Sunday, November 25, 2012

December 2011--and the serial posts keep coming

Were were lucky to have Steve's mom Sandy up for Christmas this year. Of course, the kids had their annual concerts--we were so impressed with Joshua. No stage fright this year!
And of course, some video :)

DSCN0498 from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

DSCN0497 from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

Untitled from Sarah Beck on Vimeo.

We didn't have a white Christmas this year :( These are some pictures post Christmas but as you can see, we got very little snow

October/November 2011

Every October we take the kids to Rheault Farms for the fall festival. They always have pumpkins, pony rides, and crafts. It's become a family tradition.
For Halloween, Joshua was a cop and Whitney was Rapunzel. I made both costumes--Joshua's was easy, Whitney's was way more involved. Looking back I don't know how I had the time to sew that dress, but it turned out really cute.
Of course, Steve has his annual NCA Conference in Chicago, and of course, I become a slacker when in comes to making supper. Perogies, an old standby:

Life as an MFA student (Fall Semester 2011)

I have to say I really enjoy being a student. I love every aspect of it, even the homework. This semester was my second year (or so) of my Master's program, so fall semester I spent the majority of my (spare--ha!) time writing my thesis. I was really lucky because I got to take an indepenent study class with my advisor. Since I'm motivated by deadlines (my only motivation) we had a deal that I would turn in a chapter a week. We would meet and discuss each chapter, talk about where I wanted the story to go (which the majority of the time, I had no idea) and then we'd talk about how to head forward and things to keep in mind for revision. It was tough, but looking back I learned the most I ever had about the writing process. My advisor helped me see my project to the end and kept me from getting caught up in a revision cycle that would prevent me from getting there. This is snow baby. Snow baby is a joke we MFA students started. Two of my collegues were terrified of figurines (Hummels and Snow Babies in particular). Just as a side note, I'm terrified of clowns, and a porcelain clown showed up in our office too. Snow baby would disappear and then reappear in student offices and mailboxes. Along the way something happened to Snow Baby.
One day, Snow Baby showed up in my office with a message
Here is a picture I took of the side of my home computer. During this semester I drafted the first draft of my story, and with all of the story lines, I tried to keep track of the main tensions in the story. Having something "at stake" for your character is one of the most important things for your story. It is also the toughest thing for me to write. I don't write conflict well, so this was a friendly reminder for me. In fact, my first semester someone in workshop told me that I wrote like Nicholas Sparks or Nora Roberts. I cried every night for a week. Apparently, my husband filled in a conflict that I seemed to forget about too.

Catch-up Fall 2011

So I nearly gave up on this blog. Fall 2011 was the beginning of the year of the thesis and so all my resources were committed to family and graduation. And now I'm done. I've got my MFA (spoiler alert) and I'm adjuncting, so technically I have more time. But our computer crashed (right before graduation--good thing I had things backed up in 3 different locations) and it was just a pain to find pictures...anyways. I'm trying this again, because I look at old blog posts all the time, and it makes me grateful for my family and helps me remember the details of our life. So here's the Cliff notes version--to the best my memory serves me. Whitney our soccer girl:
Whitney is our little athlete, and the more she plays the better she gets. It's really fun to watch her. Steve is her coach :)
Whitney plays a lot of her games up by the airport. At least once during the game, a train will go by. This time home decided to roll through.
Fall in Fargo is gorgeous. I'm grateful we live in a neighbourhood with mature trees. The colours are amazing!
I also love the fact that I get to walk my kids to and from school. It's so fun to stomp on leaves with them!