I’ve been working for the High Plains Library District for about a year and a half now, and during my time there I have made some big steps in the field of Storytimes.  I was hired for storytimes specifically, due to my child development education, experience working with children, and my theatre background, but a few of my coworkers were really interested in the idea of incorporating Sign Language into our baby and toddler storytimes.  Together we have done research and developed curriculum techniques for adding sign language into already developed programs.  Our parents have really responded well and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback. 

Every year in October is the Colorado Association of Libraries annual conference, and months and months ago when they were taking submissions, my coworkers greatly encouraged me to step forward and submit a proposal on this topic.  My boss was encouraging, and with my coworkers help we managed to pull together a proposal and send it off.  During the summer we heard back that we had been accepted as one of the Pre-Conference sessions!  Then came many months of pulling all the final details together.  I was incredibly nervous as I’ve never presented at a conference like this.  I’m young in the field (and in general!) and this is sort of a controversial topic right now, but our session went GREAT and the conference overall was a lot of fun.  Here are some pictures – mostly for my mom who wanted to know everything that happened!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All my stuff, ready to go!

      
I stayed at the Keystone Lodge which was VERY nice.  My room was nice and spacious, and very relaxing, which was nice the night before the presentation when I was so nervous!  They also follow the Doubletree thing with cookies – one chocolate chip and one white chocolate chip cranberry.  We think.

      
The scenery was beautiful.  The snow was on the mountains, and the sunrises were breathtaking.

     
Every day I walked back and forth from the hotel to the conference center through this very cool underground tunnel.

 
Here I am, all ready to present on Thursday morning!

   
Our set up for our presentation. Pictured here is my coworker, Shirley, who presented with me.  She was such an asset on the research side of things.

It’s all over!  And it went great! We got a lot of positive feedback.

After a little bit of a struggle, CAL was able to provide me with a captioning service for the conference.  Due to my hearing loss and the nature of having sessions all day long, I was not going to be able to lipread everything.  I have not had great experiences with captioning services in the past, but this time it went very well.  I had two different ladies (one on Thursday and Friday, another on Saturday).  Most of it was done on a laptop, but for one day I was able to use an iPad, so I could sit wherever I wanted and still have access to everything going on! Here are some pictures that hopefully show you a bit about how it worked.

   

These next pictures were more for me than anyone else, but these are some of the sessions that I attended while there.

                   (That is supposed to say Book Clubs in the 21st Century)
   (Jack Gantos was a FANTASTIC speaker.  I now want to read all of his books)

 

I don’t know how my keys suddenly got stuck in italics.  I pressed something and now I can’t get it to go back!

 

But I learned A LOT from the weekend and had a lot of fun.  I even got to do some shopping!  On weekends at work we are allowed to wear jeans if we wear a shirt that either has the High Plains Library District logo or is book/library/reading related.  So I got this cute shirt from a vendor.  It has pictures of Mo Willems characters – and I like that Pig and Elephant are reading, and that Elephant is reading a Pigeon (Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus, etc) book! 

This morning was the annual Race for the Cure in Denver!  Andrew’s mom is a 20 year survivor of breast cancer and every year the family tries to go to this event.  Last year was my first year joining the family, but it helped me see how important it is, and since Andrew and I are the only kids left around town right now, we made it a priority to be there with Andrew’s parents this year.  It was such a great morning!  I was so worried that it would be *freezing cold* but it actually was a beautiful, clear day, and warmed up considerably once the sun was out.

Here we all are on the train ride in, bundled up to stay warm!

Andrew and I, just as the sun was coming up.

 
This year’s shirt and race badge.

Arriving at the Pepsi Center!

Village Inn provides a delicious pancake and sausage breakfast each year.  Super yummy.

 
Getting started!

My cute in-laws walking ahead of us.

Andrew and me

 
This is one of the coolest parts of the race.  Everyone walks down the offramp and it twists around, making a life size ribbon that can be seen from the air.  It’s my favorite thing to be a part of.

 
Andrew and I on the last leg of the race!

 
All of us at the finish line!

Each breast cancer survivor can have a free photo button made (everyone else can have one too, but they have to pay for it) and it’s always the first thing we do.  There may have only been 4 of us this year, but we took a pretty darn good picture!

And then finally, a super cute picture to end.  Andrew and I on the train ride home.  We were VERY tired, but also very happy.  We are so very thankful to have been able to go again this year, and especially thankful that we still have Andrew’s mom here to be able to walk with us.