switching blogs

Well, since I'm on vacation from being a teacher and I'm trying to take on more wifely duties (ie, cook dinner for once!), I'm switching back to my Wife's Tale Blog...and probably will continue to write in that one from now on.
If I'm cool enough, add my Wife's Tale to your blog links or Favorites or Bookmarks. And if I'm not cool enough, I really hope you give my blog an honest consideration.
And with that, here's the link:
http://awifestale.blogspot.com/

my 26th birthday

I'm 26 and tired!!

It has been such a fun day, probably one of my best birthdays ever (though I think I say that every year!). Ben did a great job of spoiling and wearing me out today!!

First, we woke up at about 8 and hung out for a bit. We got ready and when I walked into the kitchen to leave, I saw this:A new mountain bike! I was already kind of aware that this was going to be my present, but it was still a fun surprise! I got right on and it is the perfect fit!I found out it was a present from Ben, my mom, and my other great mom and dad Hubert. Thanks!!! My plan for tomorrow is to go for a nice ride.

After I played with my bike for a bit, we got in the car and onto the freeway. Halfway through the drive, Ben said I had to close my eyes because he wanted to surprise me, so I obliged. I got totally lost and confused and nearly fell asleep, the ride was soothing.

And then we stopped. At Ruth's Diner up Immigration Canyon. (Side note: Ben took me to Ruth's Diner on our first date in high school, junior homecoming dance, and we've been talking about going back forever, it's really yummy!) We had a great breakfast in the fun little diner. I got SO stuffed!

Next we drove to a tattoo parlor. And Ben wanted to go in to get tattoos. But we didn't because I got a stomach ache thinking about it. So don't worry, mom, no tattoo for me.

I wanted to walk around at Gateway, so we went to some really fun shops there (my new favorite: Urban Outfitters). We stopped at Barnes and Noble, the Apple Store, and Dick's Sporting Goods. I got some new biking gloves that match my bike.

We had talked about going to a movie, but Ben steered me in the Sanctuary Day Spa and I ended up getting treated to a manicure. It was pure HEAVEN. I decided that I need to treat myself to something like that every month because it's really relaxing and feels great. (shhh...don't tell, Ben got a pedicure and loved every stinkin' minute!)

After the spa, we went to see Kung-Fu Panda, the new animated movie. It was darling. Jack Black was hilarious. "Skedoosh!"

We decided to invite Ben's parents to dinner and I decided I wanted to go The Cheesecake Factory, which opened here recently. It was great. I had an awesome pizza. Then we ordered cheesecake. I got a peanut butter cup cheesecake with caramel and butterfingers. It was amazing. The waiters/waitress' sang to me:





And then I stuffed my face.
We just got home and I'm looking forward to getting into my pj's and relaxing the last hours of my day away. Thanks to all the birthday wishes!!! I love you all!

that's a wrap

I'm taking a nice 3 month long break of being Mrs. Hubert. The school year is over and I'm thrilled.

We had a short day today with the students only being each period for 25 minutes and exiting the building by 12. As teachers, we stood at the front entrance and watched the little dears mull around, some in tears, as the year came to a close. I think some teachers really wanted to do a dance and cheer that they were finally gone!!

The year-end faculty/staff luncheon was pretty fun. They gave all of the teachers/staff leaving a little gift and then sang the retirement song to the one lone retiree, Coach B. He went around the room and said something about every single person. At my table, we took 'bets' on how long he'd talk. Let's just say who said 18 minutes was way off and the person who said 45 was the closest (I think it ended up being almost 50 minutes or something). It was quite sweet, but me and my pals kind of got the giggles. We were drawing pictures to represent each of the holidays...and as one said about the Christmas picture "We may be here until Christmas!"

I was checked out and gone by 3.

If I could remember one thing about this year, I would remember it being a lot crazier and more difficult than my first year. Last year people told me, "This will be your hardest year!" But I think this year has been harder. Here's why:
- Traveling from room to room and being kicked out of my room caused a lot of stress---I believe I cried every day during lunch for at least that first week. For the most part the other teacher's rooms I borrowed were nice and welcoming. Others were difficult and meddling and treated me like a student teacher. My students hated the fact that we were kicked out and took it almost as hard as me; classroom management went out the window and students used the unfamiliarity as an excuse to misbehave and pretend "we aren't in your room so the rules don't apply." I pushed a freakin' shopping cart! A shopping cart was my classroom! Enough said. (No, I'm not at all bitter, I'm over it!)
- My yearbook/newspaper staff was right up there next to the words horrible, awful, bratty....and on and on....but we managed (with my own stupidity at working on pages until 12am on some nights just to meet deadline) to have a decent yearbook, I think.
- Working on my ESL endorsement AND a Master's at the same time is really insane and I'd never recommend it, but I really didn't know what I was getting myself into with most of it (ie the ESL endorsement was much more complicated and busy than I ever imagined!) A few of my teacher pals might remember a certain temper tantrum I threw last summer during one of our ESL classes...full on screaming and rolling around on the floor. I'm sure glad none of them had a camera!
- Add on top of all of this is my calling as Primary President, which I feel totally inadequate and undedicated to!!! I love the people I work with, I love and adore the kids, but I feel awful that I don't have loads of time to dedicate to it. But I'm looking forward to summer to have a little more time....I think.

One hour from now will be my 26th birthday. Wahoo. I think I enjoy birthdays and don't feel ashamed or sadden to tell people it's my birthday or how old I am. Ben has the day off and we're doing...something. The best present is the fact that school's out and I can relax a bit. But I do still have homework. Which really sucks.

I'll probably switch back to blogging on my Wife's Tale blog from here on out (and not returning to Teacher's Tale when school starts again, as I have before). I'll put a link up here soon for Wife's Tale.

Ben and I went to the DMV today to get a new license. Mine expired tomorrow and he needed a new motorcycle one. We didn't have to wait too long, only because my husband is good with words and convinced the lady to help us both at the same time, even though we had two different numbers. Then we went to Marie Calendars; I didn't eat much since I just had eaten, but we got a killer blueberry pie, which is just about the best thing I've ever eaten. We came home and decided to take a nap before we both worked on various things (me, homework; Ben, bills). I set the alarm to wake up after about 45 minutes but then we both ended up sleeping until 9!!!

Oh, the joys of summer break!

last of the yearbook drama....i hope...

We've had a little bit more drama with the yearbooks this week. I thought the only big problem was the 08 name things, but, oh no, there's more.

Yesterday the secretary handed me a book and told me to look inside. I saw that the cover was ours so I assumed the inside would be ours. It wasn't. The pages inside were pages from a school in Ukiah, California. The book was all in color, had graded k-12 shown, and loads more punctuation/spelling mistakes than ours. I laughed. Luckily, it was only this one book like that, but I keep wondering how it happened. I suppose we'll never know.

Today, a mother came to see me and complained to me about the fact that her son's picture is not in the yearbook as if I took it out on purpose! She yelled at me and told me that "it sucks to buy a yearbook when your kid isn't in it." I was apologetic and tried to explain that I didn't take her kid's picture out; it was a mistake with the photo company not putting his picture in the group. She gave more attitude than I care to remember but I do feel kind of bad about the whole thing. This is a student of mine that actually kind of like. But, as the secretary told me, there isn't much I can do now.

I said goodbye to my 9th graders today. They left after getting their refunds. Some went to Lagoon...a cold, wet day for Lagoon. Other's went home. I was somewhat happy to see them go.

Today I took board games and I ended up playing Apples to Apples during each period. It was so fun! I had about, on average, 10 students in each class, which was refreshing.

Tomorrow is the last day and I'm very excited. We're having a big faculty luncheon after the kids leave and then I have to go get my new drivers license. Crazy that it's already that time, eh?? Then the big 2-6 on Friday. Ben got the day off so we're gonna play. I'm excited!!

I'm off to finish my book club book before book club tonight at 7!!

red bull oops!

Well I survived yet another yearbook day. For the most part, it went off without any major problems and I think the books were a success! We inserted a little "oops card" explaining the mistake with the 08 pages, and I think the kids kind of "got over it" quickly.

I made the HUGE mistake of drinking a big Red Bull on my way to work in the morning. I drank it and ate a breakfast sandwich, all in the 10 minutes or less it takes to get there. My thinking was that I would need some extra energy for the big day and wanted to be able to handle everything.

I felt great for the first hour of distribution, which went really smoothly. My staff was surprisingly fun to hang out with and it was fun to see the student's excitement when they received their books.

An hour into distribution, we made a change in staff and continued to call down more students. At this point, things started to slow down, the excitement was wearing off (for me, anyway), and I was crashing...hard. I felt my body literally shaking with an overdose of sugar. Then, the principal brought all of us a soda, which mistakenly I drank, too. My hands were shaking and I felt weird. I sat down to sign some of the staff's books and seriously thought I was going to pass out. Then I started getting a stomach ache.

After normal distribution, I sent the staff back to class and I was left alone to give out more books to students who managed to pay off fines and buy books. It was quiet and only a few kids came at a time, so I had time to just sit and relax...and almost fall asleep.

The effects of my Red Bull high were wearing off (thankfully) and at this time, it was time for lunch. All of the teachers had to be at a "post" to watch the kids and make sure they weren't wandering the halls. I was right by the lunchroom and had fun hanging out with the other teachers. I was also able to sign some more books and get students to sign mine, too.

Then we had department meeting and I was out. of. it! I don't even remember what we talked about. I was so tired and worn out. Hopefully I didn't miss much!

I had a sweet e-mail yesterday from a parent of one of my challenging students. I've been in contact with this parent quite a few times about his son and met him at PTC. His e-mail was thanking me for my work and patience with the student. I almost cried.

I'm officially finished with my ESL endorsement. I submitted the last of the assignments yesterday and now I just have to send in paperwork and $$ to get the endorsement posted under my record AND to apply for a lane change, which is a nice little (key word, little) raise :)

After I came home yesterday and took a 2 hour nap with Zeus, I forced myself to finish my homework for my master's class. It was long and tedious, but I'm glad I finished it. On my agenda today is to finish up all grading for 4th quarter, get grades posted, and be done with grades for the year!

4 days left of school. 7 days till I turn 26. Yay.

Swan Lake WOW

As a former ballet dancer, this gave me chills!! Watch the whole thing; even if you aren't a dancer, it's still amazing!

life through brown-colored lenses

These are my new glasses. They're brown. And they're great.

Here's my old glasses. They're black. And they were eaten by Zeus on Saturday. They were five years old.


Like my new brown pair, my black one's are Ralph Lauren (and mostly I get those because it says my name). Ben bought the black ones for me just before he left for Iraq almost 5 years ago. They were the most expensive pair of sun glasses I'd ever owned and I vowed to take great care. And I did, mostly.

I kind of "grew up" with these glasses, because, let's face it, a lot has changed in my life in 5 years. Five years ago, I was just engaged and coping with the fact that my hubby-to-be was in the middle of war. Five years ago, I was still in college and living with 5 other girls at BYUI. Five years ago, I still wasn't sure if I liked being a real adult (I still don't, for that matter).

Now, however, thanks in part to Zeus' decimation of my black glasses, I now see life through brown-colored lenses. I'm a full-fledged adult (whether I like it or not) with a career and a home and a husband who is home (sometimes) and dealing with his time in war. Life is good through brown-colored lenses, so far. I foresee what may come in my life in the next 5 years. Hopefully children will come. Hopefully I'll learn how to sew. Hopefully I'll learn to love Zeus again.

big oops

So remember when I posted last time about how excited I was about the yearbook. Remember how I said it looked great? Yeah, well, I should maybe take a little bit of that excitement back.

Because over the weekend I found a HUGE mistake.

I've taken some time to calm down over the mistake and had a sick stomach all weekend realizing I'd have to tell my staff AND still hand out the book this Friday.

The mistake? Let me explain...

Last year, my yearbook rep offered to do a page for us (Actually a double page spread) where, in the shape of the numbers 0 and 7, he put all of the students names. It turned out really cool last year and my staff this year elected to have the same thing for this year, only obviously with this year's names.

As my rep began working on it, he obtained a new list of this year's students name to include in the number 0 and 8. He completed these pages, the last two, just shortly before my last deadline. Because of the tiny font and a not high resolution when printing the pages out, when I proofed the pages, all I saw really was blurry font.

On Saturday, I decided to take a while to really check the book and highlight mistakes, write notes down for next year, and proof one last time (not that at this point anything could be done, right?). I came across the 08 page and studied the names. I came across one of my last year 9th grade students' names and chuckled at the mistake. But then I saw more and more 9th graders from last year.

I realized that this year's 08 page had LAST YEAR student's names and that NONE of this years 7th graders were included. Ugh. To some of you it may not seem like a HUGE deal, but in the yearbook world, where mistakes last FOREVER, it is.

I broke the news to my staff during 2nd period today after telling them that the books had finally been delivered. I could tell they were upset but thankfully they took it like champions and agreed with me on my idea to create an "Oops...we're sorry for the mistake" card to hand out with the books. I spent all of my lunch and prep period creating, printing, and cutting the cards up to be inserted as we pass the books out. I contacted the yearbook guy over my rep just to see if there's anything they could do, but no such luck.

7 days left. I can't wait!!!