The profession I chose

I love teaching...

This semester has been a great one so far. I just finishing my first block of practicum in a 5th grade class. Who knew I would love 5th grade so much! I was dead set on 1st or 2nd grade, or maybe work as some sort of specialist in a school, but those little adorables are making me double think.

I'm awesome...

I have a picture of the whole class as well, all 30 of them, but cannot post it on the internet.

Next week I will start my second 5 week block in a 1st grade classroom. Maybe I'll love it more, maybe I'll love it less, maybe I just like being around kids in general. Their hilarious, witty, creative, active, kind, forgiving, adorable, etc. Everything we all hope to be, they are.

Some say teaching is the hardest job in the world, but yet the most rewarding and most important - I believe them, it's an important hat to wear, but it's worth it.

This semester I am doing my level II in Elementary Education. This means that I enter the classroom for a full days work 3 days a week. I do anything the teacher needs. I have gotten some good one-on-one and group teaching experiences, as well as a better feel for how the classroom runs.

Being in the classroom has also revived my love of reading (Who has time to read what they want anymore!) I got a glimpse of a couple good 5th grade books and decided to start my own classroom/home collection of children books. We went to a book sale and got all of these for $20!! Mark got some he wanted as well. I got almost 50 picture books, 15 chapter books, a children's dictionary, a "almost perfect" Disney storybook, etc. Needless to say, it was a blast for both of us.

Come Christmas time, it will mean that we are one year away from graduating, Mark with his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and me with my Bachelors in Elementary Education with an emphasis in ASL. Sounds pretty cool, and those titles will sure look good on beautiful embossed USU card stock paper. What a Christmas present that will be!

After that? maybe a 4 month trip to China and surrounding areas to teach English...
After that? Well....that's as far as we have gotten

Updates

This last semester was a VERY successful for the both of us. We both finished with above a 3.5! It's nice to win one :)

We have spent the last two weeks hanging with this little guy. He has been so freakin adorable. My favorite is when we come out of a room to see him patiently sitting and waiting for us, or how he farts in Mark's face, or his Bad A cage fitting with Jasper (Walker dog), or how his name fits perfectly in everything, in every song, saying, etc. We love the little guy and have had fun with him. Matt and Carla get home from Spain on Sat.


Sunday is Justin's farewell talk! He is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. WOW I can't believe this time has come. I am so stinkin proud of him and SO excited for him! It will be fun to write a missionary in a few weeks. He enters the MTC on June 9th and is going to San Franando CA! Congrats and good luck to him! We will be in Star Valley that day.

We are just roaming free this summer, sorta. Mark has had the opportunity to do a couple jobs here in Salt Lake and I am doing some work for my Logan job from home. Things are going well. We have started a blog for Mark "portfolio," (click here to see it!) hopefully this will help keep him busy with jobs this summer. The blog is still a work in progress. He has already got 3 or 4 other jobs lined up, so we will be jumping from SV to Salt Lake, to Logan quite a bit this summer. So far its been great.

Ya for friends! I have seen Kyli and Hannah a few times while being down here. We have had so much fun! Chase and Brooklyn are growing fast and man they are adorable! I stole this pic from Hannah's blog because I love it! Chase is "a bit" bigger than Brooklyn. I love it! They are both so cute! Thanks Hannah and Kyli!

Aggie Locks

A couple of weeks ago I donated my hair along with many other aggies on campus. It was so fun to see so many girls walk up and just give away their hair, many of them just on the spot. I was planning this for several months so I was prepared. Here are some pics. They just cut it off blunt, so they could get people through faster, I went back later and had it styled all cute like.

These are some other service center peeps that donated as well, after this pic

Lots to blog about

This is how we celebrate the last day of classes. SLEEP! Super excited to finally get caught up on sleep. Finals week is next week and then we are done!

Final PALS activity. This is about half the group I am over in the service center. We had a blast. We will send the nicer smiling picture to United Way of Cache Valley as a thanks for funding this program. Thanks to my amazing husband for helping me this whole year with this!

A backpack says a thousand words. We often joke that you can tell a persons major on campus just by looking at them. Its true though, its really easy actually. Mark is OBVIOUSLY an engineer by the size of his backpack. More often than not, it is more full than this.

We LOVE to see family! This is little Allstar (blog name). He is Melina and Spencer's boy and he is so full of smiles. So adorable.

Starting to get a little ansty

School is almost over! We can now count our assignments and tests on one hand. Sure feels nice, but its hard to keep going, and finish those few things when you can see the end.... so close! So far it looks like we are going to have a fun summer with few responsibilities and places to be... meaning jobs. Good jobs paying more than $8 an hour are not in sight, but hopefully they will show up, or Mark will have lots of handyman work. That would also be nice. Either way, another semester is almost out the door and we are that much closer to fulfilling our hopes and dreams. :)

Engineering Nerds

Mark has a group project in one of his classes and they were told to come up with a group name... these are the ones his peers came up with. We thought they were pretty hilarious

Naked Mole Rats
Fraggle Rock
Unicorn Warrior
Warrior Princess
Oscillation Fascination
Tiny Dancers
Manheim Steam Bowlers
The Giga-Watts
The Giggle-Watts
Bridget
Its a Trap
Noted
The Cancer Bats
American Caterpillar
Omnomigon
The PRO-Tractors

Our favorites are in bold.