JR Smith Elementary

I started my practicum on Wednesday and I am in a 2nd grade class at JR Smith Elementary in Heber. I car pool with 5 other girls who go to the same school. We take my car everyday because it has 6 seatbelts and everyone chips in for gas, this is cheaper than driving two cars up. It takes about 30-40 minutes to get to Heber by driving through the canyon, but it will be worse once it starts to snow here. I just love my students already, things have gone well the first three days but I know that things won't always be this good, I will have hard days. Starting on Monday I will be teaching guided reading everyday and I am excited for it. Some of the things the teacher had me do today was grade papers, give spelling tests, and teach the math lesson. I can't wait to see what the next three weeks have in store for me.

WAY TO GO SPARTANS

Blessings

So I was stressing out a lot because the heat in my car wasn't working. I had no idea how I was going to afford to get it fixed. Cody (Jen Spencer's husband) came over to take a look at it and wasn't sure what was wrong with it but told me that I needed to get more antifreeze put into it. So I put the antifreeze in it yesterday before I went to go get it looked at. Lo and behold all it needed was some antifreeze and a new cap. It cost me about $20 to get it fixed. The Lord definitely gave me a huge old blessing. Now I can stress about more important things. Love you all!!!

A few 7th pictures

I actually have about 8 picture files on my computer, so here are just a few of the pictures. This picture is of Jess and Alysha enjoying cake at my birthday party. This next one is of me and Parker at a Tiger's game. I don't recall if it was the summer of 06 or 07.

The next picture is from the mission and I only had about 2 months left. My companion Sis Griffin was determined that I should marry Elder Potter (the one on the far right), she is still determined to this day. Next is a nice close up of Shelby and the last picture is of me and my "daughter" Sis Stott in my very last area on the mission. Those were some really good times. Love you all!!!!!

7th picture

Sorry it has taken me so long to do this. Since we are using my parents computer and I am on the one upstairs right now I don't have much to chose from. My dad had their hard drive pretty much wiped due to virus problem a couple of weeks ago so, there were actually only 7 pictures in the my pictures folder. And the 7th one happened to by a picture of our wedding day.
Oh to look like that again :)

The house

http://www.flinthomes.net/cgi-bin/homesearch/hsh
This is a link for you to check out the house we want to buy. I hope it works.

What's new...

Charlie starts teaching this Thursday. He went today to shadow the teacher he is taking over for. She is going to be the math intervention person for K-6 in the district once Charlie takes over. He wants to see how she runs her classes and get the book(s) so he can start preparing. He is going to try to keep the classes structured as close to what she does as possible since the kids are already so far into the school year. He might be able to change to more of his own style after the semester changes, if he gets new classes then. We still aren't very sure how it will work out quite yet.

I will be sending the paper work to our realtor this morning so she can turn in our offer on the house I mentioned earlier. We want to get the ball rolling and see how willing the bank is to work with us. I'll keep you posted.

We had a surprise party for one of my good friends at our house on Friday night. She had no idea until she walked up to our house and saw the balloons we'd hung for decorations through the front window. Charlie had wanted to hang something over the window so she wouldn't see them, but we didn't. Now I wish we would've. It was a fun party. Not many people came, but it was probably better that way. I love planning things like parties. I haven't given a surprise party since my senior year in high school. It was fun planning it and trying to keep it a secret.

My friend Amy, from high school, I'm happy to report, got married on Saturday. She is that last of my friends from high school to tie the knot. I'm so happy she finally was able to. She's been with her, now, husband for about 8 years. It's about time they finally made it official. She was beautiful and the wedding was nice. Most of my friends made it to the reception. It was fun to catch up with them. My friend, Carolyn, is expecting her first baby on the 24th of this month. She's having a boy but won't tell anyone what the name they've picked out is yet. I'm happy for her. It's nice that my friends from high school are finally catching up to where Charlie and I are in life; being married with kids. But, we still really don't have that much in common and don't really hang out together all that much. I'm not really that sad about it though.

We had a full weekend, and it's not going to get any better for the rest of this month. We're holding on to the seat of our pants and hoping to make it

Tag You're It

This is an idea my sister, Jana, just did on our family blog because we were kind of in a posting slump so I thought I'd try it on our blog too. Go to your My Pictures on your computer and find the 7th picture listed on it. Post it in a new posting and tell us about it. Here are mine. I have multiple because we have lots of folders of pictures on our My Pictures and so I picked the first picture in the 7th folder, then I picked the 7th picture in the 7th folder, then I picked the 7th single picture on the My Pictures. Enjoy!

This is Makayla in the giant bubble exibit at the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum. We went there with my brother Kurt and his wife, Heather and my sister, Kari and her husband, Eric last August. Kari and Eric had come into town to visit so we went to this museum for something to do while they were here. Kurt and Heather are in the background of this picture.

This is Jaxson playing the giant pipe organ exhibit at the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum on that same trip.

This is my nephew, Harvey. He is my brother, Kurt's son. His first birthday is Oct. 25th. He just learned how to walk about two weeks ago. He's a cutie!

Charlie has a job!

I just thought I'd post, for Hannah's sake, that Charlie finally has a job. He'll be working at Beecher High school. We aren't sure when he will acutally start because he has to be officially hired by the school board, but the school offered the job and he accepted. The school board is more of a formality, but until that is taken care of he can't actually start working. We are excited for him to have a job, but not very excited about the school that he'll be working for. It's a pretty rough, inner city school, with some rough students. It's also going to be for 7th and 8th grade math. Charlie doesn't really like middle school either, but he thinks he has a good chance of getting into the high school next year. They have a pretty high turn over rate for teachers because the school is so rough. I'm for sure going to be getting him pepper spray to carry and I joke that I might have to get him a tazer gun as well. I know the Lord will watch over him. Now we can move on to buying a house. We have one picked out. Now we just have to get a mortgage for it which might be trickier said than done.

Birthday Fun!

I had a real good birthday! I had class at 8am which wasn't so much fun, but my friend made cupcakes and the class sang to me. After class I came home and did nothing since it was my birthday. I went out to dinner with a small group of friends at the Olive Garden. My roommate Jamie bought me dinner and got me a $20 gift card for Walmart. My other roommates Victoria and Kristen bought cake and ice cream and also got me a &20 gift card. I invited people over for cake and ice cream at 9pm and about 20 people showed up. I had a lot of fun but I was also glad to see them go because I was ready for bed.

For Logan!

So I have decided to start a new tradition for the family. Since I can not be with you, you will all see me sing to you on your birthday. Here is the site for Logan's song. http://FreeGabMail.com/AV/Viewer.html?SID=cCxN27u5H297T265

For Mother!

Happy birthday Mom! I made this little video for you. I love you so very much!!!! http://FreeGabMail.com/AV/Viewer.html?SID=TtH3mgSAjRWhmdN1