Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Thanksgiving

Matthew and I were able to spend Thanksgiving with Jenna and Cole this year. We each drove out and met in Pagosa Springs, CO and stayed at a cute lodge with a fully equip kitchen. It was so nice to see Jenna, Cole and Cade. Cade has grown up so much! We really didn't do much sightseeing, but instead the boys played video games and the girls did crafty things and cooked. And we all played with Cade!
For Thanksgiving dinner Jenna and I split up who was in charge of cooking everything and we had a feast! One funny thing though, Jenna rolled out and cut the roll dough into crescents the morning of Thanksgiving and then we were finding warm places for them to rise like on top of the dryer, stove and such before cooking them. Well two days after Thanksgiving day when we were all getting ready to leave, we decided to do some laundry. Well Jenna opens the door to the laundry area and low and behold we had one pan of rolls still rising!! They had actually stopped rising and were quite gross by then. But it was a funny site.
So my computer is being dorky and is not letting me post pictures at the moment. So we will see if I can get them up sometime.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Arts Conference

I spent Thursday and Friday at an Arts Conference in Ogden. It was so wonderful. They really put an emphasis on how to include the arts into everyday classroom teaching. We always focus so much on reading, writing and math but sometimes forget about how important visual arts, music, dance and drama are to children. We were able to spend about 2 hours in a workshop for all the art forms and then had a couple of hours with everyone who attended on our grade level to discuss and plan how we are going to implement what we learned into our teaching. I am so pumped to use the ideas and lesson plans I got. One of the best things about the conference is they really integrated across the curriculum. For example they showed us how to teach math using music, weather elements with dance and then drama with teaching the solar system! My kids are going to be so cultured!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Not Thinking Before Speaking

Embarrassing moment of the week: So everyday in my class we do some sort of word work. Yesterday we did 'Guess the Covered Word'. I had this paragraph up on the overhead with some words covered up. Then as we read the paragraph we would try to guess the word that was covered by using context clues. Usually I will give them a few guesses at a word and write their guesses on the board. Then I give them a clue by uncovering the first letter and then erase the words that don't match so far and we think of more words that match the first letter and so on. Well, on one word I let them guess for a while and then uncovered the first letter which was a 'f'. Then before really thinking about it I asked the class. "Ok, here is your clue. Now can anyone think of any 'f' words?" Of course the whole class just started laughing and saying "Oh my gosh!! Did you hear what teacher asked us?!" And to make it worse just as I said that another teacher walked in the room to asked me something. The word I was trying to guide them to was 'fantastic'.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

I've Been Tagged

RULES
1) Post rules on your blog
2) Answer the six "8" items
3) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV Shows
1. Lost
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. The Office
4. Dancing With the Stars
5. Heroes
6. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
7. umm…..
8. don’t watch a lot of tv….

8 Things I did Yesterday
1. Woke up freezing! (Matthew was hot and decided to open the window all night)
2. Made copies for the day
3. Taught my students about fractions and how to write a persuasive letter
4. Used toilet paper to make a scale model of the solar system during science
5. Graded papers
6. Planned lessons for today
7. Ate left over soup for dinner
8. Went to the gym

8 Things I look forward to
1. Thanksgiving with Jenna, Cole and Cade
2. Christmas at home
3. Summer
4. Matthew deciding which career to go into
5. Skiing
6. having children
7. weekends
8. shopping (not grocery shopping!)

8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Japon
2. Red Lobster
3. Cheesecake Factory
4. Mimi’s Cafe
5. IHOP (breakfast all day!)
6. Costa Azul
7. Los Hermanos
8. Chili’s


8 Things on my wish list
1. travel to Europe
2. to be dancing again
3. healthy family
4. that I could have donuts and French toast 24/7
5. to always live close to family
6. to someday have a tan
7. to learn how to dance on pointe
8. to have a cricut

8 People to tag
1. Taryn
2. Alisa
3. Emily Sharp
4. Aubrey
5. Melanie
6. Kara
7. Stephanie
8. Katie Tolle

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Alexi's Engaged!







This is a big deal. My best friend from eighth grade is engaged!! Alexi and Tim have been dating FOREVER and are finally getting married! I am so excited for her!! Alexi has always been in pictures right between Jenna and I! We have always had to "share" her! Now she will belong to Tim. (We really like Tim by the way!)She has been such a good friend over the years and I am sad to be living so far away from her. She is living in Texas and is teaching dance and drill team at a high school. A wedding is the perfect excuse to get together this summer!

A couple of other Halloween pics!

The annual Halloween cookie decorating at the Allens!

Ciera and Matthew being vampires

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Election!

So I voted for the first time today!! It was great!! I felt really good about putting in my say for the presidential race. The process went so smoothly and there was no line right after school when I went.

It has been so fun to talk to my class about the election. Some of them are so adamant about who they want to win! I have done a lot of fun online interactive things for students to get familiar with the election process and about the candidates. We talked about the electoral college and I had them all color in the states either red or blue for the 2004 election and discussed what it meant and how they determine a winner. I told them we will do it again in the next couple of days for this election to again see which states ended up voting red or blue. This was such a great visual and educational activity! They are so pumped to see if there were any changes this year. It all comes down to tonight!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween Festivities

Happy Halloween! Here are pictures of us getting together to carve pumpkins with Matthew's sister and my sister! I was very impressed with Matthew's wolf pumpkin! I also have some pictures of what I dressed up as for Halloween to wear to school! I was Princess Giselle from the movie Enchanted. I didn't have exactly what she wore but it was close enough! Thanks to Ciera for letting me borrow her prom dress and to my cousin Laura for the big petticoat to make the dress poofy and huge! It was so fun to be dressed up all day!




Sunday, October 26, 2008

Matthew

Matthew loves to sing and act and has been in many musicals including lead parts in high school as well as a chorus part in BYU's production of The Music Man about 3 years ago. The musical that BYU is putting on this year is Thoroughly Modern Millie. Matthew's uncle is the director and mentioned to Matthew that they don't have very many males trying out. So last minute he decided to try out and. . . made it!! His part is a chorus dancer. He gets to sing and dance in several of the music numbers. Apparently he is a good dancer because the choreographer made him the dance captain! That just strikes me as really funny because I haven't really seen him dance all that much. But I've never seen him in a live production and am so excited to watch him! What is even more exciting is Matthew's cousin is the lead actress and her husband is the lead actor! How lucky for them! So if you are interested in coming to watch it, it's playing mid-end January and tickets are already on sale!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Door Contest

At work, we are using the month of October for Red Ribbon Month to support no drugs and no violence. We have been doing fun spirit things all month like hat day, crazy sock day, sweats day (my personal favorite) and others. On one of the day we had a door decorating contest. I decided to combine themes and do a Halloween/No Drugs arrangemenet. It was so fun. Thanks to Grandma Black for the cute witch template. My students had a lot of fun making them and were really creative. This year all the schools in my district have invested in a Cricut!! It was so fun making letters with it while my students were working. They thought it was about the coolest machine they had ever seen (I totally agreeded with them!) Anyway our work paid off and we ended up winning the door contest! Yay for my great students!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Siblings

Its been really sad not having Jenna and Cole around to hang out with but around the same time they left we have had lots of other siblings move in! My little sister Ciera moved into the dorms at BYU to start her freshman year. Matthew's sister Aubrey and her husband moved to Provo so he can finish his engineering degree. And Matthew's brother Brian moved to Provo after coming home from his mission this summer! Its so nice to have lots of siblings around.

For the longest time, as far as siblings go, it has always been Jenna and me, Jenna and me. Which don't get me wrong was always so fun! (Even Matthew said, "Since Jenna left you don't seem to laugh as much.") So true! Jenna and I could always find something to laugh at! But now I am having new experiences with siblings. Ciera is so very different from Jenna but is so fun and very random!! I appropriate her individuality and Matthew and I try to hang out with her as much as possible. Lucky for Matthew, they get to eat lunch together at BYU so he sees her more than I do!

It has also been so nice to hang out the Matthew's siblings Aubrey and Brian. They are so fun and all three of them are pretty alike! Whenever all three of them are together they always have their inside family jokes and they just laugh and laugh. (Sometimes me and Jon, Aubrey's husband, are like what?? Why is that funny??) Its so fun to see them all together. We have been on triple dates quite a bit. So here are some pictures of us hanging out with siblings.

hanging out with Ciera and Brian


Matthew and Ciera playing video games. Can we tell who is winning?


Ciera and me shopping


campfire date: Brian and his girlfriend Elise


Jon and Aubrey

Matthew and I

Hanging out at Aubrey and Jon's apartment

Making cookies with Ciera!

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Handbag Giveaway!

Here is your chance to win a free handbag! Go to www.handbagplanet.com and register to win! To launch their new products, handbag planet is giving away 1 bag every hour on their first day. Go register on their website and good luck!

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Fun Science Things

I have just finished teaching about the moon and its phases and here are a couple of fun things we did with it. First are pictures created by my class of the surface of the moon with a lunar rover on it! I had fun showing the class actual pictures off the internet of astronauts riding in a lunar rover on the moon. Next for their test on moon phases I gave each student a pack of Oreos and they had to correctly show me the phases in order! It was so fun. They agreed with me that this will be the funnest test they will ever take! Now on to the solar system!

Monday, September 29, 2008

Eagle Scout

This weekend Ciera and I went to our cousin's Court of Honor. Gage received his Eagle Scout award from the scouting program. Its the highest award you can get in scouting. I am so glad Grandma Black called us and invited us to go with her. My Uncle Steve lives here in Utah but unfortunately I don't see his family all that often. It was a great program complete with one of Steve's famous slide show with pics of Gage growing up. There was also a presentation of a real bald eagle which was really awesome. Congrats Gage!


Friday, September 26, 2008

SWAP

Some of my friends from my BYU education cohort decided to do a SWAP. We are all living in different parts of the US now and keep in touch by blogging. Well Emily had this great idea of getting little gifts for each other and swapping them. So here is the package I got from Taryn! I loved it! It was so fun to open. What a great fall package! Taryn definitely had my classroom in mind! I am going to use the Halloween candy as incentive for my students and the stamps to decorate student's Halloween stories! I also love the foam soap and it really does smell like cinnamon pumpkin! One of my favorite places to get a yummy treat is Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Taryn included a gift certificate to get one of their amazing Apple Pie Carmel Apples. I'm so excited to use it. Thanks Taryn!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

On my way home from work

What a beautiful, heavenly gift...

Sunday, September 07, 2008

We Miss Them!

So Matthew and I really miss having Jenna and Cole around to hang out with. We really spent a lot of time together this summer--let me rephrase that--Jenna and I spent a lot of time scrapbooking together while Matthew and Cole spent a lot of time playing video games together. But still we had some good times. I really think most of all that Matthew misses Cade!! Matthew actually teared up when he had to say goodbye to Cade for the last time and tried to hide it (so cute!). It was really fun living close to Jenna and especially both of us teaching 6th at schools that were 4 minutes apart from each other. We have always lived with each other or at least near by and now for the first time we are long distance. Of course its weird living apart but so far its been ok. She called me yesterday and we found out that we are reading the same book right now (Breaking Dawn) and are within a chapter of each other and we have the same calling at our church (teaching the 9&10 year olds!) We must be twins or something. So I was just thinking and looking back at some of the fun things we did together this summer and thought I would post some pics!

I don't even remember what was so funny--but something is always funny when we get together!


Playing rock band at Jenna's house


This was honestly the best picture I could get of the four of us on this night!! I guess Cole was losing or something and I am not quite sure about Jenna!

Monday, September 01, 2008

Pictures of my Classroom

School started about two weeks ago and things are going great. I am finally posting pictures of my new classroom!





Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Back to School

I have to say that Matthew and I have had a pretty good summer! I mean I have a job that literally allows me not to work at all between and June and the middle of August. You can't beat that right? We were able to go visit both our families, go on a cruise and to a family reunion. I feel like we have been living on vacation for a couple months. It has been really nice to spend time with so much family and with each other. Well it's back to real life. Matthew is starting his Masters program in BioChemistry at BYU in a couple of weeks and I start teaching school tomorrow! Today was Meet Your Teacher at my school and it was so fun to see all these students ready to come back to school and excited to be in your class! It's always nice to hear a parent say that they requested you as a teacher for their child. I am so glad I get to teach again at the same school and the same grade level as last year. I also got an upgrade. Instead of being in a portable I get a real classroom! I have had so much fun being able to organize and decorate my new room (pictures are coming). Now that I have taught one year I feel more prepared and confident to do it again. There are so many things that I am excited to improve on and to do better at. For some reason the subjects I like teaching the best are math and science which is really ironic to me because those were the same subjects I struggled with in school. The only reason I can guess is maybe it is because I can relate to having a hard time with these two and therefore I try to teach it in a variety of ways so everyone has a chance to understand it. I don't know but I really enjoy the curriculm I teach. I get to teach about the solar system, outer space, light and sound waves, microoganisms (proabably my least favorite), pre-algebra, fractions, geometry and more. We really start delving into some deep subjects. Not very many people have a job where they can start over and improve every year but I am glad that I do.

Conversation today with a kindergarden teacher :
She came up to me in the hall and told me "I had a kindergardner come meet me today and she had her older brother with her who is in 6th grade. I asked the boy what new teacher did he have this year and he says, 'Oh I don't know her name but she is the hot one.'
Turns out I found his name on my roll. Oh great...

Sunday, August 10, 2008

San Diego!

Summer is over! To top off our already wonderful summer, we just returned from San Diego for a family reunion on my mom's side. It was so nice to see extended family and everyone was there!! A big thank you goes out to my Grandma and Grandpa Allen for organizing and planning this trip. We stayed a week in brand new suites and cramped in as much fun as we could! I took so many pictures from this trip and it was hard to choose which ones to post so I kinda posted a lot! Here is a taste of some of the awesome things we did!
Padres game!

Only in California would they need an address like this!

Playing games in the hotel lobby! We had a few loud nights of this and I wonder if the hotel staff were glad that we finally left so they could have some quiet nights!! One of the cool things about my mom's side of the family is we all love to play games! Since Matthew and I drove out there we brought a huge stack of games and almost played them all!

More games! This is my dad, Matthew and lots of cousins playing.

We spent a day at LegoLand! What a cool idea for an amusement park! It was actully really fun and so very cool! We went with my parents and sisters and loved going on rides and seeing everything made from Legos!


A picture with the Lego man!! My little sister, Kayla, went up to him and asked him to dance with her and he did!! It was halarious! They were already done dancing by the time I got my camera out!

Cade loved LegoLand!! We were on little boats here that took us on a cute little path were we saw scences from different fairy tales all made from Legos!


More things made from Legos!


This was the best ride!! We were on teams in these fire trucks. We had to peddle our trucks up to the desplay of houses that were on "fire," then pump water while someone else aims the water at the house, and then once you put out the "fire" then peddle your truck back to the starting line!! It was hard work!! We were really panting when we were done! This was our team and we lost by a split second to the rest of my family.


MiniLand was one of the best parts of LegoLand. They had differnet parts of big cities all made out of Legos!! Here we are standing in front of New York! It was so cool so see all the details of the buildings and cities. We saw Washington D.C, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and others all made out of Legos. If you know our family, then you know we all love mini things so this was like the ultimite mini find!

In the San Diego harbor, there was a museum of a Navy airplane carrier that was used in World War II. We took an audio tour through it and it was very interesting. We are sitting in pilot seats that would be used for an escape from a plane in an emergency.

I'm a pilot!

We also went to the San Diego Zoo!! Check out this character!

Matthew beside some big, burly sort of animal in the background. I can't remember what it is!
I found a mini gazelle looking animal!

Bike riding along the beachfront!


Matthew and I drove up to LA one of the days to go to Six Flags. We had so much fun. We both enjoy roller costers and we had a great time.

While we were in LA we visited some friends later that night! Matthew has a cousin living there and I had a good friend from college living there. Turns out they live about a mile away from each other! It was so good to see both of them. Matthew's cousin and his wife have two kids and one on the way. I'm so sad I forgot to take a picture of them before we left! But I did remember to take one with Taryn! I finally got to see her little boy and he is so cute!! It was so good to catch up with family and friends!! MAtthew and I both agreed that we should have spent more of the day with each of them even though it was a very late night driving the 2 and 1/2 hours back to San Diego!

The last day there the boys (and Ciera) got up way early in the morning to go fishing while the girls went shopping! Later that afternoon, we went to the San Diego Temple with Jenna and Cole. The Temple was so beautiful inside and out!! I loved it! We passed it on the highway a few times during the week and its just so huge and white that it completely stands out from anything else around it!

Overall, it was an awesome week to spend with family and I am so grateful for my parents and grandparents for helping make it such a great way to end the summer!