Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Savannah's 1 year B-day Photos
Top 5 Strengths
My Top 5 Strengths
Competition
Achiever
Maximizer
Significance
Learner
Competition
Chances are good that you often unravel perplexing ideas, problems, processes, opportunities, or puzzles. You usually continue working until you discover how something operates. You think much faster when you know someone else is trying to understand how the same thing functions. This likely motivates you to finish first. Instinctively, you refuse to be content with your performance until you have been declared the most capable, successful, or accomplished person in the group. Just knowing you are being compared to others gives you the extra energy and determination you need to surpass everyone else’s performance. Because of your strengths, you have identified your talents and strengths. You know the things you do quite well. You waste very little time mulling over your limitations, shortcomings, or failures. Your strengths allow you to capture first-place honors again and again. You refuse to concentrate much energy on areas where you must struggle just to be average. “What’s the point?” you ask yourself. By nature, you usually know the right time to assist someone who is vying for top honors or the first-place prize. It’s very likely that you consistently aim to turn in the prize-winning performance. A second- or third-place finish can send you into an emotional
tailspin. Your ability to pull out of it depends on your other talents.
Achiever
Chances are good that you work for hours, days, weeks, or even months to produce
outstanding results. You impose demanding standards for excellence and productivity on
yourself. You probably cannot rest until each requirement is met. By nature, you think
intensely to conceive vivid mental images of the future. Many individuals lack your ability to envision what will be possible in the coming months, years, or decades. As a result, they regularly rely on you to do this visioning for them. It’s very likely that you spend hours unraveling the mysteries of complicated procedures, routines, or systems. Your step-by-step descriptions help numerous individuals understand how things operate. Because of your strengths, you typically immerse yourself in intense activities. Preferring a fast pace, you thrive on excitement. You appreciate being surrounded by like-minded individuals. They motivate you to expend even more energy accomplishing whatever needs to be done. You stay busy and work hard whenever it is necessary. Driven by your talents, you naturally concentrate your physical and mental energies on doing whatever needs to be done right now. You have a natural gift for living in the moment. This explains why you need to produce meaningful results each day.
Maximizer
Because of your strengths, you periodically inspire people by finding out what motivates
them. You may give individuals lots of recognition. Once in a while, you celebrate each
person’s uniqueness. Perhaps your acknowledgments or compliments energize particular
people. It’s very likely that you sense that you do a good job of streamlining processes and action plans. You study ways to efficiently perform mundane, tedious, or repetitious tasks. As insignificant as an activity seems, you help others appreciate its importance. Your orderly and easy-to-follow steps save people time and allow them to deliver consistent results on schedule and without hassles. Instinctively, you are quite determined to enhance your talents rather than waste time worrying about your limitations. You often experience bursts of rapid growth each time you can use your talents, knowledge, and/or skills. By nature, you recognize you help individuals feel part of gatherings, conversations, organizations, or events. Sensitive to subtle forms of discrimination, you strive to overcome it. Consciously excluding people is unacceptable, in your opinion. You probably distance yourself from people who despise people or things they regard as inferior. Driven by your talents, you may accept that no two people are exactly the same. This partially explains why you ask so many questions. Sometimes you are trying to figure out what makes an individual different from everyone else. Perhaps this knowledge allows you to inspire, coax, demand, challenge, or pressure various people to do their finest work.
Significance
It’s very likely that you attract people by noticing their accomplishments. You gain much
satisfaction from being liked. Your sense of importance is enhanced when many people say you are their friend. Driven by your talents, you may be a solo performer who wants to do important work. Perhaps you engage in activities that set you apart from the vast majority of people. You sometimes dedicate your time, effort, and energy to these pursuits. Chances are good that you provide the impetus — that is, the driving force or motivation — people need to reach their goals and excel. Because of your strengths, you urge and prod people to settle for nothing less than great accomplishments. You have a reputation for drawing out individuals’ finest work. When timid or risk-adverse people rise to your standards of excellence, you know they would not have performed as brilliantly if you had not been there to influence them. By nature, you gravitate to people whose work ethic is rock solid. You like to associate with individuals who are driven to excel and highly productive.
Learner
By nature, you acquire knowledge more easily when you can talk with others about ideas,
concepts, or theories. Thoughts come alive for you when questions are posed and answers are proposed. You have a delightful time thinking out loud and listening to intelligent people express themselves. You naturally document or store in your mind bits and pieces of discussions. You want to refer back to these insights or facts whenever the opportunity
presents itself. It’s very likely that you are attracted to difficult and challenging endeavors. You are not inclined to look for the easy way out. You are bold. You take risks. You dare to stretch your mind. You test the limits of your abilities in ways that timid individuals would not attempt. Because of your strengths, you normally dedicate yourself to acquiring knowledge and gaining skills. You probably devote many hours to mental labor. Instinctively, you typically enroll in demanding classes. You thrive in situations where you can test your talents as well as your endurance to discover how much you can accomplish. You need to prove yourself to yourself each day. Driven by your talents, you yearn to be inspired by your work. You want experience to be your teacher. You need to feel enthused by your work or studies. You constantly acquire knowledge and skills. Whenever you study facts, ponder concepts, test theories, or sharpen your skills, you feel most alive. You are inclined to avoid people and situations that prevent you from expanding your mind.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Secret Project... Aron with one A
The books are written to fit National Standards and Guidelines for Math, English Language Arts, Economics and Personal Finance. The purpose behind the book series is to have a book focus on personal finance that teachers could use in the classroom, but that parents can also purchase and take a proactive step to teach their children money management. Personal finance is only required to be taught in 3 states! Teachers do not have time to add in additional curriculum when they are being pressured to teach to the standardized tests. That's why the book series meets other standards, like reading and math, so teachers can use it for when they are teaching those subject but also squeeze in personal finance lessons at the same time. The books are not meant to look like curriculum/text books. They will be sold at numerous locations. At the end of each book there is a family/classroom activity. This was designed to be a family home evening activity, but is perfect for any group setting. On our website there is free worksheets for parents and teachers to print and use.

The book series is called "Aron with one A" and is about Aron and his HUGE family. Stephanie came up with the name after her brother Aron. Since Aaron is typically spelt with two a's he always has to correct people and say, "with one A".
The K-3 book series consists of 20 books with each book focusing on a different money management lesson. There are 7 kids in the family and each story focuses on one child and their experience learning the lessons. We will expand to curriculum at some point to include a grades 4-8 book series and a grades 9-12 series. The reasons it is separated into these grade groupings is based on the way the standards for personal financial literacy standards are set up.
A question that will most likely be asked is, "How do kindergartners learn about money? They are too young." Research shows that as soon as a child can count they can begin understanding the concepts of money. The hope is that if personal finance is taught earlier than maybe the scary statics such as, consumers have over 1 trillion dollars in credit card debt, bankruptcies are on the rise and mortgage defaults are at the highest levels ever, wouldn't exist anymore.
Here are just a couple images. This only shows 4 of the 12 characters.
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Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Easter Day
Savannah Update
Milk time right before her nap. She gets to watch a little Sesame Street during this time. It winds her down for a nice long nap.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Something historic
And... WHAT... why is a total Student Loan overhaul allowing Washington DC to take full control of student loans doing in a health care bill. Again, WHAT?
Yes, this is Historic... Historic Mistake.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Meet Mitt Romney... CHECK!
It was soooo cool... I am not that star struck for movie stars, but I really admire Mitt Romney for so many reasons.
I look forward to read his book.

Friday, March 19, 2010
iPhone HELP!
Any help would be great.
Thanks,
Kelly
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Work Stuff
1. I was asked to serve on Experian's Consumer Council. It consists of 12 national personal finance experts. It was an amazing experience sitting around a round table with experts I have looked up to for so long. While I was sitting there I thought, 'I have quoted at least 6 of you in my last literature review." It was a surreal feeling acting as their peer.
2. I got a cool letter from Senator Lou Correa last week. I am being honored as the recipient of the 2010 Women Making a Difference award. Tomorrow night is the awards ceremony and reception.
3. Every year there is a National Financial Literacy Poster Contest for local high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. This year a student for our region won the National Competition. I was ecstatic when the National office called and informed me of our winner. I called the student and his mom. The mom screamed on the phone and began to cry. They both get a free trip to Washington D.C. and will be honored at the National Financial Literacy Gala. It was a very touching moment, and I couldn't be more happy for him.
4. Lastly, I was interviewed for an AOL money article. Here is the link. I was very happy with the article.
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/03/13/money-college-credit-cards-debit-cards-the-key-differences/
Sunday, March 14, 2010
She's WALKING all by herself!

Friday, March 12, 2010
Hanging out with Grandpa and Grandma

Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Savannah... NOOOOOOOOOOOO
When I showed up to my parents house they had a great gift for me!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Leadership Training
Although I am in a cool hotel room it sucks coming back up to my room with a load of school work to do (I am procrastinating with blogging). I have been working on a special project with my sister-in-law Stephanie and I much rather work on that instead of read about Marx and Weber! I am taking three classes right now- Critical Pedagogy, Theories Framing and The Art and Science of Teaching Higher Education.
Lastly, just finished Outliers by Malcom Gladwell and all I can say is AMAZING. Next is Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
My Baby can Read
Something else that is fun... I finally got prescription sun glasses. My black frame regular glasses have been in the shop for two weeks getting repaired. Savannah snapped them in half so I have been struggling for a couple weeks (bad timing since the semester started three weeks ago... I tried getting through it with by taping my glasses and then I realized I looked like a total dork so I made an eye appointment). When I went in to get them fixed they retested my eyes. The Kaiser doctor told me that I was starting to develop specific type of lines or wrinkles around my eyes that are indicating I am not protecting my eyes in the sun (since turning 25 I feel that I am getting nervous of looking older so this was very disturbing news). I thought this was going to be a sales pitch for me to buy an expensive new pair with lenses that fade in the sun. I told him since I wear my regular glasses all the time I don't switch to sunglasses since it hurts my eyes without prescription. As I thought he then suggested those lenses in my regular glasses that tint in the sun. I explained that I didn't feel that it would be a good look on me (since he was wearing a pair and seemed jazzed to tell me about how 'cool' they were it was the nicest way I could think of saying I don't like them ). The doctor said that then prescription sunglasses were medically necessary and so my insurance covered it. I was SO happy. They even covered my favorite brand COACH! I have been wearing them for a couple days and LOVE them. I can feel such a difference- I get a lot less eye pain/head aches when driving during they day.
Monday, February 15, 2010
A bunch of Randoms!
The picture of the shoes were included for Grandma Jane... who LOVES shoes more than any human being can love shoes. Even though Savannah is very tall she still has small feet for her height.














