Thanksgiving!

This year for Thanksgiving I went home to Texas. I haven't had Thanksgiving dinner with my family for about 4 years so it was nice to go home! Matthew and I helped my parents make pies and the best rolls in the world. We went over to my Aunt and Uncle's in Arlintgton, Texas for dinner. It was so fun to see cousins and be with family. We had an amazing dinner and it snowed on Thanksgiving Day!! This was the highlight for my little sisters and cousins! Of course the flakes were far wand inbetween, but still it was snowing in Texas. We all piled onto one chair after playing in the snow cause we were all so cold! We played games, had amazing pie and enjoyed each other's company. Here is a picture of Matthew and his BYU apple pie that me made.

The following day, we went Christmas tree hunting as we do every year the day after Thanksgiving. We sat on the hayride and loved picking out trees. My little sisters and I probably enjoyed picking out the cutest, littlest tree we could find! But it was a blast and my family got a really pretty, tall tree for the family room. Too bad we had to leave before we could decorate it with them. Fun trip! Fun people!

Grandpa Black

Last week, my Grandpa Black passed away. Out of my four grandparents, I thought he would have been the last to go and not the first. He had such an active life in running, serving and always working on a project. My family gathered in American Fork, Utah for the services. This was really tough on my Grandma Black but we had most of our famiy there to help and support her. I couldn't believe how many people came to the viewing and funeral. We had prabably 200+ people who stood in line over an hour to pay thier respects to the Blacks. It was very touching to see how many people Grandpa Black had influenced. It was really nice to have so much family around. We really had a good experience being there. The funeral service was so inspirining and helped bring closure to the situation. Though this was a sad event, I am peaceful about it and know I will see him again.

I've Been Tagged

I have been tagged by Julia and Marissa to tell 6 things about myself. But, as usual I have procrastinated long enough!
A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. Matthew and I are really into Heros and Lost. We really are not TV people, but we have gotten into both of these shows and are obsessed! We are in Texas right now for the Thanksgiving holidays and pretty sure we brought season 2 of Lost with us on the plane. but hey the time passed by so fast! So these are the two shows we watch when we both get home at night.

2. So I have a fetish with really cute pillows. I love to have lots of fun pillows on my couches and bed. I am pretty sure I got this obsession from my mom but now I can't help it. I love going into stores like Burlington and Ross because they usually have really cute [pillows for less expensive prices. Matthew really doesn't appreicate them nearly as much as I do but they just add so much to a room!

3. I love to scrapbook. I think this is an awesome way to preserve pictures and memories. However when I am scrapbooking, I hate having one picture in the middle of a page while it is surrounded by all this cute-sy stuff. I like to cram (tastefully) as many pictures on as I can but still have enough room to decorate and make it look nice. I try to scrapbook in my spare time, which usually come to Sunday afternoons.

4.I love my job. Its really fun to have a real job and to enjoy it too! My 6th graders are great and I never have a dull moment during the day. I love to plan fun projects for them and to have creative lessons that the students are engaged in. Even though it takes about 50-60 hours a week to really be prepared and ready every week, I can't think of anything else I would rather do as a career. And the best thing is, no matter where we end up I can always get a job in what I love to do!

5.I like to cook new recipes. I definitely have my favorites that I made a lot but I like to try new dishes. The other day I made a homemade cheesecake was so rich but smooth and creamy. Some of the recipes i have found have been turned down by Matthew, but most of the time they turn out great. The only thing I really don't like is dealing with raw meat, so Matthew takes good care of that and then I can do everything else! So if you have any fun, new recipes, don't hesitate to share!

6. I really do love to dance and miss it so much!! I miss jazz dancing like I did in drill team and I miss being on the Ballroom Dance Company at BYU and competing in ballroom events! Matthew always catches me dancing around the house! So far this year I have taught the beehives in my ward how to line dance, a family in my ward had a family reunion with about 100 or so people that asked me to come teach how to line dance, I have been invited to a singles stake dance to teach line dancing, and now a co-worker asked me to teach salsa dancing to a group in January. I am loving all these oppertunities to dance and I would love any more! I am seriously considering taking dance this summer at a studio but feel kinda weird being an adult and wanting to take dance classes!

So thats me! I now tag Aria, Taryn, Debbie, Emily, Andrea Trowbridge, and Melissa Mann.

Yummy muffins!

My cousin asked for this recipe, so I thought I would post it for everyone to enjoy!

Coffee Cake Muffins
-1 ½ c flour
-1/2 c sugar
-2 t baking powder
- ½ t salt
- ½ c butter, melted
- 1 egg
- 1/3 c milk
-Topping (Below)
-Icing(Below)

Topping:
In a small bowl, combine ¼ c brown sugar, ¼ chopped walnuts (optional), 3 T sugar and 1 t cinnamon. Add 1 T melted butter stirring until mixture resembles moist crumbs.

Icing:
In small bowl combine ½ c powered sugar, 1 T milk and 1 t vanilla, stirring until smooth.

Directions:
1. Prepare topping, set aside
2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour in butter, egg and milk. Stir (will be soft).
3. Spoon 2 T of batter in each cup. Sprinkle ¼ of topping over batter. Spoon batter over topping filling cups ½ full. Sprinkle ¼ topping over batter pressing into batter. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pan.
4. Prepare icing and drizzle over warm muffins.
(Doesn’t make good mini muffins—I tried it)

Halloween!

We had a lot of fun on Halloween in my classroom. In my school district all teachers and students are encouraged to wear costumes all day! So it was almost pointless to do anything productive cause students were so distracted and eager for that night! But we did a fun Halloween writing activity and some other fun Halloween stuff! I was impressed with the costumes my students wore. I had a motercross guy, a couple of devils, a few rocker chicks, a hobo, Legolas from Lord of the Rings, a dead soccor player, and much more. I am really not a costume person but I didn't want to let my kids down so I came to school as a pirate. The whole school had a parade so everyone could see everyone's costumes and even parents were invited. I got several teachers tell me "Oh I almost didn't recognize you as a teacher, I thought you were a student!" Oh well. I had a couple of parents come in to do a Halloween party and they did a great job. We played games (like a mummy making race by wrapping up students in toilet paper!) and made popcorn hands with candy corn as fingernails. It was a great day. I didn't get any trick-or-treaters cause we are in a basement and our door doesn't face the street! But that was ok by me. I was all Halloweened out just from the school day! Here is Jenna and I right before we left for school. I would show a picture of my class doing the mummy race but I probably shouldn't put up student's pictures without parents knowing about it. But they did such a good job!

Pray for Grandpa

This week has been very hard for the Black side of my family. My grandpa Black hasn't been feeling well that last couple of weeks and was finally brought in to the hospital. At first they thought it was his lukemia coming back but not quite sure. Grandpa has been taking some blood thinning medicine but the doctors found that he was bleeding inside his brain, and the blood thinning medicine was not allowing the blot to clot and stop the bleeding. There have also been some other complications, some of which I don't even know. Also his sodium level was very low, almost to a comatose state. We have gone to visit him and he isn't very responsive or talking very much. We are praying that he can recover! My dad came out here for a few days to be with his father. Grandpa was a talking a lot more the last time I saw him, but his health was not improving. I know the doctors have been debating surgery but think he might be too weak. So keep him in your prayers!

The Weekend

I love productive weekends and this was a very productive weekend! Since I get up at 6am everyday I guess my body is used to that so even on the weekends I wake up that early. I try to sleep in but oh well. I got so much done on Saturday! I had a ton of grading to catch up on especially since the term is coming to an end this week and I have parent-teacher conferences on Thursday (scary!) I did a lot of school stuff as well as laundry and Matthew put up some stuff on the walls that I have been wanting to rearrange. Also I have kind of been stressing about what to be for Halloween since I guess all the teachers at my school go all out for Halloween. And I just really don't get into it that much. So Matthew and I went to the costume store to get some ideas. I couldn't believe how scandelous everything was! Definitly not appropiate for the elementary classroom. But right as they were closing I found a Princess Fiona costume. It came with a very modest purple princess dress and Shrek ears! So I think I might go with that plus it would be a good costume for an elementary school. To add to the weekend we went to the BYU game with my old roommates on Saturday. At first it was cold but slightly sunny, then it kept getting darker and darker until we watched from across the field the rain just come sweeping in! It was pouring! So good thing we were kind of prepared with hoods and gloves. But then all that rain turned to snow! It quickly became blizzard conditions and our Cougars still won by a long shot! It was fun to be in the first snow storm of the season, however we all were numb, wet and parked a long ways away. We decided to walk to Jan's house and have hot chocolate until all the game traffic died down. But it was quite the experience. Late that night while the boys were watching a baseball game Jenna and I got together with our roommates and played games (which took forever cause we would talk and laugh a lot and forget whose turn it was !) On Sunday I finally had time to do some scrapbooking which has been long put off, but right as I was glueing down my first picture, my glue ran out! Out of all times to run out!! But luckily I called Jenna and she had some I could borrow, so I finished one of my roommate pages (shows how far behind I am!) To top of the weekend, I get to sleep in tomorrow (if I can) because I have a substitute in my class while I go to a training not too far away from Orem!

Baby Shower

This weekend I hosted a baby shower for Jenna. It was a lot of fun and ended really showering pretty hard that morning. I couldn't really take a lot of pictures but my cousin took a lot of pictures that she is going to give me so there will be more coming! A lot of Cole's family came that I had never met before so it was fun to meet all of them. We played baby games, had fruit and coffee cake muffins and of course opened gifts!! Jenna got a lot of good loot for "Jole" (The combined name of Jenna and Cole--not the real name for the baby, just a nickname!) It was all so tiny!! I had fun picking out outfits and little shoes! Anyway the baby shower was a lot of fun and thanks to everyone who came! There is a picture of the invitations I made and a pic of Jenna and I right after the shower.

Classroom Pictures!

First is my reading corner. Students love to sit here and read and I always make sure that they are being used to read in and not just sleeping or playing! One of my classroom jobs is to fix up the reading corner and they do such a good job. I never have to go back and fix it up! All arond the reading corner are little posters from each student where I gave them three sticky letters and they had to come up with a word that describes themselves using each of the letters. Its hard to see but it they were so creative in some of the words they picked!Next, as I was leaving my class last night the sunset was so pretty I had to take a picture. This was right outside my classroom door. Next are a couple of student computers withd some bullitan boards of what we have been studying. Last here is my reading library and birthday calendar! Teaching is hard work but so fun. I am excited to start teaching about ancient Egypt next week!

Two Weeks Down!

I have survived my first two weeks of teaching 6th grade! It has been a new fun experience as well as a very time consuming job! I have 27 students and they are a great class! I think I have a really good combination of students. I had no idea how much this job would take out of me. I have been so exhausted these past couple of weeks but I'm sure I'll get used to that. Everyday we do Work Work, Writing, DEAR time (Drop Everthing And Read), Math, Science and World History. The subjects that are the hardest to plan for me are History and Science because I find myself trying to brush up on the information myself! This past week my students seemed to be seeing how far they can get away with things so I have had to really work on discipline and have the class redo things until they do it right!! But on Friday we ended the week well by having a class auction where students can "buy" things with thier "class cash" that they earn. ( I told them we would have a big auction on the last day of every month). They loved this idea and really got into it. Now I thing they will really try to do thier best to earn "dollars." I have a great coworker who teaches 6th grade right next door to me. She is a second year teacher and we get along great! We do a lot of planning together and she has a lot of good ideas for science which is good for me! I keep forgetting to take my camera to school to take pictures of my class but will soon! Anyway I am loving teaching and learning a lot in the process!

Cedar City

I know I am a little behind but things have been so busy now since school has started for me but I will post about that later. The weekend before I started working Matthew and I drove down to Cedar City with a couple, Kevin and Brooke, who are in Matthew's chemistry class. They are so fun and we have enjoyed getting to know them this past semester. We stayed at Brooke's parents house which is probably the most amazing house I have ever seen! They live on the top of a mountain and the house is complete with an indoor lap pool, 2 sauna's, a home theatre room, and an amazing game room. The whole house is just very ornate especially all the woodword and crown molding. I loved the layout of the house but it was so big that I sometimes got lost! Anyway they had 4 wheelers and jet skis that we played with all weekend. It was such a nice getaway. We had so much fun. Matthew did awesome waterskiing! He got up every time and stayed up for a while. Me on the other hand had a little more trouble but still had tons of fun. I did the best on the tube. I held on for a long time and when I was finally thrown off, it was such a hard landing that I almost lost my swimsuit bottoms!! They fell down to my ankles and fortunatly I was able to retrieve them and pull them back up. Here are some pics of us 4 wheeling, playing at the lake and also they had a hummungbird feeder in the backyard and had literaly 30 hummingbirds all huddled around. But for some reason they must have known when I brought out my camera, cause they would all fly away!

Wonderful Weekend

Last weekend Kayla stayed with us after finishing a week at BYU for EFY. It was such a fun and packed weekend. We picked her up at 6:45am on Saturday at her dorms. Then we went out to breakfast while she told us all about EFY. Then we decided to go floating down the Provo River. We went all over town and apparently no one in Orem sells water shoes. So we decidied to chance it and wear flip flops. The river was so fun! Matthew was on a tube and Kayla and I shared one. Good thing we did that cause I don't think Kayla would have made it on her own. She didn't quite get the paddling thing to move away from rocks and trees! The water was cold but still bearable. Some parts were just so relaxing and calm and other parts had some good rapids. The only fatality we had was Kayla's flipflop that she lost in the water! We were able to save it once, but the second time the current was so strong we couldn't get to it. We took a lot of pictures on the river but once we got on the water we used a underwater camera to be safe and I don't have them developed yet. Later that night we went to a wedding reception for my friend Alisa (You have probably seen her in some of my other blog pics.) She looked so pretty and I'm glad I went. Since we were in Salt Lake City we walked around beautiful temple square and took pictures! Kayla is quite the photographer! Sunday, Kayla went to church with us and that was really fun since I am in the Young Womens. That afternoon Kayla made her famous cookies for us. Then we had dinner over at Matthew's grandparents and games later at my grandparents! It was so fun having Kayla with us and she is now exactly my height! I can't believe that. I have come to realize that I will probably be the shortest Black girl since 2 of my sisters have surpassed me and another one is very close!

Harry Potter!

So lets be honest, Matthew and I are really into Harry Potter! We were both so pumped for this last book to come out and we have already seen the 5th movie! Actually we watched the Harry Potter movies 1-4 during the week when Jenna was here and then on the weekend went and saw the 5th one! We didn't want to miss out on the excitment of the 7th booking coming out so on Friday we went at midnight to Borders to get our preordered copy! Matthew went early Friday morning to get a ticket to hold our place in line. We we arrived about 12:15am it was so packed!! I couldn't believe how many people were there! It was so fun though. Kids were all over the place dressed up as different characters. It was so funny when the first couple of peolple got their books they held it up really high and everyone in the store starting clapping and cheering! I saw a couple of people I knew like Chris Jones and his wife and a couple of other people from BYU. We stood in line for about an hour before we got our copy. On the way home, I drove while Matthew read the first chapter out loud. Then while I went to bed he proceeded to stay up until 3:30 reading! So neither of us are done with it but when I came home from work today I was going to read until I saw that Matthew had taken the book up to campus with him today!

Reunited!

For the first time in a long time all 4 of us roomies were in Utah at the same time (me, Melissa, Jenna, Laura.) So of course we had to go out to lunch. We went to this really cute place called Zupas. Its so yummy! You walk in there and it is filled with groups of girls! Its the perfect little girls-out-to-lunch place. It was so nice to catch up with everyone. I think we sat there for about 2 1/2 hours just talking! Jenna was in town that week because we both had new teacher induction. I am getting really excited to teach but nervous as well. All summer I have been thinking that I still have a while before school starts but really now I only have 3 weeks to get everything ready! Jenna stayed with me and it was so fun to be together again. Matthew said he could never understand anything we were saying to each other cause we never really have to finish our thoughts to get what we are saying in our conversations! It was fun to see her growing belly! She's going to be a mommy! Well starting inAugust all four of us will be in Utah again so we will have to have more lunch outings to Zupas!

Bitter Sweet

I know this was a little bit ago but I have been forgetting to post it! I got together with some of my cohort friends that I graduated with for lunch. It was really great to see everyone again. It is bitter sweet because we are all going our separate ways. Taryn (next to me) is moving to California where her husband got a job, Alisa (on the left) is getting married in July, Emily and Taryn are expecting babies in the fall and then Alisa and I have teaching jobs for the fall as well! So this was probably one of the last times to be together. These girls are so much fun and I am glad to have gotten to know them as much as I did! We went to lunch at Magleby's Fresh (Love it!) and then I introduced them to my new favorite snack. The Apple Pie Carmel Dipped Apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (I'm not sure thats the real name of it but its something like that!) It was tons of fun!

Camp Shalom!

Girls Camp was so much fun! I am so glad I got to go as a leader. I think its almost more fun as a leader cause I didn't have to do any of the certification stuff! This camp is so much more intense than when I was in YW. Each girl had responsibility of building a fire for an assigned meal (we made all our own meals as a ward) and sometimes we were waiting for like 20 minutes before a fire was started. Every girl at some point had cooking duty, dish duty, fire duty, biffy duty (the bathrooms are called biffies, not quite sure why!) I really got to know the girls during camp and loved being with them. My favorite parts of camp was hiking, the canoes (though some girls "fell out" of their canoes and got in big trouble, but it was pretty funny!), singing across the lake at night with another stake on the other side, marshmellows over the campfires, the faith walk and all the chants and songs that you sing at Girls Camp! Here are pictures of the canoe races we had, some of the girls in my cabin, sitting and waiting for dinner to be ready, and my third years and me on the hike! It was so dusty there, we just got so dirty. To make it worse we had no hot water. Most of us, including me, didn't take a shower the whole time! I also had the problem of blending in as one of the girls, I was constantly explaining that I was a leader and not one of the girls!

Prep for Girls Camp!

Idid not know how much work it took to put Girls Camp together until I have had to plan for it! We have a wonderful camp director who has put so much work into this. I am in charge of the 3rd years and therefore had the responsibility to come up with decorations for our camp site. The theme this year for our stake is "Journey To The Son". So our ward decided to focus on the signs and billboards that we see along the way directing us in different ways. So I made roadsigns that will be mounted to wooden posts to stick around our camp! It has taken so much time but I think I am ready! I guess I better be because we are leaving tomorrow! Unfortunatly I had the 3rd years help me put them together and many of them didn't glue them very straight! But thats ok, they still turned out great. So here are pics of what I came up with. Also there are im purple borders because our ward chose integrity as our color so we have purple shirts and purple signs!

My cute Husband

Yesterday I had to work until about 6:30 and so on the way out the door to work I told him that I wasn't sure what to do for dinner since I had visiting teacher coming over at 7:00 and I wouldn't have time to do much. So on my way home from work he calls and says "Hurry home, I have dinner in the oven!" When I got home he had made a casserole and the table was all set! It was the cutest thing to see him have everything ready right when I got home. That was so nice to come home to. I asked him where he got the recipe cause I didn't recognize it as anything I have made before. He said he just looked on the internet and found it and we had everything that it called for! It was really good so I even wrote the recipte down to make it again! Matthew is so helpful and he just does things like this that make me smile!!

Line Dancing

I am the beehive advisor in my ward and absolutly love it! For one of the midweek activities they wanted to learn how to dance. So I taught them how to line dance! Well about a week later one of the beehives asked me if I would come to her middle school to teach line dancing. They were having a big country dance party the last day of school and wanted me to come teach the 6th, 7th and 8th graders! So on Friday I had to take off work and go to their school. It was so fun! I was impressed how both guys and girls were willing to learn. They caught on quick!! They had a lot of fun and we even had a competition bewteen the guys and girls and from my view they tied! Anyway it was so cool to see all these young kids just trying so hard to be coordinated and get the rhythm! It was just such a fun experience!

Costco!

So I was in Costo yesterday by myself for only one purpose--to pick up pictures at the photo center. Which I just found out that you can send in your pictures online and then in an hour pick them up for the same awesome price. I used to have to go inside, drop off pics and then come back in an hour. So I was really excited to learn that they do it online. Points for Costco!! So that was really my only reason for going and that is even near the very front of the store. But then I thought about the samples they always have in the food section. So yes, I really did walk all the way over to the gocery area just to check. And to my delight there were samples all over!! So I made my way through the asiles just to try all of them. So what was suppost to be a very short drop in to Costco turned into a hunt to see if I had tested everything they were sampling. Anyway it was just really fun and random and I thought I would share!