The Miles Rausch Family Website

The nice thing about announcing you’re pregnant on the internet is you all don’t immediately look at my belly.

There were people sneaking glances at 8 weeks to see if they can see anything! I know I hadn’t gained more than a couple pounds and I certainly wasn’t close to “showing”. But what makes it bad is then I spend the rest of the day wondering what decision they came to. Do they think I’m showing? I mean sure, after losing all that weight, I’ve still got a little fat pouch that I wasn’t able to get rid of before pregnancy. Do they think my fat pouch is a baby?

So thank you, internet, for not looking at my fat pouch and making a mental decision one way or the other. I’ve got enough to be paranoid about.

For the record, I accepted this weekend that I am, in fact, showing. But only a teeny tiny bit, I’m only 14 weeks. The uterus is getting bigger and is moving and it has pushed out the lower part of my belly. I can tell, and Miles can tell, but I don’t know if others can. If I try on a maternity top, I look way more pregnant. Also, it turns out people are very generous when it comes to hand-me-down maternity clothes and early baby gifts. And that is wonderful.

A little something new coming soon.

I first heard of Animoto from friend Bryan. He was wondering if I’d recommend it for camp to use for slideshows. I was obviously no help. (End of my bad introduction paragraph.)

I’m in grad school right now to receive my M.Ed. in Teaching. I will be certified to teach K-12 Art if all goes as planned. One of my classes this semester is called Teaching and Learning with Technology. In this class we are learning a lot about different technologies we can incorporate into our classrooms. For a final project, we are to work in pairs to explore a particular technology tool and present it to the class, along with a how-to handout for our classmates to keep and refer to when they’re in the classroom. Well, my partner and I chose the Digital Photography category which just happened to have Animoto as one of the topics we could present on. (It has a great option for educators to apply for unlimited videos for them and their students. Awesome!) So I’ve been reading and messing around with it for about a half hour and it’s pretty sweet. It took less time to make the video than it did for it to render. And even then, it took about 5 minutes to render.

I thought I’d share my sample “messing around with Animoto” short. I’ll be making something a little more polished for the presentation. This is of little Anna, who we used to babysit, two years ago. Miss her.

(Also, I know. It’s been over 2 months. Get over it.)

Today is my last day at the City.

After a few months of pushing out my end-date, the extra room in the budget in my department has run out. It’s not unexpected. In fact, we’ve known it would happen from day one when I was hired in September. This position has always been a temporary one. It’s funny though, because even though I’ve been temporary from the get-go, I’ve been with the City as a designer longer than I have anywhere else. Granted, that’s mostly because every other place I’ve worked (except one) has been as a student in internship-like design positions. So really, my temporary position has been the most stable and long-lasting. Even my coworkers welcomed me like I had been there forever, and would continue to be. I was given projects that had longer deadlines. I was treated like I would be there for a while. They assumed I’d be there. And they were right. I started out at 10 hours, which quickly grew to 20 hours, and then finally 30 in October.

I’m a classified employee in Media Services, which means the things I work on are considered confidential (not everything is, obviously, because they are produced for the public, but many things are for internal use only) and that is why I haven’t posted anything I’ve done on HolliRausch.com.

Most of my days were spent working on small tasks:

• fliers
• posters
• banners
• brochures
• updating previous artwork/content
• data entry
• production work (binding, copying, laminating, grommeting, etc.).

However, there were some larger and more in-depth projects I worked on as well:

• 2009 calendar sent to every Sioux Falls resident
• Police department billboards (2 locations)
• Media Services’ office artwork
• Banners for conventions/trade shows

I was notified of my official end-date last Wednesday. The very next day, I was offered (and accepted) a position as a Graphic Designer with the University of Sioux Falls. I will start in a week. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. The only way I can explain it is that it’s God’s timing. I obviously had no control as to when the budget would dwindle nor if I’d ever again be offered a job in my field. It’s about the same hours as at the City, but since I will be the only graphic designer in-house, and this is a new position, we foresee that I will be very busy and my hours might increase. While I had a very positive experience with the City, and learned a lot, I am anxious to move forward with USF in a permanent setting and with a great group of people trying to make some changes.

There will be no pomp and circumstance. No party. We won’t divulge in treats. There will just be some good lucks and stay in touches as I leave at 4 p.m. and my coworkers return to their desks. I prefer it that way.

We finally have some pictures of our house. The place is put together and completely unpacked. Things might not be in their final resting place, but they’re out of their boxes at least! That’s further than we got in the apartment…we ran out of places to put our stuff!

Check out the rest of the set, Our House.