In a quick nutshell..

The last several weeks have been a blur as my summer has been wrapping up.  Celebrating Bryce's birthday 3 weekends in a row with Neal Diamond, dinners and a comedy club, and a weekend trip to Jackson Hole last weekend.  Since then, I have lived and breathed school, getting my classroom ready.  I love this time of year where I prepare for another year of teaching, ready for new changes, new students, and am always wanting to change things around in my classroom.  This year is no exception-I rearranged my whole room, causing me to have to organize and dejunk quite a bit, which is a good thing but has kept me extremely busy!  I'm LOVING how my room is turning out, though!   Here are a few pictures taken from this past week.  I didn't take a picture of my small group area or tables yet, they aren't ready!

My math manipulatives, organized and labeled for my students to use!

My whole group area/SMART board

My new reference "wall"

One view of my classroom library.  Love my new red rug from IKEA, bean bag chairs and pillows!

Another view of my classroom library.  Notice the cute tissue pom-poms.  Two of Bryce's nieces came and helped me in my classroom and helped me make these.  Darling huh?!

The two things that get me through most things in life:  Chili's chips and salsa, and Sonic's blue coconut diet coke!

30 Reasons Why I'm Proud To Be Me-#8

I haven't done one of these for a while, and I have to get 30 in before February 18th!  So reason number 8 of why I think being me is so fantastic- How much fun I love to have.  I'm all about trying new things and experiences and they always turn out to be so fun!  My fun for tonight?  Watching Neal Diamond in concert.  Yeah, buddy!

New...

I've had a busy few weeks with getting some new things in my life that I absolutely love!  My MacBook that I have had for over 3 years had an issue with the video card.  I took it in to the Apple store and decided that I should just get a new MacBook Air because who knows if putting the money into fixing it will benefit if something else would happen.  I use my laptop for EVERYTHING!  It goes with me pretty much anywhere:  school, campus, Salt Lake.  I do so much work on my computer that I felt like I definitely got my money worth with all the school activities I created, with how many papers I typed, etc.  I am in LOVE with my MacBook Air.  It is thin and weighs like two pounds. 

I have also been looking for a cute cruiser bike to stroll around Logan in, but haven't been able to find one for cheap.  My good friend told me about one sold at a yard sale for cheap...and it's purple, the best color ever!  I picked it up today and I LOVE it!!  It's so cute!

And last, but by far not least, I got a brand spankin' new car!  I've been researching cars for the last month or so, and knew I wanted a Mazda 3 because it's a very cute car and fits my needs.  I was planning on buying one in October because that's when my credit card would be paid off, so I could afford car payments, something I haven't had in about 4 years!  Bryce suggested going to a dealer to research new and used cars, get my questions answered and get a feel for the car, so I agreed.  I wasn't expecting to walk out with a new car yet!  But the deal was too good to pass off.  I had to say goodbye to my Cord, the car that I have had over the past 8 years of my life.  We got through a lot together-starting my teaching career and taking me back and forth from Logan to Tremonton for my job, moving to Denver and driving back and forth from Colorado to Utah a few times, road trips to San Diego, Spokane, Las Vegas, and all over Utah.  I basically live in Salt Lake on weekends now and it got me through lots of weekend trips back and forth from Salt Lake to Logan.  I put over 150,000 miles on that car and it worked like a charm.  But it was time for an upgrade.  They let me trade in my car for a good deal as a down payment, and they were also doing a deal that I could wait 90 days to make my first payment, which fit perfectly into October being the time to first pay. It had 8 miles on it, has power locks and windows (something I have never had!), and key less entry.  It's black, shiny and SOO cute!  I will post an actual picture of it when I quit being lazy and send it from my phone to my computer.  I'm excited to see what adventures I have in my new car!  I'm also on the hunt for a good name for my car.  Any suggestions?

To Portland, St. George, and Back!

This past weekend, I took a quick trip to Portland, a city I have never been to before.  I'm always a huge fan of going to new places and seeing and experiencing new things, especially food!  My dear friend Ellen recently received her Master's Degree from the University of Oregon (Yay Ellen!) and asked me to come up and drive back to St. George with her.  I've always wanted to see Portland, and summer is the perfect time to travel, so I agreed.  We spent a few hours in Portland-beautiful and green!  We ate at Old Town Pizza-yummy, but super creepy bathroom; walked on the river walk and saw some interesting people, and Ellen drove me by the Portland temple-stunning.  Then we headed to Eugene, where she lived.  She took me up to the University of Oregon, I instantly fell in love with the education building.  If I were to ever be crazy enough to get my PhD, I would want to get it there just for the sheer fact that the building is adorable!  The Olympic track and field tryouts were going on in the stadium, how awesome is that?!  I then helped her clean and pack her car, ate some VooDoo doughnuts (LOVED IT!) and we headed out the next morning at 6:30 AM.  We drove for about 17 hours-eating, sleeping, talking, laughing, eating and finally made it to St. George.  The next day, let's just say I slept for most of the day, and it felt fantastic!

On Monday, we drove from St. George to Salt Lake, where I stayed for a fun fourth of July celebration with my favorite person.  So in 3 days time I went from Portland, to Eugene, to St. George to Salt Lake.  Not too shabby!  I loved catching up with Ellen and seeing a part of the world I haven't seen before.  I look forward to going back to Portland someday and spending lots of time exploring the city even more!

All the Time in the World

Now that my research class is over (I survived, with an A on top of survival!), I have lots more free time on my hands.  I know, jealous, right?  It can be both good and bad.  I'm loving sleeping in, reading more non-textbook books, catching up on teaching blogs and making a HUGE list of ideas that I want to add/change in my classroom (I've got teaching on the brain 24/7, so sadly, even in summer, I can't shut my mind off from it, and sometimes stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning looking up teaching ideas.  Obsessed much?), watching several episodes of Downton Abbey (LOVE IT!), and making a few extra dollars by ChaCha, and a new one that I just signed up for called Text Broker.  If you don't know what either of these are, I suggest Google!  I would like a bit more fun money in my life.  As you all know, I am in love with my job as a first grade teacher, but I sadly spend a lot of my own money on my classroom and supplies, and don't make a lot of money as it is.  It's all good in the hood because I'm single and don't have a family to support (yet?) but sometime in the future I hope for that to happen, and want to save as much money as possible, while still having some money left over for fun.  Who's with me?!

I don't post as many pictures as I would like, because let's face it, I'm not a photographer and don't have to be one when everyone else in my life is, and I can just borrow/steal their photos!  I finally got around to getting these pictures from Bryce from our trip to Disneyland back in February when I celebrated turning 30.  Aren't we presh!?  I just love spending time with this guy, he sure knows how to make me laugh and how to make me happy.  Friends like that are the greatest in the world!

Research Proposal=DONE!

I just completed on Sunday the hardest assignment I have been given yet in Grad School.  I had to write a research proposal, as if I was going to present to a board my proposal for my thesis.  You see, at USU, for my major, you can choose 3 plans to get your Masters.  Plan A, a thesis.  Plan B, a project.  Plan C, taking a few extra courses and writing an exit paper and have an exit interview.  This girl right here is NOT about big projects, big papers, etc. etc. so I of course went with Plan C. I had no idea that one of the classes in Plan C would be to write a proposal, as in getting my thesis.  My proposal is done!  And on Monday, my professor told the class, "I knew this class was exceptional, but I've never had a student get their proposal done two weeks before the due date."  He then proceeds to show my work, have me talk about what I liked, what was the hardest part, etc. and then had everyone clap for me!  It was a proud but embarrassing moment for me.

I really am proud of the hard work I put into this proposal.  It came out to be 27 pages and might actually be something I do in my teaching.  I wanted to research more how parents could teach fluency strategies at home because I feel like what I'm doing in school isn't enough for a small group of students who have isolated skills down (phonics patterns, high frequency words, multisllyabic words) but still can't read too fast.  I'm super curious how the results would be.

Anyway, that's what I have been working on since my teaching job got out for the summer.  The class ends next week, so I am looking forward to having a little time off to check things off my teaching goal list, get more reading in, and even some exercise!  Please Bless!

30 Reasons Why I'm Proud to be Me-#7

I find the beauty in others and in things so easily, and I am always open to seeing that beauty.  It's around me on a daily basis, and I take the time to seek for it in everyone and in everything!