Schools out for the Summer!

Well I survived another year. In some ways this year seemed long but I can't believe it's over! This last week of school was pretty fun. Dustin always teases me that I don't work the last 2 weeks of school. The last week (one week) is a lot of cleaning, wrapping up and playing. We had water day yesterday. The kids take their desks and chairs outside and we scrub them down with soapy sponges then spray them down. Then in the afternoon we do rotations with water. The kids don't get really wet, maybe a few sprinkles here and there. I had about 5 kids that walked in Thursday morning and we almost in tears because 'Teacher, we forgot our swimsuits'. If only you could have seen the concern on their faces. It took me telling them a few times that they didn't need their swimsuit before they would calm down. I was in charge of the water balloon toss. It was a lot of fun. And I might have tossed a few right next to their feet. One of the little boys chased me and popped on on me though. Good times! The last day is always a little bitter sweet. The kids are so cute. A bunch of them made me cards. My favorite one said "Thanks for being a great teacher for first grade. You teached me a lot." (Guess they missed some grammar lessons :) Two of my girls made me a giant (like 12 papers taped together) poster of the three of us. I am very excited for summer though... sleeping in, staying up late, spending time with Dustin, playing with friends and family, camping, jet skiing, BBQ's... I could go on and on.

HAVE AN AMAZING SUMMER!

My Absolutely Incredible Husband!!!

I just have to take a minute to brag about my hubby. Dustin never ceases to amaze me. I seriously don't think that there is anything he can't do. When people ask me what he does I think it would be faster to tell them what he doesn't do because he really does it all. He has started a successful business from the ground (or our little first ghetto apartment), he is now expanding Monster Sak to sell furniture (really, really nice furniture for way less than R.C. Willey), he's a real estate agent, a loan officer, a property manager and I could go on all day. One of his recent goals was to get a book published. When he told me that's what he wanted to do I couldn't believe it. I mean really, who does that. Well I shouldn't have been surprised when Cedar Fort told him that they would publish his book. That's right... DUSTIN IS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!! His book is called 'Learning to Prosper'. It's a self help book aimed at helping returned missionaries use the skills they have learned in post mission life, school and how to graduate from college with no debt. You can see a picture at cedarfort.com then click on the new release link on the left hand side (sorry, I don't know how to put a link). It's on the second page, #17. I just searched on-line and Amazon and a few other online book store already carry it! I am so proud of him!

Seven Pounds

We just finished watching this movie and if you haven't seen it yet, maybe you shouldn't read this yet.

I was really excited to see it and now that I have, I wish I wouldn't have watched it. I really liked it up until about 15 minutes to the end. I don't really want to say to much because I hate it when movies get ruined but frustrating. It had an overall good message and it did a great job getting you totally emotionally invested but I feel completely empty. Not happy.

Have you seen it? What do you think?

Yes we're still alive

From the looks and sounds of it, we're not the only ones who have hit a wall with blogging. It's not that nothing exciting is going on, I just haven't felt motivated to blog about anything. But by request of my cousins ... here is a quick update.

We've had two birthdays in our house and 6 in just our immediate families in the past two months (all but one in March). Dustin turned the whopping 2-8 and I turned a quarter of a century. For Dustin's birthday we had a little get together with his family/going away party for Rachel and Brandon (man that seems like FOREVER ago). He was sick on his actual birthday which was kind of the pits. He got a fish for Christmas (long story, ask him). My birthday was a school day and my first graders wanted to sing to me like every 5 minutes. They were really cute. We went to Outback with some family and friends. Dustin got me beautiful Gerber Daisies, and a bike and I'm so excited to be able to ride all over town as soon as it warms up. Funny story, he got me an ice cream cake that looked heavenly. It was called Mud Pie and it looked like chocolate and peanut butter. He cut it and served it and we all started eating it. It was then that we all realized, that isn't peanut butter, it's coffee flavored! Ha ha! We had a good laugh over that one.

In other news, as many of you know, we can't stay put in one place for very long. We moved into our new place and it was a nightmare!!! The first night, our neighbors had quite the party and were blasting music until all hours of the night. A few mornings later someone went cruising up our street, very early in the morning honking their horn. Other times there were teen aged boys peeping in the basement windows, or grown couples coming right up to the window to look in. Needless to say... kind of a scary place, especially for me! So we put in some time there, trying to make it work and now have decided to move back and keep it vacant for a little while. Oh, the adventures!

I am very excited for General Conference this weekend. I LOVE conference time! I love the energy boost that I get. We are so blessed to have living prophets that lead and guide us and remind us the things we can do to make our lives better than we ever thought possible. And here's keeping our fingers crossed that it gets warmer by the weekend!

Spring Already?

I almost don't want to say anything for fear that I might jinx this wonderful weather we've been having! I love springtime! It's actually been light in the morning when I'm getting ready for school the past few days. So light that I thought I slept through my alarm one morning and woke up in a panic, only to look at my alarm and realize I still had 5 more minutes to snooze! I've had recess duty this past week and I usually dread it because it's cold and windy but this week it was beautiful. I didn't even have to wear a jacket some days and I busted out my flip flops one day! Funny recess story... one of my little boys found a pair of glasses on the field. As he handed them to me he said "Teacher I found these glasses and their missing a window." ha ha (they were missing a lens). My students have been much happier since the weather has warmed up also.

I have a new passion. Maybe even an obsession! I LOVE VOLLEYBALL!!! My sister-in-law Dani invited me to come to practice with her on Tuesday nights starting about a month and a half ago. I played young women's volleyball but that was the extent of my experience. I was okay and I had a lot of fun playing. The girls we play with on Tuesday nights are good. Most of them played on high school teams or took classes at BYU. I do alright serving and bumping but no one ever taught me how to set or spike the ball so I didn't really like playing up on the net because I didn't know what to do. This last Tuesday one of the girls showed me how to do those things and it was so much fun. I can't wait till next week until I can actually use them in a game. I feel like I just excelled like a whole level or something. Ever since practice I've been wanting to play more than once a week and it was just my luck that a bunch of the girls I teach with like volleyball too. We decided that we would all play after school on Thursdays! Yea!

Everyone at my school is super motivated to be active because we are starting this biggest looser competition. It's more about being healthy than loosing weight, although you get points for loosing weight too. (Don't worry there aren't any weigh-ins wearing only shorts and a sports bra). You get points for different healthy habits each day like taking a vitamin, drinking enough water, not drinking carbonation or caffiene, eating 5 fruits and veggies, and for working out or lifting weights. I'm excited for some motivation to be healthier and a competition is just what I need!

More First Gradeisms

This week was a long one. We had parent teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday which means that I was at school from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm and then had to go back and teach on Friday. I think my kids could sense that it was going to be a long week so they gave me somethings to laugh at. So here they are...

One of the boys in my class came up to me with a mini water bottle. He said "Teacher, sometimes my throat gets clogged and my mom said that I should drink this when that happens." I was thinking, a clogged throat, wow! I told him he could keep it at his desk. When his mom came to parent teacher conferences she saw the water bottle. I told her about his 'clogged throat' and she just laughed. She said that he had told her he was thirsty and she told him to get a water bottle. I guess her response wasn't dramatic enough so he had to spice it up!

Next, my students all wrote a story and then they got to type it and we published it. One of my really bright students wrote this great story about going to California and the beach. They were playing and going boogie boarding. Then they drove a while to their grandmas house. They were going to celebrate FOURCHENLY!!! (just like her story, all in caps and 3 exclamation marks). She said that she loved fourchenly. It was an awesome story with periods and capitals and just about every single word was spelled right (which is amazing for first grade) but I was really wondering about this mystery holiday so I asked her what they do to celebrate fourchenly. She said "ya know like the parades and the fireworks'". It was all I could do not so just start laughing. Oh... The Fourth of July. Oh course I didn't tell her and when her mom read it she just about died laughing.

February being dental awareness month, we had some wives of dentists come put on a presentation. When they were finished we went back to class and I handed out a little packet with a toothbrush, toothpaste, those tablets that show were you missed, and some stickers. One of my little girls turned to her friend and said "this is the best day EVER!" Who would have thought a toothbrush beats out candy, parties, Halloween and even Christmas.

And my FAVORITE for the week. Bob (we'll say that was his name) comes up to me at recess and says "Suzie made me kick Joey in the privates." I looked at him and said, "Bob, can Suzie really make you do that. If you kicked Joey then it was your choice." He then looked at me and said "I can not resist the puppy eyes." hahahahahahahaha Wow, this kid has the best excuses. I bit my cheeks REALLY hard and said "Well you better learn how to", sent him to sit and think about it, then turned around and just laughed.

MEXICO

For Christmas this year, Dustin's family all voted for a cruise together over presents. On January 10th we all flew down to Texas. Dustin's parents picked us up and we drove strait to Galveston to get on the ship. This time we rode Carnival Ecstasy. It was so much fun all being on vacation together, no work, no worries just good times. It was a five night cruise that went to Cozumel and Progresso Mexico. While at sea we went to shows... ...got our makeup done by Aimee for formal night... ... went dancing at the club... ...danced at dinner...
...sang karaoke (sorry no pics), laid out in the sun (in January... AWESOME!), played lots of Sudoko... ...and of course ate a TON...

When we got off the ship in Cozumel we took a taxi to a private beach and they took us snorkeling. It was our first time going and it was AMAZING!!! We saw a big sea turtle, lots of beautiful fish that would swim right up to you. We saw a few barracuda (that Dustin tried to swim up close to, he still has all his fingers don't worry) and right at the end we saw a HUGE stingray. It's wing span was probably about 6 feet! It was amazing. We did get stung by a few jellyfish but it was totally worth it. We took some really cool pictures with our underwater camera but haven't got those pics developed yet. In Progresso we went to some ancient ruins called Chichen Itza. Supposedly it's one of the seven wonders of the world. The craziest part is that when you clapped at this big ruin it would make this crazy sound back. They said that it was the Gods welcoming you there. Then on our way back we stopped at this sink hole. I guess they are all over this part of Mexico. This one was beautiful. They had built a tunnel to go down to it and you could get in and swim. Aimee and I jumped in for a few minutes. There were fresh water fish and the water was so clear you could see way past your toes.


All in all it was an AMAZING trip. After the cruise we got to spend a few days in Texas visiting family and doing a little shopping. Thanks Mom and Dad Robison for the amazing Christmas present!