train video 1

2008 Christmas Tree

Baton Rouge Week 26

Hi all

We were done with school but seemed like we needed to do school stuff almost every day. For example we had to make sure that grades were submitted. We also had to go to meeting about a possible partnership with our college and a college in Tanzania. Dana had some meetings about the teaching schedule for her department. We did finally manage to get our paper submitted to a journal. It took some doing but we sent it off Thursday evening.

I had to give the missionaries rides a couple of time this week. The ward mission leader was sick. They do have bikes but sometimes they need rides at night. The roads are horrible for bike riding, especially if you have a specific destination. At night it is worse. They had to practice for their part in the ward Christmas party. The ward party was Friday. It was a Cajun Christmas; the food was a variety of gumbos. It was all very good. It was pretty well attended with a few non-members in attendance. We invited some people who didn’t end up coming. Oh well, we will keep trying. They should probably have our ward party earlier in the month. Our ward is still pretty dependant on the University so a lot of people leave as soon as they can after the semester.

We had a great day Friday. The cabinet installer was able to come and put in the cabinets in the laundry room. We just need to get the granite on the little 18 x 32 floor unit. It has a large drawer and two cabinet doors below. We also now have three cabinets above the washer and the dryer. I have added pictures on the blog showing the laundry room. The laundry room might be done by the time we get back. Our contractor has a small opening between jobs.

I have also added a picture of the Christmas tree (Georgia Dollar General Purchase), complete with the trains. I also have a couple mediocre videos of the trains in action. Notice, I have two and most of you have…?

We are frantically trying to get ready to leave for our trip to Utah. We are folding clothes, paying bills, and making final arrangements.

Dana was sustained and set apart as the Relief Society President today. It is all a little overwhelming for her. She is wondering how she can do justice to the women in the ward and still try to be a new professor.

We love you and are looking forward to seeing you all in Utah.

Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana

Louisiana snow!

Some university student had time for a snowman even in the midst of finals.

Mike the LSU tiger was out roaming around his pen all day. If you browse the LSU Reveille website you can find even more pictures of the big cat playing in the snow.

Baton Rouge Week 25

Hi all

We have seen a lot of firsts here in Baton Rouge: Biggest Hurricane in the city’s history, the worst LSU football season in a long time 7-5, and the largest snow storm in at least 50 years. We woke up Thursday to a winter wonderland. Local school closed but the university kept at the finals schedule so that people could finish. Snow stayed on the ground most of the day and the next day temperature were back up to 70 degrees. Here is the web address for the university newspaper http://www.lsureveille.com/ you should be able to see some picture there if I can’t get them on to the blog.

Dana is improving as the days go along. She is still subject to getting tired after working hard. She has finished up grades but is working hard before we go to Utah to finish a paper or two so that she can have them in review as she makes application for jobs. We work at the school for four hours yesterday. Then she kept working at home for the afternoon while I did a few Christmas errands. We have been behind with Christmas preparations this year. Dana’s hospital visit slowed the pace of things. It is fine, it is better to put family needs first before all of the frills.

I have also finished my grading except for one graduate student. She has an independent study and her deadline is this Tuesday. I am actually looking forward to reading her paper when it comes in. That leaves me to spend this week doing house stuff, Christmas stuff, and some writing. I would like to write about four hours in the morning each day this week, and then work around the house listening to Christmas music, and then finish up the shopping or wrapping.

Maybe we will catch up on some movies. We went to see Australia last Friday night. I liked it but it is long. I thought it was maybe trying to be two movies about the same people.

I haven’t found the time to get involved with any basketball at all. I like both college ball and the NBA, just no time. I must admit that I am looking forward to the bowl games that I am connected to in some way. That is about the only sporting events I can get involved with. I just hope Raymond is following the Giants again. They have had a great season so far and have only lost that idiot who shot himself with his own gun. I like the overall image that the Giants seem to produce. I am so done with the Dallas Cowboys.

We are proud of Sophia generous holiday contribution at the McDonald house. If you don’t know what she has done check out her picture of the project on her blog at http://www.deaconsmommy.blogspot.com/ (for those of you new to links inside of texts just move the mouse arrow over the blue part and then hold down the control button and click the mouse key, the right side or you can cut and paste the address into the address bar of google). The bonus is that you will get to see a ton of pictures of Deacon. I was impressed with the wide variety of people who help her in a variety of ways.

We also want to tell Abbey how proud we were of her Sub 4 Santa efforts. A few weeks ago she asked her Bishop if the ward had a project. She volunteered to head one up, perfect for a member of the activities committee. The ward has six family home evening groups and they provided for six families in transition in the Boston area. You can check out her report and excitement at her blog: http://abbeysmind.blogspot.com/.

As far as I am concerned this is the best kind a Christmas that a child can provide a parent. We don’t need anything else.

Walker turned 20 this Saturday. His constant service as a missionary is another example of charity. I am sure that he has learned much and is growing in his testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. His service to the people of the areas in which he serves will be blessed in ways that he can’t even imagine. We are reminded often of his work because we see the missionaries so frequently. We had them over for dinner this Thursday night. Yes, the snow day. They were going go bike the six miles to our house and then over to another member appointment. I told them to bag that, I picked them up and then drove them to the next place and then they had a ride from there. The mission here is trying to involve the members more, imagine that. Our family mission plan has two major foci. We plan to invite neighbors and friends to any ward function that has been designed for socialization of the members and for missionary work. For example, we are having a Cajun Christmas this Friday at the ward house so we are inviting a few people. We will invite and they can decide. We are also trying to invite some non member friends for dinner at least one Monday a month for a family night. Combined with that, we are trying to invite ward members over for family night on a different Monday. Two other small things are having the missionaries help people move (we know lots of people who move around) and carry pass along cards. Lots of people say “have a blessed day,” aren’t they just begging for a pass along card? So, how can you help?

We have a ton going on here in Baton Rouge but it is time for people to make plans for a visit.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Dad and Dana

Baton Rouge Week 24

Hi all

This has been a fairly straight forward week. It was work and rest, work and rest, and more work and rest. It was the final week of classes and Dana went and taught on Monday. It was probably her most interesting class because she taught partly under the influence of lortab. She then went home to rest. She also had previously invited the student teachers she supervisors over for dinner and their final work. I cooked dinner. We had barbeque chicken, new red potatoes with onions, green pepper, and red peppers, and a green salad. For desert we had some cookies. Alas, they were not homemade. We had purchased cookie dough from the neighborhood children.

Then I had my final class on Wednesday. For their final my students need to bring their final project and be ready to explain it to the others. Hopefully, I will be done with grade by Thursday. I have a mini English department conference on Thursday. I hope that doesn’t get in the way of finishing the semester.

Dana’s writing group gave her good and important feedback on the paper we are trying to get out for review. So, we hope to have that finished before we go to Utah. I have another small paper that I need to send to the English Journal. My writing group will be looking at that tomorrow.

Dana had a conference to attend in Washington D. C. This was scheduled almost a year ago. She is presenting with the reading specialist from Jordan School District. They are reporting on the elementary balance literacy project that seemed to work well. Dana went back to the doctor before the trip. She is healing fine. The doctor did tell that she will continue to be tired for about three weeks. She just needs to make sure to rest.

I am working hard planning for the ALAN Review. I am planning on spending about a morning a week working on this project. This week I made a big list of information that we need to get from the old group. It will be a big task but we seem to be on top of the project.

As you can tell we are plenty busy trying to get work done.

Yesterday, I drove with some people to Slidell where the church has a bishop’s storehouse and a canning facility. I canned a variety of foods for storage. I didn’t do a massive amount. I just tried things we eat: spaghetti, macaroni, rice, red beans, white beans, and pinto beans. I also bought some new things we haven’t used before dried onions, carrots, and apples. We also are going to try some dried milk and hot chocolate. If you don’t have a plan I really think that you need to get started. Gas is down to about 1.65 here. I am tempted to put the same amount of money in a small account every time I buy gas and see how much money I have in a year. We seem to get by in the hard times but we don’t seem to plan and prepare during the good times. We are planning to deliberate us the food storage by making at least one meal a week from the food storage stuff.

Our next big project is to finishing the laundry room. We have the cabinets purchased and we are waiting for the installer to have a day open to come and put them in. It will save us a little bit of money by contracting directly with him.

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the fire in the fourplex. We have the check from the insurance and even after the deductible we should not have to come up with too much out of pocket money. The insurance amount and our contractor estimates were very close. It really helps to have a contractor who knows the area and has worked with habitat for humanity. The standard for that construction is perfect for rebuilding an apartment. They have gutted the apartment and I have not had to do a thing. Great! I will go over and look at it tomorrow. We should be able to rent it right after the new year when we get back to town.

The Utes are in the Sugar bowl against Alabama, a team that was number one for much of the season. I think whoever controls the passing game (either offensively or defensively) wins. Georgia is in the Capital One bowl against Michigan State. I think this should be a really good game. BYU plays Arizona in the Pioneer Bowl. Wow! BYU has a good chance with Arizona in down year. It is a gift, but LSU got in the Chick-fil-A bowl in Atlanta against Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech beat Georgia in a free for all and Georgia really took it to LSU, especially in the second half. LSU had better duck and cover.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana

Baton Rouge Week 23

Hi all

Well, this was an eventful week.

My conference in San Antonio was to continue through Tuesday. Tuesday morning Dana called. I had a little bit of stomach grumbling on Saturday and Sunday. Dana wasn’t feeling well (she had severe gas pains) and called to see if mine were similar. She thought I had given it to her or she had appendicitis. I finally convinced her to go to the doctor. That was an event all by itself.

My original flight back was 6:30 getting back at 10:00. I hurried to the airport to change to a 4:30 flight. I got to the airport at 2:50 and was able to get a 3:30 flight to Houston with an earlier connecting flight to Baton Rouge. I almost missed the Houston flight. I talked with Dana briefly before the San Antonio flight. I only had time between the San Antonio flight and the Houston flight to briefly call her visiting teaching companion. The flight attendant was forcing me to turn off the phone. I was able to say “Yorka, Dana has appendicitis. She is Lady of the Lake hospital.” Yorka was surprised that the call was so short, but she was able to find Dana at the hospital before the surgery.

I arrived in Baton Rouge at 6:45. I was able to talk briefly before the operation at 7:00 and Yorka picked me up at the airport. I was at the hospital before the operation was done and talked to the doctor when he came out. Dana did fine. She was able to check out of the hospital by about 3:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday.

We had a very quiet day on Thanksgiving. We had plenty of food in the house (Thanksgiving afternoon one of my graduate student and her mother fixed us a couple of plates that we ate off of for two days) and I went and bought a few more things on Wednesday afternoon. We were able to see a movie early Friday afternoon and again early Saturday. Dana took naps in the afternoon. We have been watching tv (we are making good sense of our dvr).

I have been reading some of the Young Adult novels I got as a participant in the ALAN conference. I brought back 53 books. I will be reading even more YA novels over the next five years. Don’t worry; I am attaching a membership form to this email. That way you can all open it and join up.

I made a small Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Dana hasn’t felt much like eating for the last few days. Dinner was nice and now we have leftovers for the next few days.

Dana has one more class to teach tomorrow before finals. I think I will take her up for that and then bring her home. My students are working on final projects. The work here is winding down for the semester.

It was a rough week for football. LSU lost to Ole Miss and Georgia lost to Georgia Tech for the first time in seven years. That left Utah at 12-0, BYU at 10-2, UGA at 9-3, and LSU at a lowly 7-5. LSU really suffered at the quarterback position.

Dana really appreciated all of the phone calls. I should have called more people, but I was busy taking care of Dana. I feel like I can catch up now.

My students are working on final projects for the rest of the semester. Hopefully, I can do the final grading for everything except the final project this week. I then will get back to writing, planning for the ALAN review, and preparing courses for next semester.

We are also carefully watching for the bowl announcements next week. There is a good chance that Utah might get a placement at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. If so we might come back early and try to go.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Dad and Dana

This is Dana. I might say that the last week was less than stellar for me. Dad forgot to tell you I have been worried about my new calling and choosing advisors. On Friday, my birthday, I wrecked the car. I backed up into the pillars of the car port, tore off the passenger side rearview mirror, and scraped the heck out of the door. The lovely painful appendicitis just topped off the whole week. What I learned from all this is that people love you even when you are an idiot, people who hardly know you are kind and generous, and how much I love all of you for thinking of me. I don’t know if it is the medication or just feeling pretty darn humble, but I have been exceptionally emotional the last four days. Besides crying at an ATT commercial, I feel so fortunate to have married and been born into a family that is so wonderful. I love you all and thank you so much for thinking of me.

Dana

BR week 22

Hi everyone! How are you doing? I figure if I ask a questions some of you might send a small reply. Well, one can hope can’t he? As long as I am pointing out gaps in your character, I should mention that more of you need to be writing Walker. It doesn’t have to be long (My word, he doesn’t write much sometimes, but he is writing.) just write about what you are thinking, doing, studying, experience, or how great it is that he is doing what he is doing.

I liked hearing, over the last week, some of your plans for Christmas service. One of the best presents I have ever received was the report on the service projects that you all did last year for Christmas. This year, Abbey is helping to organize some sub for Santa work in the area around Cambridge. Good luck. Sophia has plans to help redecorate a room at one of the Charity houses (I think the McDonald house). It is great to hear about all of this. I look forward to the updates as the season goes along.

I have been in San Antonio for the annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference. It is always the weekend before Thanksgiving. I generally miss Dana’s birthdayL! She did get a great gift though. I generally room with Chris Crowe, an English Education professor from BYU, and Nate Phillips, a former teacher and current graduate student at Vanderbilt. It has been a good week so far. I stay until Tuesday. The NCTE conference ends today, but the ALAN workshop continues on Monday and Tuesday.

I AM THE NEW EDITOR OF THE ALAN REVIEW. What does this mean for you? Well, you should all subscribe to the Journal. It is only 20 dollars and it would boost the circulation rate. Hum, maybe I know what people are getting for Christmas. The editorial team will consist of me and two others. The others are Jackie Bach, who is at LSU with me and Melanie Hundley, who is at Vanderbilt and was a student at UGA when I was there. We shared an office for two years. The search committee narrowed the interview pool to five editorial teams. They interviewed all of them Saturday. Saturday, at about 6:00 pm, the chair of the committe called me and asked if I was ready to spend five years working really hard. I will be the lead editor, only for organization purposes. Both women are very smart and extremely organized, I will try to do what they say. We did a very thorough job preparing for the interview. The initial application took some work but once we made the next level we did work to understand the history of the journal and the potential future. We put together a small packet, six pages, with a mock up of a new sample cover. (Every new team of editors puts together a cover and we had another friend from UGA put together a quick black line drawing. I will send it along next week as an attachment when I can get to a scanner.) We felt very comfortable with our preparation and when the interview was over I felt very relaxed. O.K. I had a headache the size of Cincinnati due to some flu symptoms. The day before, I ate something that caused a serious grumbling and frequent trips…. I think I was slightly dehydrated. I had to meet my major professor for lunch after the interview. I sipped a drink and played like I was eating a taco. I went to the hotel and slept and watched TV off and on for about 4 hours. It was a great day, to celebrate I had dinner with Jackie and another colleague. Here I am in the Heart of Texas with Mexican food all around me and I ate a light French soup and a sprite.

Georgia did not play, which was probably good for them. They need to get ready to play a surging Georgia Tech next week. LSU got spanked at home by Ole Miss. It was ugly. I think there is a full suicide watch in Baton Rouge, heck, maybe the whole state of Louisiana. Utah just took apart BYU from the information we have been able to get. I think Dana listened to it through the internet so she might have more to say about it. She is a true red Utah fan while I try to hope for the best for both. I do, however find myself drifting to BYU when they go against each other. Utah has had a great season and should get a great bowl placement. Go Utes!

The Jazz played in San Antonio while I was here and lost again. We will have to check with Mitch, but I think they have lost in San Antonio something like 24 straight times. How many years in a row is that without a win in San Antonio.

By the way, The Alamo is tiny. I can’t imagine what it would fell like to be absolutely outnumbered and surrounded.

We are going to be in St. George for Christmas. We think we will drive up to Salt Lake Christmas afternoon. We look forward to seeing everyone, especially little Wil.

We love you all. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana