Weekend with the Graffs

Last weekend we had lots of Graffs in town so we decided to all take off and go to Bear Lake, Utah for the weekend. I know wintertime isn't the best time to go to a lake, but we were just more interested in all being in the same place just hanging out. We went with Matthew's mom, Matthew's brothers: Brian, Dallin, and Ben, and his sister Aubrey. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend and Matthew's family is so fun to be with. Bear Lake was so pretty even though a lot of it was frozen over. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

What A Wonderful Husband

This was our conversation in the car last night:

Me: So we really don't need to do anything huge for Valentine's Day. We could just go use our gift card that we have at Red Lobster.
Matthew: Ok.... but I already got you a gift.
Me: What?? Ok, how much can I spend on you now?
Matthew: Don't get me anything. No really.
Me: What?? I can't not get you a gift knowing you already got me something.
Matthew: Well I always think of Valentine's Day as the husband doing things for the wife.

I don't mind that mindset at all! :) What a wonderful husband!

In School Today...

My class loves to jump in with random comments no matter what we are talking about. Today we were talking about words that end in -ade and -aid and how they sound similar but are spelled differently. For example the words lemonade and mermaid. So I was having students come up with different example words that sound like these and we were deciding which spelling was correct. So one boy mentions the word "masquerade." Great vocab word. So we talked about the spelling and the meaning of the word. Then one girl piped up and mentioned, "That word reminds me of mascara." Then another boy said, "Oh yeah, isn't that the stuff that goes on your lips?" I just started laughing out loud. It was just so funny the way he said it. It was like he was thinking, 'Oh I totally know all those make-up terms and I am going to show you that I know them!' The class laughed along with me and I assured the boy we were not making fun of him. He also laughed and knew we meant no harm.

This reminded me of my friend Alisa's post about her husband not knowing what mascara was!!

Always Check Your Child's Homework

I got this as an email from another teacher at my school and thought it was hilarious!

When asked to draw a picture of what they wanted to be when they grew up, second-grader "Sarah" turned in the lovely drawing shown below. Needless to say, the teacher was a bit surprised -- Mrs. Smith had always seemed like such a conservative woman. So she sent a note home to the girl's mother asking for clarification as to the picture's meaning. (read Mom's reply below the picture)


(Here's the reply the teacher received the following day)
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith

"I'm Always Alone"

So this phrase is a family joke directed at me. Appartenly this happened when Jenna and I were really little, like 3 years old and the only kids at the time. I guess I walked into my mom's room while she was taking a nap but she really was kind of awake so she could hear me. I guess I looked at her, saw she was asleep and then sighed and said, "I'm always alone." My mom said she felt so bad, she got up and said "Oh Shan! Let's go play!" What a nice mom. But that comment is just kinda funny cause how many kids have an instant friend that is the exact same age?? I mean I have a twin and really never have had to be alone. But I guess when I was little I sometimes played the pathetic card.

However for the month of January I really have been alone! Matthew has had intense rehearsals for his musical coming up. He has practice every week day from 6-11pm and then Saturdays 9am-9pm. I see him every day for about 45 minutes in the morning as we are getting ready and leaving for work. Then I am asleep when he gets home. I crave the weekends becuase then I get to see him Saturday nights and all day Sunday. It's just been wierd being alone cause like I said, I have almost really never had to be alone and I really don't like it.

But on a happy note, I have been to a couple of Matthew's practices and the play looks really good. Matthew gets to slick his hair back and wear some really handsome costumes including a tux! I'm way excited to see the show and way excited to get my husband back.

Happy News

Matthew and I are happy to announce that we are expecting a baby July 2009!! We couldn't be more thrilled!!

Home for the Holidays

So yeah, I have been lacking in posting anything new for awhile. But the holidays just seem to get so busy!! Anyway, Matthew and I were able to go to Texas for Christmas this year. We drove two days down and two days back and miraculously didn't hit any bad weather. There were snowstorms all around us but we must have been watched over as we drove. Jenna and Cole also came down so we had the whole family together! It was so nice to catch up with my sisters and parents. Too bad I had a cold the whole time. Here are new things I learned about my little sisters while I was home:
1. Kayla is really pretty without braces and has perfect hair.
2. Alyssa is an amazing cup stacker! (She won first place at her school!)
3. Ciera kisses boys
4. Kayla's dancing is so fun to watch (she is Captain at her school!)
5. Alyssa has a pet turtle named Murtle
6. Ciera thinks that if you just change into different pajama pants than the ones she sleeps in, that counts for getting dressed for the day.
7. Ciera and Kayla both think they are taller than me but they are not. (ok, maybe we are all the same height)

Overall, it was a very relaxing week and was time well spent with family. For New Year's we were back in Utah and were able to hang out with Jenna and Cole and Eddy and Miken. We ended up at Eddy's house playing Rockband until about 2:30am. But it was really fun to hang out and catch up!
Now I am back teaching. But I feel like that holiday time was the perfect amount of break and now its time to get back to work!
I accidentally left my camera at school over the break but I was able to steal some pictures that my family took.

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.

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!

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'.

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

On my way home from work

What a beautiful, heavenly gift...

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!

Pictures of my Classroom

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