October 2010

Things are moving right along with the house. We should know by the end of the week if it will be ours or if they still need some stuff from us. Lane and I have reviewed our pictures of the house and got re-excited! I'm so excited to decorate it for Christmas. That was my very first thought when I even saw the house. It's going to be beautiful.

Trevor's time is just about up here. Guess who gets to come up to take him home!.....Dad AND Devin! YAYYYYY!

I'm sad my mom won't be able to come up because I've been wanting them all to come up, but I at least get to host those two...three counting Trevor. It will be a tight house (now would be good timing to have the bigger house). Maybe we'll have it by then and just put them to work for the day they'll be here! I'm sure they will just love that.

We will see my mom soon enough. Lane and I are going home for Thanksgiving!!! It's that year again, which means Christmas in Wenatchee. We're already here, so we don't have far to go then. I'm excited to be home next month though. I feel like I can't go enough. There's no place like home.

The cold/flu has been going around of course. I finally got a cold, and it hit me hard within minutes. I think we need to get flu shots this year since I will be going into classrooms and there are a lot of sick kids in those classrooms. I'm prone to catching something.

I feel very un-festive for Halloween this year. It's next week and I am not planning on any costume. I am working the nights of parties, and I won't be working on Halloween so I feel like I have no reason to dress up. And I didn't even decorate because I was assuming we would be in our new house by now. I guess I'll just go big next year...maybe.

There are crunchy leaves on the ground!

Fall Is Here

School:

I'm about 4 weeks into school. It's a lot of work. I haven't been as motivated and on top of things as I had hoped I would be. However, I do love the things that I'm learning because we talk about kids ALL day. Parts of it are overwhelming and terrify me, but most of it just makes me so excited to be a teacher. My favorite part is observing. I would hardly call it an assignment, but I have been able to actually go into classrooms to observe. I have been in 3rd grade so far, and love it. If I could get paid to just walk around schools/classrooms, help out, and just observe...I would love life. I am so fascinated with being inside elementary schools, especially here because in California most schools are out door schools. I have never experienced being inside a school that's all inside, with lockers and such. I always thought that was just on TV. It's awesome! (I'm a nerd, I know).

House:

Ohhh it's all so frustrating. We have almost given up. I updated our house blog if you care to read it.

http://ourhomeevolution.blogspot.com/

$:

I am grateful that we pay our tithing. We have had a few things come up recently that feels like it will cut us down to the wire ~ehem~ like my car...But we have been blessed with everything that we have. I guess I can say that I have been waiting for these random expenses to come up because things have seemed too good to be true. I opened up my own account just today for my tip money. So it will be nice to have that in case I need to go home or something...or if we have an emergency.

Entertainment:

I never really felt like a couch potato until lately. All I ever want to do outside of school and work is lay on the couch and watch tv. (I'm not depressed). DVR has enveloped my life. I record 2 episodes of "Boy Meets World" M-F 4,4:30am, so I love to watch those. I record Ellen Degeneres M-F and watch those when I have time. Of course this is all when school's in session, but I also record "Dancing with the Stars", "Teen Mom", and "The Office". Luckily, but sadly "Teen Mom" just had its finale. I have become hooked to that show, haha. Anyway, it's not like I have all the time in the world to watch all this stuff. I have been pretty busy. I just need to replace some of that time with better stuff like reading and exercise.

I love fall. I love the colors, and when the weather becomes crisp. I love the fall clothing. I am just ready to go crunch some leaves.

This blog has totally become a vent session I guess. That's all for now though.

Life

Well I survived my first week of school! First impressions: I will definitely get my practice in for presentations. I don't think I have ever been bad at giving presentations, however I am one of those who get the nervousness--thinks about it all night beforehand, nervous stomachache, throat gets dry--so hopefully that will all calm down (especially since I will be presenting all day M-F when I have a job)! I'm sure that's what this practice is for. I guess this will just test all those areas and prove whether or not I can teach for a living. We are going into classrooms starting this week! I don't know why I wasn't expecting all of this stuff. My first observation assignment is a 3rd grade class. As of now that's included in the range of grades I want to teach.

I also found out something else today: my minor is TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). I guess I have been a little clueless going into this program. The automatic minor switches every 2 years. If you don't know much about the Wenatchee area, it is very diverse. So of course this minor is perfect for teaching in this area! My Bilingual Education professor mentioned today that he is considering setting up our practicum in Honduras--going there and teaching for 3-4 weeks! That would be pretty awesome if that worked out...a lot of money though. So anyway, this is a bit jumbled for a summary of my first week of school, but there it is.

Still no news on the house. We're still waiting on the lenders. I'm to the point where I'm not expecting anything to happen on a certain day. It will all just be a pleasant surprise when it happens.

I'm an official server at the Dirty Bird!

Still Waiting...

I'm not even going to say when I think we will officially close anymore. We're pushing a month late (which could be normal I guess) but seriously? They're driving us crazy! Everything's all set, we just need a few measly signatures from the lenders! SHEESH! I guess to keep with my other updates, now we are supposed to get the keys either tomorrow or Monday. I have had so much free time that I could have been using on the house projects, and now I will be in school and starting to serve at work and just too busy! I guess that's what I need though; I don't like too much free time. Ok, my ranting and raving is over.

p.s. Lane is really busy with work all of the sudden, and he's currently out of town working really late. I just watched a chic flick tonight with Trevor and stuffed my face with doritos, popcorn, and chocolate chip cookies. I need to cut that out and start doing some P90X otherwise I'm going to gain 20lbs this winter!!

Closer and Closer...

Well we finally signed the papers on the house today! The notary lady met Lane at Red Robin while I was working and in between seating people, getting drinks, and running food, we signed our lives away page by page! So it should be tomorrow when the house becomes "our house" and then the projects begin! We are so excited! I can't wait to get going on things and then be able to move into it in about a month. :)

We're getting so close!

I am also getting closer to serving! I got my liquor serving permit last week (which was step one) and now they are going to write out my training schedule!

I'm getting so close!

And I feel like I have had a lonnnnnnng summer break and school was never going to come. But I start a week from today! It crept up on me and now I am getting nervous to actually be in a set program and to be able to see my end in sight!

It's getting so close!

September 2010, here we come!

Well nothing exciting has happened lately--everything has been going in slow motion I think.

ME: I have been getting pretty good hours with work the past few weeks, and things are looking good for an upgrade to serving. Then again, I have been feeling that way for the past year so I guess we'll just see. School starts on the 20th of this month. I have been pretty ready for that until the past couple weeks when my mind has just been so enveloped in decorating ideas for the new house (which should be ours officially in a few days!) Annnd I've been a little baby hungry but don't get your hopes up (or freak out if you're my mom), because we are still waiting until I'm done with school :) Plus, we have some friends that just had a baby/are pregnant, and Brady & Leah Harker are moving up here this week and they have an adorable baby that I can fill my hunger with. We're super excited to have another pair of friends to hang out with!

I decided to challenge myself a few weeks ago and play a solo piece in sacrament meeting. I basically stopped playing piano the year I graduated high school and didn't really even touch a piano until I moved here to Wenatchee. I have the calling of Primary Pianist right now, which is a lot harder than people think! Especially for someone who hasn't played the piano in about 4 years! I'm nervous for the primary program in a few weeks, even though everyone is focused on the cute little kids and don't care about the piano, haha. It's getting better for me though, and I've been playing a little more at home lately, so maybe I can start teaching my niece finally (I told her last year that I would start)!

A couple weeks ago one of my best friends/old roommates, Mandi, and her husband visited her family in Spokane. I hadn't seen her in over a year so I decided to take a little drive to go see them! It was so great to catch up and to visit her sweet family as well. AND she is officially preggo! So happy for them! :) And it just so happens that our other best friend/old roomie, Michelle, is also preggo again! She already has one stinkin' cute kid, can't wait to see the little babies!

LANE: He's been doing really well with his job. He's basically at the top of his game and impressing his boss we'd like to think. Things are going great for him. If this summer has been any kind of foreshadow of what this winter will be like then he will be one busy man and will for sure need to hire some backup for his area. Other than work, he has been busy keeping the ball rolling with the house and also has his mind enveloped in ideas (and more of the money aspects like usual).

Football Season is starting--joy! Fantasy Football has started him off! I actually prefer football over basketball, however there are just way too many college teams to follow. But there will be more room and a lot of projects in the new house that will help me avoid watching it all.

TREVOR: Oh yeah, he's here too! He's finally getting a little busy with work. The orchards have been a little backed up this year so he didn't get to start working right away like we had thought. He attends institute on Tuesday nights and the rest of his time he is bored, texting, and eating Taco Bell. Hopefully he can make some more friends (the ones he did make left for college). Either that or he'll just be too busy with work and reading his scriptures ;) that he will have no time for anything but sleep. haha

Backstreet's Back..Alright!

Remember these boys?

Well of course you do! It's only been a decade or so...

Well they came here of all places!

I remember doing extra chores so that I could get this...

...and plug it into my little karaoke cassette player and jump on my bed singing and dancing to my little crushes (minus Kevin--who is no longer in the band). So of course we had to get tickets! So I went with the only 3 boys that went (jk), half expecting the show to be a ridiculous attempt by 4 fat/bald old guys to try to once again win the hearts of thousands of screaming girls--25 year olds who know every single word to every single song, and 13 year olds who try pretending they know all the words and later go make up some story to their friends that they touched Nick Carter's hand.

It was actually a really great show! They did awesome, still look pretty good, and even though they have quite a few moves worth making fun of, they moved the whole time and sounded great!