Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Departmental Honors and Lost Phones.

As my day keeps going up, up, up...poor Kyle's keeps going down, down, down... :(

The most amazing day in all of history started with canceled school.  Then I got most everything on my to-do list done (scary, I know!).  Then I got a wonderful email that informed me that I was a finalist for the Academic Honors in Writing recognition, which was something I applied for at the beginning of December.  I have to go write a common essay with the other finalists in March, and we'll see what happens from there.  Guess being an English major and writing all those ridiculous essays paid off, huh?  The email also let me know that I'd been selected to receive Departmental Honors.  Yay!  

And THEN the announcement on the radio that school is on a two-hour-delay?!  It can't get any more perfect!

But poor, poor, poor sicky husband.  He is so stuffed up and sluggish and weak that I couldn't help but baby him all day (although that's strictly against my personal caring-for-the-sick policy).  Then he goes to his night class for the first time and loses his phone.  I'll go hunt for it tomorrow morning, and hopefully we find it!

Looking forward to going to school tomorrow :)

Student Teaching

So it's the semester of student teaching!  And so far, I love it (snow aside).

I absolutely love the school I'm at.  I love the teachers.  Although I've had half a day with the students, they seem very pleasant, helpful, and willing to learn (angels!).  I have TWO desks and have spent my evenings so far shopping for materials to stock them with.  I've also been working to get names in my gradebook, a parent letter drafted, and lesson plans formatted.  The drive is nice--not too long, not too short.  AND!  I have student teacher friends!  There are three other student teachers at my little school and although I hardly see them, we contact each other regularly after school for moral support!

So, eventually I want to get some pictures up of my desk.  I obviously can't take too many pictures of the classroom (and absolutely NONE of the students under any circumstances!), but I'd like to show you some of what I'm doing over the semester.  I'll at least show you where I'll be sitting at for the majority of it!  I've enjoyed very much using the things my parents and in-laws have gotten me for Christmas for the classroom!  All the school supplies and dress socks sure come in handy!  I'd have to say, though, my favorite belongings so far are my big-girl teaching bag and my lunch box.  Maybe I'll put up pictures of those, too, because I love them so much?  We'll see.

I can't wait to go tomorrow, provided that we don't have snow, of course.  I'm not complaining about the snow, though!  Yesterday I had my first early dismissal from school EVER (no, not a one, not even while I was attending school in Jay County!) and today school was cancelled.  I'm pretty sure I won't always be this excited about it because teachers and students have to make those up, but hey, regardless of how many snow days y'all get, I still graduate on May 7th!  

So just keep on snowing!

Update 4: Our First Anniversary

So, again, a little late, but better late than never, they say.

Our anniversary was on December 30th.  It was a good day and the weather was pretty warm, but not very pretty.  This made me happy that on our wedding day we got a good blanket of snow...I would have been disappointed if we had ugly mud in all our pictures!

We ended up getting each other a few gifts.  



Kyle did the manly thing and got me jewelry!  He also got me a movie that I can use in the classroom.  I did the right thing, too and got him a tie rack (meaning I listened to him because that's all he's been talking about needing over the past month and a half) and also a very nice commuter mug that you can heat in your car.  He talked about wanting the mug, too, and then promptly forgot about it so when he opened it he had a clueless look on his face and I had to remind him of the conversation--lame! 





We went out to Johnny Carino's afterward and dinner was DELICIOUS.  We got one of the family platters so we had to share...kind of like on Lady and the Tramp...except we definitely had separated our piles of spaghetti.  We're pretty territorial about our food, so that's okay!  Best part?  Dinner was mostly FREE thanks to some friends of ours who got us a gift card to Carino's for my bridal shower in November 2009!  Yeah...we're capable of saving gift cards for that long (although it was super hard).

We went shopping afterward, which is something we really enjoy doing together after we've eaten.  We spent a gift card at Target and Kohls and then went to the mall.  We weren't out for very late, but it was long enough.  Being married for a year makes you super old and you get tired super fast.  So we came back at about 8:30.  

Then the fun part....CAKE!



It doesn't quite look like year-old cake, does it?!  Still, Kyle couldn't handle the idea that it was a year old, so he could hardly eat any of it.  He had a nibble of icing, but that was it.  Then we had a discussion about what to do with the rest.  He wanted to toss it (the whole year-old thing, remember?) but it tasted even BETTER than I remembered it, plus that cake cost us $500, PLUS how rude to want to throw away a cake celebrating our union!  So I hunkered down and just ate the rest over the next day and a half.  And let me tell you what, it was worth it!



One other little happening on our anniversary...while we were out at Target, we spotted this "pet jacket" on sale for like 66 cents.  So we snagged it, knowing Tiger would hate us.  Here he is being a good little boy eating his treats (we had to bribe him to get it on):


And afterward rolling around in attempts to get it off of him.  Poor thing doesn't understand velcro!  I could have laughed all night, but I'd just had half of the cake, so we put him out of his misery and put the pet jacket away in the attic.  Don't worry, we'll get it out again when he gets nippy and needs a piece of humble pie!


All in all, can't wait to see what next year brings us!

Friday, January 7, 2011

More memorable dates (Kyle's opinions)

Now that we're married and it's time to move out of the "college-kid" phase, my husband has been particularly intrigued with the art of becoming a gentleman (and therein a better husband and future father).  He's found this website called "The Art of Manliness" that is a worldwide hit and run by an LDS couple.  He decided a while back that there needed to be more information on gentlemanly dating, so he wrote up a guest post about it:


http://artofmanliness.com/2011/01/06/4-suggestions-for-more-memorable-dates/

Wanna know how he won me over?  Read his ideas and find out :)