Jumping fun!

Thanks for the great toys grandma and grandpa!

Reading list I

Books Read from August to mid December. The titles that we would suggest for anyone to read are marked by an asterix. Dirty Job, The Piazza Tales, Candide*, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*, The Color of Magic, Spook, Kafka: the Torment of Man, My Freshman Year, Guards! Guards! (Discworld #9), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,Staircase of a Thousand Steps, Brave New World*, Clockwork Orange, The Amulet of Samarkand*, Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, Teaching composition as a Social Process, Diversity and Motivation, The Vocation of a Teacher, Teaching Literacies, Extras, Graceling, The Art of Literary Research, Goodbye Chunky Rice, Analyzing Prose, Specials*, Pretties*, Uglies*, Selected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, The Golem's Mighty Swing, The Metamorphosis*, Maus, Cairo, TheTruth (Discworld #25)*, Academic Literacies, Performance of Self, A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, Theory and Practice for Writing Tutors, Hawthorne: a Life, Bone*, Devil in the White City, The Book of Mormon*, The Brothers Karamozov*

Christmas time is here. As always, we have been very spoiled. Here are some of the images from Christmas.

Snow

It finally snowed here in Winona. I think that the weather has decided to make up for lost time. After being promised snow on the ground for Halloween (there wasn't) and for sure snow for Thanksgiving (nothing) it has finally snowed. The snow waited for the very last day of November and then it dropped about two inches. Then it flurried December 1 and 2 than today (the 3rd) it dumped another two inches. It came faster than some expected today. So much so that local schools here were delayed two hours before starting.

In other news that is perhaps a bit more cosmic than the weather, today was my last day of classes of my first semester of Grad school (angels sing and crowds rejoice). Now I just have to wait a few weeks to find out how I actually did in my classes. I am hoping that I will pull out with no real battle scars. The school here doesn't give pluses or minuses on their grades, just the letter. I think I might be on the boarder in a class or two so I don't know how that will pan out. At the very least I will just be relieved that this semester is over. That means grad school is 1/4 way over as well (at least for the master's)

More Pics

So cute - Kyla













Daria is a little lady.


















Takin' it easy













Kyla is a Babooshka













Daria will eat you!!

Some Pictures and Halloween

Here are some pictures of the girls at Halloween. They were both Alice in Wonderland.












This is Minne Hall where Derik spends most of his time - unfortunately.













Finally, we found how to control the girls (They climbed in by themselves).

Do we like Winona, MN?

So many people have asked us how we like Winona. We will try and answer that during this post with a careful listing of pros and cons.
Pros:
Bloedow's Bakery - cheap pastries and a regular doughnut sale (4 for $1)!! - yummy
Farmer's Market two times a week - cheap/fresh seasonal produce and flowers
Scenery - Mississippi river, lakes, bluff valley, lots of trees - great fall colors
Small town - pretty peaceful all around
Culture - Shakespeare festival (largest Shakespeare festival in MN) every summer plus all the events that come to the three colleges in the town (Russian National Ballet in January - Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty [yes, we will probably go])
Friendly Branch - the people in the branch are very nice - problem is they keep moving away
University - I (Derik) get a lot of individual attention in my grad program - always a plus
Gas - gas is about 60 cents cheaper than in Rexburg right now (We're at 2.79 a gallon)

Cons:
f00d - most places in town require the customers to be drunk before they can start to enjoy the food (we have both bar & grills AND pub & grilles)
parallel parking - everywhere and nothing but (to get a parking permit for campus starts at $90 and goes to $185 - I walk)
Strangers - yep, we're new. Can't say that we know a lot of people - yet. No family in town to soften the transition.
Bugs - little flying gnat things. They're everywhere! All the locals say that the bugs were unusual this year - we shall see.
Scenery - our bedroom window stares at a lit billboard. At least it changes monthly.

unknowns:
Community activities - there are several free fairs and concerts in the park during the summer - but who do those events attract?
Museums - there are a lot of museums in the town and we have been to none of them - yet
Stained glass workshops - the city is billed as the stained glass capital of the US with several functioning stained glass workshops in the city; we haven't been to any of them - yet.

Neutrals:
Apartment: big, cheap, good location (next to target, walmart, a bookstore, a fabric store, a fresh produce stand in our back yard, a park/lake across the street, and a hospital) but lots of unsupervised children and teens (it gets loud), noise (right next to a busy road), and poor location (hospital with ambulance sirens - a lot of them [the girls are starting to imitate them], one bar and two liquor shops close by, and a lake [small kids - large body of water - you put it together])

Now that we have weighed all of the evidence, the final verdict is: Positive over all.

Here we are. Here is our town

Here is Kyla and Daria playing one of their favorite games. Notice Derik on the couch reading his book. Grad school is now going in full swing.


Here are some pictures of the town that we live in, Winona.