Flashback Friday: Halloween

I am visiting my mom tonight since I had no school to teach. I voted and then we went to lunch. When we got home we were talking about how I sometimes like my own writing and she told me she missed my flashback friday posts. I guess I just get so busy that I haven't put a lot of effort into blogging regularly. So we went to the basement and dug out the old photo albums and had my brothers girlfriend judge all the pictures of my past halloween costumes and pick the cutest.

So here you go. Now I'm off to watch Sweeney Todd for Halloween! Happy Halloween everybody!

random collection of thoughts

I have a lot on my mind right now. I really should be entering scores but I am feeling sort of A.D.D. right now so I'd rather post about all the things on my mind.

First off...... I totally won the drawing on that meal blog. I get a quick stir pitcher from pampered chef! I'm really excited because I really have been wanting one for awhile now.

Next, I've officially received word that one of my students has found my blog. She's a T.A. in one of my 7th grade classes....... I should have never taught her about google images. She googled my name and found the blog. I really don't care though. I wonder if any of my other students read this........... I can't ask otherwise they'd all look for it. Meh.

Third, I'm kind of bugged today because one of my teachers told me that I needed to stick to my friends at home and not care if the kids are my friends. She said "I know it's important to you that the kids are your friends......." I'M NOT FRIENDS WITH MY STUDENTS. She has not been in my classes while I teach, except for today while we played a game of jeopardy. I am a friendly person but that does not mean that I seek friendship from my friends. I am feeling more and more like the teachers I work with think less of me and I can't figure out what I've done to change that. If you didn't read my post titled "My Michael Scott Moment" you should. Notice in that post that I never once said I wanted to be friends with my students. I just don't see why they can't like my class and me and still respect me. I don't want to hang out with my students after class and I honestly don't care what they tell their friends about the class, but why can't they be happy to come to my class?

Fourth, our housing situation is currently on hold. I saw a bunch of family and friends at a wedding this last weekend and everyone was so excited for me so I thought I'd let people know that we may still be moving but it is currently on hold while our grandfather takes care of some medical issues. He is in our prayers and while we are looking forward to moving and being able to save money on housing, we are more concerned for our grandparents well-being so we hope that things are taken care of and all cleared up.

Also, I am sick of coughing. I don't really like sleeping with the humidifier on and I hate how fuzzy my teeth get when I suck on cough drops all day.

meal blog

So I know that I have already posted this (I'm sure you noticed, cause you are all faithful readers......) But I really wanna win the quick stir pitcher from this site so I'm posting it again.

If you have ever had a hard time deciding what to make for dinner, there is a new blog for you: http://mealtimehelp.blogspot.com You'll find simple meal ideas, a place to share your favorite dinner time meals and maybe learn a trick or two for old time favorites. There will also be monthly giveaways. You'll always have an answer to the question "What's for dinner?"

So check out the blog, but don't enter cause I wanna win........ ohok fine go ahead and enter.

It comes ALIVE at night!!!

No this post is not about a scary Halloween experience. The title was however my attempt at making it seem that way. No, this post is about the joys of living in an apartment complex, and by joys I mean the stupid things that people do that make it so that no one in their right mind wants to stay in an apartment complex for their whole lives.

Brad and I love our apartment. It's a cute one bedroom place with it's own washer dryer and a dishwasher! That's 3 steps above the last place we lived. It's new, and it's close to work and school. On paper it's also a smoke free environment. I say on paper because as far as I can count there are 2 other apartments in my building where people don't smoke. Those 2 happen to belong to people in my ward. Even though these people face eviction for smoking they do it openly. I finally had enough when it went from cigarette smoke to marijuana smoke and I told the managers and I even had my first experience calling the cops. Don't think I'm little miss tattle tale either...... I just don't want to pay for air conditioning when I could open my door and let in the nice late summer breeze at night, but I'm not going to open the door to marijuana smoke, it gives me headaches. As far as I can tell neither going to the managers nor calling the cops did any good because every day there are people sitting out on their balconies or in the stairwell smoking.

The first day we lived here our neighbor from downstairs came up to introduce himself to us. We thought that was really nice, except he continued to inform us that he has a party every weekend and we should let him know if they are too loud. The noise from his parties has never been TOO bad, but now that I've called the cops on them for the marijuana I'm afraid to ever go down there. And judging from the quantities of alcohol that he carries in every Friday afternoon I'd rather avoid the party anyways......... Even our non-smoking church going neighbors upstairs sometimes vacuum at one in the morning. I got all dressed to go ask them to please wait till morning when it finally stopped. This past weekend we can't tell where the noise comes from, I think it's the apartment that shares a back wall with ours. People come outside every night around midnight and start yelling to each other. Even with all windows and doors shut I can still make out the words they are saying. It is starting to get old which is why I'm so glad to share this news with all my friends out there................... WE'RE MOVING AGAIN!

Grandma and Grandpa D have been asked to go on a mission ASAP and they asked us if we would watch their house for them. SURE! It's a beautiful house and we are feeling so blessed to have the opportunity to stop paying rent and to stop having noisy neighbors so we can save up our money for our own house someday! Because the mission call hasn't worked like most normal mission calls they aren't exactly sure when they leave. As soon as they find out we will be putting in our notice here and praying that our contract sells so we can move there with no further obligations here. Once we move anyone can come visit us because we'll have more spare guest rooms than we'll know what to do with!

I'm excited if you can't tell from the number of exclamation points I've used........

My Michael Scott moment.......

Once a week all the student teachers in the Salt Lake area get together to provide support to one another while we struggle through our student teaching. There are some student teachers in the group who admit to struggling while building relationships with the students and it got me thinking.....

On an episode of 'The Office,' Michael Scott is quoted as saying "Would I rather be feared or be loved? Both, I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." Sometimes I feel like this. How come I have to make the students fear me to respect me? When I tell people that the students really like my class, and seem to enjoy me as a teacher, they act as though I must have no control over my class, and my students must not be learning. Why can't the students enjoy me as a teacher and still respect me?

I honestly feel like they do.

I've had this internal struggle before. While growing up I had some really good Young Women's leaders. The girls in my ward built relationships with these women and trusted them with our deepest teenage secrets and in return they shared their love and advice with us. Because we had a FRIENDSHIP (that's really what it was, it was more than a teacher/student relationship) we called these women by their first name. It was suggested that the girls in the ward were not showing respect to these women because we didn't call them by "Sister.........." I honestly do not feel like this showed any lack of respect towards these women. The women that I knew who were lovely women but did not share this relationship were refered to as "Sister .......... " Sure I respected those other women but I didn't care for them the way I cared for my first name basis leaders. So is it impossible to like someone and still respect them? I don't think so.

So why does everyone freak out when I suggest that my students like me AND respect me?

Tagged

GOOGLE GAME

This is how the game works: Use Google image search to answer each question. Then, out of ONLY the first page of results, choose your favorite or most random image. Then tag some people to do it!! :)

MY AGE:

PLACE I'VE BEEN TO:

PLACE I WANT TO VISIT:

FAVORITE PLACE

FAVORITE OBJECT

FAVORITE FOOD

FAVORITE ANIMAL

FAVORITE COLOR

BIRTH PLACE

CURRENT PLACE OF RESIDENCE

PETS

PAST LOVE

BEST FRIEND

NICKNAME

FIRST NAME

MIDDLE NAME

LAST NAME

BAD HABIT

FIRST JOB

GRANDMOTHER'S NAME

COLLEGE DEGREE

WHAT I'M DOING RIGHT NOW

I don't tag anyone because this took me forever to finish. But it was fun, so I think if you are bored you should try a few of these things on your own.

Something I learned...... when you google image my husbands name the first picture that comes up is my cousin.....

The condo

I wont title this flashback Friday because it is Monday and that would be a lie. Plus all I've done lately is flashbacks because I don't have time to write except on the weekends. But I thought today I would tell you all about my weekend. My grandmother has a timeshare at the Island Park Resort in Idaho and so we go up there for a weekend at the beginning of every October. So on Friday we were able to leave as soon as Brad got off work and drive up, stopping at my cousins reception in Idaho Falls, and arrive at the condo around 11. We spent most of Saturday in Yellowstone playing and hiking and then Sunday we were able to kick back and relax, listen to a little conference and feed some ginormous fish. I love going up and I love the feeling in Island Park. There are so many memories that I have up there, and I look forward to it every year. I could probably write almost 20 flashback posts about it since we go every year, but I wont. Some of you that read this have come with my family to the condo before and you know that it is one of my most favorite places in the whole world. So now you can enjoy a nice picture of Brad, Erin (my sister) and I at Old Faithful. This picture was snapped online from the webcam that is located in a tree near the geyser. I know we're small but that really is us.