Hunting

Last weekend Mahonri went out goose/duck hunting. He convinced me to come along. Although he hasn't convinced me yet that I need to hunt with him, I will admit that he has made me enjoy looking at different wildlife animals and birds. I am fascinated with them now, thanks to him. Anyway, even though he only got one duck this time around, it was a very successful hunt. There were a lot of ducks and geese around but Mahonri wanted to sneak up on one particular duck and get it. He was successful and ended up getting a rare (to our area) Redhead Duck. See the pictures below of the success:

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Halloween

Halloween is such an interesting holiday for me. I really do not like dressing up so I usually so I do not like Halloween. However, I LOVE carving pumpkins so the holiday really isn't so bad. This year my parents brought us some pumpkins when they came down to go see Thriller. We joined them in seeing Thriller. It was a pretty good production. On Sunday, the day before Halloween, we carved the pumpkins my parents gave to us. It was fun. Here are the pictures of our pumpkins:

School/Basketball

Once in a blue moon I get around to actually blogging. Things have been crazy and busy during the past 3 months since the last post. I am going to do three separate posts today so I am going to start with school.

School is almost 1/2 over already. I cannot believe how quickly time is passing by this year. We just sent out our quarter 2 mid-terms. Christmas vacation will be here before I know it. Things in the district with all the changes had a rough start but the kinks are getting worked out. I am lucky enough to have a great principal that is really trying hard to get everything to fall into place. I am enjoying my high school classes that I am teaching for the first time this year. I do miss not having as many middle school classes but I am adjusting.

Basketball season has also started. It have 24 girls this year. I was sure that many of them would quite the first few days of the season because that is the norm, but this year everyone decided to stick with it. Mahonri is helping me coach this year and it has been fun to have him helping me. We decided to not do try-outs and just allow all 24 girls to be on the team. It is probably a few too many but that just means next year we will have more to pick from that have some experience. This year the team has no seniors and only 5 players from last year's team. We are extremely young and inexperienced but Mahonri and I will work hard to get them ready to play. Almost all the girls can make a lay-up now, which is a lot more than the handful that could when we started, so I guess we have accomplished something during the past 3 weeks. Without any background knowledge or experience with basketball for most of the girls we have been going really slow and focusing a lot on the basics. It is challenging but we do like challenges. Wish us luck this season because we are going to need it!

In other news, I decided to cut my hair and donate it to Locks of Love. I am not very sentimental so I did not take before and after pictures. The only picture I have is from my cell phone because my best friend asked me to send her a picture. Here is that picture:

Slacker

It's a good thing I don't slack off on other things the way I do about blogging. You'd think that I would find time to blog during the summer when I am not working, but obviously I didn't. I think it's because things don't change much and so there are not too many exciting things to blog about.

Mahonri spent the summer going to school and I spent it being lazy. I did take one class this summer to keep my teaching license current. It was nice to get that class out of the way so I won't have to worry about any classes for the next few years. Although the class was pretty boring and more busy work than anything, I did learn a few strategies that can be useful in helping me be a better teacher.

This summer has been a summer of learning. Even though things don't always turn out as planned, I am grateful that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The knowledge of the gospel can help make trails and tribulations bearable. The Atonement is the greatest gift we have been given. Lessons can be learned that make us stronger and ready to handle other things that may come our way. Even though the past couple of weeks have been hard, we have managed to overcome and grow closer to our Savior.

Recently Mahonri and I went to Gunnison and headed up the mountains for a nice, relaxing day before school starts again. We first went to Shinglemill and went fishing. Other than the cows that are up on the mountain, we were the only ones there. Both of use were able to be successful this fishing trip and caught one fish each. We had a few other bites that we didn't catch.





After our fishing, we decided to drive around and look for wildlife. It was a pretty successful drive. We saw some deer, 24 in total. There were 4 bucks and 20 does that we saw. We also spotted a huge herd of elk. I would guess that there were about 200 elk with this herd on the side of the mountain. We were able to spot a few bulls in this herd. It was really cool because I have never seen so many elk at one time. We also decided to go on a little hike. While hiking, we spotted two elk, a spike and a cow. We laid down in the road and just watched them as they got closer to us. They got within 20 yards of where we were laying. We watched them for about 10 minutes before they spotted us and ran off. We were able to capture this on film. It was a really neat experience.

School starts for me on Monday (Aug 15). I cannot believe how quickly the summer went by this year. The middle school will be housed in the high school this year, but we have claimed one of the hallways as the middle school hallway. Unfortunately, I do not have a classroom this year. I have on office that is located inside the locker room. When I teach my health class I will be using the science teachers classroom because she will be in the home-ec room teaching that period. I will be teaching a few different classes this year. I have one middle school PE class, 7th grade Health, 2 high school PE classes, and 2 elementary PE classes. I have never taught high school so it may be interesting. I am ready to get going again though because it will be a change of pace from the summer. It may take a few weeks to get adjusted to the new classes and to being up in the high school but I know we can make the adjustment. I am sad that I won't be able to have the same lunch schedule as my other middle school teachers. I may just have to go hang out in one of their rooms during my lunch. We shall see.

The End of an Era

Yesterday was the last day of the school year for me. I am convinced that summer vacation is more for the teachers than for the students. Each year as school gets out for the summer, I am super excited for the break and the time away from school. I usually have all of my checkout sheet finished within an hour of the students leaving and I get on my way to my own summer vacation. However, it was a very different situation yesterday as the students left. It was much more difficult to be excited about summer vacation this year; allow me to explain my feelings.


Over the past few months, our school board has made some very tough decisions. Everything they have decided hasn't always been supported by the community or the staff members, but the board honestly believes they are doing what is best. They have decided to eliminate the middle school (where I work) and move the 6th grade back into the elementary school and move the 7th and 8th grade up into the high school building. For those of you that don't know, the middle school campus is not an actual school building but rather four modular trailers set up in a circle. We (students and staff) know that our campus isn't the best but we still love it. It is our sanctuary and the place where the transition from elementary school and high school can take place. The middle school age is such an important age as students are going through many changes. Anyway, so the middle school campus will not longer be part of the school district. Another decision that was made by the board is to eliminate the four day school week for the middle/high school and move them back to a five day school week. Both of these big changes will begin next year for the 2011-2012 school year.


Now back to yesterday. As the students left I felt like a chapter of my life was closing. I have been working at the middle school for the past four years. It has been a very unique work environment. One of the greatest strengths of the middle school is the staff that I have been working with for the past few years. We are all seriously really good friends. We have such a strong bond and it makes it easy to collaborate and be on the same page. We enjoy being with each other and often have get togethers outside of school hours. It was sad because due to the changes, one staff member has found a new job and all the rest of us are not sure what is going to happen. We have not been offered contracts yet because the board and administration have not figured out how many teachers are really needed. We have been told that most of us will probably we offered contracts but we aren't sure where we will be teaching. The team is being broken apart. We are hoping to all move to the high school and be able to still teach the 7th and 8th graders. However, we may not get that opportunity as many of us will probably be given assignments that are not within our certified positions. It has been mentioned that they want to offer more electives and so most of us will be stuck with classes we have never taught and may not know much about. We'll be teaching both middle school and high school classes.


It was also hard to pack up my room because it has been my classroom my whole teaching career. I will be moving away from my home, my sanctuary. It was a really odd feeling. I didn't want the day to end. I didn't want to walk away from the place that I have grown to love. However, I did have to leave. I did have to get on with my summer vacation. Now I am just waiting to see which classroom will be mine within the high school building and what my teaching assignment will be. I will be starting a new adventure, but before I embrace it fully, I am going to spend a few weeks of the summer living in the many great memories I have made at that Dam middle school!

Fishing

The weather in St. George has been so warm and sunny that past couple of weeks. One evening Mahonri and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather. We tried going fishing Easter weekend but we didn't have any luck because it was crowded. The next Thursday evening, we were able to find time to get out and went fishing at Baker Reservoir. It is a beautiful res. surrounded by trees. There isn't much room to fish from the shore because of all the trees but luckily, we were the only ones there that evening. We were able to fish from one of the only spots shore fishing is possible. Here is a picture of where the res. flows over into a stream. It's a neat looking place.

It was a pretty slow fishing night. We did manage to catch one fish, a rainbow trout. We released the fish back into the water because neither of us enjoy eating fish. We are looking forward to summer when we will have more time to fish and hopefully camp.

I only have 2 weeks of school left this school year. Mahonri has 2 weeks off of school (although he'll be spending them at his annual training for guard) and then he'll be taking classes this summer semester. We are still waiting to find out about next year and the jobs in Beaver Dam.

Spring Break

I'm not sure why I ever update the blog because it seems as though nobody ever reads it. Oh well, it helps us record our memories. It was recently spring break. Mahonri and I lucked out this year because my school and DSC scheduled spring break during the same week. Last year we had spring break different weeks and therefore we weren't able to do anything fun together. This year we took advantage of our break and planned a trip to SLC to a Utah Jazz game. We like going to Jazz games but this year has been disappointing to be a Jazz fan. We decided to get tickets to the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves because we figured they may be able to win that game. We purchased the tickets and we able to get 12th row tickets, center court. My parents were given some tickets to this same game so we met them in SLC for dinner prior to the game. The traffic didn't cooperate and we were a little later getting there than planned, so after eating we made it over to the arena. We were a few minutes late but it ended up being in our favor. When we reached our seats, there was a man sitting in them and he asked us if we'd like to change seats. He had seats on the 6th row just in front of us. He wanted to move back so he could be by his friends. Of course, we wouldn't pass up on the opportunity to sit even closer so we switched and went down to the sixth row. It was neat to sit so close. The players are huge. We were close enough that you could hear them talking, although not close enough to always make out what they were saying (which might be a good thing!). The Jazz had a good game, especially CJ Miles who scored 40 points. They won the game and made our trip even better! After the game, we decided to spend the night at Anniversary Inn. It was a fun little get away and we stayed in the mountain themed room. It fit us well. We had a good time. The rest of the week was spent in Gunnison. We went to the temple with Cutler as he took out his endowment and our nephew, Jace, was blessed. It was a great spring break!