Thanksgiving and BLACK Friday

Thanksgiving was CRAZY this year for Brian and I. Good thing we both love to eat and can just take things as they come. Brian had to work the whole weekend in Salt Lake so that made for a lot of driving. We left our home on Wednesday for Brian to head down to Salt Lake. He worked Wednesday night then Thursday morning. After the morning shift on Thursday he headed to Kaysville to meet up with me and my family at my grandparents. Originally we weren't going to eat there but our Thanksgiving meal got moved to 5:30 and you can only go without eating for so long........SO we grab a small plate each and enjoyed our first Thanksgiving meal. After eating we headed to Corinne to see Brian's mom and sisters. It was a lot of fun catching up with them and spending some quality time out there. We weren't able to stay for too long though because we had to pick up some food from my parent's house to take with us to Plain City.
In Plain City we had our second Thanksgiving meal.....which was delicious. We then grabbed some pie and flew out the door to head to Wellsville to plan our Black Friday shopping. It is tradition that we go every year AND we have a pretty sweet system down. This year we had a little bit of a hiccup to those plans as the stores opened earlier then EVER and ALL AT THE SAME TIME! We only got stuck at Kohl's and no other store opened for four hours so we stood in line (some of us anyway) instead of getting a nap.
At five the rest of the store's opened. Brian had a football game on Black Friday so we only let him stay with us for the first few stores, then it was night time for him. This Black Friday was insane....especially Walmart but you never know where next year will lead Brian and I so we wanted to have the most memorable time we could and I think we accomplished that. We also hit a record time in and out of the store....how's four minutes?? Yeah, I didn't lie when I said we have a system down. After shopping the rest of the day was just exhausting for us. I helped my mom get Christmas out and ran a few errands that we were unable to do early in the morning due to different events, while Brian spent the day at his last home football game. Then Saturday and Sunday Brian worked and I chilled.
Saturday I did make a trip with my mom back down to my grandparents. My grandma was so sick on Thanksgiving that she couldn't even get out of bed. So when my cousin asked for some help in getting some family stories, my mom and I went to go visit with my grandma. I found out about some things about my grandpa's brothers that I don't really know and discovered that my grandma's side of the family has twins in it (identical and all of them have been boys....interesting huh?). Now my grandma is just surprised no one has had twins yet and thinks one of us granddaughters should have some....what do you say to that?
Overall, Thanksgiving break was fun for us....if not a bit lonely with being apart the whole time. But I got to sleep in and Brian earned a little more cash for us. Now we just have to find the time to set up a date to us that money on some us time.

Pinterest Christmas Craft

I really do love to craft and be creative....Pinterest has just added fuel to the fire. I have made several things that I have pinned to pinterest. The first Christmas thing I made was an ornament out of a light bulb. It turned into the cutest little snowman.....only problem, I forgot to get a picture and since my niece helped me finish it she wanted it so she gave it to her other grandma so she could see it on the tree. :( But now I have just made the cutest little candy cane start weath. It was a little harder to make then I originally thought it would be but it still turned out way cute.
Here is what I did:

I started out with a box of candy canes and some small peppermint candies. You need ten of each.

You then hot glue them together into five hearts.

You then place two behind and glue one heart on top.

Then you glue the fourth heart on top. The fifth heart is a little tricky and where it got a little harder. One end goes behind and one goes on top. This may be where I would start next time instead of the way I did.

But it still turned into a cute start like it was suppose to.
You then take the candies and glue them onto the edge where two candy canes meet.
Like this

Once all the candies are one you can hang it up. I decided to add a cute ribbon to have it dangle from since I love ribbons.

Viola!! Done. It was super easy and way fun to do. Plus it gave me more ideas to try with candy canes....not sure I will this year but maybe when I have my own place or something.

Now I also might still be making more ornaments from light bulbs since I had three burnt out lights at my house so began with three light bulbs and my parents just had a burnt out light too. So while one is already begun in a new idea I still have two to make snowmen out of. We shall see if I get time to try it again.

My students

I had a student who moved away, so we took a class picture to give him before he left. Now I have a new little boy in our class. But here is a picture of my morning kindergarten class before that student left and with a few students missing.

Brian's Birthday

November 18th was Brian's big day.....his 26th birthday. If you ask him if he feels his age, he will probably say yes since he has begun to have interviews for different careers. (The NBA lockout just ended probably too so there is a chance he could be called for the second interviews now.....we will have to see.) Brian had to be in Salt Lake on his birthday for his internship and I had school in Logan. So we didn't get to see each other until later that night. It, of course, snowed like crazy on his birthday. (There was a huge snow storm the day he was born so no big surprise there.....I think it snows probably 90% of the time on his birthday.) We met up in Riverdale to do some quick shopping then headed to Red Robin for his birthday dinner. We had a lot of fun with the family. Thanks for all working with our crazy schedules and meeting up with us. Brian and I then spent the weekend together in Salt Lake relaxing and enjoying some football games (Brian's favorite thing to do watch sports). It was a lot of fun....too bad he had to work in between the hang outs and the whole rest of the weekend.

My gifts to him

Grant being silly

The whole gang. Thanks everyone for coming!!

Harry Potter

One thing my school does each year is a Harry Potter day. They go all out and have the children all get sorted and placed into the different houses. They then have them sit at their designated tables for the house while they eat lunch. They whole school participates and everyone has a great time. They do it every year when they have Thanksgiving for lunch. My teacher brought me a lunch and had us sit at the head table to watch the action. It was a lot of fun seeing all the teachers get into it and have just as much fun as the students.

This is the lunch room all decorated, I guess this year was mellow compare to past years.

This guy's name is Harry Potter (he is from the community) He comes in every year to help sort the students.

My supervisor dressed up as the snitch.

The director who is new this year took his place as Dumbledore.

It was great fun to participate. My teacher and I both got sorted. I was placed in Gryffindor while my teacher I work with was placed in Slytherin. It was a great day to relax and have a ton of fun. The children just loved it. I love being at a school that does fun and unique things like this.

My Students

I technically don't have direct permission to post pictures of my students but their is a blog for each class so if you want to check it out here are the links:
http://am-kindergarten.blogspot.com/
http://pm-kindergarten.blogspot.com/
This is why I have two random testing posts. I needed to be able to help my teacher create a slideshow since our children love to have their pictures taken. Now I know how to do it!!

Testing Slide Show 2

Testing, Testing

November 7, 2011

Almost there.....

....with graduation. My last big project is due November 14th, one week from today. I am almost done with it. I also have all my lesson plans and units typed up just need to put the finishing touches on them. All this means is that this weekend was progressive and now I am almost done with student teaching. That is so crazy to think and say. But this weekend I finished it mostly all up while relaxing at my parent's house.
Then after we saw this beautiful baby

Get blessed Brian crashed and I typed like a crazy woman. However because I am so close to finishing up everything I was able to finally spend some time on some things I have been wanting to do. It isn't done but it is started so I am going to show you the before and after pictures of painting.

Before it got anything done (except the metal taken off)

Added the posts needed

All painted and ready except for two things

Any guesses on what it is going to be. I have the template ready I just need another hour to type up some things and it will be ready to go! I can't wait.
That was our weekend. Nice and relaxing! We also got a calling in our ward.....we are CTR 4 primary teachers. It will be a lot of fun and we can't wait.

Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun this year....until it was over and Brian and I got sick. But that is another story. My school allows students to dress up which means I need to dress up. I haven't done this is years!!! So I was at a complete blank as to what to dress up as, until Sunday morning/Sunday night. Here is what I ended up being:

I was a cowgirl. The Kindergarteners loved my costume and I have my brother-in-law to thank for most of it. Celest donated her stuff too but the belt buckle and boots were mine.  I wore it all day. Which was fun, since the nieces and nephews liked it too. Brian's grandpa did also.
We went to Brian's sister's trunk or treat then hung out with the whole gang at grandpa's later. It was a lot of fun.

The dressed up gang

Our dinner

Brian tested out some glasses to see if he could be cool.

Grandkids and Grandpa

Brian with three of his cute nieces.

We also helped Brian's nephew get all dressed in his cheesey costume. After the costume was done we made him pose for pictures.

It was a fun night until 1 am when Brian began throwing up. Turns out some how we all got exposed to the flu. Brian got the worst part out of the two of us. I only had a sensitive stomach and digestive system while he got knocked out flat. He still isn't totally feeling like himself a week later. Hopefully he will soon.

Another Birthday

We have quite a few birthdays in Brian's family in the fall. It seems like every other weekend or so we are getting back together for another birthday dinner. This last one was for Brian's little nephew Mischief.

He got a potato Head from his aunt....he loved it.

Using Pooh to climb as high as he could. He also used the little slanted wall behind him as a slide right after.

getting ready to blow out his candle

Doing it all by himself.

Brian's birthday is next for us to celebrate but Brian and I are talking about disappearing for that weekend since I will be all done with my assignments for student teaching and we need a couple moment away. Guess we will see when we celebrate his.

Utes Football Game

Back on October 29th Brian got 3 tickets to the Utes football game. We debated for a long time who we should invite to come with me. In the end due to the activities that were being provided we opted to invite these two kids.

They look really happy there, huh? This is us waiting for the Ute players to come down the sidewalk to the stadium. We got there a little early and waited in the sun all dressed in black for the blackout....so we were getting a little warm at this point.

Here they are giving out high fives to all the players. They thought it was pretty cool to meet the players like that. It was funny listening to their comments about the guys height or build and saying good luck to them.
After the Ute Walk we headed to the tailgate party....I feel bad but the boys definitely got exposed to quite the scene with a drunk lady.

We got a picture at the tailgate party taken by AT&T but it doesn't want to load here so go to my facebook if you want to see it. After the tailgate party we booked it to the car to get all our warm stuff for the game, we then ran back to the stadium, hurried inside and headed to trick or treating.

The boys got a lot of stuff. More then I thought they would do. This is a picture of the flashing sticks that the baseball players were handing out. All the other teams were there too with their schedules and pictures plus candy. The boys got hats, glasses, shirts, the glowing sticks, candy, and big candy bars. Yeah they loved every minute of it.

Here are the boys in their bling and enjoying the beginning of the game. We had some fun people sitting around us until the crazy guys came and sat behind us. But the boys had a lot of fun. I guess we got the seat where the subway promotion was going on. If I had sat in Dillon's seat I would have gotten a $25 gift card. Before I knew that though they moved up one row. Dillon was so sad he wasn't sixteen so that he could have won BUT we made it on the jumbo screen.

The Utes played great and we won in the end. The boys just enjoyed the atmosphere and then sent the last quarter trying to stay warm. It got pretty cold on us. Brian came up and visited in the fourth quarter between his last promotion.

The best part was just having fun and giving both of these boys some first experiences. Nathan was so excited to be at his first college football game. He was getting to experience all kinds of firsts. One thing that he wanted to do and was envy of were the people on the field. He just wanted to walk on it. So at the end of the game.....

We made his wish come true. We walked on the field and blended in with those waiting for the football players to come out. He was so excited about it. The boys both loved the cars Brian was put in charge of especially the one he got to drive. They wouldn't stop talking about it the whole way to get ice cream.

After the fun night, Brian and I knew we made the right decision. These boys were talking about the game and the fun they had for days. I know I had a blast even though I had just gotten a cold. Definitely a fun memory. Brian and I talked after ward and we hope to be able to do this with our nieces and nephews more.