Christmas

Matt and I are so lucky to have such wonderful family. We both get along really well with our in-laws and family functions are something we really look forward to. Needless to say, Christmas was fantastic. Matt's family celebrates on Christmas eve, and we all go bowling together and have dinner and presents later. Bowling was a lot of fun with the kids this year because they were both actually into the bowling part.
Remember when you didn't care about how many pins you knocked down, all that you care about was watching that ball roll down the lane? Claire was so funny. She did this every time it was her turn.






After bowling, we had dinner, opened presents, and watched the Fischer 2010 video that Randy made. That is probably my favorite part of the night because it is so fun to go over everything we did during the year. Then the kids played with their new toys, meaning all the boys played with Brad's new nerf guns. We ended up leaving around 11:00, only to go home and do Christmas just the two of us. I like doing this because we usually are already in the present-opening spirit and it is fun to be together.

On Christmas morning, we slept in until 10:00! Then we headed out to my mom's house and spent the whole day there, eating, sleeping, opening presents, playing games, watching basketball and just messing around. The Decker family came over for dinner and we all got into some games together. It was so fun to have everyone there... well Jeff was only partly there because he had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to go to work. It was such a great day.

Merry Christmas!

Christmastime

This December has been super busy for us, Matt has been finishing his semester and had to take almost a full week off for finals so he could "study," which basically means so he could sleep in and have me help him finish his take-home final and copy old tests into his notes... Anyways... It was crazy for me to finish off the month and get my students all set for the break, and finally get caught up on that stack of stuff on my desk that I can never seem to find time for.
Luckily, through all the craziness, Matt and I have been able to do some of the things on my mental "Christmas To-Do List," including:
1. Attend the "Forgotten Carols" (Easily one of my favorite traditions)
2. See the lights downtown with Tim, Kamie, Kendra, Lance, Jenna and Jake
3. Attend the Christmas performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir featuring David Archuletta
4. Shop, shop, shop (which I HATE, HATE, HATE!!!!)
5. Eat lots of Myrna's sweet rolls
6. Have my family over for dinner to celebrate Alex's 21st birthday
7. Go with my mom, Jeff, Alex, and Cassie to get my mom's Christmas tree and have dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday
8. Listen to SOME Christmas music

I really do love this time of year.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Our New Apartment

This post has been long time coming, so sorry for all you people who have been waiting to see pictures of our new apartment. We are so happy to be here, we love having two bedrooms, a big open family room, a nice kitchen, a washer and dryer, a big closet, and so many other things! If you want to see more, call me and freaking come over!

Our family room (view from the second bedroom)

Our family room (view from the entry)

Our "dining room" (and you can see our washer and dryer in the kitchen)

Our second bedroom AKA office/LIBRARY

Our bedroom

The kitchen! Yay!

Pictures

Ok so photo shoots are not as fun when you don't have kids, but I did like some of these pictures and had to share...

Christmas Decorations

For my birthday, my mom bought me a bunch of way cute Christmas ornaments and I was so excited to put them all on my tree, and put up all my other fun decorations. I decided to go with the bright green and red colors for my decorations, and it turned out super cute! (Of course, none of the pictures really do this justice...)

Since I don't have a mantle anymore, this is in our window:

Matt was sad we don't have a Pepsi wreath anymore, but I love how this one turned out:

The tree!

Matt had to have some input on the tree, and since my tree topper was too big, this was it:




21 DAYS!

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO WORK TOMORROW!

Winter Crafting

For my birthday, Lance and Kendra gave me a gift card to the Wood Connection and Kamie and Tim gave me a gift card to Hobby Lobby... Obviously, I love to craft! I decided to finally get myself something for Thanksgiving, although I didn't make it until Thanksgiving was over... But oh well. As you can see here, this was the end product.



I also bought some cute trees to add to my Christmas decorations (my mom bought me Christmas ornaments for my birthday too, I'm so spoiled... You will see those soon, once we get our tree decorated).


And finally I needed to make my own version of my totally favorite quote to go in my kitchen. Since the quote reminds me of sweet treats, I had to go with the black and pink, although Kamie and Jenny wanted theirs to match their kitchens. The tan and red one is Kamie's and the black and red one is Jenny's. They are not completely finished, but close! I can't wait to finish and put mine up!

We've Moved!

Yay! We are officially out of our one-bedroom apartment and into a bigger apartment! Yay! Pictures will be coming soon, I can't bring myself to put pictures on the blog of an apartment that still has boxes sitting around.

The Teacher Credo

I would make one amendment...
"I will not yell in class EVERY DAY."

Life After 11 PM

So, Matt and I are pretty boring, I'll be honest. We haven't been out with friends in forever, and rarely are up past 10 or 10:30. So after I got done babysitting on Saturday, Matt and I got together with Tim, and Tom and Lindsay to do some bowling. It is a true testament to Tom and Lindsay as friends that they came down and hung out with us when we called them at 9:30 at night and wanted to meet up at 10:30, when they live in Roy. When we got there, the guy said we wouldn't be able to use our coupon we have, so after being indecisive for a little while, Tom, Lindsay, and Matt and I went back inside and bowled. Wow, I forgot what life was like late at night. We sat near a very interesting crowd to say the least.
After we played two traditional games, Tom made up a new game. In this version of bowling, you try to score the LOWEST. Now you are probably thinking, "Gutter ball every time." In this game, a gutter ball is worth 10 points. Not so easy now, is it! Wow we had so much fun. People thought we were crazy when we were all stoked to hit one pin, and mad when we got a strike. The picture below shows the final scores for everyone (I am number 1, Matt is 2, Linds is 3, and Tom is 4). Take the final score, and add ten for each gutter ball, and you have Matt as the winner! Crazy fun.
Thank you Tom and Lindsay for a very fun night out!

Christmas books

You all know that I am crazy about books. So, of course I think the best gifts are books! Please, if you want to get books for your family or friends for Christmas, go to my book club site and order there! You get everything scholastic has to offer without paying retail or shipping! I am putting in an order on Friday, November 19, in order to make sure everything gets here in time! Please check it out! I get points and free books for all orders. I use these for books for my classroom and gifts for my students who don't have books at home. I promise this is worth it for you!
Website: www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Activation code: DH2FZ
If you decide yo order, please put your name in the student name line so I know who to bring everything to! I will deliver everything to you personally before December 4!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

My List of Yay!

Yay #1: Parent-teacher conferences are over!
Yay #2: Only two weeks until I have A WHOLE WEEK OFF for Thanksgiving!
Yay #3: Only three weeks after that until I have TWO WHOLE WEEKS OFF for Christmas!
Yay #4: Christmas is coming! (I don't own Thanksgiving decorations, so I started putting up my Christmas decorations today and I liked it)
Yay #5: We are looking for a new place to live!

Halloween Weekend

For Halloween weekend, Matt and I headed up to Richmond to spend time with the family. Diet, Myrna, Tim, Kamie, Steven, Kari, Jenny, Randy and Brad and Claire all spent the weekend lounging around, eating a lot of junk food, joking, laughing, wrestling, and doing all sorts of fun things together. We carved pumpkins, dressed up in our costumes, went trick-or-treating with the kids (in the rain), played games, and had a fun weekend! Thank you Jenny and Randy for sharing your home with all of us for the whole weekend! It was such a blast!

The Rest of my Birthday

Last Friday, Matt promised to take me on a birthday date. I was so excited since I had spent the whole day doing report cards and getting ready for parent-teacher conferences. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and cheesecake (of course), then we went to This is the Place for their haunted house/forest. We wanted to go to the Night at the Zoo but we were too late. Hopefully next year. We were not disappointed though by our choice at This is the Place. It was so much fun, and actually pretty well done for a haunted house/haunted forest mix. They used the entire place, inside and out, and had surprises around every corner. Our favorite part were the war trenches, it was so different from anything we have ever done before. What a fun night, and thank you to my cute husband!

Party Like a Fifth Grader

So Halloween at an elementary school is fun if you are a mom or a student, but SUCKS if you are a teacher. 600 kids on a sugar high, sweating to death in their costumes, slutty parents dressed in costumes chasing their kids around taking pictures during the parade... ugh. What a WASTE of a day.

This year, we decided not to do anything important, and just party all day. We have been working with the kids and parents on two goals that they work on at home. When they work on their goals, they sign a calendar. The kids who brought back the calendar completed went to a special Halloween party. We hung doughnuts up on strings and watched the kids eat them without hands (so funny by the way), and the kids loved it. In between doughnut hanging, we played Freeze Dance. This was the best part of the day (ok, the smell was terrible), and it was incredibly fun to watch the kids let loose. This video doesn't even do this justice. The music was blasting and you could hear it, with the door closed, down the hall. Funnest party ever.

The Deer Hunt

Matt spent every weekend this October hunting and camping. On the last weekend, Lance shot his deer. Matt of course couldn't let his little brother get a deer and not get one himself. So he went up with Diet on the LAST NIGHT of the deer hunt and SHOT HIS DEER! He was proud of himself, especially because his deer is bigger than Lance's deer (sorry Lance, but it's true). When I saw the pictures, I couldn't believe how gorgeous it was in the mountains with all the new snow! Wow.

Happy Birthday to Me!

On Friday I celebrated by 23rd birthday! This was my first year with my own class on my birthday and the kids were so cute to me all day. Some even brought me little presents and made me cards. Kids are so funny. My principal came in and sang to me, my mom and Cassie came and brought me flowers, and the secretary called me the "birthday girl" over the intercom all day. It was pretty fun. The kids loved the Krispy Kremes I brought to share. After school, Matt gave me my birthday present! He got me a sander for all my craft projects! So cute. Then I went out to dinner at Olive Garden with Jenny, Kari and Myrna! After dinner, we went to see "Thriller" by the Odyssey Dance Company at Kingsbury Hall. This is my favorite Halloween tradition, this is the fourth year I've gone to the show and I still love it! We met Kendra, Jenna, and Jenna's mom at the show. It's always fun to go with people who haven't been before. After the show, we all went to Cheesecake Factory for cheesecake! YUM! MY FAVORITE! What a fun girl's night out! Thank you girls for coming, and thank you boys for letting us go! (Matt headed up to the deer hunt just before we left for dinner. That's what I get for having a birthday in October during hunting season)

After the show!

Fall in the Mountains

Last week, I went for a hike just near big cottonwood canyon with Alex, my mom and Jeff. I'm not much of a hiker, so luckily we went on a trail that wasn't too tough and was mostly shaded, so it was a really nice afternoon! So much fun! The leaves are all changing colors and it was so beautiful. I love fall!

It's a Problem...

So remember my summer booklist? I wrote about "The Red Pyramid" written by Rick Riordan, the same author as the Percy Jackson series. Well, I don't know how, but he did it again!

This book begins a second series based around the Percy Jackson theme. Not only is it the same idea, but it brings in the same characters and settings, while also adding new ideas. It came out on Tuesday and I finished this morning. I could not put it down and now I am craving the next book in the series.
Just FYI:
Kane Chronicles 2: No title yet, comes out summer 2011
Heroes of Olympus 2: The Son of Neptune, comes out fall 2011
I CAN'T WAIT!
(My husband thinks I'm a nerd, but that's just because he is intimidated by reading)

Halloween Project

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year, and of course I am sorely tempted by anything Halloween, especially things from my favorite wood store. When I saw these, I thought, I can do this with stuff I already have! I spent less than 10 bucks on everything and am very proud of myself! I can't wait for Halloween!

Saturday Night

Last night after the boys got back from Priesthood Meeting, we went over to Diet and Myrna's for rootbeer floats. I was craving Krispy Kremes, so we got in the car to go to Provo to get some. As luck would have it, we got pulled over and I got a speeding ticket. Matt was pissed! It was a good teaching opportunity for me to help Matt learn how to have a good attitude when you can't change your situation (haha). Those were some expensive doughnuts!

LOVE

I swiped these off a fun blog I stalk...
Had to share...