Why this is only the 4th post for all of January

I started school right after we got home from Christmas vacation. I am taking 8 classes which add up to 18 credits-
Science Methods
Social Studies Methods
Math Methods
Intro to Spanish
PE Methods
US History
Practicum
Testing and Measurement

I have been busy. I have missed sharing my life with all of you. We have no food. I need to go grocery shopping before it snows.
That is all.

George III

I am back from my extended and unannounced blog vacation. Honestly my life is just so dull I haven't had a darn thing to say. Except this- for my Art methods class we had to make an animal paper bag puppet. And not just any old typical glued on construction ears and eyes puppet. It had to be 3D, anatomically correct, and made out of creative materials. Let's just say I took those requirements to heart. Meet GeorgeIII-

Come on, are you surprised? You know how adorable I think turtles are. The puppets were due on Wednesday. Everyone showed their puppets (turtle, blow fish, rabbit, parrot, elephant, and butterfly) and we critiqued and graded them all. Then we ranked them from best to worst (in a nice way, of course). And guess who's everyone thought was the best? Mine. Duh! How could you not think GeorgeIII was the cutest turtle puppet you ever saw?


In case you forgot, here is GeorgeII.
(GeorgeI was my pet box turtle from long ago who ran away).


Here are the other turtles I have joyfully encountered since living here in Missouri.

Okay, so this one was at the zoo. But the rest were in the wild.

Have a good weekend. And don't worry, I'll be back soon.

Sorry about the lack of updates. I got a complaint that I am not satisfying the blog-addicts out there, so I apologize. To be honest, I haven't the heart to write lately. I'm still bummed about losing my job, and not having to work is making it worse because sitting around here with nothing to do is making me go a little bit crazy.


On a more positive note, I have been getting a little bit of much-needed experience working with school-age kids. First off, I started tutoring again. Sadly, my previous tutee, Ariel, moved to Chicago this Summer, therefore I did not get to say good-bye. I was a bit nervous about getting a new kid, but it turned out fine because I got Alex whom I have tutored before. She is a sweet girl and I look forward to working with her this year even though I will miss Ariel.
Here is Alex with me last April- (not the most flattering picture, I know)

Other sad news- I quit the two year-old Sunday School class to get the aforementioned experience and moved up to the 2nd-4th grade class. I will really miss the two-year-olds. You remember how much I loved them (if not, click here). This Sunday was my first day with the older kids, and it was a lot of fun. I am not the main teacher, so I get a break from teaching the Bible lessons, but I get to lead song time which means I had to break out the old guitar. I spent practically the whole day changing the strings and tuning the dang thing.

Also, I have visited my friends from church Mary's and Brenda's classrooms the last couple weeks. They are both third-grade teachers at the same private school. That has been good for me because, frankly, I have been freaking out about student teaching next year. I haven't had a whole lot of experience in the classroom or with school-age kids so I am really starting to get nervous. So basically I am doing everything I can to get more experience to ease my fears a little. I am going to start helping at our church's Sunday night kids' program, and I am looking to either tutor another day or volunteer at another church's after-school program.

While I am on the subject, for one of my classes we will be going to an elementary school for a couple days for the next few weeks. We are learning how to give reading tests/inventories and are going to test them out on students. My first day was Monday, and I was in a fourth grade classroom. It was a lot of fun. First of all, the school we went to was awesome. I immediately decided I want to teach there just by the looks of it (probably can't judge a school by its looks though). The building is super nice and airy with tons of pets. Yeah that's right, animals. Everywhere you go there are fish tanks, and in the hallways I saw a huge parrot, other little birds, a snake, and I only saw part of the school. Outside they have a nice courtyard with a pond, and I hear the kindergarten has a pool.

Then I got to work with a fourth-grade girl and she was too cute. Part of our class assignment was to interview our student, and I thought it would be awkward asking her questions like- when is your bedtime? what do your parents do? But it ended up being really enjoyable because she was very talkative and had a very inspiring personality. For instance I asked her if she liked school and she said "Oh, I love school! And I always pay attention in school, for two reasons. First, I want to get a good education, and second, I want to be a teacher when I grow up!" She is a lot of fun, and I will be working with her each time I go to the school.

Yikes! I've got class in ten minutes! Have a great day!

I'm FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Yea! summer time here I come. Finally. Summer school was officially over at 7:43 p.m. last night. Although it was a quick and easy way to get six credits over with I do not think I will be taking summer school again. Every night I was sitting in class listening to my instructor talk about himself instead of sitting out on the step listening to the cicadas and watching the fire-flies. Now that it is the end of June already the nice weather is quickly dissipating. Soon it will be too hot and muggy to enjoy. So even though summer school only took away one-third of my summer it took the best one-third. Oh well.

So my birthday didn't turn out to be so bad after all, for those of you were wondering. I skipped my second class so that I could go home and enjoy my birthday if only for a few hours. I came home to a vase of flowers in the living room and my husband scurrying around to feed me a delicious dinner of pork chops and mashed potatoes and chocolate cake. Also my birthday present came- on my birthday! Which I wasn't expected so that was kind of cool. Here is my birthday present-

Isn't she beautiful?
And here is the cake Jonathan made all by himself from SCRATCH. It is decorated as a turtle in case you couldn't tell.

Anyway- I hate to cut this off short but I have a lot of summer goofing off to catch up on. Since I was so busy with school this past week I haven't even gotten the chance to play with my new toy so I've got a lot of baking to do! But check back often because I will be updating this thing daily now that I am school free.

Summer School

I have been a very bad blogger. What fun is a blog if you never update it? Anyway the lack of posts lately is due partly to the fact that I am in summer school. I am taking two classes (two intro classes- sociology and computers- that I want to get out of the way) that are Monday through Thursday from around 5pm to 10pm. So I have been going straight from work to school. Which I have come to find out, is not necessarily a good idea if I don't want people to think of me as that girl who stinks. I found this out a little late though since I often went straight from work to school during the spring semester. The way I found out is like this... Jonathan got a summer job (thank the Lord) at a local coffee shop. I won't go into the details because 1. he hates it and 2. he doesn't want anyone to know that he, a sophisticated philosophy phd student is stooping down to the rest of the working world's level. Anyways... this coffee shop serves food and the sort, and when he comes home from a long day of working in this coffee shop, he stinks. Mostly like old syrup and I am not sure what. So I thought about it- I work in a kitchen with food all day long; I am bound to stink when I come home. I asked Jonathan for the honest truth, and he told me straight up, that yes actually I do stink when I come home from work. Bad. He doesn't specify what I stink like, however. We were arguing about who stunk worse though so we smelled our dirty work clothes. We did not come to a conclusion but Jonathan did say that my work clothes smelled like a twelve year old boy (i.e. similar to my little brother's room). I reluctantly agreed. So here is my question- if I went all this time without knowing that I stink like a sweaty adolescent boy, then does everyone who stinks not even know or notice it? That seems weird to me. So think about that the next time you are like- wow that guy could use a shower. Give him a break, he can't smell himself.
P.S. I know what you are thinking- Sage, that is disgusting- But don't worry too much- I don't go to school in my work clothes. I change into clean clothes and spray a bunch of body spray on. Who knows if it does any good.
P.P.S. For your information my birthday is tomorrow. If you do not have my address or e-mail address to send me presents and the sort, just let me know by commenting and I will be happy to tell you where to send them.
P.P.S. Are there woman taxi drivers or limo drivers? I think I saw one today, but I wasn't sure if they even existed.
P.P.P.S. In case you are wondering- I am having the most pathetic 22nd birthday ever. I am going to work at 8am. Then after work I will head straight to school until about 10 pm. Exciting.
P.P.P.P.S. Am I even doing this right? I never could figure out if you were supposed to add more p's or s's to p.s. Does anybody know? If p.s. stands for post script like I think it does, it would make more sense to add more p's. But in actuality I have no idea which is correct.
P.P.P.P.P.S. For goodness sakes cut this nonsense out, I am in the middle of class!
One more thing- I wanted to spice it up a bit by adding a picture. So here is proof that my little brother is a hunk even though his room stinks. Besides it probably doesn't stink any more because after all he is almost thirteen years old!

What I have been doing for the past two weeks

I can't tell you how good it feels to be done with school for the semester. Last week I worked a full week, so I hardly had time to get any school work done. Remember how I am a sleep addict? Well I figured out I was just getting too much sleep. Since it is impossible for me to get up any earlier than is absolutely necessary, I decided I would just have to start staying up later. I changed my sleep schedule so that I go to bed about 12:30 or 1 and get up at seven. I don't feel as groggy and tired when I wake up. Plus it gave me a reason to drink coffee. I have discovered how nice it is to drink black coffee when I get to work. I started calling it my happy juice because it has this magical effect on me, where I feel alert and in a good mood. No wonder Jonathan sucks the stuff down like a hummingbird does kool-aid. (Don't ask me where that came from). So with the help of added hours in my day, I managed to write five book reviews in two days (phew!). Then this week I had to write the eight lesson plans for my language arts class in two days. That was fun. Thankfully I had Monday and Tuesday off, so I had the time. I hadn't cleaned my house for like three weeks, so Tuesday night I spent three hours cleaning. Wow! the bathroom is sparkling along with the fridge. I hate dirty fridges. How can you put new groceries in a dirty refrigerator? Don't do it. Wednesday I had to teach one of my lesson plans to the class. I was nervous but I think I did really well. The finals for my classes were take-home, so I got those done. And for my music methods class, my professor exempted me from the final (Yay!) since I knew everything on it anyway. So there you go. I have three weeks of freedom until summer school... but we aren't thinking about that right now are we... because we are enjoying having a clean house and no homework!

All is lost

Okay well, I just was merrily typing away, then I accidentally lost all that I had just typed. So I promise, I was going to post something interesting tonight, but now I am mad and don't want to type it all again. Besides I'd never be able to remember it.
I guess I'll just give you the main point of the paragraphs I had written.
Random Thoughts-
My music methods class is fun. The teacher is fantastic at the piano. He is trying to teach everyone the basics of piano. Since I already know how to play I get to help teach. I wish I could take lessons from him, because without a piano teacher I am lost. I have been working on this song for months. I think I am finally getting it.

Sunday's service was convicting. It was the best Palm Sunday service I have ever been to. Not super cheesy, like Palm Sundays have a tendency to be. The theme was betrayal. I don't know if this link will work, but you can try clicking on it to see our church's bulletein from this Sunday. I will tell more about it later, and try to fix the link.

I have been sad lately. I had a rotten last week at work. We didn't have much going on, so there was hardly anything to do. Plus the air conditioning still wasn't working, so it was unbearably hot. Today was much better though because this Sunday is Easter, and we have a huge Easter Brunch. I kept busy, and the air-conditioning was fixed.
I miss my family. I miss Idaho. I especially miss downtown Boise. We realized that we have now lived in St. Louis longer than we lived in Boise together. I can't believe it has been over a year and a half. It feels like ages ago since we first moved here, and even longer since we lived in Idaho. It is weird to think about it. It seems like we had totally different lives in Boise. Actually it was a different life, but it seems like a different life-time. That doesn't make much sense does it? There are definitely things I like about St. Louis, and reasons I like living here. I won't bother to name them now. But still. My parents, my grandparents, my siblings, my in-laws, are all in Idaho. My twelve-year-old brother is growing up without me. I hardly recognize him when I see him. Here we have no family. We have church friends. But none that are super close (yet; we are working on that). In Idaho we didn't need friends because we had our family.
Jonathan and I are so anti-social. We like to isolate ourselves from everybody, especially if we are feeling lonely (which doesn't make much sense, I know). Pastor Donn actually warned us about this during our pre-marital counseling. We took some personality tests thing, and we were both extreme introverts. He said we will really have to make an effort to get out and be with other people. He is so nice. He even told us we could call him for money if we needed some to go out. I am sorry, I'll shut-up now, I am sure you have had enough of my whining. If any of you have advice on making friends, let me know :)

Just a quick post before class

Yay I am so excited! Erika left comments on my blog! That is so cool. Thanks Erika. You are the bomb. I need to e-mail you. Don't worry I will soon :) So I had a wonderfully long weekend. I ended up having Monday off as well, so I had a four day weekend! Yay.
Friday I cleaned the house (as usual.) And then worked on a bunch of stuff for my sunday school class, and ran some errands. Made pizza for dinner and then what I did after that escapes me. Saturday was really nice b/c we went to Northwest Coffee Co. Our most favorite coffee shop. Anytime we go anywhere else we are disappointed and end up saying, why didn't we just go to Northwest? We drank the best Americanos in town and ate pastries, and read MAD magazine (reading material was limited). Then we went to Good Will and St. Vincents, which are both just a couple blocks away. I found a super cute Old-Navy summer (brand-new) dress ($4.50), and J. Crew jeans ($4.00). I was hoping to find a Shamrock cookie-cutter so I could make Shamrock sugar cookies, but no such luck. I made sugar cookies anyway (heart-shaped) with green frosting. They were so good we ate them in two days. Anyway, then we came home and just hung out doing basically nothing the rest of the day. It was so nice because that is the first time we have been able to go to Northwest on a Saturday morning and do nothing all day, for a long long time. Plus on Saturday I was looking for a video-game on the Internet, and happened to find out that this game that Brooke and Ira gave us a few years ago (Marvel vs. Capcom 2) is worth a lot of money. So I checked it on e-bay and it was selling for up to 115 dollars! I was so excited. I know hardly anything about e-bay, but I put ours up for bid anyway, hoping to become rich! So far it is only up to $31, but there is still three days left to go. I doubt it will sell for much, but I am really hoping it will.

Do you ever get temporarily obsessed with something when you find out or learn something new that is really cool? Well, that is how I get anyway. So I got into that obsessive mode after finding out our video-game was worth something. I spent all of Sunday afternoon looking up our junk on e-bay to see if it was worth anything. I even dreamt about e-bay all night. I dreamt I was at my parents house giddily thinking about all the stuff they have that I could sell. Now it has basically worn off, but that doesn't mean I am not checking to see if anyone has bid on our item 10 times a day!
That is how I was when I decided I wanted to start a blog. All I could think about was what I would write and what I would put on there and blah blah blah. Of course I had to convince Jonathan to get me Internet first. I think he got it for me just so I would shut-up about it. I am such a dork.

Since I didn't do much homework over the weekend, that is all I have done the past few days. For my children's literature class we have to read kids' books from different genres and then write a review on them and come up with a lesson to do with them. Anyway I have done 11 so far and I am getting so sick of it! The good news though, I got nine of them back on Monday and I got 100 on every single one. So I was glad about that. I had two due today, and I just barely got them done. Well I better go I have class in thirty minutes.

Highlights

I am so sorry I have been neglecting all you faithful readers out there. I hope you have not given up on me. Last week was my spring break so you'd think I would have written more last week, but I didn't, due to two reasons-
1. Jonathan was working hard on school, typing a paper (so I couldn't use the computer)
2. I couldn't put down the book I was reading.

Okay, so then the weekend came and all the sudden I had to go back to school, and I had only done one out of the five assignments that were due on Monday. Yikes! I spent all day Sunday working on school, and had to get up at 5:30 just to finish an assignment. Monday I went to work from 8-2, then had to go to school at 4 and stayed at school until 9. Tuesday I worked, then went to tutoring for a couple hours, and then had to do more homework. Wednesday was the same as Monday. Today, I worked and then we went to some friend's house and watched basketball. The movies I checked out from the library are due tomorrow so I had to watch a movie, and now here I am.

Here are the highlights from the past couple weeks- You know me, I like lists-


*Read a really good book called The Kite Runner. I wouldn't normally have read this book, except it was last month's book club book. Unfortunately I didn't even read the book in time for the book club, so I didn't even go. But everyone said it was good, and I already had checked it out so I decided I may as well read it. I couldn't stop reading it. I read it in less than a week. Now I wished I could have gone to book club because it is the type of book you want to talk about after you have read it. If you are looking for a good book, read this.

*Saturday was a 250 ppl wedding. I cut the five tier cake by myself (after Becca taught me how). I was pretty proud of myself. It is not too hard once you know how to do it and get the hang of it. I was covered in buttercream afterwards. Yuck.

*Tutoring went really well this week. I am thankful for the opportunity to work with Ariel, because honestly, I have not worked with kids older than the age of 3 that often. If I am going to be a teacher, I need to know how to deal with kids, and this is definitely giving me needed learning experiences. Ariel is up and down. One week she is really ornery and doesn't want to do anything I have planned to do and throws a fit. The next week she is really sweet and compliant. Because of my inexperience a lot of times I don't know how to respond to her behavior. It isn't good because I am not always consistent with her. I never know if I am being too firm or not firm enough or what. I mean, what am I supposed to do when she doesn't want to do what I ask, so hides her face and won't talk to me? I can't tell if she is just having a bad day and feeling sad, or if she is just plain trying to get her way. It is totally worth it though. Not only for the experience it gives me but just the joy of having a relationship with a sweet girl and trying to be a Christ-like figure for her. Sometimes I feel really tired after work, and I just don't want to go at all. But afterwards I am glad I went.

*I went grocery shopping for like four hours, because my fridge looked like this (there is nothing in the drawers either):

I absolutely despise grocery shopping. Ever since we left Win-Co (I love you Win-Co) all the joy is gone. I went by myself, which is always a bad sign. Jonathan has to go with me to keep me in check, or else I am like a kid with ADD in a toy-store. I have a very planned out well-organized list before I go, but once I get there I get distracted and I think of new things I need and I have to look at everything and I can't make a decision for the life of me. I feel like I get trapped in the store. It's horrible. I feel bad when I take him though because he has better things to do than grocery shop, plus he also hates it. It is better than last semester though. The only time we were able to go was Friday night. We tried to convince ourselves it was like a date. That was like the last thing I wanted to do on a Friday night. Anyway, it feels so good to finally have food in the house again! I could probably go on and on about the whole grocery shopping thing, but I better save it for another day.

*Today I made marshmallows at work. It was kinda cool. I tasted them before they were set up and it tasted exactly like marshmallow creme. But better.

Okay so that is all the interesting things I can come up with. The weather was really nice at the beginning of the week but I didn't even get to enjoy it. Now it has cooled down. I am so excited though because I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. I haven't had a Saturday off since we got back from Idaho in January. I am going to try to get all the junk I need to do done on Friday so I can enjoy Saturday with my to-do-list all crossed off. It's ambitious, I know, but there is no harm in trying.

Just for fun I'll leave you the cool card I made for my mom's birthday (yeah I know I was like three weeks late in giving it to her)

Not a great picture, I know, but isn't it cute?

Weekend Update

Okay, I didn't have an ultra exciting weekend, because I am not an exciting person. In fact my life, as some may see it, is quite boring. I don't mind so much. Jonathan keeps telling me that I married a boring man so I guess I am stuck being boring. But, I am going to tell you about my weekend anyway. First a side note. My blabbing about being boring reminded me of my conversation I had with the weird guy on Thursday.

So I went to school, thinking I'd be in and out in a few minutes because I just had to drop off an assignment. As I was walking out of the Educ. dept office, this guy asks me if he can ask me a question. Annoyed, I say "what?" He then proceeds to ask some really vague question about how social classes view each other. Hoping to get out of it and go home, I just said "I don't know". He kept prodding me though, but I wanted to know why he was asking. Apparently, he had just got out of some Sociology class and was testing out what he had heard his professor say. He stopped me because I am white (he probably figured it was his only opportunity since white females are far and few between at my school) and he wanted to know, how white people view black people, and how they are different. I am afraid I wasn't much help to him though, because I was caught off guard, am shy with strangers, and so wasn't too excited about engaging in a conversation with this guy. We talked for over and hour though, and it was pretty interesting because we found out how opposite are lives are. I am from Nampa, Idaho where it's news at the dinner table if you saw a black person that day, and he is from a Chicago neighborhood where white people aren't seen for miles. He thought it was the most amazing thing that I don't have cable, and have never had cable. He said he has never met anyone that has never had cable. Oh well. He wanted to know what I did for fun. Ha! I am sure he thought I was the most boring person alive. He said he had done more than I've done my whole life by the time he was twelve. I finally was able to pull away. We didn't come to any conclusions on the race issue (no surprise there). When I told Jonathan about it, we tried to decide if we were racist or not. I think everyone has their own biases, and I know I have plenty. But we both realized that more than anything we are classists (no I don't know if that is actually a word). Yes, we are biased towards poor people. (poor as in really poor, not fake poor (like us)) We try to avoid them, and look down on them whether we realize it or not. Yes it is shamefully sinful, especially since the Bible is always talking about how we should love and care for the poor. You can think we are horrible people. Because we are.

So on to the actual purpose of this post. Our weekend:
Friday

• worked for awhile
• made home-made pizza
• watched TV
• practiced piano, got frustrated and depressed so went to bed

Saturday

• worked
• made vanilla pudding for Jonathan (home-made not the powder from a box)
• went to some folk's house from church for a game night, ate pizza (again) and played Settlers of Catan. (I was not named Lady of Catan unfortunately)

Sunday

• church and sunday school
• nap
• lunch
• watched dumb movie on tv
• laundry
• went on a walk with Jonathan

So there you go. This week is my Spring Break already. I have a ton of homework though and am working a full week, so I won't being doing anything fun.

If you are bored, go here and type in your address. I would give you mine so you can see my house, but I don't want all my stalkers out there to find me.

And a picture for those of you who only read books with pictures.

Our house (we live on bottom) in the summer. So green! Can you tell I am anxious for spring?

Old School

for my "teaching children to read" class each of us were assigned a student at an after-school program. this publishing company gave us all kits to make a book. so we went to the school and had our students write and illustrate a story, and then we will send it in and it will be made into a real book.
anyway... today i went to work with my student, who is a seven-year-old girl. she is really cute and smart and i have had a lot of fun with her. everything she says cracks me up.
today, as she was drawing a picture of one of the characters in her book, she said
"i am going to give him an afro. *moving her arms around in a circle dance/cabbage patch* Old School."
i laughed out loud. you would probably have to see it for yourself though to fully appreciate it.

Yay! I love Internet

I finally convinced Jonathan to let us get DSL internet! It is only 14.99 a month and is way faster than I expected (okay so the last thing we had was dial-up so yeah it's going to be a lot faster) I have yet to find out how much taxes are though.

So anyway now I am super excited because I can finally keep in touch with all of you in Idaho. I started this blog so that you can read about my boring life and stay updated on what's going on with Jonathan and me. But you have to be faithful readers and leave comments or it won't be any fun. And I will try to post often and put lots of pictures up.
You can blame Alicia Daniel for giving me the idea. I had so much fun reading hers that I decided I wanted to start my own. Let's just hope it's not horibbly dull and that I can think of things to write about.

I hope you all had a good Valentine's Day. I spoiled Jonathan by making him a yummy dinner and a cookie pizza for dessert. I also gave him a couple little presents, and left him sweet notes around the house. He spoiled me and got me the Internet.
Here is the cookie pizza- delicious

We had crazy weather this week. Monday it rained all day. Tuesday morning it almost felt like a spring rain, but then at about 11 am I look outside and it's snowing like crazy! When it snows here everything shuts down and there a ton of wrecks.

And a few updates for those of you I haven't talked to in awhile........

• In September I went back to school to Harris Stowe State University. It has been an interesting experience. It is a very small HBU (historical black university) close to my house and to work. Click here to see pictures of it. (Click the main picture to see more)
  
• Also in September I also started being a volunteer "tutor" at Firm Foundation Program (click here if you'd like to read about it). I have tutored the same girl all the way through and have really enjoyed it. Here is a picutre of Ariel and me-




• I started a new job in November. I am now a pastry cook for Lazy Susan Catering company which is part of the same restaraunt I worked at. My dream job. Still at the same location (Nadoz) I am just in the kitchen now... where it's quiet and relaxed (most of the time) and there are no customers or stupid people (at least not as many)! Yeah! Click here to see the mini pastries we often make and here to see the desert case in Nadoz we fill up every day.
• I started teaching a Sunday school class for the almost two's and two year olds. Which has been fun and... a bit tiring. Trying to get them to sit still can be a challenge! But what can you expect they're only 2 years old!
• We went home for two weeks at Christmas and had a great time. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

The Family Picture

Brooke and me

I like this picture of David

Snuggling on Christmas

David and me (I look David's age in this picture)

Well.. I think that about wraps it up. I have spent way too long on this so I better just quit. Thanks for stopping by!