Double Yikes!

Fence at sunset (taken by Stuart)

Well, the next ten weeks are going to be super intense and busy. So I may not get back to blogging for a while. I just got back from a week in Humboldt County. Had a great time, though it rained almost the whole time I was there! Go figure. So much for riding at the beach. lol. Did get a lot done, but not exactly what was intended.

Possibly found a great pasture for Gio and Ber. Am in the process of talking to the land owners and working out an agreement. It is a short ride to the beach, and trails. Beautiful land. We'll see what happens. I have a place to stay (my brother's house in Trinidad) either permanently or short term. I'd like to be closer to where the horses will be, but that may not be in the cards. I am set to move the first two weeks of June, depending on transportation for the horses and my stuff. Woohoo!

Pretty braids, busy teeth... (picture by Stuart)

Approaching weather, coming up the pasture (photo by Stuart)

However, a lot to do until then. I have my dissertation proposal defense Tuesday, April 13th. I stand up in front of my committee and any audience who comes, and explain what I intend to do and why. They grill me with questions, and then send me away while they discuss. After I pass the proposal defense, I can start collecting data. I am not real confident about passing this defense, from where I stand right now. Monumental task.

On top of the defense, I have a poster to put together for an education research presentation next Wednesday, and I need to work on the research projects I'm doing with the professor I work with. Yikes. And I need to finish up the work I was doing for my independent study classes. Double Yikes. Oh, and did I mention I'm going to Washington D.C. for a week, to supervise a high school student? Last week of April, something my professor hooked me up with. Will be a great experience, but it warrants a Triple Yikes at this point! lol.

With the weather warming up, and the arena drying out, I plan to start riding this week, as my diversion from this massive pile of work. lol. We'll see how that goes. Needless to say, I need to get off of here and get back to work. The house is so quiet, and I miss my girls. I may be taking my work in to the university and setting up shop at the Library from now on, to avoid this empty house. Until I grow accustom to the silence, I guess.

See you all in a while... Oh, and Happy Birthday, Stuart!

Arcy's Moon.

Georgia's Moon.

Spring is Here, I Think

High-desert lupine. About the size of a teacup saucer!

It is spring, I can hear the birds singing, and the grass is starting to grow a little. The trees still look dead, but that's how it goes up here. The flowers above are from Jump Creek Falls.

It's spring break next week up here in Idaho, so I'm headed south. Not much I can do with my research with most people gone, and I can read pretty much anywhere. While in Humboldt, I'll be looking for a place to call "home" while I finish my dissertation this next year. Also looking at trucks, and making sure Ber and Gio have a place to call home, too. The week is going to fly by.
Hopefully I can ride a couple times, visit with friends, and have a good meal at my favorite Mexican restaurant. I'll try to post pictures, and maybe a few videos of horses.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with some very, very cute goats from down the road, an example of a "catbird seat", and my happy horses.

Cat in a tree...

Very content cat in a tree!

Mama goat and two kids.

Third kid-an "orphan" in her own home. Bottle fed, hence people are very cool.

Tiny, micro flowers. The size of a pin head!

Side view of same micro flowers.

Carrot time!

Rare, quiet moment for Ber. Before the carrots appeared...

Jump Creek Falls

Went to Jump Creek Falls today, which is south of Marsing, on the south side of the Snake River. I'll let the photos tell the story....

At the Entrance, looking south into Jump Creek Canyon. It's a 1/4 mile hike in.


Walking up the trail.


Really cool caves all along the cliff sides.


I have lots of pictures of moss an lichens. Rocks were covered in them!


This yellow lichen was all over the place, especially high up on the cliffs. Looks exactly like the stuff on Abert Rim, in Oregon.


Jump Creek, winding under the boulders


Can you see the fish? Talk about camouflage!


The water fall.


The water fall from up on the cliff.


Hiked up on the west rim of the canyon to see the water fall.


From way up on the cliff, where the ravens were soaring.

A Sad Day

17 great years. 14 weeks, omg cute!

So Glad March has 31 Days!

I'm glad March is here, but I'm grateful there's 31 days in all. I need them! My Pilot Study passed IRB, which means the university research review board said I could go ahead and do my study. I mailed out 57 letters, with return SASE's, to prospective participants. I've heard back from 20 so far. That was enough to pull five participants for the first interviews, to test my questions and procedures (aka "pilot study:).

The exicitng news is that I need to submit a draft of my Pilot Study report on Monday (Mar. 8) to my committee for their review and feedback. Why so soon? Because my Pilot Study defense is March 22nd!! Wow. Pretty cool. So, nose to the grindstone and all that. Do five interviews, transcribe them, analyze the transcriptions and the data from the demographic survey, and find my conclusions. Whoa!

The weather here has been really nice. In the 50's, clear skies. Arcy has decided she likes to go for walks again, after a couple weeks of being a house potato. She says the warmer weather suits her fine. The horses are beginning to shed a bit, and the grass is beginning to grow in their pasture. So they are pretty happy. Jetta went to the VW dealer and had some work done, and seems to be running purrrfect again. I can't wait to see how the mileage is for this first tank of diesel after the work. Hoping to get back up to 45 mpg! None of this 40 stuff! (I realize 40 mpg is nothing to shake a stick at, but when you've been used to 45, it's hard to swallow! lol).

My dad and my brother, Stuart, are coming up the end of March to visit, just in time to go to my Pilot Study defense. Very cool. Then I am headed to Humboldt for a week. On my agenda for the trip is to figure out where the horses are going to live, find a truck to buy, and maybe even find a place for me to live! I also want to help a friend with her garden, check in on my house, spend some time with friends, maybe do some horse stuff, and spend some time each morning working on my dissertation proposal. Then it's back to Boise to submit my dissertation proposal, defend my proposal, and collect the data. Pretty exciting to see how it is all coming together. I hope to move back home by June 15th. WooHoo. Just before the heat really bakes Boise to a crisp. lol.

Putting the Cart before the Horses...

Well, I went and did it. I found a sweet new ride for the horses. I do not own a truck, so it is going to sit there and look pretty until I find the right truck. And don't even ask if I have ever driven a truck pulling a trailer! That would be a "No." I'll be learning how on the flat farm roads of Idaho.

The trailer needs a serious bath to get rid of the dust, but other than that, it's a beauty. 2007 3-horse, slant-load, aluminum skin on steel frame. The story is, I've been shopping horse trailers for a while, and when this one came along, and they accepted my offer, it was just too good to pass up, even if I didn't have a truck yet. The sellers were kind enough to deliver.


As for the rest of things, I'm chugging along with my research and work. Really enjoying what I am doing, but I don't have much spare time to speak of. So, hello to everyone! I'll be down in Humboldt the end of March to start figuring out my move back, so if you're there, maybe we can visit.

Maybe I ought to go look on craigslist, see if I can find that diesel long-bed automatic truck I am looking for...

It's February!

View from far pasture, looking towards barn.

Short post today. Just checking in and sharing my good news. The Pilot Proposal is done. I only learned of what I had to do on Tuesday, and fortunately I'd been working on reading the research for a week already, but still it was a major crunch to put it together in a week. Emailed it to my committee, and so far the response is very positive. So glad. Here's a link to it, for anyone who was curious or wanted to read it: Emily's Pilot Proposal.

Now on to contacting parents and lining up interviews. I'm definitely going to need every minute available to me, between now and the end of May. The good news is it is doable. I wasn't so sure a couple weeks ago. I can do this.

Snowed yesterday. The snow is gone today, but it's pretty cold out. The horses have decided that hanging out in the barn, eating, is a good thing!

Giovanna at snow-filled fence.

Horses investigating thrown snowballs.

Black walnut tree, holding snow.

A fat, happy bush.

About that new Dissertation topic....

As some of you may know, my master's thesis examined parent and student perceptions of differentiated instruction at my charter school site, Blue Heron Middle School. My questions in that study were: Why did the parents/students in my school choose alternative education? What, if anything, was different about the school? and What, if any, impacts do those differences have on their learning throughout the year?

With the increase in emphasis on school choice options for families, the reasons parents/students choose different schools, and the outcomes of those choices, continue to be important. I am currently in an internship at a charter school here in Idaho which emphasizes an Expeditionary learning model. This year they expanded and added over 100 new students. This offered an opportunity to explore why these families chose to enroll at this charter school. However, because the school has been in operation for ten years, it is fairly stable in its curriculum and day-to-day organization, which is a huge plus. These families came into a successful school instead of stepping onto a new boat leaving the dock, like with my school!

My new dissertation topic examines parents' perceptions of how their choice has impacted their child's growth. In my thesis, it was interesting to look at parent/guardian's own elementary school experiences, and how that influenced their perceptions of their child's schooling. This is a big piece of this study, as well. Do parent experiences influence the act of making a choice? Do parent experiences color their perceptions of what school should be like, and their satisfaction with their child's school?

For my pilot study, I'll be talking with five parents/guardians. In the dissertation, I'll be talking to about 30 parents/guardians, as well as the students them selves, to compare perceptions. It's great to have a large population to draw from, because the more interviews I do, the better.


I'm doing good on my time line, so far. Have my project approved, and am submitting the Institutional Review Board paperwork tomorrow. That's the university approval process to make sure my research is safe for human subjects!

Am deep in the review of literature for the study. Best part so far has been finding a researcher in Finland who has spent a lot of time looking at the influence of parents' experiences on their perceptions of education. So my literature review is taking on an international flavor!

Onward and upward, one handhold at a time. :)

(I promise pictures of animals and scenery next time. Sorry for the dense text.)

Belay On!

Here we go! Tomorrow the spring semester officially starts. Over the last two weeks I've been working on reading, doing prep for my dissertation, and started my internship hours at the charter school, but the pedal truly hits the metal tomorrow. As I'm mentioned to a few people, I feel like I'm standing at the bottom of a vertical cliff, looking up. Can't see the top because it's shrouded in clouds. No path. Just a lot of training and experience that I need to put to use, in order to carve new hand and foot-holds in this cliff. The title of this post refers to my friends and family who've been holding the tension on the rope this last year. Hang in with me, five more months! Belay On!

The steps along the way up this cliff are numerous, and I'm trying to do most of them this semester, which is perhaps a little nuts. But then I churned through 2+ years of coursework in a year, so I have a track record for being a little nuts. There's also that black walnut tree outside my window which had a LOT of nuts this year. Maybe it was contagious! At any rate, here's what I have left to do, in order to earn my doctorate and get really great table reservations under "Dr. Gibson"...

Independent Study: 6 units of credit for reading and internship courses, to finish out my credits/experiences.

Graduate Assistantship Research: 20 hours a week of work on research projects with my advisor.

Comprehensive Evaluation: AKA "Comps". This is a project which shows that I am able to conduct research and that I am ready to work on my dissertation. There are three options, but I'm choosing to do the Pilot Study option. This allows me to do a smaller research project, closely related to my dissertation, in order to test out some ideas and further develop my research design. Through a Pilot Study, I also do a literature review, which will feed into my dissertation. I do a proposal for my comps, get that approved, then do the pilot study and write up a "mini" research report.

Defense of Comps: I present my Pilot Study and defend its merits in front of a jury of my professors and peers. They ask me questions. If I am capable at this step, I...

Advance to Candidacy: I am a "legal" candidate for a doctorate in education, and I have free rein to work on my dissertation research.

Dissertation Proposal: I write up a proposal and time line of my dissertation. If approved by my committee, I...

Conduct Dissertation: research, data collection, write up, etc. I hope to collect data before I leave Boise in June. Then I have a year to write my dissertation.

Defend Dissertation: Similar to defending Comps, but even bigger, more public, and more important. If I am successful, I am allowed to graduate. I'm shooting for May, 2011, but I realize that things come up, so I'll be flexible.

I changed my topic for my dissertation. But until it's fully approved and my Pilot Study is completely designed, I'm keeping quiet. Oh, and I'm still doing the Grammar of Schooling study, just as a research project for my graduate assistantship instead of for my dissertation. Needed more flexibility of time for that study than my self-imposed timeline for my dissertation would allow.


Wish me luck, and check in with me from time to time. It means a lot to me. This is the hardest part, and I understand now more fully the desire to walk away from something really hard, rather than trying and risk failing! Coming back to face this semester was tough--you have no idea how close I was to just tossing in the towel and heading home. But I've come so far, so fast, and I can do this. I think I can, at least! I finally started thinking about all my students from the past, and imagining they were all watching me, holding my belay rope. What would I want them to see? What would I model? That lit a fire under me. :)

Off to the races...

Are they Washing Out?

Here are my winter horses. While I was gone for two and a half weeks, my neighbor was feeding them. When I arrived back, he came to tell me that my hay was crap, that it was "washing" them. Which I understand now means it is running right through them. He then informed me that he'd been supplementing my crap grass hay with his alfalfa, and that I could continue to use the outside bales on his stack (which have been rained on and need to get used up, hint, hint). Hmmm.

My grass hay is the same hay they ate all last year. It's mixed grass hay, grown without pesticides, and it is weed free. Beautiful hay in my eye, but I have not had it analyzed, so it could be junk, I guess. There manure looks really good, as well.

Are they being "washed" out? I can't really tell, they look like my horses, and they are both covered in wooly mammoth fur! Horspoor recommended I post some pictures, so here they are... Would like to get anyone's feedback on how they look after almost two months of winter, and three months of eating the hay. Thank you!

Giovanna

Giovanna Berhwood- the draft horse is really showing... Perhaps he'll be the vaulting horse? Berhwood Giovanna- isn't she supposed to be clean where her blanket was, not the opposite? Berhwood

Video Trials- Top and Maisa

Experimenting with uploading video from the video camera.
Here's a clip of Maisa Fahim at pasture last summer, I think.





And here's a video of Top lunging last week.

Back in Idaho

At Kathy and Dick's house in Humboldt.

Made it back to Idaho safe and sound. Arcy is thrilled to be back in her house. She spent half an hour checking everything out, making sure things were still here. lol. Then she ate a huge meal and crashed. She hadn't eaten much for the last two days with the traveling, so it was good to see her eat.

Everything here looks good. There is a (expected) slush pile of muck in the stalls and arena, and I'll be busy for the next few days getting things cleaned up. But the horses look GREAT and seemed pretty pleased to see me. All blinky eyed and smiling. I'm so relieved. Being gone for over 2.5 weeks, I was beginning to worry.

The roads were perfect- I'm glad I waited another day and a half. No ice or snow anywhere, but banked up on the sides. I was quite fortunate. It's going to take me a while to get acclimated here again. I already miss the riding facilities at RA--clearly I will not be riding my horses anytime soon, given the ice in my arena! Bummer. Was having so much fun on Belle and Maisa. I guess I do need to be focusing on my dissertation research and reading, but still...lol.

Happy New Year everyone, and best wishes for whatever your plans are for the coming months!

Yay!!!! Thank You Dr. Winnacot

Okay, I got a second opinion. Arcy was pretty much on borrowed time when I got her down to Humboldt. Wasn't sure she was going to make it, with her frantic, manic episodes and panting attacks. Took her to see her old vet, Dr. Winnacot. He prescribed some non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and some joint medicine.

After a week, she's a new dog. Well, she's still an old dog, but she's got a lot of new life in her. Much less stressed, much happier. Doesn't seem to be in any pain. She goes for long walks, and her feet don't puff up in the evening. Yes, she's still semi-senile, and has extremely vacant moments, but I feel really, really fortunate that I followed my gut, brought her down, and gave her a chance at a few more months (relatively pain free!) at least.

From Blogger Pictures

So, here Arcy goes, into her 17th year, still ticking. Pretty cool.

O Christmas Tree

Here's some pics of the Christmas Tree at HP's house.
Note: Be sure to find a Noble Fir next year. Much easier to drench in ornamentation!
In fact, we had about five garlands left over! Unheard of.

Too funny-- And I thought HP doing the lights in the past was excessive...I got to do the lights this year, and I had to run out and get five more strands! The tree just ate them up. lol.

I could not get my camera to do justice to the lights deep in the tree, and the brushy branches of the Douglas Fir hide lots of ornaments. Still a pretty tree, though, I think.