February!!

February is here!!! Well...it's almost over!


Life in Duluth has been soooo busy!! I finally feel like I am settled in Duluth! Only took me 5 monthes! I have a fun, good group of friends, I am part of a church, get along with my coworkers, and know too many middle school students in the building... And this is the part of my school year where I had to start thinking about next year already! I don't know what will happen, or what I will choose to do, scary to think about already!

I am ready for a break, and luckily I have a week off starting tomorrow night! Most of the school has been sick on and off the last month, and it finally hit me over the weekend and all of this last week. So I am so ready to recuperate and recharge!

The weather has been interesting lately. We had freezing temperatures of wind chill of -30 and strong winds to now we have 40 and most of the snow has melted off the roads and parking lots. But with this warm weather comes consequences. I wasn't looking in the school parking lot and stepped into a nice deep puddle. And just last night, my apartment gave me a present of a leaking ceiling. So now I have two spots in my bedroom where water is dripping from the ceiling. So I will be sleeping on my couch until they fix it since i can't stand the noise of dripping water all night! Ugg...


That's my short and quick update! Enjoy

Happy New Year!

I failed...


My goal was to post at least every 2 weeks, it's been a month! Well I guess it makes sense with the holidays and break.

Right before Christmas break, my sister came up to visit me in Duluth to see my apartment and hang out since she had just gotten back from Chicago. She took the bus up on Monday and we left together after i got off of work on Wednesday. But ironically on that Tuesday, Duluth Public Schools had a snow day! So it was perfect timing because we got to bake and in the afternoon after most of the snow was plowed it had stopped snowing, we went shopping! But before we could go shopping, we had to dig my car out of the parking lot. My apartment manager had plowed the 8-10 inches of snow we got from out lot and he decided to plow me in...

Over all my Christmas break was great! I went home to Minneapolis for about 2 weeks and hung out with my family. I had to bring my cats home and they got locked in the basement because my parents had the house cleaned and is not animal hair free. My sister was home from Chicago for winter break with all of her stuff, she just left about a week ago to Rome, Italy to study abroad for the Spring semester.



During break, I finally made the decision to cut off my hair. When you look at the picture it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, it's not super short, but I ended up cutting off 3 inches. And while I can't resort to just pulling it up in a pony tail on days I don't want to deal with it, I love it!

After break, school has been interesting and very busy! It seems like I haven't been able to sit down since going back to school on January 3rd. The students were really good the first week back, but since it was the end of our 2nd quarter, we had some much to do! Late assignments, last minute homework being turned in and needed to be graded! But this last week, they all seemed to be off...I work with 4 different classes, and across the board they were not with it. But I'm crossing my fingers that tomorrow, day 1 of quarter 3 goes smoothly!

In the end of January will mean that I have lived in Duluth for 4 months. And looking back it has gone so fast and I can't wait to see what Duluth looks like in the spring and summer! I say that because it has managed to snow 1 inch every other day, multiple times in one day, and I am sick of scrapping my car off before school and after school!

And finally over Christmas break I had a mission. That was to find all of our Christmas family pictures from the last 10 years and put them in frames and hang them up in my apartment. I was looking at all the pictures I have in frames and most of them were of my friends from college or work and some of me and my sister. But only one of my family from maybe 2000. So I found pictures as far back as 2004 from my mom and I hung them up in my entry way.

Almost Christmas!

So the last time I posted anything was right after Thanksgiving, and here I am already talking about Christmas! It is still a week and half away, but I feel very unprepared. I've bought one gift, and just have a list for all my friends and family of what I want to get them, now I just have to go out and find the gifts!

With the count down to Christmas vacation down to 7...my students are already checking out. And to quote two students this morning: "Why would I think of anything right now unless I had to" and "Come on Ms. Ingram, it's almost Christmas break, do we have to read?" It's going to be a long 7 days if they are already thinking like this!

This last weekend I know that the Cities got over a foot of snow, we were lucky to get no snow, but we are currently stuck with -10 degrees and colder weather. I would rather have snow then freezing cold weather!

My parents were nice enough to come and visit me this last weekend to hang out and to go shopping! Our goal was maybe to get some Christmas shopping done for my siblings, since it's always nice to have help for ideas from a sister. But instead I bought more stuff for me, and just got ideas for my brother and sister...We were lucky that we didn't get snowed in, we did watch some great movies and cook some holiday cookies. And of course drank some wine with out pizza!

One of the recipes that I loved was a Peppermint Snowballs, and I thought I would include the recipe because they are sooo good! I even took a picture of our final product to share!

Peppermint Snowballs

1Cup Butter

¾ Cup powder sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon salt

2 ¼ Cup Flour

½ Cup quick oats

10 starlight mints, crushed (1/4 heaping Cup)

Red food coloring

Powdered sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat butter and sugar on high until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla and salt. At low speed, beat in flour, then oats, mints and 12-24 drops of food coloring(depends on how red you want them).

Shape into balls and bake 15-18 minutes. Roll in powered sugar and cool. About 4 dozen.

And finally, I've had many people who haven't made it up to Duluth, or haven't seen my apartment since I finished the decorating and furniture rotating. I decided instead of putting in pictures, I thought I would try a video tour. I hope you can all see and hear my "commentary", I tried to walk you through my apartment and describe what was there, if you don't hear my voice, you'll still get the idea. The best players to hear and see would be Windows Media Player or VLC player, but it might just show it to you on the blog, not really sure yet! I hope you like it!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Winter is Here!

Mom and Grandma on Thanksgiving.

So Thanksgiving has come and gone and I can't believe it is going to be December in 2 days...

Thanksgiving was really good. I was at the point of my Duluth life and work that I needed a long weekend at home. The drive home was definitely interesting, I was able to leave work at about 3:30 to try and get on the road early and miss rush hour and the storm that was coming in. On my 3 hour drive home I say 1 car spin out in the lane right next to me and about 6 cars in the ditch with either a firetruck or a police car or tow truck. It was the first time I couldn't use my cruise control the whole time on my drive down. Not as relaxing as it normally is...

My sister getting a back rub from my dad during movie night.

But my whole family was home for thanksgiving until Friday night. We went to my Aunt and Uncle's house near St. Cloud and it was just like any other family event, entertaining! At our "kid table" (which the youngest is now 19 and the oldest maybe 28) we always have the oddest conversations, and then the traditional bashing of the electronics. My family is full of tech people, and we all have our opinions on what is the best and what shouldn't have ever been created...enough said. I ended up walking away from my Aunt's house with 3 plants, and about 10 candles...I'd say I did pretty well!

My brother who looks like he has no face.

Black Friday...I decided to go and see how it would go...at 1pm. I went with my mom and we still hit major traffic and parking problems. But I walked out of Herbergers with $30 boots! So it was worth it!

Black Saturday? Oh yeah, that's what they call it now! I also decided to try that shopping day out. Nothing fancy, no major driving or parking debacles. I had a great shopping day on Saturday as well! I spent $55 at Old navy on 2 pairs of jeans and 2 pairs of pants, at JcPenney I spent $40 on a wallet, hair barrette and clothes. Score!

Overall the weekend was a great success! It was hard to leave and head back to Duluth though. I didn't realize how much I miss "a big city" feel. I loved driving to the stores on multiple freeways, going to a Super Target and having to worry about Snow Emergency Routes of Minneapolis. While I love my new job, I miss the routine I had in Minneapolis and it's taking time to set up a new routine in a new city and trying to meet new people and get to know my surroundings.


 I have two cats who keep me company in Duluth. One seems to think that his home is on top of my cupboards on my Crock Pot box. And the other likes to lay on my computer and watch Scrubs with me.

So that's what is up with me right now! Excited for December and ready for some snow!

Weekend of Friends

Lift Bridge

So last weekend I had my very good friends Sarah and Bethany come up to Duluth to visit me. Now I am a little late with this blog because this past weekend I was so busy, so here it is!

Me, Sarah and Bethany on the pier by the lighthouse

They came up early on Friday and we had no definite plan of what to do, but knowing us, that wasn't a problem. Bethany loves to decorate, and she's really good at it. So I didn't hang any pictures in my apartment because I was waiting for her to come and help me figure the layout and where things should go. Well it turned into let's rearrange the entire apartment and buy new furniture and all that good stuff. So after an excellent lunch at Grandma's, we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and then all of Friday night, until 11 decorating and rearranging my stuff.

the lighthouse form afar...

They did a great job, the place looks a ton better, but i was not envisioning it taking all day, $150, and me being shunning to my room to do work while they surprise me with a new living room layout!

Saturday we went downtown Duluth and down Canal Park to do some shopping, sight seeing and exploring. It was so fun to be able to explore Duluth with great friends and even run into a coworker from Roseville!

view from the musuem

After a great weekend, I was surprised with a very busy week of work, I am fully into my job now, I think I am at week 7 of my new job, and I am feeling the weight. I have a lot more responsibility and am doing more lesson planning (which I am loving both! I love to stay busy!)

My two cheesehead friends, drinking Cheesehead Wine!

I am missing home less, even though I really miss my old job and coworkers, talking to them via text or facebook just reminds me how much fun we had on the stage (our office), and talking to some of my old students on facebook also remind me of how much fun I had teaching them last year and how they are a year older now!

View from my school after the beautiful snowfall we had on Saturday!

I leave you, hoping to update again this next weekend, maybe with some pictures of the Downtown Duluth parade that I am going to watch on TV with great coworkers, while we make fun of it in our cozy warm living room!

First Post!

So I was inspired from a few of my friends to start my own blog. I always love reading their blogs to see what they are up to, especially since I have graduated from college and a lot of my friends have moved away from Minnesota. And now I am on that list of people moving away...So this is a great way for my friends who still live in the cities or those who live elsewhere to keep updated on my life and to update me on their lives!

My cats in my new room in Duluth!

In the end of September I moved up to Duluth to become a Language Arts Interventionist at a charter middle school. This job is a dream come true, I never realized how much I loved reading with students until I had the chance to be an interventionist last year in Brooklyn Center in an elementary school. While most of my friends find it odd that I am a language arts teacher and not a math teacher, I am surprised too. While I always pictured myself as a general education classroom teacher or a middle school math teacher, this seems to be a perfect fit for me.

While middle schoolers can be a struggle to work with because of all the hormones and the the personal life stuggles they are going through, they are a blast to work with! I really connect with them and love to teach with them and love to carry on a conversation with them (not the same conversation you would have with a 1st grader!) Most of the time a conversation I have with a student will make my day brighter no matter how tired or how many meetings I have that day, they just have a great train of thought at 4pm on a Friday...

Snow Day!

Duluth is a beautiful city to live in, it does have its quirks...All the hills are lovely, though I am lucky to live on top of the hill and my school is on the hill, so I'm pretty lucky to avoid most major hills. Duluth is a lot smaller than Minneapolis, and I am getting used to the different stores that they have here and the ones that they don't have here. I forget that sometimes some stores that I am so used to that are in the Mall of America are not in any other mall in Minnesota, so I just have to remind myself that I will have to make a special shopping trip when I hit the cities. We also already had a snow day! My apartment and school got about 3 inches of snow in October, but the Department of Transportation closed schools because of the busses and the airport got about 7 inches of snow, so yeah for us! But just wondering how the rest of the winter is going to go! I am also getting used to the fog! Some mornings when I leave my apartment at 7am, the ground is so covered with fog that I can maybe see 15 ft in front of me, I have never seen so much fog before!

Fog is taking over the school!

The lingo is also different "up here". I've had many students and coworkers politely correct me (well my coworkers are polite about it...). Such as: "Where are you living in Duluth?" "Oh, I'm living South of Miller Hill Mall." huh... Correct answer: "I live down the hill from the Miller Hill Mall" . I'm so used to learning NSEW directions when living in Minneapolis, my dad would be proud to know that I can almost always say what direction I am facing without looking at my compass in my car! But this is not language that they use up here, so just more new things to take in.


Over all I love it up here! Still learning my way around the city and meeting tons of new people! So I'm taking it slow and excited for what's going to come next!