Labor Day...I know.

Sheesh. I just uploaded a boatload of pictures, now I'm too tired to Narrarate them...ugh, I'll do my best! We went to Yellowstone for Labor Day, camping with James, Miekka, Seth, Jacob, Lia, and Joe. It was so much fun! It was a good camping trip. Beautiful things to see, at night we could hear the wolves howling, and elk bugleing...it was outstanding!




What would a trip to yellowstone be without some close encounters with Buffalo?! Massive creatures.
Prism Pools....a.maz.ing.

Old Faithful!
A beetle-Bum (Bumble bee) I just thought this shot was super artsy and cool. posted for Dad...:)
Miekka James and Seth., Seth did the Junior Scientist AND Junior ranger programs! It was fun,a nd reminded me of when I did the junior ranger program at yellowstone when I was younger :)
Again, Old Faithful! (Does anyone else think of Dennis the Menace when they say "OLD FAITHFUL!'???

CUTE SETH
CUTE LIA
We lovingly crammed into the mini-van the majority of the excursions in the park, there was a lot of driving. I tried to stay awake but I slept a lot of the distances...
These two boys have the BEST imaginations, also, Jacob didn't take of his "Robin superhero cosyume the entire trip! SO hilarious, he even had a mask much of the time, Seth of course was Batman. :) Robin was capturing Batman...or maybe he was a bad guy, I never can keep them straight.
Lia was my snuggle buddy, she kept me so warm all bundled up, and I promptly became her favorite entertainer :)
JACOB...LOL...poor kid ran right into a pokey-outie tree branch that was halfway broken off...look how close the scratches got to his eye!!!
We had a GRAND time! Thanks Lances!

True story...rated PG-13 for a swear word

It's too late...12:23 am...I had parent teacher conferences tonight. We are going camping to Yellowstone tomorrow, John is still up and will be all night working on unpacking LOADS of junk from boxes we brought from our storage unit...

Today was entertaining. I teach reading for all the low readers in third grade. I love them. They are adorable. They really struggle and I have to try really hard to motivate them and get them to have fun in reading because most of them hate it. I don't like doing things I'm not good at either. I came up with this game on the fly today: teams of three kids per team. Personal white board, marker, one person is the writer to write the sentence, a reader to read and make sure the sentence makes sense and a speller to make sure the spelling word is spelled right. So I say, your first word is 'lamp' write a sentence using the word lamp. They do, they get points accordingly. Their sentences went like this: The lamp is pink. She turned on the lamp. etc etc. The next word, black, write a sentence using the word black...the cat is black...I have black shoes....and then one group is taking awhile to show me their sentence, I can tell they are arguing, I give them time. They bring me their white board. They look at me frustrated because they can't figure out how to spell one word, I look at the sentence:

"I have a black sh!t"

True story. They wanted to write shirt...ahhhhh...awesome day.

School

First week of school. Survived. My class is so adorable! I knew they would be, but it's just thrilling to have them with me! I feel so privileged to be their teacher. They are some remarkable kids. We spent the week doing routines and get to know you games, and art and math games and writing and lessons on being good people...like making friends and helping others. I also had to do some testing to see what groups each child should be in. In my new school the students rotate for math and reading. The bad news is I teach all the really low readers, which means I teach low kids, ones that can't recognize letters half of the time. It will be a challenge for sure, but I am really looking forward to building them up and making them confident little people. I have some real chnaracters in my class, one with a lischp...teascher, teacsher...whastch tchime isch lunsch? And one who is a refugee from Somalia, ZERO english skills, but a beautiful beautiful girl, and eager to learn, she wears a hijab and everything :)

Bummer: I am sick. already. I know its a combination of stress and a new schedule and GERMS, but I wash my hands all the time, my students always put hand sanitizer on, they just pick their yucky little button noses and thier boogers end up all over the place, in their mouths (BARF) on their clothes, rubbed onto their own hands, desks, pencils, etc etc etc...and they make me ill! Darn it! I'm hoping my immune system with kick it up a notch. I am so achy and stuffy I don't know what to do! Drugs are the answer I think...any 'sure thing' magical remedies out there? Let me know!

I LOVE the way my classroom ended up looking

First day of school! Can you tell this dress is my FAVORITE?!?!?! It was John's first day of the semester at the U too, cute yes?

With my lunch bag and everything...so exciting!

Please ignore the MESS that is my desk...it always looks like this, organized chaos!

"THE" leaf, remember how bad I wanted this leaf, I wish I had 2 more! Penelope hanging out...lol....hanging out! LOL!!!

The reading corner..it didn't quite turn out how I had envisioned it, but it's still pretty cute. The owl, the leaves, the BOOKS :) Love it! The kids REALLY love it, they think our classroom is the "Bomb" their words...not mine. I like it.
I made this word wall...if they don't know how to spell a word, they go over and see if it's in the word wall, for example, if they don't know how to spell 'friend', they go look in the 'f's. if the word is there, they take it to their desk, spell it, and return the card to the 'f's. If the word is not there, they bring me a card and a pen and say "friend". I write it on the card, and they use it to spell. this way I don't have to tell kids a trillion times how to spell the word 'friend'. nice. and SO cute!

All my chairs were mismatched, anad my desks were different heights. I begged the custodian to be my friend and help me switch out chairs and fix my desks, I am a little ocd about them all being the same color, height, etc. I love it when things match, and I LOVE these old green chairs!

View from the back of the room

View from the door

All these bulletin boards will be full of things eventually, like art and vocabulary words etc...

Notice the flags at the top, made by me out of fabric, they took me FOREVER to make , but I will use the FOREVER so it's okay :)

Had to bedazzle my computer desk, just some extra fabric I had...nice touch though right?
My wall of embroidery hoops, inspired by Jessica! Thanks Jess, I love them! I am working on some curtains that match these...they are taking far too long to finish...bit off more than I care t chew at the moment! :)

A few more things....

Found FIVE dresses for FIVE dollars EACH!!! Talk about a five dollar FREAK OUT!!! This is the first of the five that I have worn, paired it with a sassy black belt thanks to Jana, and I wish you could see my hair twisted back...it was adorable.

butter yellow with Grey polka-dots, I love the collar and the buttons, sorry the pic isn't the best, feeling WAY to lazy to edit photos!

Also, Jana took John and I to float down the Provo River, it was GORGEOUS! (And a little cold) but so much fun!


One more thing, I just finished this dress! I LOVE it, i'm even making 2 more with this pattern, (the same as I have made in the past) it's seriously THE most comfortable thing to wear! I love when I can be comfy and cute at the same time! I got the green fabric for like 50 cents a yard at a wal-mart close out...SCORE! And the middle section is an Amt butler print that I LOVE!!!

Crafty pics...

So I finally got around to taking pictures of some crafty things I've been up to...enjoy!

I happened upon this FABULOUS already vinyl covered fabric at a quilt shop this weekend, it spoke to me...I had to have it and when I saw it I knew what needed to be done with it. I love it so much, when Mom and I drove home I asked her if she would lay the fabric out on her lap so I could glance at it while I was driving, it's a happy feeling. The actual recovering of the chairs took all of 15 minutes and then I just kept looking at them. So beautiful, so perfect, so me. Infact, when I had washed my face and brushed my teeth down stairs, I had to tip toe back upstairs and take a peek at the little beauties before I went to sleep. Now that is what I call a satisfying craft project!

BEFORE CHAIR...not my style...

After chair, exactly my flow...

My cute mom, testing em out...and a cute new pair of chairs!

This little darling is Penelope. I got the idea from a shop in Etsy, but the yo-yo feathers were my idea. She is SO cute, she turned out much cuter than even I imagined! :) Love when that happens. She will have a prominent place in my classroom, which by the way is coming along, if ever so slowly! :)


I scored this FABULOUS IKEA lampshade that has my name written all over it at a yard sale for 10 bucks, the lady had just taken it out of the plastic that day, LOVE IT!!!

This is my new craft space, it is ever so handy, and large and lovely. I have all my fabrics and crafties in just the right places, (I got the white shelves for free, they are brand new ikea shelves, I love my life!...long story)

Mom was here for a few days, much to my delight! we talked and went to visit grandies and talked and went to get ice cream and talked and went to a movie and talked and painted our nails and talked and ate yummy food and talked and talked and talked. It was SO good to have my mom all to my self for a lot of her visit, it was a much needed momma therapy! Thanks mom, I love your face!

The green and teal containers were from the dollar store, the handled totes I had already and I labeled them with my cricut and brown vinyl lettering.

This mobile was so fun to make! I got the idea from Jessica's blog, I think she made hers out of paper, these ones are double sided, one side is felt, the other is a fun scrap print. I glued the top circles onto an embroidery hoop. So fast and fun!

That's all for now, i have more to post BUT the rest of my cute stuff is at school!

Almost an entire month...

Okay, so I have been checking blogs ALL month, but have had little motivation to update on my own. The weird thing is, I have tons to blog about...I'm just too busy to do it all at once, and it seems daunting when I have a LOT to catch up on, you know?

-Well John's birthday was last month, it rocked. I took him on a date to a YUMMY chinese restaurant in bountiful and to see a musical called "James Blonde" it was a spoof, very ridiculous, but entertaining :)

-I went to my family reunion in Idaho, with my family, John couldn't come :( but we had a great time camping and swimming and eating and playing!

-I've been crafting my guts out!!! All I ever want to do is craft CUTE things, and shop for bargains to make cute things out of!!! I don't have any pics right now because I just haven't got around to taking any, but TRUST me, I will post pics soon and you will be amazed!

-I've been doing homework...a LOT of it. I'm stuck right now because I am writing a literature review, but in order to write it, I have to read TONS of academic journal articles, which are basically written in a foreign language, its just a lot to process at a time, so I am not moving as fast as I should.

-I went to GIRLS CAMP!!! My favorite thing ever! I love being in Young Womens! I loved the testimony meeting, the songs both fun and spiritual, the hikes, the crafts, but mostly just getting to know the cute girls and rockin leaders in my ward! (It was stake camp, but we camped in wards).

-TOO MUCH DETAIL ALERT!!!
I have been literally melting for a month. I had some irregular cell action on my cervix, my pap came back irregular, so I had to have my cervix frozen. My doc literally stuck a freezing wand up in me that was hooked to a freezy-thingy, and froze my cervix for 3 minutes, waited a minute and froze it for another 2. Apparently tons of people have this done all the time. He said it wouldn't hurt, that I didn't need anyone to come with me (I asked John to come anyway) and that I would be just fine, just a little bit of cramping...WHAT.EVER! It hurt so bad, and my doc office is 45 minutes away, I was so glad John was there to drive me home, I felt like someone had stapled my ovaries to the ground, it hurt so bad, I had to stop along the way home to puke and poo...it was bad. So since I was frozen, I now melt. You would think, how much could it melt, it's not like there's a lot of surface area in there to freeze, how much could it be? Well, a lot more than you think that's what. I've gone through more pads than I have ever seen in my life. It feels like when you're on the first or second day of your period, adn you have a heavy flow, and your tampon is full and you can feel that you need to change it...NOW and you can feel warm ooze coming out...yeah, like that for 2 weeks, and now it's lighter, but now the dead skin is making its exit. I ahve no idea about childbirth, and what happens after, but maybe this was a good prep. A new sensation to say the LEAST! :)

-Had a stellar barbeque for the 4th of july at Nate and Amy's. Did some fireworks, ate some good food and played with the kids.

-What else, some friends have had babies, Sarah, welcome Ivy Mae, and Emily, welcome Carly Renee! YAY for babies!

-And my best friend in the world Amy was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer. A treatable cancer that was caugth early enough for good treatment and recovery, but still draining, exhausting, scary chemo and all that comes with healing your body and ridding it from the cancer. Amy is so amazing though, her sense of humor keeps everyone's spirits up and she is a fighter! I'm working on some crafts for her, if any of you crafty ladies would like to help, let me know. Amy, I know you'll read this, I love you so much! Can't wait to see you in August!

-Weel, that's mostly it, I just feel overwhelmed with life right now, it will all be fine when my papers are written! Whew, so that's the update and I am such a loser for taking so long to write. Love you all!