Summer Trip #2 Vegas Baby!

One week after our trip to Logan my mom, sister and I packed up our belongings and headed to Vegas for a wedding. Because my mom had to work that day, and Erin was checking out of her apartment in Logan before driving down to meet us, we didn't leave Provo until after 6. This meant that we got to Vegas at about midnight (1 am Utah time) Luckily we were staying at my Aunt and Uncles house so we knew we'd have beds waiting for us. Saturday morning mom and I went to the wedding while Erin went with her cousin to search for jobs. That evening we went to the reception. After changing our clothes behind our car we headed to the Bellagio to watch the fountains. When we got home we did the traditional road trip tattoos and then came home early the next morning. It was a fast trip but it was fun to hang with the girls yet again! Here are some photos of our awesome tats and of the world record setting chocolate fountain at the Bellagio!

Very important post!

I was going to keep posting about summer trips but I just remembered it is a holiday today! When I was in college I was privileged to be friends with a girl named Haley. (That's right Haley, I consider it a privilege) She came up with a really great holiday and I think it is something that everyone should take part in. Every year on June 1st she goes out of her way to try something she's never done before. I know it sounds so simple but so often I let myself get into a rut of doing the same things over and over again and this is just the push that might be enough to get me to try new things. Haley has done many things including walking to another state (inspired by my crazy roommates) going fishing for the first time (today!) going to antelope island for the first time and hiking ensign peak.

So I think everyone should take Haley's challenge and do something today that you have never done before. My sister Erin, went to the Great Salt Lake today for the first time and she didn't even know it was a holiday! Even if you are reading this too late to do something today do it tomorrow and call it a belated celebration of June 1st. I'll post later about my own June 1st experience.

Summer has begun.... weeks ago

So because I was all hung up on what to post for the big one O O, I let some really fun trips go by without reporting about them. Now that school is winding down meaning no more subbing jobs for me I have some time to tell you about my fun summer trips.

The first summer trip I went on started out with my moms sisters. Every year around mothers day (this year was a few weeks early) my mom and her sisters have a girls weekend. It started out as a way to get out of going to their own churches on mothers day (my mother says she doesn't enjoy hearing about how great everyone elses mom is...... makes her feel bad. She really shouldn't) This year they spent a weekend in Salt Lake staying at a fun hotel and partying all night. (or at least until 10) The next day I got to go with them to see "American Fork Idol" at the Desert Star Theater. I love that theater and if you have never been you ought to go see a show. My aunts are a hoot and that made the show even funnier. After the show we all went to my aunts favorite Chinese restaurant. When everyone went their seperate ways my mom and I went to Logan to visit my sister Erin and watch her perform in her last concert as a member of the University Chorale at USU. It was a big production of Beethoven's 9th symphony. It was really neat but something I will only need to see performed in its entirety once in my life. After staying in the scariest motel in Logan we went to participate in Erins last lesson in her relief society. She taught a very nice lesson on families and temple marriage, a topic that was really difficult for her to discuss due to recent events in our family, but she did a wonderful job and got a lot of girls talking and thinking about the subject. We were able to help Erin pack up a few boxes to be ready for her move to another apartment for the summer and we also got to interview her date on Saturday night. Even though it snowed a little while we were there I'm still going to label this summer trip number one because it was the beginning of summer for the college students so it counts.

Why I haven't posted...

So I know this will sound lame, but the reason it has taken so long for me to post anything new is because every time I would open my blog I would see that I had 99 posts and my next post would be post number 100. I felt like there was some sort of pressure for my 100th post to be full of awesomeness. I couldn't post because I couldn't come up with something that was worthy of such a milestone. So this is me rebelling against that pressure. I will not post any cool pictures, I will not talk about the goings on of my life, I will not leave you with anything witty to ponder. Take that post number 100. Now I can move on.

Brads homework

A few weeks ago Brad and I decided that we should go on an adventure. Since Brad was taking a humanities class that required him to go to a museum we decided to make a day out of it and go do his homework together. We'd tried a couple times before to get to the museum but because I work early and he works late it was hard to find a time when we'd both be home and the museum would still be open. Finally we had a Saturday without conference or Easter or visiting relatives. We drove out to the end of the trax line in Sandy and we got on the train. We rode into Salt Lake and then switched trains to the University line. While waiting for our transfer train we watched a very inebriated woman confess to the poor volunteer working at the platform that she was running from the cops. At which point she proceeded to try to get on a moving train. She didn't succeed and instead decided to go back the way she came, which would have led her right into the hands of the cops.... if there had actually been any chasing her.... and she stagged up the street, almost missing a curb. Once we got our connection we rode to campus. We got off at the stadium because we really had no idea where we were going. We found a map and started hiking. We hiked up the hill to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. We weren't sure what kind of fee there would be to enter and as Brad pulled out his wallet to pay we were informed that it happened to be a FREE Saturday! So we got to walk around and admire/ponder the art without feeling like we HAD to enjoy it just because we'd paid to get in. After the museum we took trax back to the gateway and had a fabulous dinner at "The Counter". A cool place where you custom design your own burger. When dinner was over we rode trax back to our car and came home. We met a really friendly woman and her homeless boyfriend and their child while we waited for the ride home... I hope for the childs sake that somehow they have a roof over their heads. Overall it was a fun time and we felt really cultured afterwords. Minus a few blisters (I had new shoes and terrible bandaids...) it was a really fun day!

Back at Bennion

I got a phone call from a very pregnant teacher at Bennion (where I did my student teaching) and she was in a panic because she was due in less than 48 hours and her long-term sub had just torn his Achilles and had to go to emergency surgery. He wouldn't be able to stand, drive or walk for the next 6 weeks. So I am back with my seventh graders, and some new 8th graders that I hadn't known, this time teaching science. I wanted to be a science teacher once......... I was 5. It was what I picked right after carpenter (my favorite show to watch as a child was This Old House). I'm enjoying it even though it's outside my realm of previous teaching. The seventh graders were sad that their previously scheduled sub wouldn't be there (he is a regular at the school) but by the end of the first day I had students running into the room yelling, "Is it true?!" because word had spread that I was back.

Because I'm not teaching any of my 9th graders this go-around it has taken them a little longer to find me. Every day I see a few more and they all get excited and shout my name in the hall. It's like they think I'm not aware that I'm back. I had two 9th graders who were so excited to see me that they nearly tackled me before class started on Wednesday. Today they both were standing in the hall way with their science class waiting for their teacher to unlock the classroom door after a trip to the computer lab and they decided it would be a good idea to start yelling, "I love Mrs. Dimick!" Right in the middle of class. My students were watching a movie and they all looked at me confused. I just got up and shut the classroom door. I've figured out classroom management fairly well but for some reason I can't seem to get the kids to stop loving me so loudly..... It makes me nervous that the other teachers will dislike me because their students are yelling my name. So if you are one of those teachers...... I'm sorry.

Also, if you are an employer, I'll try to not be so awesome so the kids at your school wont yell my name in the hall. But I can't promise anything.

New Experiences

I just had the first realization of living in an upscale neighborhood. In a way it's not really like this was a new experience because even when I lived in apartment complexes people came to the door trying to sell things, but today I'm pretty sure they came to my door because of my neighborhood. I don't like door-to-door salesmen. Part of why I don't like them is because they want you to like them so much! They use your name and they tell jokes and they get you outside of your comfort zone to try to get you to buy their product. This particular one includes a "youth program" so not only are you not helping them sell you are making some poor child not have a "program". This guy made it a little easier by telling me that I looked 7 years old. Thanks. He then more seriously asked if my mom was home, and continued to refer to me helping my mom clean even when I told him I was the woman of the house. He asked if I had my own bathroom, and I wanted to be like "no dude, this whole big house doesn't have a single bathroom in it. We go to Wal-mart to use theirs." So in the end I told him I "wasn't comfortable making purchases without talking it over with the family." He was ticked but I'm sure he wished that I'd let him to whoever actually lives in this house.