Lots of trips!

The past several weeks Erik and I have traded traveling. He went to Chicago and Seattle for work, and I went to Geneva on the Lake (for fun) and Indianapolis for work. Now we are finally home, and hopefully home to stay! My Mom came to visit for her birthday. I made her a cherry chocolate cheesecake and zucchini lasagna rollups. She seemed to like it. We also went to spinning and body pump together at the Y. The teacher for body pump walked up to my mom and said she could leave at any time if she couldn't do it. Ha! She doesn't know my mom. My Mom is hard core. She can run circles around some of those 20 year olds. 

Happy 70th Mom!

 When Erik is traveling we tend to eat a lot of vegetables. Not everyone in my house is as excited about it as I am. I made pea soup one day and leek and potato soup another day. This is Sarah's face when I served the pea soup. She couldn't wait for Daddy to come home so she could eat bacon.

yum! Pea soup!

 My sisters, neighbor Sarah and her friend Leah all went to Geneva on the Lake for a girls trip. We had a fantastic time. On Saturday we went to 4 different wineries. I'm not a huge wine drinker but I loved the scenery. I tried a little of the wine and some I liked more than others. We ended up not eating lunch because we drank so much wine (probably not a good combination).  The five of us stayed in a little cottage right by the lake. The view was spectacular. We also got pedicures which I enjoyed!

Wine tasting

Us at a vineyard

 For dinner we went to the Old Mill restaurant. For an appetizer they had pierogi pizza which is basically pizza with mashed potatoes and a garlic butter sauce on it. Of course I had to try and duplicate it. I made mashed potatoes and homemade pizza crust. Then I put the potatoes along with some sauteed onions and 3 varieties of cheese on the crust and baked it. The mashed potato pizza was good but not great. Not as good as the restaurant's version. It was very heavy too. I also made a regular pizza for Matthew since there was no way he would eat mashed potato pizza. I'm not sure this experiment was successful.

Mashed potato pizza

Right on the lake

Those who know me know that I am an oreo connoisseur. I bought the new mystery oreos (which taste like fruity pebbles) and submitted my entry to win oreos. Because I need more oreos. 

Mystery oreos

Wednesday - Saturday the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference was held in Indianapolis. This is a prestigious conference for Engineering Educators. I was excited to present my work on adding the raspberry pi to my CEIS100 course. The presentation went really well and I made a ton of contacts. I made several contacts at Ohio State which is good for collaboration or in case I need a job! Actually a woman from the University of Cincinnati tried to recruit me to teach there. She asked if I was happy at Devry. Ha! Not moving to Cincinnati.

Going to this conference made me realize how big makerspace is now. So  many universities are getting 3D printers and giving students pis or arduinos to create. Students like hands on and it really gives them an opportunity to be hands on. I've got some ideas of how I want to use the raspberry pi in my classes as well. In addition gamification is huge in education right now. I would love to figure out a way to add gamification to my online courses.

Unfortunately as soon as I left Sarah got strep throat. So she stayed home from school. Luckily Erik works from home so this wasn't too problematic.

A student project, 3D printed light scaffold from University of Florida

 I was in Indianapolis by myself but that didn't stop me from playing pokemon one night. I did 2 Entei raids and then started walking back to the hotel. One of the guys playing started walking with me and we were talking about our legendaries. Then he asked if I was married and said he was lonely. Dude I'm just here to play pokemon! Well and go to the conference. I do hope that my going to this conference and speaking raised the prestige of Devry in academia. That's my goal!

Me at the presentation

This upcoming session and the upcoming January session are going to be HARD! I have a new Advanced Visual basic class I'm teaching. I made videos explaining all the labs but still - it is an online course and that can be difficult (especially the first time you teach it). I'm teaching my mobile app class. This class is SO challenging because Android is quirky and Android studio can be a pain. So I need to meet with each student in a webex. I have 5 hours of webex a week scheduled for this. There are 20 students in the class so this is going to be difficult. I also am teaching a software engineering class I haven't taught before. I'd like to add github into the class because knowing version control is a good thing for students but this class is new and I'm not sure. I am still going to do it though. Finally I'm teaching onsite Friday nights CEIS100. Yuck! Friday nights!! At least this class is only 2 credit hours and I should be out of there at 9pm.

I need some prayer this session!!

Cub Scout Campout

I snapped a few pictures of Sarah and Matthew sparring at tae kwon do. Yes Sarah is sparring in a skirt. That's my girl! The kids are doing great and really getting good at sparring. I enjoy sparring Erik. It should be required for all couples as marriage counseling.

Sarah and Matthew sparring

Another shot

 Matthew is outside ALL the time. After school every day he goes and plays in the backyard making a path through the woods that is poison ivy free. This happened after he got poison ivy twice this summer. All of the kids are doing well in school. Jenna (obviously) is doing fantastic. Sarah is doing amazing as well and Matthew is doing so much better. He got 23/25 on his last spelling test. So he is definitely catching up.

Matthew's path

Matthew working on his path

 We went to COSI and got a picture of Sarah riding the unicycle. She did a great job and wasn't scared at all even though she says she is afraid of heights.

Sarah on the unicycle
 

 Last weekend we had our first cub scout campout. I am the leader for all 22 first grade boys. This campout was for all elementary kids 1st - 5th grade. Our whole family went and we camped in our tent we haven't used in 10 years. It was SOOOO cold! 44 degrees at night. I'm trying to figure out how we can bring the camper next year. Sarah's best friend (and in fact the only person she seems to hang out with now!) is a boy named Alden. He was at the cub scout campout and they played together the whole time. Here is a pic of Sarah and Alden. They write stories together on google docs and get along really well.

Sarah and Alden

 The campout was fun. We sang songs, performed skits and our den earned our bobcat badge. This was a HUGE difference from girl scouts. We sit in a circle and do crafts at girl scouts. I couldn't get these boys to even sit still on the bench. They started jumping on the tables and acting bananas.

Tents!

Playing phase 10

In other news:

• Joel's book is the bomb diggity. I love it!
• I'm reading Tower of Dawn, the 6th book in the Throne of Glass series. It is good - not as good as the others
• My craft show is Saturday. I have a ton of jam ready for it, and I hope I sell more than last year.
• Next session I'm teaching Advanced Visual Basic (a new class), Advanced Software Engineering (another new class), and Mobile App Development (a class I developed but is a difficult one to teach). So next session will be crazy for me. Not to mention the session after that I have 2 new classes as well. Yikes!! 
• Sarah is now playing the viola. She seems to like it - we will see as the year goes further. I remember when Jenna played the viola. The 4th grade strings concert was not a melodious sound.