fit here!

Happy 2009! Hope your first month of 2009 had been a good one!
Love,
Mom