Week Three

My Plan for the week

My plan for this week focuses on getting back into school mode. We being professional development next Monday, so I need to get all of my summer projects finished before the week is over. I also plan to spend lots of time at the pool finishing up my summer books before I have to spend my days at school! I also plan to go home a visit a few days with family before my schedule gets extremely crazy. So much to do.. so little time!

What I did / Where I went

I spend an evening in Margaritaville at the Jimmy Buffett concert! Lots of parrot heads and colorful shirts filled the crowd. This was my 6^th concert seeing Buffett! You’d think it would get old, but it gets better and better every year! I also spent some time by Mother Ocean. I flew to Myrtle Beach for a short 3-day vacation. Although it rained part of one day, I still enjoyed being in the sand. I ate my weight in seafood and had a great time with friends.

What I learned
I learned that when your head is focused on vacation, it is very difficult to get homework completed! When I get into a book, it is hard to get out of it. My plan was to do homework at the airport and on the flight. I started a book before leaving and just couldn’t put it down! I had good intentions to do homework, but instead I finished Tales from Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett. I couldn’t put it down!

The article about Pinterest ideas was very cool! I never thought about using it for collaboration or tracking progress. The evaluations page gave me a deeper understanding about how I choose my websites. The list of evaluations provides an easy way to ensure I use only the best sites at school and for personal use.

I also learned to finish homework before a storm because the power outage can cause it to be submitted a day late!

What I decided for my website

I did a lot of work on my website this week. I worked on my homepage and completed my About Me page. I had difficulty and am still having difficulty with the spacing on my homepage. I wanted the text to be beside a picture of a quote and for some reason it won’t move up. Very frustrating! I had so many pictures that I wanted to add to my About Me page that I couldn’t just choose a few. So I used the slideshow feature and included them all!

Week Two

My Plan for the week

My plan for this week includes time with my toes in the sand! I’m leaving for the beach on Wednesday and will return home on Sunday. Before I go to the beach, I’m going to spend some time in Margaritaville for the Jimmy Buffett concert! Since I have so much excitement this week, I plan to take my computer with me so while I’m waiting in the airport and during my flight I can do my homework. It will make the wait go by faster and I’ll get my work completed so when I get home I can rest.

What I did / Where I went

This week I went home on Wednesday for the opening of the restaurant (it went great!). I also traveled to Columbus, Ohio for the Musicians Against Childhood Cancer MACC bluegrass festival. It was a great time with even better music. I enjoyed lots of talented bands and ate some delicious food. Since we put on a bluegrass festival back home, the band members know the Rudy Fest Bluegrass Festival crew and come visit every time we go to a festival. Thursday evening, members from multiple bands came to our campsite to jam. I love jam sessions because of the variety of people playing and singing. It rained on us Friday night, but we put on ponchos because the show must go on!

The last band featured an orchestra (yes, at a bluegrass festival!) of children 3^rd grade to high school. It was very impressive and a wonderful twist to the bluegrass band.

On Saturday I went home early from the festival to help the restaurant. It was jam packed on Saturday so I helped bus tables, wash dishes, refill drinks, sweep, mop, and an assortment of other jobs that the waitress and cooks needed done. It was really great to see friends and family enjoying the new restaurant.

What I learned

I finally learned what sitemaps and wireframes are after reading about and creating one of each. I like how you can use them to help to map out a webpage instead of going straight into the page making. I need a guide for most all things I do, so using them will be a great help when I begin my webpage. I used lumzy.com for the wireframe. I didn’t use a lot of the tools it provides yet, but I can see it will be useful when organizing the layout of each of my pages. I used writemaps.com for the sitemap. It was very easy to use!

I knew about the Cloud already because I upload stuff to it from my iPhone and iPad. I never really thought much about what it really is until I read the article Cloud Computing Explained. I never knew that there were actually warehouses that hold the information. So my pictures on the Cloud could be in Oregon, North Carolina, or California! Who would have thought that my Facebook status updates are in the same places as well as Virginia and my Tweets are in Sacramento and Atlanta! Crazy stuff!

What I decided for my website

For my website, I decided to use weebly.com to create it. The site seems pretty simple to use, and I like simple! I have 5 tabs, which include Home, About Me, Snap Shots, Homework, Parent Info, and Useful Links. Within the homework page there will be another tab for Extra Credit and in the Useful Links there will be tabs for Games and Extra Practice. I’m slowly learning how to use this stuff! It can be a bit confusing!

Week 1

My Plan for the week

I make a checklist of all the things I want to do in my day or week. Since summer is so short, I like to get in all the things I want to do before it is over. I can be a little scatter brained, so making lists helps me get my life in order.

My checklist for this week includes making pillows for my mom, painting a picture to hang over my bed, preparing a birthday present and cake for a friend, use my coupons (I love coupons) at the Half Price Books store, and of course get my homework completed. I plan on traveling back home for the grand opening of a restaurant that my dad and other family friends are opening on Wednesday. I am ending my weekend with some great music at the Mothers Against Childhood Cancer (MACC) bluegrass festival. 

What I did / Where I went

This past week, I spent a lot of time lying by the pool reading. I also spent some time listening to great music. I went to the Dave Matthews Band concert at Riverbend in Ohio. This made the 4^th time I’ve seen Dave. Every time it gets better and better. He played an acoustic and electric set that blew my mind! The weather was perfect and I enjoyed the time spent with friends. Excellent evening!

My parents came to visit and pick up my couch. My friend recently bought a house so she graciously gave me her much nicer couch to me for free! I’m very lucky to have parents that are retired and love to visit me in Lexington. They came and helped move the couches as well as take me to dinner and ice cream! (I will never be too old to go out for ice cream with my mom and dad!)

My friend from Ohio visited me one evening. We went downtown to listen to live music at Thursday Night Live. If it isn’t evident already, I really enjoy music and jump at all opportunities to see live performances! On Friday we went to Natural Bridge for hiking and Miguel's pizza. We wanted to canoe, but they were all taken. 

I traveled back home to Grayson for the weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday with pool volleyball and good home cooked food. I try to visit home a lot in the summer since it can be difficult during the school year. The hardest part about moving away has been missing my friends and family. Fortunately, most all of my friends back home are teachers so they have the summer off as well! My parents took me to dinner again on Saturday (so I may be a little spoiled) and then topped off the evening with a porch of friends and music playing. By the way, the moon was beautiful on Saturday night!

Sunday was also spent lounging by the pool with family and friends. I went out to the farm to feed the animals and gather eggs for my week back in Lexington. I may live in the city now, but I will forever be country at heart!

What I learned

  This week, I have learned that you should always be prepared with a barrier, such as a board, to block the extremely hateful turkey when trying to gather chicken eggs. The turkey at the farm can’t lay eggs so she sits on the eggs laid by the chickens. She is very bitter when someone tries to take them from the coup. A barrier must be created so your hands don’t come out with chunks missing from being pecked!

I also learned not to procrastinate doing homework because a Harry Potter marathon could be on the night it is due!

What I decided for my website

Since we haven’t started our websites, I haven’t decided anything yet!