Well, it’s been a bit since I last posted, but with good reason. The past two weeks I have been in training with Leander ISD. Apparently, all the new to the district people have an extra week of training, and then this past week they had all teachers doing some time in the school and reviewing curriculum. I can understand where the district is coming from, but I really wish they didn’t feel the need to cram loads of information into my head right before the school year starts. It hasn’t helped me prepare for the REAL reason I want to be there in the first place-working with the students!

The upside of the training is that there were a lot of other new to district teachers at Canyon Ridge, so I got to make friends with a lot of people I probably wouldn’t have been able to get to know otherwise. I also have a “mentor” as I am considered “New to Profession” (first year teacher) whose name is Carie. She’s been a lot of help in watching out for me and giving me good ideas for the beginning of the year. We’re actually going out with her and her boyfriend Mark for dinner tonight, as they both have been in Austin for a lot longer than we have and know some good places to try. 🙂

Anyways, My birthday was great, thanks to the wonderful man I married. I don’t know what I would do without him. He had to work a lot that week, but he still made the time to come home early and take me out to try sushi! I had tried cheap sushi once before a long time ago, so I was really nervous, but we went to downtown Austin and gave it a go! It was great!!! I can’t wait to go back there again. We had the Godzilla; “Salmon, Avocado and Cucumber drizzled with spicy teriyaki sauce, covered with tempura flakes.” MMMMMMMM!!!! the other one we tried wasn’t as good, but it was still a great experience.

Afterwards, we walked for about 5 minutes to Congress Bridge, which apparently is well known for housing a large colony of bats in the summertime, and the best time to see them out and flying around is in August. We thought we might be too late to see them as it was getting pretty dark, but we weren’t! there were thousands of these tiny bats swarming around under the bridge; it was really neat to see. Afterwards, we came home and ate some great Costco monstrously large chocolate cake that Jared bought. What a great guy he is!

and now, as for me, I am lesson planning. I have a fairly good outline of next week already planned, and I’m excited to get started and actually meet my students for the year. I only wish that I could get rid of these headaches.

I can’t believe how fast time flies. Two weeks ago, I got a call offering to interview with the Leander ISD, and two days after that, interviewed with the principal of Canyon Ridge Middle School and was offered a position teaching 7th grade English. I’m still waiting for all the paperwork to go through, but yesterday I met with a couple of the other Language Arts/English teachers and got the key to my room so I can start organizing things! It’s just amazing to me how things somehow fall into place.

I am a bundle of excited nervousness. The way the school is assessing the students is really new and uncommon. Everything gets a grade of 1-4, and assignments focus on only one or two “traits” like “focus” or “mechanics”. A “1” is that the trait is not evident. “2” is that it’s basically there but not quite solid; “3” is that they are proficient, and “4” is advanced. It makes sense, but it’s going to be kind of strange to work around that… I don’t know how I feel entirely about that. Also, the scheduling of the periods are different than anything I’ve ever been involved in. It is exciting to note that the class sizes are really nice and small- compared to my class of 35 and 36 while student teaching, the largest they allow here is 25, and last year, some of the teachers only had 3 classes of 15 or so…. so no more than 50 students total! I’m definitely not in Utah anymore.

Now I just need to figure out what the heck is wrong with my health, we’d be pretty much good to go.

In other news, tallying up the votes I got (some were emailed to me), the Pink bag is in the lead by one vote. If you have an opinion- vote soon (unless, of course, you already voted…)! Jared refuses to give me his opinion on two such girlie bags. 😉

Hey everyone!

I just want to say that last week was amazing. I don’t want to jinx anything, since there’s a lot of paper work that has to be done, but if all goes well, I will really be a teacher! When I interviewed with the principal of the middle school, she basically offered me a position there on the spot, which was amazing to me. I am so excited, but there’s a lot of side stuff, so it’s not technically final yet.

Anyways, my birthday is coming up in about 2 weeks, and Jared had a really great idea for a gift… a customizable messenger bag because I’ve been envying his for awhile. He found this great website because one of his co-workers has this brand of bag and loves it. I am so excited, and this will be great if all the teaching stuff falls into place!

But alas, I cannot have my cake and eat it too. I have a predicament. I like TWO of the bags that I designed, and I need help… so leave me a note and tell me what you think!:

Bag Number 1 (Orange design):

Option Number 2 (Pink design!)

I know you can do polls somehow on these websites, but I am too lazy to figure it out right now. I promise I am really excited about either- so I want to hear your ideas! These are the only options though… if you don’t like either, just say “I hate the orange one less than I hate the pink” or whatever. You can go to their website and design your own for yourself!

Hey all y’all! I’m working on my Texan-ness.

First, it’s been awhile since I’ve shown off my two favorite men…. so what better than showing two of their pictures off?

What good looking guys?! Who couldn’t love these faces?

Well, life has turned around since my last entry. Funny how little things like that happen at the moments you feel most hopeless. The great news is that I had an interview yesterday that went fantastically well that has led to an interview tomorrow. It’s teaching 7th grade, not high school, but really, the most important thing for me right now is to continue teaching. Plus, I haven’t had as much experience with middle school, so maybe (assuming I possibly get the job) I really will enjoy it more now that it’s my class, not some other sadistic teacher’s. I just feel so lucky that I got these interviews; I really needed that self-esteem boost!

The downside now is 1) if I don’t get hired, and 2) the teaching certification process! They are 6-8 weeks behind, so I had to do some alternate steps to insure that I will at least have a temp license to allow me to teach.

I also have continued trying to be crafty! The ladies in my ward get together every month or two and do a “card camp” where they spend the evening making cards. There are 3 card styles, and we make three of each of those styles, meaning we leave with 9 cute cards! Here are the three cards I made yesterday:

Not too bad, right? I am happy that they turned out so well! and it’s a lot cheaper than buy cards like this in a store… woo hoo! 🙂

Really, Jared is the one who should tell this story, but I gave him nearly a week to write this in his blog and he hasn’t, so I am claiming it!

Sunday morning, about 3:30, I was dragged from my dreams by a strange coughing sound. I’m sure you’ve all had it, where your alarm –or whatever the noise is– is incorporated into your dream, so I was really struggling to wake up. Anyways, I finally am conscious when I realize the noise is little Stevie coughing or choking. Almost as soon as I realize this is a dangerous sound to be hearing, I hear Jared cooing, “Oh, thanks buddy, thanks a lot!” Over and over again.

I turned on the light, and Stevie had thrown up all over Jared- and he was taking it so nicely! No screaming or grossed out sounds; just a really nice “Thanks buddy!”

haha.

Obviously, it’s not funny that Stevie was sick. Or that before he threw up on Jared, he threw up on the sheets, and then afterwards two more times on the bathroom floor. Or that all in all, we were up with him for 2 more hours afterwards before he (or we) could get back to sleep. But Jared’s reaction was just so funny- that he could be so calm about it all, as if the dog was just cuddling with him or giving him kisses. I was very impressed with his behavior–I don’t think I would have reacted nearly as well.

(No dogs were hurt in the telling of this story. Stevie was fully recovered by Sunday afternoon.)

In other news, I went to the doctors office again on Monday about the headache stuff–no luck. And she still doesn’t want me to have any sort of pain medication for my headaches for at least a couple more months! I’m so frustrated with doctors. growl!

I did get my Professional Educator License for Utah last week- Upside (kind of): I paid $177 and sent in a copy to the Texas board (and am working on getting BYU to send official transcripts there) to get everything settled to teach in texas! Downside: there are no teaching jobs immediately available for my qualifications in a 45 minute radius. We’ll figure something out though!