apologies

If you haven't noticed, I more or less suck at keeping on top of the whole blogging thing. Really, someday I have plans of totally rocking it, but until life allows me the occasion to do so, please know that my life is anything but boring... or at least anything but uneventful. BUT, while I'm here, I might as well compose some kind of genius right? :)

Lately:

I checked out ten juvenile fiction books from the library the other day and have been working on nibbling my way through them. So far, I've finished "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg, and "The Matchlock Gun" by Walter C. Edmonds. My favorite of the the three was probably the Giver just because it presents some ideas that were completely new to my mind such as not knowing what a hill, or snow, or birthday is... but it definitely left something to be desired at the end. I've discovered the Newbery book shelves in the children's section and am going to continue working my way through those. I'm currently partially through "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg, "The Tale of Despereaux" by Kate DiCamillo, and "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh" by Robert C. O'Brien. Some of them I've read, some I haven't, but can't remember the gist of most of them, so a reread is definitely in order :)

I plan to hike the "Y" tonight with Hillary and perhaps some other people if they can stop whining and think about how cool it will be to watch a movie on my laptop once we reach the top.

I got a new cell phone: A black Sanyo Katana II.

My fourth graders will be taking their CRT's next week (pray for them. they need all the intellectual, spiritual and any other kind of help they can get.)

For the first time since school started I have all of next week planned to a "T". This is due to the fact that I had less to plan because of all our testing, but nevertheless it feels great to not have the guilt hanging over my head of "you should probably finish planning or you're going to hate yourself next week when you have to stay four hours after school to finish planning because you didn't on the weekend and you are already exhausted because your kids were off the wall today because you didn't plan and they didn't get it." All I have to worry about is that stack of probably 200 papers on my desk that I have to grade. Ah teaching.

If you're ever in Provo on a Monday night, you'll notice instead of the occasional student or pair of students walking home or to class you'll find students walking in herds. How we love our assigned "families"!

FUNNY

Funny emily stories to come soon, regarding our home ward bishop, hamburger buns, and more. Get excited! :)

I'm going to write this one down before i forget. One time, all of us kids were visiting our grandparent's house (dad's parents, that live on Anderson Island), and one of Emily's favorite past times is looking at pictures, so she found some photo albums and was looking through them. She found a picture of a little kid that was taken from behind, and far away. That little kid was her, and she knew it, nevertheless, she leaned over to Kate and me and said, "who's that cute little fella?" Well if we're talking cute little fellas, it MUST be you, Emily.

ah to reminisce...

Spent part of the evening tonight chatting with my little sister, who is actually getting much bigger now (she's 14!). We randomly got to talking about our childhoods and all the funny stories we could remember. This is what we got:

how we first pronounced "grandma"--
Austin: gamma
Coy: gamby
Emily: gumpy
Nellie-Kate: dumpy
Mckenzie: gumby

Notice how it evolves each time from what the older one said... be careful when you listen to your siblings! :)

As you could probably guess, Nellie-Kate was always the sassy one... had a way of making everyone feel SO great about themselves :) You can imagine how grandma felt when the 3-year-old marched up at a family gathering and demanded in the snootiest voice a three-year-old can muster, "Dumpy! Get me chips." And if you could have seen the way she walked... she was always on a mission, everywhere she went. Swinging her arms and stomping her feet like no one had better get in her way or she would walk right over the top of them.

first words--
Austin: HOT! (said while pretending like i was going to touch a burner then quickly pulling back my hand)
Emily: hiding (they sang a song at her preschool about hiding... she would sway back and forth on the rug and say "hiding, hiding" :))
Mckenzie: Hi! (she greeted everyone she met multiple times... we figured she was headed towards being pretty friendly :))

Randomness runs in the family. Just about anything can be turned into a joke. Makes for a lively household (most of the time anyway), and a pretty healthy sense of humor! And yes, that pipe is made from tootsie rolls.Some of us hated hair brushing and showers,

and all of us ran around barefoot all the time, everywhere. Sometimes we would wear our socks out, but our dad's rule was either "go without socks or put your shoes on"... so we aimed for that. Unless of course dad wasn't around :) What was even better was when we could wear our swimsuits all day long. We played baseball, or kick the can, or hide and seek in the cul-de-sac on warm summer nights with the neighbor kids while all of our parents watched from front porches. We slept on our trampoline. Eventually we'd all turn into brown children from being in the sun so much. Mckenzie is the best example of this:

And even though we often fought (biggest rivalries: Coy & Austin vs. Nellie-Kate, and Nellie-Kate vs. Mckenzie. Although there was that time when Emily tried to tip Kate out of her cradle when she was first born... jealousy gets the better of all of us at some point :)), we always stuck together through all the hard stuff. Coy baptizing Mckenzie was just one of the highlights!
Sometimes when I'm away from them for so long, I forget. But those four kids were involved in most of my choice memories from childhood, and what can I say... I just LOVE us!!!

self-fulfilled prophecy

hahaha... so i was just reading back on a post from last week, and i said steep downward plunge by wednesday right?

Turns out wednesday was the night that a gigantic white-out storm decided to hit the entire wasatch front (provo/salt lake, and further north and south of those). I left earlier than normal because the snow was coming down and blowing around pretty well, and i was advised by friends to head out. So i did. And thank goodness because even leaving when i did, the drive from my school back to my abode in provo that usually takes approx. 45 minutes ended up taking me 2 HOURS and 15 minutes. Yes, you read that right. As in 135 minutes. OH and i forgot to mention what had happened earlier that day...

On my way to school, a cop decided to pull me over for speeding. While i sat waiting in my car for the glorious news mr. policeman was going to bring (about 100 ft. from the school's parking lot, mind you) one of my students and his parents pulled up to drop him off. he proceeded to get out of the car, walk a few steps towards the school and then stop and stare directly at me in my car, while the cop and his ever-so-obnoxious lights flashed like there was some REAL emergency going on the ENTIRE time we sat there (really, why do they do that? some sort of expression of their dominance over this pitiful crime committer they have just captured? gosh that ticks me off. EVERYONE LOOK THIS PERSON MADE A MISTAKE!!!!!). After the whole ordeal was over, i pulled into the parking lot, got out of my car, and the first thing my adorable little fourth grader does is scream across the playground and parking lot, "YOU just barely got a TICKET!!!" No really? ugh. And this was just the beginning.

Later that day i received the fabulous news that a new student would be transferring to my class from a different fourth grade class (the second this year, not to mention the other two new students I have gotten). Which isn't a bad thing, but it does give rise to a significantly higher amount of work (putting together tote tray materials, sending home syllabi, getting papers back signed, acclimating them to a new classroom, re-teaching procedures/routines, etc.)

And not to be too explicit for any males that may be reading this, but to top it all off, my lower back was aching bad and i had cramps all day. Funny how these things time themselves.

But don't worry, this story does have a happy ending. After I got home, I went to the gym and ran my little heart out, at which point the endorphins kicked in and life was great again. AND on my way to school the next day i discovered that our school district had been graced with a two hour delay. BEST NEWS OF MY LIFE. or maybe just that day. but still :).

And this is going to be random and completely contradictory to the main idea of this post, but this is how i'm really feeling tonight. SOME DAYS I JUST FEEL GREAT, and LOVE LIFE, and all the AMAZING PEOPLE THAT LOVE ME, and that I LOVE BACK. This just happens to be one of those days ;).

saturday is a LOVELY day

One of my most favorite things in the world is waking up without ANY obligations, and knowing I can choose to get out of bed, or stay in bed at my leisure. This particular morning I woke up a little before nine, rather pleased with myself that I woke up naturally around the time that I prefer to wake up, and then promptly decided that i didn't feel like getting up yet, and fell back to sleep. Freedom is a wonderful thing.

Sometimes I feel like a rebel. In my head at least.

Like when my desire to do something one way ceases because I find out someone, who has some sort of charge over me, WANTS me to do it that way.

Anyway, back to my Saturday. I ate delicious cereal for breakfast. Probably two bowls actually. Man food tastes so much better when you're really hungry for it. Then I proceeded to spend the next three hours planning for next week. Water cycle, QAR (question, answer, response) for guided reading, multiplication review, V-day party, a parent coming to teach dutch, ABC books, respect lessons. blah blah blah. Actually, i'm not feeling half bad about teaching at this moment, but I am preparing myself for a steep downward plunge by Wednesday at the very latest. As far as I can tell, they can't be good for even two consecutive days. But who knows, things could look up.

So after my planning extravaganza I took a shower, and went over to eat an amazing vegan lunch at Caitlin's apartment. Spent a couple hours discussing social issues and our future lives.

You know what? My life is boring. I'm going to put this out of it's misery, and stop describing my day to you in such excruciating detail. Next time, I'll be sure to make something up.

If I had a penny for every time I got distracted, I would be a rich, rich woman.

hello people...

just a note: i am slightly discouraged by the lack of comments i receive on my posts! Why is this? 1) I don't post often enough? 2) My posts are not of the commentable nature? 3) You are nervous because no one else commented and you don't want to be the one to break the silence?

seriously, major bonus points if you JUST DO IT!

thanks guys.

Time to shine

"Mom, it's your time to shine!" ~Mckenzie
"I HAVE PNEUMONIA!" ~Mom

Also, when I first got back, Katie told me a very entertaining story about Emily. I guess one day, Emily thought she heard Katie coming, and decided she would hide under Katie's bed and surprise her. So she got under the bed (Katie has wooden sort of skirting around the bottom of her bed, so in order to get under the bed, she had to crawl through a little cupboard door) and waited for Katie to come. Turns out, Katie wasn't coming up the stairs at the time, but she waited awhile, and eventually started yelling for help... "KATIE!!!!!!!!"

Katie, thought she needed some toilet paper, which was strange because she remembered just replacing the roll in that bathroom, but she was doing the dishes, so she asked Kenzie to go and check on her and see what was up. Mckenzie went upstairs and looked in all the rooms and bathrooms and couldn't find her, when she heard her voice coming from Katie's room. So she checked the closets, etc. in Katie's room without any luck, when she found a little note on the floor, on which was written, "HELP WANTED UNDER THE BED. EMILY" hahahaha...

Anyway, they went upstairs and yanked her out from under the bed, after undoing the barricade that she had put up in front of the cupboard door. She explained how she was waiting for Katie and was going to surprise her, and Katie just said, "I don't think I would've looked there for awhile..."

Seriously, my family is soooooo goofy. It's great.

it's that time again!

So I've made this goal to blog more, one because it's healthy and feels good to let out my ideas, etc. and two because i'm more likely to blog than write in my journal (mostly because i'm faster at typing than handwriting) and i need to be recording my life. You know, for that book i'm going to write someday.

I'm not usually much for new year's resolutions, simply because of the stereotype they carry with them of making all of these wonderful goals and then two weeks into the new year losing all motivation and failing to follow through on any of them. When I hear the words "new year's resolution" i get instant running video of going running at the gym and then getting sick of running at the gym so much and going for doughnuts instead. BUT... this year I did make some because we had a lesson on making goals at church last sunday, and it seemed like a good idea. I've kind of been absorbed in school and fourth graders and am slowly slipping further and further from attending to other parts of my life. So here they are:

1. Go to FHE. I was a diligent FHE go-er for most of my freshman year, but slowly lost interest because, "i have a lot of homework, and hey, these people aren't my family!" Hence, I haven't been in mmm... we'll just say quite awhile. But I need to get back into going to extra church activities if for nothing else, just to keep myself meeting people. It's not like I have a lot of chances to meet potential hang-out buddies amongst my 24 fourth graders parents. FHE seems like a good place to start.

2. Keep a writing utensil in my hand when reading my scriptures. This has been a goal of mine for some time... but I'm usually just lazy. In fact, usually when I pull my scriptures off the shelf I think, "do it... go get a pen and paper", but then i think about how it will take me a minute or two to find the pen and paper, which time I could be using to read and therefore finish reading sooner and turn off that darn light. And then I think about how if I DO get a pen and paper I'll probably end up thinking of something to write, and then who KNOWS how long it will be till I can get my mind to stop and shut down for the night. Kind of like when you give a mouse a cookie. So being the intelligent manipulator that I am, I usually just go with the "I can't find a pen and paper right now" approach, and then when I inevitably think of something that I should write down while I'm reading... dang. i don't have a pen. The goal is to conquer all of this, and do what i should do. But I must say, if I had done that in the first place, I wouldn't have near as funny a story to tell.

3. Cook! I used to love cooking, but I don't know that I have actually made a meal from a recipe even once since I've been at school. NOT EVEN ONCE! This goal includes choosing some things from a cookbook that I would like to eat, adding any ingredients I am lacking to my grocery list and buying them, and then making the meal from the recipe. I'm pretty excited about this one, because as long as I can make myself do it, it means that I will be eating actual warm, satisfying, healthy food for dinner! And it won't even be from a box!

4. Be on time! I've developed this horrible habit of being late to most things that it is not required that I be on time to... i think possibly it stems from the fact that i try to be very efficient and not waste any time (which is funny because facebook is one of my favorite pasttimes...), and so I don't leave early because then I'll get there early and just sit there... wasting time. BUT i need to get over that mindset and realize that being on time is a necessary courtesy.

5. Put more thought into my lesson plans. My students just... need that. They have a hard time as it is... let alone when i don't plan well enough.

More to come...

dreams

So, last night I had a dream that I was voted emporer. I don't remember the entire background... unfortunately. Randomness must run in the family.

me and quotes

So i'm such a quote person... i don't know what my problem is, but I seriously love other people's quotes! My favorites are usually from my sisters... lately anyway, since i never see much of my roommates (because seriously, those usually beat all :)). I put a couple on my facebook, and i got rid of a couple others, but i shouldn't have because I realized that I COULD HAVE PUT THEM ON HERE!!! argh. Anyway, here are a couple of the latest funnies:

"You're my favorite mom. Except for dad."
~Emily

Kate saw Emily walking around the kitchen on a couple of different occasions with her big pink overnight bag. This wasn't a usual occurence, so she asked, "watcha doin' with your bag em?"
And then here's the kicker... Emily replied, "oh nothing. just my bag... (and then she cast her eyes down, ashamedly) actually... i used it to sneak buns up to my room."
Katie opened the bag and looked inside, and therein lie a single hamburger bun, which had slid over the side.

Another time, we wrapped our corgi Malcolm up in a blanket so we could take him with us in the car to grandma's house. Katie was holding him, and suddenly she broke out in... well, this:

"and there lie before me, a shivering babe, wrapped in swaddling cloth.

"what big teeth you have shivering babe...
"what pointy ears...
"what a snouty nose
"what a chubby butt...
"and what a donkey-like stomach..."
Yes, she is that random. all the time.

Finally, Katie went snowboarding for the first time on the Sunday before Christmas, and as soon as she walked in the door proceeded to relay to us a very detailed version of the happenings of her trip. To Katie pretty much everything can be turned into a joke, and so her stories are usually pretty entertaining. The quote below was something similar to a punch line for one of the stories she was telling. Following her first successful attempt to get on the lift, they were riding along, and at this point i sort of tuned out until:

"And that's when.... I fell off the lift."

It was like in the movies when that screeching record sound plays and everyone freezes and looks over at the person speaking... and then we all cracked up because, WHO DOES THAT???

Autumn

I have never been one to be very excited about fall. I have always been very much a summer girl at heart, wishing for summer to continue past it’s time, and hoping that fall will wait in the wings just a little bit longer. And I of course expected my feelings to be the same this year. But this year as fall came around, there was something about it… this wonderful smell that reminds me that Halloween and Thanksgiving, and the wonderful Christmas season are coming. It’s almost like with every sunrise, sunset, turning leaf, and breeze that blows, someone is whispering in my ear… “and always, life continues…” we just keep rolling on, always. There is something rather whimsical about it. Makes me want to huddle in a corner with a hot chocolate, a huge beanbag, and a thousand blankets, just the same as it makes me want to put on mittens, and my big black wool jacket, and a fluffy scarf, and go running through a pumpkin field, or build a snowman and have a snowball fight… and now I feel cheesy, but I mean these things in the least cheesy way possible ☺. I just really like to experience real life, in a real way.

From the mouths of Fourth Graders:

Responding to a prompt regarding the national flower, a rose.

"Because it is like everyone's favorite flower and my moms and my aunts favorite flower too and they smell good and I like it too.

And like mostly everyones mom likes them so thats why they picked it."

"I could not pick a different flower because it is my mom's favorite flower and color. I think it was a good choice for the country because the state bird won't eat it."

Answering the test question: What kind of evidence has been found that people lived here so long ago?

"Plimith Rock."

girlys

So we go pick our girls up at 5pm from practice everyday, count them, and start walking. The great part: they follow me like little ducklings wherever I walk :) Love 'em.

campin, campin, campin

I have been having the time of my life being a sports and dance camps counselor! I mean sure anyone could guess that it's a good job, but I don't think I realized how much I would love it! We meet so many kids, and get to know all the other counselors, plus, we get to do fun stuff everyday with them. You name it we get to do it... ice cream party, pool party, talent show, all sorts of dances, seven peaks, watch movies, temple square, etc... and I'm getting paid for all of it!

My girls have just been so awesome... in fact my roommate (another counselor) and I have stayed up many a night after the girls have gone to bed just chatting about how we are so impressed with them.

I think I'm going to start keeping a list of little things that I love about being a counselor:

being trusted with the responsibility of 12-17 pre-teen or teenage girls
little homesick girl waking me up at 6am for a pep talk
planning and scheming on what we can do to help and make things better for our girls
the fact that they will come find us, wherever we are, if they need something (see quotes)
Anytime something exciting or scary or interesting happens, they run to come and tell me first
Being a leader
they love my attention and live to impress me... so cute :)
they seek me for help if they are sick or need something and trust my guidance

i think it's just being here, and enjoying the entire experience. Belonging here. Being on the same level with all the other counselors, and understanding their plight, yet also understanding the girls, and being able to help them through their teenage crises... celebrating the successes and learning from the mistakes together. Couldn't get much better than this :).