Looking forward to Christmas....

Hello again everyone!

I should start off with the most important information of the last few weeks: how our first pasty-making experience turned out... For those who don't know, pasties (pronounced pah-stees by the Maxeys) are steak, potatoes, rutabaga, and onion wrapped in pie crusts. They are a Maxey family favorite and my mom spent years perfecting her recipe and tailoring them to every family member's tastes. I made them this week and they turned out pretty well...not QUITE as good as the finely-tuned original but still yummy. Now, for those of you who do not think this is big news, just consider that EVERY SINGLE person in my family except Dani (who didn't know I was making them) specifically made a point to ask how my pasties were. Seriously, Aaron, Dad, Mom, and even Grandma were anxious to hear all about it...lol. I love my family!

Now on to much less significant news...

My work is going well. I'm very excited by the hard work most of the students I'm tutoring at school are putting into catching up and improving their grades. A few volunteer tutors and I started working with 4 students in reading/writing for the last two hours of the day. All of them were failing or close to failing every subject. But with our help, they all have made a plan to get all their missing assignments in, go to some after-school tutoring to work on math/science, and are working extra hard with us to catch up in reading/writing. They are so busy that they finish all the in-class work for the day plus 2-3 of their missing assignments during the 2 hours with us. They also seem enthusiastic about trying to get good grades and mostly are responding well to our belief that they can catch up and start doing better in school. I'm so proud!

I also have a 6th grader reading at about a 1st grade level. He's also trying his best and even practicing his sight words and spelling at home. I've been reading some African folk tales with him (he's from Kenya), and he was so excited about them that he checked out his own book of folk tales from the school library. Already, I've started to see some improvement with building the number of words he can recognize right away and just generally with his confidence in learning to read.

The after-school programs are going well too. I love sign language and am learning all kinds of new signs. I'm more of a student in the class than a teacher, but I help out as much as I can. The after-school tutoring just received an influx of new volunteer tutors, so the kids who come pretty much have one-on-one tutoring if they need it. Now that I have more hands to help, I can focus more on teaching the kids who come rather than monitering behavior and trying to keep them on task. We also started something called "Math Mondays" where most of the volunteers have a special interest in math. We hope the kids struggling in that subject will be even more motivated to come after-school for help if they know math will be the focus that day.

Also, we had a big Americorps kick-off this week Friday with speeches and an award presented to the former governor (Locke) who devised the Washington Reading Corps program and signed it into law about 10 years ago. They gave a statistic that WRC (my program) has helped about 140,000 kids in Washington improve significantly in reading/writing since its inception. Wow! There were about 900 other Americorps members from the Seattle area at the event in the Seattle Center (by the Space Needle). Pretty powerful to see so many people from around the country committing a year to national service...

After the morning presentation, we had a disaster preparedness training. Apparently, Washington state experiences/has the risk of more kinds of large-scale disasters than any other state (even volcanoes). Umm...cool, I guess? But, don't worry! They gave us a starter kit of supplies for our home (water, emergency blanket, first aid stuff, etc) for use in case of an emergency and told us all about what to do in situations like fires and earthquakes (drop, cover, hold...now you know!). The presenter was knowledgable and really funny, so it actually kept my attention for several hours. Hmm...I'm still thinking the moms might get more worry than relief from this paragraph...sorry!

Finally, my work has a three-day, two-night training conference this week from Tuesday to Thursday in Wenatchee, WA (which is apparently a small town east of here known for their apple-growing...sound like Michigan to anyone?). I get to stay in a hotel with a really nice girl (Melissa) from my Reading Corps team who is also married. I'm excited to get to know my teammates more, and I hope some of the trainings will provide useful information for me to put into practice at my school. On Friday, we'll be back in Seattle for another team training with just my group, so I'm a bit sad that I won't be at school for most of the week... Pray that Kayle will survive for a few days on his own!! :)

Kayle's work is also going well. He finished adding a new feature and is working on adding another, more complicated one now. I guess I'm not really allowed to say anything exact about what he's doing (confidentality and all that) so you'll have to ask him personally if you're itching to know more. I hope it suffices to say that "he likes his job."

Another big event from this weekend was a party to celebrate a friend's return from Japan. We played Wii, ate Mochi balls (an ice cream dessert), saw some pictures of his trip, and had a blast playing Cranium. It was a fun night and Kayle especially enjoyed beating everyone at Kirby's Avalanche. I loved being on a Cranium team with Kayle and winning the game (I guess Kayle and I know each other well enough to guess effectively). The party was at Joe's house (it was for one of his roommates, Jordan). About 10-12 of us were there.

I also went to the Notre Dame-Washington game in Husky Stadium on Saturday. Kayle gave his ticket to my friend, Sarah Jenkins (from ND), so I went with her. We had a lot of fun catching up on each other's lives, going to a huge ND tailgate put on by the alumni club, watching ND crush Washington (even though our team did not play all that well), and hearing from another avid ND fan all about our team this year and his predictions for the next few years. It was a bit nostalgic to cheer on the Irish in person again, and both of us missed ND stadium and the thrills of the student section. Hopefully, I'll make it back to South Bend for a game at some point...

Other random news:
-Kayle has been working on his chess game all week, taking online tutorials and solving chess problems. If he asks you to play over Christmas, beware!
-I lost my backpack by leaving it on the bus this week, but thankfully got it back the next day by visiting the downtown Metro bus office. I guess I shouldn't read "Little Women" while I get off the bus anymore! Still Gretel...
-Our church community group assigned "homework" last week along the theme of Song of Songs: write a letter explaining to your spouse reasons why you love them. It was fun exchanging those letters last weekend (I got two whole pages...woo hoo!).
-We're still waiting to get my insurance card for Americorps to coordinate our health insurance with Microsoft. I've been waiting to go back to the chiropractor until we get this figured out, but my back is starting to get really sore again. I hope that gets figured out soon! I also have a small bill from the doctor that we have to contest...blah...
-The rain isn't completely back yet. The last few days have been pretty warm and sunny. I think the nice weather will last a couple days before the cold drizzle starts up again. Bus stops are not nearly as pleasant when chilly and wet.

AND LASTLY,

-We bought our plane tickets to come home for Christmas!!! Yay! We're flying in on December 17th and leaving the morning of the 30th. We saved about $500 by flying on those days, but I have to miss the last Friday training session for work. My boss is not too happy about that, but I need to prioritize my family. I think I escaped this time with only a short lecture! :-/

Well, that's all I can think of for now! We love and miss you all! Thanks for hanging in there for another LONG post...

~Angie and Kayle