Holy Dirt Batman

Charlie and I had five yards of dirt delivered on Monday. We were planning on using the dirt to build up our backyard near our house. Our backyard slopes right toward our house and as many home owners know that causes water problems.

My uncle Dean provided us with an affordable dirt dealer/dirt deliverer/dirt guy. Dean had eight yards of dirt delivered to make a garden and fill some holes around their yard. So we thought we would start with five yards and order more if necessary.

Well it turns out five yards of dirt is a gargantuan amount of dirt! There isn't a lot of wiggle room for a dump truck to maneuver toward an ideal dirt dumping ground so we ended up with a huge pile of dirt right in front of our garage. Lacking in the brains department, I didn't take the car out of the garage beforehand either. Oh well it was motivation to move the dirt!

Needless to say in two days Charlie and I moved the entire load of dirt. The ground by our house is much more level and actually slopes away from the house. We had so much extra dirt after leveling our backyard that we were able to landscape around the side of our garage and fill some holes in the yard.

After two days of moving dirt, laying down mulch, edging the backyard, and planting grass seed we are both ready to enjoy the air conditioning!

Scroll over the pictures to read the captions.

Christmas in July

Now that the Fourth of July has long been gone, I thought I would update everyone with the photos of this year's Christmas in July.

It was another great Holt/Sjoblom/Dahl/Potts/Peterson gathering! Mom did almost all of the organizing and sent out color invitations this year detailing the activities. There was the annual firework display in Cumberland, tug-of-war, egg toss, card games, fire-pit stories, and deep-fried onion rings and cheese curds.

Everyone managed to pile onto the lake property. Mom and Dean have two campers on the property (one inherited from Dean's parents). Craig and Jody have their camper and a tent as well. Grandma, Grandpa, Jim, and Traci rented a cabin for the week, while Dean and Stacy only stayed for a day.

Here are a bunch of photos wrapping up the experience:

DNR officer Charlie inspects the lake.

Who Are You Voting For?

I hope this video can sway your vote!

Technology Crazy

With Gustie Camp over I am now at home enjoying my time with Charlie, the comforts of our own bed, television, computer, and Internet. I have missed these things dearly for the past five weeks. If you asked Charlie right now he would tell you that I apparently missed the computer and Internet most of all. I think I am conservatively averaging five hours of computer time a day since Thursday. But I have a reasonable explanation for all the use. I am part of an online class for teachers in our district. We are reading Will Richardson's book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms." I read the book during camp and now have the ten online assignments to complete. All the assignments are due by August 1st but since I was at camp, I need to complete them in the next two weeks (very doable).


The online class has been awesome! Many of the tools I already use personally or have added to my classroom due to the community of practice group I was in last year. Yet Will Richardson's book is awesome (I would recommend it for Gustavus' education technology class) and I have learned so much more about the various web tools and their capabilities as well as classroom application.

The amazing thing with this class is that it creates even more tools, information, and options for students to learn beyond the classroom. It is crazy how much is out in the Internet world for kids!

I have added some new links to my blog that I recommend people to check out. My favorite links are voki.com, wordle.com, 43things.com, and 43places.com. If you are interested in seeing my classroom blog, wiki, and public RSS aggregator on netvibes, let me know.

Woohoo technology!

Thanks Mom

As many of you know my mom, she is a very talented person. She has many talents that unfortunately I didn't grasp onto and many can argue, I have a lack of talent. Lets review the list of my mom's talents:

• good cook
• crafty
• makes candles
• makes own stationary and cards
• scrapbooks
• woodwork
• SEWS
• the list can go on
• uses power tools efficiently
• gardens and does wonders with plants

Yet there is some small ray of hope, I have developed a green thumb! My mom passed on something to me that stuck, I can work with plants! Mom got us some plants from her church flower sale and they have just taken off in our front yard. Even the shrubs, bushes, and hostas have taken off and recovered from some early hail at the beginning of summer. Although I am taking a lot of credit, mom picked out the flowers for us and Charlie has been a big help watering the plants while I was at camp.

I enjoyed taking some pictures of the flowers, please enjoy.

TC 10 Miler

We officially found out today - Team Potts - was chosen from the lottery of runners to participate in the Twin Cities 10 Miler, "The Shortcut to the Capital." We are excited to both get in this year. The October 5 date is a big day for the 10 Miler as it is the decade mark of the race's existence. The race will also be the host of the USA women's 10 mile championship. Charlie and I need to pick up the training!

However most importantly, there is one big perk to the race being at its 10 year mark. The long sleeve shirts that have always been sweet shirts with great designs will be dri-fit to celebrate the event! Woohoo for the us snobby people, Charlie and I, who turn our noses up against 100% cotton!