Prepping my Classroom, Soccer, Football, and Caleb's Birthday

The last time I wrote was May 1st, which was the first official day that SOME of the Coronavirus quarantine restrictions were lifted. Honestly, in Idaho we were pretty relaxed about the whole thing by May 1st. We had taken it pretty seriously from mid-March to mid-April, not letting our kids play with friends, not taking our kids to the stores when we had to get groceries, etc. We would occasionally take them out to places like the nature park or to the mountains to go on hikes, but for the most part they were at home and in our own backyard playing with each other. The weather was pretty cold and gloomy at the end of March too, so it made it easy to just stay indoors and watch movies and play games. But then by the end of April, when the weather starting warming up and the sun started shining, I think everyone was like, "Okay, enough is enough. We are going back to normal life!"

Finishing up the school year
So on May 1st, we started letting the kids play with friends more often and they would be outside a lot during the day. The school district officially cancelled in-person school for the rest of the year I think at the end of April, but we continued to do "home school" until May 15th. The official "last day" of school was May 22, but there are usually field trips and class parties and field days that whole last week. Also, Gabe and Caleb's teachers made everything due to be turned in by May 18th so that they could get grades submitted. The whole "grades" thing was kind of a joke though because the superintendent basically told the teachers not to fail anyone. So you could have done absolutely no assignments during the "home school" months and still passed. But for the kids who actually tried, they could give an A or a B. Gabe and Caleb both had straight A's. Avery's grade was simply a P for passing because that's how they do it for elementary school.

On May 21, the room mother of Avery's second grade class decided to have a little class party since the school wasn't having one. She made little buckets of goodies for each student and then she had everyone drive up and wave to Miss Homer (their teacher) and grab a goodie bucket. If you wanted to, you could park and let your kids get out for a minute and play. Avery is good friends with the room mom's daughter, Briella, so she was ecstatic to have the opportunity to go to her house and play for about an hour (outside.) She also was excited to see some other friends and her teacher. The fun thing is, her teacher got moved up to be a third grade teacher next year and most of the class is requesting to have her again, so even though they didn't get closure at the end of this year, it will  be like they are all returning to her class again this fall! Here are some pictures of Avery writing with chalk at the school for teacher appreciation day and then the little class party at Briella's house.

Gabe and Caleb didn't really have any class parties. At the middle school, Caleb's teachers stood outside at tables and had taken everything out of the lockers and individually bagged it, so as you pulled up you would say your student's name and they would bring over their "locker contents" bag. Caleb's included his jacket, two water bottles, some gum, and lots of other random junk. He said to me, "I feel bad for the teacher who had to clean my locker out." haha

Gabe's school had a day where you would also drive-up and they would give you your yearbook, but I had already taken Gabe with me to the school to make copies for next year and he was able to empty his locker and get his yearbook already.

Gabe and Caleb both have a lot of their friends in our neighborhood anyways, so it wasn't like they weren't able to see their friends. Avery's friends live more spread out around town, so we have had a couple of play dates in the past couple weeks with them.

Getting my classroom ready
Once school had officially ended on May 22, the teacher whose classroom I was taking turned in her keys and I was able to get them. It was kind of confusing, but basically the CLASSROOM I was taking was not the actual TEACHER's that I was replacing. They kind of took the opportunity to shift things around because they wanted all of the English teachers closer together and then the History teachers closer together. It actually worked out better for me because the classroom I got was better! haha So I am the new inhabitant of classroom 183. The lady that was retiring, Mrs. Munns, had been teaching history in that classroom for the past 10+ years and boy did it show! There was sooo much stuff in that room! She had every shelf packed, ever wall cluttered with posters, every inch was used. It was kind of giving me a panic attack when I first walked in to be honest. It was like "Hoarders: Teacher Edition." On one wall, she had even put up this HUGE wallpaper map of the world. I mean, it was kind of cool, but I thought, "How am I going to apply this to English?" She even said to me, "That map IS NOT coming off the wall. I used wallpaper glue." Yikes. So once she turned in her keys, I went to the school to assess the situation. She had so sweetly left me many "treasures" that she apparently thought I may want. These included buckets of markers that were all dried out, used file folders that had writing all over them, and lots of old bookshelves that took up tons of space in the room. So the first thing I did, was haul a lot of stuff OUT of the room. To her credit, she HAD already hauled a lot of stuff out and she probably felt like the room was pretty much empty (compared to what it had been), but I still needed to remove even more.

The desk that she had used was easily older than me, so I also chose to get rid of that and bring in my own desk. The school is super tight on funds (especially lately with all the COVID budget cuts) so I didn't even bother to ask them for a new desk. I just placed an IKEA pick up order and Josh, Avery, and I drove down to Utah, picked it all up, and drove home all in the same day. I go a new desk, a cubbie book shelf, and a few other things. It cost about $200, but in my opinion, that is money well-spent for my sanity. Also, we got that stimulus check so I figured it was putting it to good use.

I don't have my classroom all put together yet, but I will show some pictures soon! I still have a few things to do, but the classroom is almost done. Then I need to focus on the actual lesson planning!

Getting Outdoors
As the weather has gotten nicer over the past month, we have tried to get out and do some fun things. We were so cooped up for the months of March and April, when May hit and the weather warmed up everyone was like, "Let's get outside!"

We went to the BYU-Idaho gardens and walked around a few times. Avery and I even had a picnic there one day while Gabe was at soccer practice and Caleb and Josh went to the gym. We walked to the campus and bought Chick-Fil-A from the food court (which was only partially open and you couldn't stay there to eat) and then we walked to the garden and had our picnic lunch.

We also went there two separate times and Avery had me take about a thousand pictures of her in the gardens. We also walked up to the temple and took some pictures. The temple has been closed since mid-March too, but you can walk around the grounds outside the gates.

We also went to Rigby Lake last week. This was our first time going there this year and the water was still pretty cold!! The boys took the inflatable canoe out across the lake and Avery played on the beach in the sand.

Just this last week, the weather was REALLY warm and on one 90 degree day, we floated Warm Slough in the inflatable canoe and tubes. It only took about an hour and it's really close to our house, so it's a fun, quick little afternoon float. Here are some of Avery's glamour shots in the gardens and us floating the river!

Football and Soccer
Gabe had signed up to play soccer for the spring. This usually begins with indoor practices in January-February and then they start having tournaments and games in March. They were actually supposed to have their first tournament on March 28th in Boise, but then it got cancelled of course because of the plague. So they didn't practice at all from about March 18-April 30th. Then they resumed practices outdoors on May 1st, three times a week. Gabe had his first games last week on Wednesday evening, May 27th, and another one on Friday evening, May 29th. They lost the first one and won the second one (9-4!) and Gabe had two goals. It was a really fun game to watch! I need to get some soccer pictures of Gabe. I haven't taken any yet!

Caleb started his 7 on 7 football season in mid-May. They usually have practices twice a week and then their games are on Saturday mornings. Because Caleb is a big kid, he usually plays defense. This whole 7 on 7 thing is really more for the offensive players to practice their running and passing plays, but Caleb decided to play anyways. It's just fun to be with his friends and get out and run. His time to shine though is really in the fall when the regular season starts. Yesterday, his team played two games in Idaho Falls. They lost one and won one. Caleb even had a couple of good catches. After his games, we went and got pizza with some of his friends on his team and their families, which brings me to his birthday!

Caleb's 12th birthday
Since Gabe didn't really get a party this year (Coronavirus and all) and Avery isn't going to either, we decided not to do a big party for Caleb. He played his football games in the morning and then we bought a big cake from a local grocery store, which I picked up after the game in Idaho Falls. Then we went to Lucy's Pizza with his friends Colter and Colton (haha and Caleb... the three C's) and sang to him there. After that, he ended up going over to Colton's house and swimming in his pool in the afternoon, so he still kind of ended up having a birthday party! He also had his friend, Benson, some over two nights earlier and they watched movies and made smores and popcorn. So he wasn't TOO neglected. For his presents, he got this game called, "Nuts about Mutts" (a card game), some football gloves, some shoes, and a virtual reality video game (the most expensive present).

Caleb also had kind of a second little birthday "party" a few days later when he had a few other friends over (Benson, Kyler, and Cole) to just hang out at our house and have cake!

I think that about brings us up to speed! Oh, I forgot to mention... we took our house off of Zillow six days after we posted it. We showed it about five times in those six days and everyone "loved it" but yet no one offered! So we felt like maybe the timing wasn't right. Also, that townhouse that we had wanted to rent got rented out to someone else, so then we really had NO idea where we would go if we sold. We decided with all of the changes in our lives this year with me teaching and Josh potentially being promoted, it might be best to just stay put for the next year. We will keep looking out for land to buy, but we will probably just stay here until next spring. We have still had realtors and people calling us and saying, "Are you sure it isn't for sale??" So hopefully we won't have any problems selling it next year. Our next-door neighbors just sold their house (or at least ALMOST have sold it, contingent on the sale of the buyer's house) so we will be getting new neighbors soon.

Some days I am excited at the thought of moving and other days I am excited at the thought of just staying in a small house and not having a mortgage past age 44! lol So we will see what happens!

Quarantine Life, Easter, Josh's Birthday, and the House is on Zillow

You would think that being home for the past six weeks would've given me lots of free time to update my blog, but yet I still didn't! haha

Here it is, May 1st. We officially began our "Quarantine Life" on Wednesday, March 18th. The kids' last day of school was March 17th and, though we didn't know it at the time, that would be their last day of school for the 2019-2020 school year. Today is the first day that some businesses in Idaho are starting to re-open. It's looking like HOPEFULLY this whole thing may be coming to an end. Here is a picture that our neighbor took of our family. She went around to each house and took, "Front Porch Photos" to commemorate the time we spent as families on lockdown. We didn't kill each other, so that's something to celebrate!!

Over the last month, we have had to make several adjustments to our lives. First off, we tried to do at least a couple of hours of "homeschool" everyday (Monday-Friday). The kids' teachers all set up their own different ways of getting assignments to them. Most of Gabe's were online using Google Classroom. He has been very self-sufficient during all of this, usually getting up early and getting most of his school work done in the morning. Caleb's teachers were mostly emailing things and partly using google classroom. I always have to make sure Caleb is staying up-to-date on his assignments. He is pretty content to do whatever the bare minimum is. Avery's teacher compiled big packets on paper and came and drove around to each of her student's houses wearing rubber gloves! haha So Avery usually sits at the dining room table with either me or Josh and works through her math, grammar, spelling, and more. Here are some "homework" pics!

Josh's work schedule hasn't been too bad. The actual shift he worked changed to 12pm - 12am. So that shift is pretty crappy. But he would work 4 days in a row and then have 4 days off. Then, once a month, he also would get one week where he could "work from home" and just be on call. That just so happened to be this last week, so it's been really nice to have him home so much. This is day 9 of him being home in a row because he had his normal four days off, then four days of "work from home," and now he has his new four days off that he is just starting today. Today is Friday and so I think he finally goes back in to work on Tuesday. He HAS been on the phone a lot though, managing guys and fixing schedules and helping with things.

I have been trying to do as much as I can to prepare to be a teacher this fall - with NO classroom experience. :{ It's going to be crazy when I step into the classroom this August and say, "Hey guys!! Well, let's try and figure this out together because I have NO idea what I'm doing!" haha No, I won't say that. But, that's what I will be thinking!

I have been going through the curriculum and trying to read all the stories we will cover. Gabe is in the class right now that I will be taking over, so I'm trying to watch the assignments that the sub is sending him via e-mail. The sub he currently has is also going to be taking one of the full-time English teacher positions for eighth grade next fall. He's a really nice guy. Basically 3 out of the 4 eighth grade English teachers this year are leaving, so there will be me, him, and one other new teacher next year! Poor Mrs. Clark is the only one staying, so she will get to lead us all! She's really nice too though and has given me a lot of resources already.

So besides homeschooling, we have tried to keep ourselves busy with other things that we can do! This usually involves playing outside (the weather has been AMAZING lately), jumping on the trampoline, going on hikes near Rexburg, Josh and the kids going on jogs around the high school across the field from our house (not me), feeding the ducks at the nature park, doing crafts (Avery made this panda pillow), playing card games, watching movies, and sneaking out to get food through the drive-throughs now and then.

Even our church has been "home church." Usually the boys put on a white shirt (no tie) and church pants, but no socks or shoes. lol I put on a very comfy maxi skirt and a sweatshirt of some sort. Avery is just in her sleeper. There's no getting her to even remotely dress up if she doesn't have to.

On Easter Sunday, I think she actually did dress up, but that was the only time! We celebrated Easter this year by doing an egg hunt out on Uncle Ben's river property. Josh called him to see if we could come out there to hide eggs. It was great because we had the whole place to ourselves. I hid almost 100 eggs! The three kids took about an hour to find all of them. On Sunday, the Easter bunny came in the morning and they found their baskets in the house. Then we had our little, "Easter church at home" and ate our Easter dinner.

Avery also had a big day on March 31st when she got braces on her teeth! They had planned on doing in March 23rd, but then everything went crazy. Luckily, they still made her a priority and got her in March 31st. Her two front top teeth were so bad that they were hitting into her bottom teeth and damaging them. So I'm glad they were able to get the braces going ASAP.

Josh turned 40 on April 18th! Since we were in quarantine, I couldn't throw his a huge surprise party (which he was sooo sad about). I did compile some sweet stories from friends and family to give to Josh in a book. He loved that. Then for his party, he just had to go fishing instead! It was going to be just he and his cousin, Devin, and then all of a sudden the word spread that they were taking the boat out on her maiden voyage this year and Josh's brother, Bryan, and two other friends, Scott and Craig, said they were coming! Haha (That was probably against the social distancing rules, but they said it was okay because all the seats in the boat were at least five feet apart.) Here is Josh with a fish he caught!

The other BIG news is that we have been toying with the idea of selling our house. We have talked about always wanting to build a house someday and I've said for years, "Well, if we are going to do it, we need to do it when Gabe is about 14 or 15 so that he has a few years to enjoy it at least!" So here Gabe is now 14. How did that happen so fast?! Everyone is telling us that the market will start to change now because of COVID-19. Some people are saying they don't think Rexburg will see much of a change because BYUI is here and they always are hiring people and there's shortage of housing already. Other people are saying, "If you're even thinking about selling your house, you should put it on the market ASAP and try to get your money out of it before things drop!" So we went back and forth about it and decided to just take some pictures and list it on Zillow.com. It's completely free and there's not contract, so we figured, "Let's just see what happens." We listed it for sale on Tuesday night and then showed it three times on Wednesday. Yesterday (Thursday) we showed it another time. Today it is Friday morning and we haven't heard anything back, so we are just kind of sitting here waiting like, "Well... is anyone going to offer?"

Part of me will be sad if we get an offer because I really do love our house. We have been here almost nine years and there's so many memories here! This is where Avery's first home was! This is where Gabe helped teach Caleb how to ride a bike! This is where Gabe lived when he started his first day of kindergarten! It's just been such a great place to raise our kids. But, with the neighborhood just growing and growing, we are starting to feel more and more closed in. Our backyard has a fence, but on every side our neighbors have built elevated decks that can look right into our backyard! Then the neighbor just behind us started building a raised playhouse last week and their kids are constantly hanging over the fence and practically FALLING into our backyard! It's just gotten so bad. Josh is like, "It's time to move." So we've been looking at different land options and we just decided to try and list our house and see what we could get out of it. If we don't get an offer in the next couple of weeks, we may just take it off Zillow and stay.

The other reason that we decided to list it was because a friend of mine is moving out of her 3-bedroom townhouse down the street and it would be AMAZING to live there for the next year while we try and build. So! That's what we are hoping for. But we really would need to have an offer soon for that to be able to work!

No stress at all, right?!

The next time I post, hopefully I will have an update about where we will be living the rest of the year! It's crazy to think about. Here is a picture of our house two days ago, which is now the cover image of our listing on Zillow.com!

Corona Virus and I Got Hired!

Basically, the world has gone crazy in the past two weeks.
That is all.

Hopefully, I will look back on this in about a month and say, "Wow, that was sure a wild week. I'm glad that's over with." At this point, no one really knows. (The good news is, our snow is finally melting! So at least there's that!)

To sum up the development of Corona Virus... At the end of January, as we were getting ready to fly home from Florida, my friend, Lindsey, told me that her mom had said on the phone that there was this new virus called Corona Virus that people were talking about. She said, "My mom said that there's this new virus coming out of China that the government is worried about. She said they might take our temperatures at the airport when we land!" I thought, "Well that's crazy..." and didn't think too much of it. They didn't do anything to check us when we landed in Salt Lake on January 25th.

Fast forward to now: March 15. Our church meetings have all been cancelled and we just got finished having our own Sunday church service in our living room using the "Come Follow Me" manual with our family. BYUI has cancelled all classes for at least the next two weeks. Many school functions including school plays, dance recitals, basketball games and so forth have been cancelled. The NBA has decided to conclude its season early. There will be no "March Madness," at least not in the basketball sense of the phrase. School for the Rexburg district is still on for tomorrow... but is barely hanging by a thread. Many school districts surrounding Rexburg have decided not to hold classes for at least the next two weeks as teachers scramble to assemble packets and online learning. Fond du Lac is not having school.

Everyone is trying to do everything they can to prevent the spread of this sickness so that America is not affected like other countries, especially Italy. It seems like Italy has been hit especially hard by Corona Virus (or COVID-19 as it is officially called) partly due to their large population of elderly people and partly because they all live in such close proximity of each other. Their hospitals are overloaded with people.

Here in Rexburg, so far the biggest inconvenience is that every store is out of toilet paper. That seems to be the item that people are most panicked about not having should they end up being confined to their homes for three weeks. We were actually the lowest we have EVER been on toilet paper about a week before all heck broke loose. Luckily, we did go and get a pack of 24 rolls right before things really hit the fan. A few days later, as the church announced they would not be holding Sunday services, the population of Rexburg really went into panic mode. I tried to order some paper in a Walmart pick-up order and when I went, they said, "Sorry, no toilet paper in the whole store." Everything else was in my order, as far as food items like bananas, brownie mix, and so on, but no toilet paper.

So then right after that (which would've been Thursday morning, March 12) Josh and I drove to Albertson's, a different store that is right down the road from Walmart. I would say their shelves had about 30 percent of the toilet paper left. I bought about another 24 rolls and Josh was shaking his head the whole time like, "This is embarrassing..." but guess what?! Later that day, you couldn't find toilet paper ANYWHERE in the state of Idaho. And it's been like that for the past few days. I'm thinking that in a week or so it's got to level off. People can only hoard so much toilet paper.

That is the update on the Corona Virus and the toilet paper stock in Rexburg! Other than that, it seems like everyone is doing okay. We haven't felt sick yet. The funny thing is, Josh got really sick right after we got home from our cruise. it was all of the symptoms that describe Corona Virus: deep cough in the lungs, body aches, fever, etc. He had this for a solid 2-3 weeks! In retrospect, we are like, "You probably got it on our cruise and we didn't even know it was a thing yet!"

I'm really happy that our church came out with the new study manuals last year that outline all of the Sunday school lessons for all of 2020. Everything has been done to push the new "home-centered church" over the past year and now everyone is like, "Ohhh... this is why..." It's kind of crazy. Also, last October at the semi-annual general conference, President Nelson announced at the pulpit, "The next general conference (in April 2020) will be different from any previous conference. In the next sixth months, I hope that every member and every family will prepare for a unique conference..."

At the time, we all just thought, "Ooh, maybe there will be a special musical performance or something!" haha Now we are all like, "Ohhh... he meant because they won't be actually holding a conference where thousands of people sit together in the conference center. It will all be done via satellite and everyone will just listen in their homes!" It's crazy to realize, "Wow... he knew."

It makes me think of the time when a flood hit Fond du Lac in June of 2008. Caleb had just been born on June 6th and we got home from the hospital back to my mom's house on June 9th. A couple of days later, on June 11th at about 5pm, Josh got a call from the Bishop of our ward saying that he needed him to come and help unload a truck of supplies that had just arrived from Salt Lake. I was like, "Ummm... I just had a baby and you don't need to go help." But of course, Josh did. When he got home that night I asked, "What the heck was so important that Salt Lake sent a truck with? What was it? What did you unload?" Josh told me it was a bunch of 5 gallon buckets with bleach, rubber gloves, garbage bags, and other cleaning supplies. I thought, "Well that's weird." The next night, a huge flood hit the town. Our church was able to hand out hundreds of buckets with cleaning supplies to people who had been affected and were trying to clean up their homes and prevent mold.  I've learned now to just shut my mouth and listen when the leaders of the church tell us to do things!

The other big news is... I got hired!!! I took my big test on March 2, which I talked about in my last post. I found out that I passed the multiple choice portion right away, but it took about a week to find out about the essay. I found out on March 9th that I passed! I had already been subbing a few times and had chatted with both the principal at the middle school and at the junior high. In Rexburg, we have 5th and 6th grade at the middle school and 7th-9th at the junior high.

The principal at the middle school, Mr. Bone, wanted to meet with me one day after school on March 11th. In the meeting, I walked in and also saw two of Caleb's current teachers sitting there. I found out as the meeting began that the English teacher, Mrs. Jones (Caleb's current homeroom teacher) was planning to take a different job at the district office and they wanted to interview me to replace her. It was kind of funny because I know that "team" of teachers well (from Caleb) and I didn't know that was the team that would have an opening. The other two teachers are both men, Mr. Spencer (math) and Mr. Bloom (science). We chatted for about 45 minutes and it went well. The next day, in between subbing a choir class, Mr. Bone pulled me aside and offered me the job, teaching 6th grade English, officially. I was very honest with him and told him that I had also been talking with the Jr. High principal and was considering working there from the very beginning, so I would have to think for a few days and get back to him.

Two days later, on Friday, the principal at the Jr. High called me in for an interview and at the end of it, he officially offered me a job teaching 8th grade English. So then I had a decision to make! I told him I would let him know by the end of the weekend.

I thought about it and talked with the kids about it and they actually REALLY wanted me at the Junior High. Caleb will be in 7th grade next year and Gabe will be in 9th, so they will both be there. The 8th grade teacher that I will be replacing is actually the one that Gabe has right now for English. She had a baby in January and has been out on maternity leave. I was thinking she would decide not to come back and I guess I was right!

So now I have to officially plan to teach 8th grade in the fall! I am excited and also nervous, but hopefully I can prepare for the next 5 months and feel ready by August! Also, hopefully the Corona Virus gets over with in the next couple weeks and we don't end up having the next month off of school!

In other news, Avery has been getting her two front teeth for the past few weeks and guess what... they are so crooked even I could tell she would need braces right away. So I took her to the orthodontist and YUP, turns out he DOES want my money (shocker). In truth though, they really are turned so bad that they're hitting her bottom teeth and ruining her teeth every time she closes her mouth. So they are going to get braces on her before the end of March. They will also need to pull a total of six teeth and put in space maintainers. It's going to be a great few weeks. (sarcasm)

She also had Dr. Suess week at school a couple weeks ago and she dressed up with some friends as "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, black fish, white fish...." Here is a picture!

Finally, Caleb finished off his basketball season with the rec department on Saturday. It was a good experience for him I think, but sadly they did not win a single game. Their coach was awesome though and a really nice guy. He made sure they knew it wasn't about winning and they all improved. They had some close games! The game on Saturday (which just BARELY was not cancelled due to Corona virus) was their closest game yet. It would've been awesome for them to win, but in the last 6 seconds they were down by four points. One of their players had the ball way down at the opposite end. He dribbled for about 3 seconds, not even making it to half court, and took the longest Hail Mary shot I've ever seen... and guess what... it SWISHED into the basket! It was INSANE. Seriously the craziest basket I've ever seen. The whole crowd erupted with stunned applause and cheers. They didn't win the game, but it kinda felt like they did. :)

Valentine's, Teacher Stuff, and Please Let This Winter ENNND!!!

Here is what has been going on in the past month...

Valentine's Day

Caleb has this girl in his class named Brylee that he asked to be his Valentine (I guess that's a thing in middle school) so he went to Walmart and picked out a little dog stuffed animal and some candy for her. He even dressed up on Valentine's Day (and by that I mean he didn't wear sweatpants to school) and he decorated her locker with heart lights! It was so cute. He also came home with a stuffed animal and some candy.

I had asked Gabe if he needed to buy anyone anything and he said, "No, I am trying to avoid girls this week so no one asks me to be their Valentine and I don't have to buy anything." (Nice.) I know for a fact there is a girl at our church who had her friend come up to Gabe and ask him, "Do you have a Valentine yet?" (Caleb witnessed this and told me.) To which Gabe replied, "No, and I don't want one." (Again, nice.) So I bought him a big bag of skittles and told him to take it to school in his backpack just in case a girl DID come up and bring him something. I told him if no one gave him anything, then he could bring them home and eat them himself. At the end of the day he sat down on the couch and pulled out the Skittles and said, "I successfully avoided people all day so I could eat these." He's a real charmer that one. I didn't take a picture of him alone with his skittles.

Avery's class had a little party, which the room mom had asked me to plan a game for. I went to Avery's class with Josh, who had off that day, and we did this little hot potato game first and then did a game that's basically like beer pong, but we didn't call it that. They just had to bounce a ball into a cup! They had fun. Her class also had a chocolate fountain and exchanged valentines with everyone.

Avery's Presidential Fair

Something they always do when they are in second grade at Burton elementary is this Presidential Cookie Fair. They do a report on a president (which is chosen for them) and then the parents have to help them make this big trim-fold poster with pictures and fun facts. THEN, the teacher also sends home a recipe that she gets from some cookbook which has what "could have been" each presidents' favorite cookie. In the past, Gabe had Benjamin Harrison (I don't even remember what cookie we made) and Caleb had Teddy Roosevelt (who liked snickerdoodles.) This year, Avery had Franklin Pierce, who was apparently the worst and most forgettable president of all time. It literally said that on many websites. His cookie was the "New Hampshire Seed Cookie" and contained sesame seeds. It was super weird. But we made them and some people ate them and then I threw the rest away. lol
Then she also had to do this square dance thing with her cute little boy partner, Hendricks. (Fun fact: Hendricks is a twin and both of them and Avery were born on July 18th, 2012 in the same hospital in Idaho Falls... They probably laid next to each other in the nursery....I'm sharing that at their wedding some day... if she marries one of them.) It was so cute to watch them all dance together. Then at the end, they did the bunny hop. Here are some pictures!

Caleb has been playing basketball with the rec department team. I haven't really taken many pictures. I have taken a few videos, but they don't really post well on here. His team is made up of sixth and seventh graders, but I think his team is mostly sixth graders. They have been playing most Saturday mornings for the past month or so and they haven't won a single game... so it's been a little rough. They honestly aren't awful and the games are usually pretty close, they just haven't quite gotten a win. They have one more game left, so we will see what happens!

Gabe has been having lots of soccer practices. He is playing on a competitive team again this year that we have to pay an arm and a leg and our first born child for (luckily he is our first born child, so it's okay). He tried out back in November and they started having practices at the end of January. He was pretty excited the other day because he came home from practice and told us that he had been chosen to be a starter and he will be playing "left wing" (whatever that means). I think it means he's not the one that is typically scoring the goals, but he can run up there and score if he wants to. I'm not really sure. He's like, just behind the forwards, kind of in the middle. His good friend, Amos, is on the team too, so they have a lot of fun together. They have their first tournament in Boise in a few weeks.

Avery has been doing tap lessons all year, but she has really been difficult about it lately. She had her performance in February and she's supposed to have another one this weekend in Blackfoot, but I am thinking about just letting her be done after it. The teacher has been a real pill about it though and is telling me that I still have to pay for the months of April and May even if she quits (which I don't really understand...) but whatever. So we will see. I am debating if I should try a different studio with her next fall or try gymnastics or something else. She's kind of a stubborn girl and when she decides she doesn't want to do something it's VERY hard to make her go. Plus, with me starting to substitute teach I am often not home in time to get her to dance class at 4:00.

On Friday, February 21, I worked my last day as a secretary at Burton elementary. Denise gave me this sweet little basket of goodies on my last day!

Then I spent the following week studying. I did also sub at the Junior High on Monday, Feb. 24 but it was super easy because it was the last day of the trimester so they were just watching a movie AND they had a student teacher that basically did everything. I just sat there in the back of the class and watched Zootopia and observed. It was pretty nice. Then I also subbed at the Middle school (5th and 6th grade) for an art class on Friday, Feb. 28. That time I was actually by myself running the class, but it was only from 11:30-2:00 and it was little half hour classes. Then I took my big test the following Monday (two days ago) and I subbed yesterday, March 3, for a 5th grade class at the middle school. It was for a math teacher so I had to quick reteach myself how to convert tons to pounds and pounds to ounces! It wasn't too tricky, luckily, and I was able to figure it out before class started!

But let's also talk for a minute about the big test I mentioned...
I took my second/final big teacher test two days ago!

I had taken the "PTK" exam, which stands for "Professional Teacher Knowledge," in December. Then I enjoyed the holidays and we went on our cruise and I didn't really crack down on studying again until the end of January. Then I started studying for the English/Literature exam. This was the one that I was even more nervous about. I had talked to a number of people who had done this program and many people said they had easily passed the PTK, but then failed multiple times on the second one. A few people I know had actually failed THREE times, which in those cases then you are just done and you don't get a teacher's certificate and you forfeit your money!! So I really didn't want that to happen.

So I studied my little brains out the whole month of February. A lot of it was on poems, novels, dramas, and historical speeches I had never read before. There were also additional sections on grammar and writing, research strategies, speech and debate, and then some more teaching principles.  Simply put, it was a LOT of information. I had scheduled my exam for March 2 a while ago and I debated moving it further into March as the date got closer, but I decided to just go for it.

The day I took it was a crazy day because Josh and I started to drive down to Pocatello and we got about 3/4 of the way there and then some crazy stuff started happening in Rexburg and they needed Josh to come with Drax! So we pulled off the highway and a state trooper that was nearby let Josh hop in and then sped him back to Rexburg with his lights and sirens on! (I think Josh actually secretly likes feeling like Batman in these situations.) So then I drove myself the rest of the way to Pocatello and went in and took my test! The test had 150 multiple choice questions, which they allowed you three hours for. Then right after you finished the multiple choice section, a timer started for one hour for you to write an essay! They had told us in the preparation materials that the essay would involve reading and then writing an analysis of a poem. It was very stressful. I said a little prayer right before I clicked into the essay section that I would be given a poem I was familiar with. Thankfully, it was a poem I had read before and even knew a little bit of historical background about! I was soooo happy! It was called "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It's basically about this caged bird that is singing and it's symbolic of African-Americans in the early twentieth century.

But my happiness was short-lived as I started to write and, for some reason, I got hung up on one part about the symbolism. I worked on it for a while, rewriting and deleting, and then I looked at the clock and I only had 19 minutes left!! I quickly wrote the remaining three paragraphs and then looked at the clock. I only had 4 minutes left! And I hadn't even read through the whole thing once! So I started reading through it as fast as I could, catching a few errors and fixing them as I went, and the whole time I'm looking back and forth up at the timer on my screen as it ticks down to 3 minutes.... 2 minutes.... 1 minute... I actually still have PTSD just writing about it now. I was reading back the final paragraph when suddenly by screen went blank and the words, "YOUR TIME HAS EXPIRED" were on the screen. Then it said, "Please alert the proctor that you are finished by raising your hand." So I slowly rose my hand and the lady came over and escorted me out of the room. And that was that!

When I walked back out into the lobby with her, she gave me the little print-out that shows the score and I was like, "I don't even want to open this in front of you in case I need to go start crying in my car." She kind of laughed nervously like, "I hope she's not serious." Josh actually popped his head back into the lobby at that moment and I was like, "How'd you get here?" I guess a co-worker had driven him back down! So then we walked out into the hallway and I said, "That was a really hard test. I don't even know if I want to open this." But then I did and I PASSED! Well, I should say, I passed the multiple choice! The essay needs to get sent to this company that has a panel read it and then give you a score. So honestly, I'm still stressed out because if I end up failing the essay, I have to take the WHOLE thing over again!

And that brings me to where I am now.... anxiously checking my online page every day in hopes that they will post a report saying I passed the essay. I will seriously cry if I fail. I do NOT want to take that test again.

So today I am just here relaxing, cleaning, and writing a blog. I took Avery McDonald's for lunch today at school since she has been missing me being available to chat with during lunch time as the secretary. She also has an orthodontist appointment today for the first time where they will probably take X-rays and prepare me for the fact that she DEFINITELY needs braces. I can already tell her two front teeth are coming in very crooked. Joy.

Finally, I have to show some pictures of the awful amount of snow we have had this winter. The months of January and February were just ridiculous with the amount of snow we had. I mean, it snowed in October, November, and December too, but in January is DUMPED snow by the truckload. Today it is 40 degrees and sunny and so. the snow is finally starting to melt away, but we had such HUGE piles that it's definitely going to take a while to all be gone. At least the sidewalks and the roads are clear! These first few pictures make it look like a beautiful winter wonderland... but I'm sick of it. I'm ready for SUMMER!! Or even SPRING!