TWO WHOLE YEARS!!

Can you believe it?!! I have been married to my amazing husband for a whole two years! Thanks to my lack of a job this summer, we were on a $0 budget for our anniversary celebration. We went climbing in the canyon with Trace and Amber and we had a very nice home-cooked candlelit dinner. I couldn't have asked for a better anniversary. Coming to this amazing milestone has led me to reflect on these two amazing years:

• I love how we can spend hours playing odd games we spontaneously make up, that have unspoken rules
  
• I love our hymn races during sacrament meeting (for all those who are gasping at our irreverence: It is just a quiet competition that last for three seconds. I promise we are good people!)
• I love how Sean has become accustomed to sleeping with a slanted ceiling 6 inches from his face and has trouble sleeping without it (gotta love our tiny apartment)
  
• I love how our family home evenings consist of trips to Home Depot and Lowe's so we can plan out our future dream home
  
• I love how spending time together in nature is a priority for us.
  
• I love how Sean comes to the rescue when cooking in my shoebox of a kitchen gets too frustrating
  
• I love how Sean always creates me as a star player in his Nintendo games
  
• I love that we are both bibliophiles and can talk endlessly about the last good book we read
  
• I love how we even have a competitive game for getting into bed for the night
  
• I love how Sean plans for our future children's outdoor activities
  
• I love how we are experimenting with Sunday Dinner recipes so that we can build our own cookbook of favorites
  
• I love how neither of us want the remotes because we want to make sure that the other person gets to watch what they want
  
• I love how we both save money "secretly" to get the other person their dream gift
  
• I love how we make random trips throughout the year to Salt Lake, just so we can go to REI, the Patagonia Outlet, and Sconecutters
  
• I love how we are constantly thinking that if anyone happened to walk into the room, they would think we were crazy
  
• I love Sean's massages!!! He definitely has magic hands
  
• I love how I got a coupon book for Mother's day that he made during Elders Quorum
  
• I love the "Remember when. . ." game
  
• I LOVE MY HUSBAND!!

I am such a slacker. . .

I was determined to blog at least once a month this semester but I really did not have the time. So here I am, with a break from school, about five months after my last post, trying to catch up. So many things have happened since my last post. I am not too surprised that I haven't posted anything since Christmas because this last semester was pretty rough. I was a very absent wife. My schedule was: 1) go to class 2) go to work 3) go home and do homework 4) homework 5) more homework! 6) sleep. I feel so awful for abandoning my husband but I'm sure he'll get over it. ;) At least now I know that I can handle AnYThiNg! and I mean aNytHinG! Whoever said that Elementary Education was an easy major, never took any of my classes!

I had a very different practicum experience this semester. I was in a first grade class with only 16 students but all of those students were handfuls! This experience really showed me that my preferred teaching grade is NOT first grade. I loved those students, but they come to you with terrible behaviors, not background knowledge, and tendencies that are so bizarre and hard to handle! Not to mention that it is a critical year for reading instruction. . . the whole focus of that classroom was reading, reading, and more reading! My cooperating teacher was a pro. Every student except for one that came very late in the year was off the charts on their state reading tests. I realized that I am definitely more comfortable with a group of students that have a little bit of experience being in school. So far, I think that my ideal grade would be anything from 3rd-8th grade. It is still a pretty big range, but I still have time to narrow it down.

***Awesome side note: Sean passed his STATS class on his very first try!!! I am so proud of him. He is a great student when motivated, but math really is his Achilles heal. He worked hard and pulled it off!