Badge 17 - Dig This

With help from Aunt Roxy and some tools from Aunt Susan, I was able to complete the gardening badge! Since I live in an apartment, gardening needed to take place in containers. Since it was not the right season for the suggestions in the book I instead grew marigolds, sunflowers and a beautiful tomato plant! (Time for BLTs) Now I can't wait to grow pumpkins in the fall. :-)

Updates - 2009

Ok, so here is the update on the past badges and the plan for the future badges:

Badge 1 - Dream it - Lost my online job - budget cuts in CA - loved the experience and will look for future opportunities. - A step in the right direction!

Badge 19 - Bead it - There is nothing better than seeing your friends wear their own creations. I made tons of beaded Christmas presents and am planning to spend some of my upcoming vacation creating again.

Badge 31 - Exercise your Options - Probably my biggest Badge failure to date. My roommate Jessi and I are walking - sometimes, but that's about it. Time to start pushing on this one again!

Badge 15 - Go World Wide - I consolidated a lot of my stuff to my hamres.com account and dropped my techiesteaching.com domain. Much more to be done, but at least there is a front cover now!

Badge 56 - Connect with Your Tribe - This fortunately is an ongoing badge. My parents were just out here for a week and we traveled to Joshua Tree NP and Death Valley NP. The photo at the top is from Joshua Tree.

Future Badges - I think I'll start working on the Photography Badge and the Reading Badge - both seem to lend themselves well to my spring break plans.

Badge 56 - Connect with Your Tribe

This is a fantastic badge about making traditions with the people who mean the most to you. I have a plethora of examples as I am one who loves tradition. My examples ranged from TGIF gatherings with my friends to more traditional holiday family activities. The one I decided to focus on is a family tradition: making Kørv. It's a family recipe from my maternal grandparents (Swedish side - see Grandma Lu in the photo to the right).

We used to make Kørv every Thanksgiving and then we'd eat it through the Christmas holiday season. It's a potato sausage with little more than beef, pork, onion, potato and a little salt and pepper. This tradition has included my maternal grandparents, occasionally my paternal grandparents, my parents, brother, sister-in-law and myself. We even have matching aprons. We've had to skip a couple of years due to conflicting schedules now that we don't all live in the same house, but this year we were able to get together as a group and make it. It turned out great and with a little mug of Glüg to help wash it down we were all very happy campers. :-)

What are your family traditions?

Updates on Badges 31 and 16

Well the exercise badge took a little time off during the holidays, but I'm back on schedule starting today January 4. Look for more updates as I progress.

I updated my website and included links to my "other" sites under my Biography. It's a start. I wouldn't say I've competed this one quite yet, but it's moving in the right direction. There are just so many great online tools out there and every time I start to consolidate I get sucked into something else like Glogster. Check it out if you have time. :-)