Grad-yu-ma-whay-tion Thyme!

Joy School:  While it made me scared of the "Gunny Bag" (who was going to "eat up all my toys and keep them in his tummy"), I learned that "Oh boy, I've got joy! I do, do you?" so it was totally worth it.

Elementary School: Slightly traumatizing socially, but definitely enjoyable. I did cool things like re-enact the Civil War in 5th grade and create roller coasters in 6th grade (and let's not forget that I was the first 4th grader in my class to memorize the times tables up to 12 ; ).

Middle School: The years-which-shall-not-be-discussed. While not bad, middle school was not great, either. I got to be on EagleTV (which was totally awesome at the time) and was a student of the month in 8th grade, but I also got my first (and ONLY) two detentions (which we DON'T talk about).

High school: Learning experience though it was, I would never go back. Great friends, great times, great memories.


College: The best 9 semesters of my life. I can't express my love for BYU-Idaho and all that happened to me there. I always had the best roommates (who usually became my best and closest friends), the best classes and teachers, great FHE brothers, and all sorts of other things. With graduation and other happenings at BYU-I, I've thought a lot about my time spent there. After these reflections, I decided I could probably a forever student there and be happy for the rest of my days. I especially loved my core and religion classes. I could just...never learn too much. I did the most growing of my life at that school and in my Birchwood II apartment. No lies. I  could really just jump up on my soap box right now about how much it bothers me when people complain about BYU-I foundation classes and the Honor Code and the administration and whatever else people whine about, but I won't. :)  I love everything about that school and I have a strong testimony that it truly is the Lord's school. His Spirit is there with the administration, faculty, and the students (well, the students that INVITE the Spirit). I just love it. As much as I was ready to be done and move on with my life (I think it's time that I really become an adult and get a grown-up teaching job), I really loved being a student. Fortunately, I have two younger sisters that go and are planning to go there and parents-in-law that work there, so I don't think I'll be too far away. :)  I wouldn't trade my education there for anything.

Mel, me, and Rochelle
First picture of the night!

Thanks for helping me with all my homework.
You learned that being an el ed major meant MORE
than just coloring pictures.

Love my girls. I should photoshop Sheena in!
I know you would have been there if you could've. :D

The BYU-I Center

Thanks Mom and Dad for making it possible for me to go to school.
You are the BEST. :)

Love them! They help us so much. :)

Day 2: After convocation at the Hart

Forgive my awkward standing position.
It was cold.
The Hinckley was my 2nd home.
The last year I was there, I spent (on average)
8-10 hours a day there. I had a home on the
3rd floor by the office.

Before convocation
Me, Cara, Rochelle, Melissa, and Maddie

With some of my favorite teachers!
Cara, Rochelle, Melissa, Sister Hovey, Sister Kay (one of my FAVS), Sister Rawlings, me, and Maddie

I could NOT have lived through my last few semesters of school without this most-lovely
of ladies. 

In summation, I love BYU-Idaho (because I'm sure you haven't noticed yet :P).

Now I get to go be a real teacher.

YAY!

Making Christmas, Making Christmas...la la la!

iiiiiiiiiIIIiiiiiiit's Christmas time! Hee hee hee hee hee!!

I like putting up Christmas decorations, especially when two of my favoritest people are helping me.

After Christmas last year, Scott and I went shopping for better Christmas things this year. While this tree is still not necessarily my "dream" tree, it's better than the Charlie Brown tree of last year. ; ) 

As a makeshift tree skirt we're using a "tapestry" of the Nativity.

Our litte tree from last year has graduate to the front room. :)  Tee decorated it beautifully. Yes, that IS her corn bag hanging on her arm. My house is a....ah....little chilly, shall we say? ; )



Totally washed out. Sorry, Tasha!



All right, all right! Its time to bring out... the Persuader!

Your choice, mate. You can talk now, or you can talk later.

Aint that right, Persuader?

Yes!

Our Christmas tree all up and decorated--looooooooooove it.

Please take note of the peacock feather ornament--very sparkly and beautiful.

Thank you, Carnahans! One of my favoritest families. :)

I don't think two kids could ever have more fun with these ornaments than Tasha and I did. They are they happiest ornaments I've ever come across. And there's TWO--one for each of us! :D (She still has her corn bag, lol.)

That is how we started off our Christmas season. Huzzah! I love it.

Rules For Editors

Grades: Various

Summary: Tips to help your students make the most of their time editing.

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliché.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25.Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Submitted by: Holly Crites - Ingleside, Illinois

http://lesson-plans.theteacherscorner.net/writing/skills/rules-for-editors.php

I'm going to make a poster of this and hang it in my classroom.

I Heart School

Inservice is over.

This is my last "free" weekend.

Here it comes!

     I love school. So much. I loved it when I was in elementary school, but I especially love being the teacher. It's incredible how comfortable I am with it. I remember (the whole one semester) when I was a music major I would just cry myself to sleep every night because I was so miserable. It just didn't make sense to me--I loved music so much and wanted to teach kids to love it just like I did. But it was just SO wrong. Everything about it was wrong and felt wrong, and that was weird because I had never felt like that about music before.

     I spent the next semester taking generals because I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. It was easy for me to rule out things I didn't want to do; it was unbelievably difficult for me to come up with majors I'd be ok with. Out: math anything, science anything, music anything, health anything, art anything. Possibilities: English ed, horticulture, or el ed. I decided I couldn't do English ed because (looking at McKenzie's stuff) I knew it would be just like the music thing over again. I looked into horticulture quite a bit, not necessarily because that's what I was really interested in, but I felt like elementary education was just SUCH a cop out major at BYU-Idaho. I felt that EVERY girl that was in el ed was just out to get married and that it was an easy major for people who were unwilling to do anything more difficult. I'm really ashamed to say that, but that's seriously how I felt. At that point in my life I really wanted to pursue a career seriously (after a mission, of course), and I did NOT plan on getting married, so I didn't want to get into a major where that's how people would see me.

    I thought and prayed and thought and prayed some more. By the time registration came around I still didn't have any idea what I wanted to do. I just got on and registered for el ed classes as a cop out. Really. I thought, "Well, I don't know that I want to do this, but I'll take some classes so I don't get too far behind and they'll be easy, so it doesn't matter."  I didn't take any horticulture classes, even though I wanted to--they just didn't fit in my schedule. Hah--I don't even remember what I took that semester! That's when Emily was there with me....so that was, what? History and Philosophy of Education...huh. I don't remember what else. But guess what? It didn't take me that long to get my answer. Everything just felt right. I felt so comfortable, good about myself, and good about where it would take me. I hadn't even been with any students yet--but I just knew that I was in the right spot.

     I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I've felt so absolutely positive about a decision that I had no hesitation about moving forward with it. My entire experience in the elementary education program at BYU-Idaho has been one of those times. I still constantly receive affirmation that I'm diong the right thing and going in the right direction.

    Now I'm finishing up that education and am going forward--w00t w00t! True, I'm still a "teacher candidate" during student teaching--I'm still learning how to be a teacher--but I get to be the teacher. I really must be on the right path too, because I keep getting seriously blessed in my endeavors to be a teacher. Senior practicum--5th grade--social studies unit on the Revolutionary War--um, yes PLEASE!! My favorites of everything. My teacher, Mrs. Marquez, was absolutely perfect for me. She was such a fabulous mentor and taught me so much about being a good teacher. She also became a close friend. We both went through some personal issues through the semester and I couldn't have been more grateful to be able to work with her though everything--she helped me be the optimistic (and probably naive) teacher I want to be, while understanding the realities that I was dealing with as well. For my student teaching I'm expecting all of that again with Mrs. Nyborg--she just seems like the sweetest lady ever and I know that I have the opportunity to learn so much from her. Oh, and I'm in 6th grade. Does the Lord love me? Yes. Yes He does. He knows I would have just died had I been in a younger class. He also blessed me with a great school where all the teachers want to help me succeed. The principal, Mr. Keller, is so supportive and wants to help us. He told me today that he knew he wanted me at his school as soon as I interviewed because he wanted me with Mrs. Nyborg. He even had to fight over me with another principal! :D  That really brightened my day.

     I want to be a good teacher. A master teacher. I really want to teach, too. Let me tell you that I soon learned that el ed is not an easy major. I mean, sure--ANYONE can be a mediocre teacher. But it is not easy to be a good teacher. It takes a lot of hours and a lot of work and a lot of continuous learning, and I'm still working on all of that. But I really want it. I want to teach, and I have every intention of doing something with my degree. I'm not sure yet (with this economy and what's happening in Idaho education) that I'll teach, but I'll be a parapro or something. I will work with children. I will learn from those children. It's all I want to do. Someday, I'll get to work with and learn from my own children, but I'll practice on other peoples' first. :)

    I know this is a lot of serious/boring/feely stuff, but that's all I've been thinking about lately. I know the Lord will take you where you need to be if you just LISTEN and DO. I know that--everything from my major to my husband--every decision I have made has gone through Him, and that's how I know they're all good ones--and the best decisions I could have made.

    So. My 6th graders come on Monday. Bring it on!

A Day in the Life of the Mad Haderlies

I just decided, after the past couple of *fun* days that I've had (where I've actually taken pictures), I'd post about one of my summer days. I LOVE SUMMER. The sunshine really brings light into my soul, and so I get happy and do happy things like take pictures. :)

Ok and secretly this isn't all ONE day, it really is a couple o'days rolled into one. But it COULD be all one day.

So first, Scottie and I wake up late and make breakfast...

This one's mine. :)

Then Scottie and I decide we need to get the car taken care of (FINALLY). We get the tires rotated and balanced, get the brakes checked, and have the oil changed (the chips in the windshield just have to wait...*sigh*).

Scott was being a good, quiet little boy, playing with the toys...

and then started making faces at me. :P

We took a break from the toys and started watching this John Wayne/Dean Martin movie (yes, he DID sing, which is why I was okay watching it, since Westerns aren't my favorite). I saw a couple magazines on the chair next to me, and that's when I made this horrible discovery:





Unfortunately, I was too lazy to read the whole article, but I did gether that there we're a mixture of things: 5% Neanderthal (sp??), 3% some other strange thing that I can't remember, and x% of other stuff. I have no idea, but I decided I liked the magazine. It was kinda like the time in Primary when my teacher told me my mom and dad weren't really my mom and dad, they're my brother and sister (you know, in the larger scheme of things), that Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are my real parents, and I just cried and cried. Yeah, it was kinda the same feeling.

So after that Scottie goes to his appointment for the day and leaves me to decorate the room. Yesssssssssss!! I didn't really do anything with it because I'd been planning on painting it this summer, and what was the point of hanging a bunch of stuff up just to take it down? But since it doesn't look like I get to paint any time soon, I decided to go "college room" on the master bedroom. I took out my box of decorations from my single days and do a bit to spice up the room, though it's by no means fantastic or finished. But now there's SOMETHING on the walls--it's not the bare, icky cream color it was before.

Then Scott comes home and works on the garage. Yay--it's clean now! I was like...I didn't know the garage went back that far! It's so nice to have more room to park. :)

huh...I should probably mention that I just realized these are all BEFORE pictures, and that I didn't take any AFTER pictures. Bummer. Maybe next time...
 

Then we hang out with Tee and Emma and make delicious homemade ice cream (thanks to Emma's class having leftovers). :D

ice cream!

I brought cookie dough to snack on, because I usually want to buy ice cream. But instead of buying, we MADE! And when we added the cookie dough to it, it was pretty dang delish.

 

We finish up the night using Scott's awesome telescope that I got him for his birthday! Yes, I did copy Emily, but it was such a fabulous idea...the moon looked sooooOOOOOooooo cool! ...but the stars just looked like bigger bright dots, lol. But it was still cool!

And then we go to bed. Sometime Scott reads to me, which I thoroughly enjoy. We're currently on the second Percy Jackson novel, thanks to the fabulous suggestion of Heidi. I love those books! But I love that Scott reads to me because that's what I fall asleep to.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the end.

I enjoy my life.