Sunday, January 27, 2013

So, remember New Years Eve/ New Years Day?

And how I didn't post a single thing about it? Well, here it goes (:

It was such a relaxing day! We went over to Trina and Brian's for the night so we wouldn't just be sitting home alone doing nothing. We ended up watching Letters to Juliet (and although you may say it's really cheesy, it's still super cute) and eating snacks while some of us did puzzles. (They are a puzzle family, I tell ya!)



It's a lot of junk food, but most of it went untouched.. Too busy watching a movie and doing puzzles!





I was chillin on the couch, putting a puzzle piece in every 10 minutes or so

Brady was sleeping for most of the night


Trina got all the girls in the family new socks for Christmas. None of them are matching, so you just make all sorts of funky pairs!! And they're so thick and comfortable!!
At midnight, Trina and Cody took some pots and pans outside and were making lots of noise. The rest of us were too cold to go out, or sleeping, or .. just didn't want to (:

We went home shortly after midnight, because Cody had to work, but it was still really fun to hang out with the family for the night!!

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

I have a problem..

If you noticed in my post earlier this morning, my fingernails are long. I'll show you again.
Cute polish, huh? Charlotte Russe. Totally my favorite color. 
No, they're not freakishly long, but that right there is long for me! Because, you see.. I'm a nail biter. Gross, yes. Super hard habit to break, yes. But I'm weird. I'll be biting my nails for a few months, until I get sick of it, and then I let them grow out for a few months. But then when one breaks and I'm not around nail clippers or a nail filer, I go back to being a nail biter. And this vicious cycle continues. And it has been going on since.. well, as long as I can remember. 

Like I said before, my nails are long right now. Which means that in my spare time (like, driving, reading textbooks, doing homework, etc) I am not biting my nails. But instead I am continuing another bad habit of mine: Biting my lips / inside of my cheeks. Gross, yes. Do I even know I'm doing it? NO! Do I go through a ton of chapstick because I always end up licking it off on accident without even knowing? Unfortunately, yes.

Okay, here comes the real problem. I have a jaw problem. I clench my teeth all the time, and my jaw aches like crazy all the time because of it. But it's not just at night that my jaw is affected. You know when most people rest their heads on their hands, like this?:
I can't do that. And guess what, when I sleep on my side (which is the only way I can fall asleep), my jaw hurts. When I cuddle with my husband, my jaw is screaming in pain. And when I sing in the car, or in church, or whenever the freak I want, my jaw is this close to jumping off of my face. WHAT THE FLIP?

So, the biggest problem of all.

HOW DO I GET MYSELF TO STOP BITING MY LIPS AND CHEEKS (which I just noticed I was doing, AS I'M WRITING THIS!) when I don't even know it's happening?! How do I get my mouth/jaw to just be still? This is honestly a foreign concept to me. But it needs to stop, so please.. please help me out.

For the sake of my sanity, maintaining healthy nails, and keeping my jaw on my face.

Anniversary Weekend

You guys, our anniversary weekend ROCKED!! We promised each other that we were really going to try our hardest to RELAX on this vacation. Every time we've vacationed so far, we've filled our schedule up so much that we barley had time to sleep. But not this time.. ohhhh, not this time! And because it was such a laid back vacation, I didn't take very many pictures, although looking back I should have at least taken one of us laying around, eating snacks and watching cable TV! (we don't have cable at home, so this was a rare occurrence!) Anyways, here's a quick recap!
Nice big bed with a fancy headboard and lamps!



We actually used the drawers and unpacked the first day! I never do that!

You may say that I'm weird for taking a picture of the door handle. But it was so fancy looking!

We got a great deal on a hotel up in North Salt Lake, so we decided to stay there Friday night through Sunday night. This year worked out so well with Martin Luther King Day being on our anniversary, because that meant no school or work, meaning one extra day to stay at the hotel and do fun things during the day that we normally wouldn't have been able to do!

So when we got there on Friday, we were both super exhausted from the hectic week we had, so we took it easy just watching movies on TV until we fell asleep (even though we REALLLLLY wanted to go to the hot tub!!!) Anyways, Saturday morning we took our time waking up, but when we did, we decided to go to the Salt Lake Temple to remember our sealing one year ago. So we were looking for doggy day care places to take Dexter to (oh yeah, we brought Dex with us. So glad we did!! Even just leaving him for a few hours of the day to go play was heart breaking!) and Pet Smart in Taylorsville has a Pet Hotel that they get to play with other dogs that are there, they feed them, and play one on one with them! Plus, it was only $15 for the day!! So we took him there and we were on our way to the temple.

(Insert picture here, except I didn't take one because I was so mad!)

We're in Salt Lake, pulling up to the parking lot we always park in, and there's signs above it saying the temple is closed!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE TEMPLE IS CLOSED? It was soooo depressing! So we ended up going to the City Creek Mall, which sucks. They have too fancy of stores.. even the not fancy stores like Forever 21 have only fancy clothes in them. We did go to Deseret Book and bought a book of 777 clean jokes for $3.99... So it was worth it (: Then we went on an adventure to find a Walmart for snacks and maybe a game. No luck. So we ended up picking up Dexter, going back to the hotel and went to the hot tub!! Man, it felt good! I haven't been in a hot tub since last March or April during Spring Break!

Sunday, we had planned on going to Sacrament meeting somewhere in Salt Lake, but.. that didn't happen. We stayed in bed alternating between sleep and half awake until 2:30.. pm... And we found a channel that was playing Disney movies one right after another, and apparently it was very captivating. We half watched Aladdin, Lady and the Tramp, Alice and Wonderland, and Hercules (:

Cody had a meeting at 4 down in Orem, so we left the hotel around 3 to get back in time, and on our way back to the hotel, we stopped at his parent's house for dinner and games! Hot tub again when we came back, and then relaxing once again!

Monday morning we woke up at 11:30, packed up and left by 12:30. Dropped Dex off at the Pet Hotel and then we got massages!!!! We found a school up in Salt Lake that charged $35 for a 50 minute massage, and it was so worth it!! It felt so dang good!

After getting massages, we went to the Living Planet Aquarium. I couldn't wait! We pulled up and the building looked like it was an old grocery store!! Which, I'm pretty sure it was..


Nevertheless, it was still very fun! And here comes the picture overload of the animals, us and the animals, and more animals.

This is an octopus!

HOLY CRAB! (AND LOBSTER!!!)

I was eating it.. although it just looks like I'm constipated..


I could NOT get a good picture of this GIANT sea turtle for the life of me! 

THE REASON I CAME!! PENGUINS!!! They were so funny! They'd just float on the water right in front of the glass like they were posing just for us!

So I took advantage of his posing and posed with him! 

Cody's favorite part!! The gators!! This picture is trippy.. it looks like there's two, or his head was cut off. Nope, just the way the water made it look.

Cody said that these gators looked like the ones that he used to catch on his mission!! Scary!

This is how tall the penguins in the aquarium were.. so cute and tiny!

This is the Emperor penguin. That's the tallest that those kinds of penguins get! Still so cute and small!

Apparently my scarf had lots of radiant heat... (see picture below)


Okay, this is a freaky. This is the size of a shark's mouth!! As in a real shark! Like, somewhere in the ocean, there's probably a shark (or was) this big just chillin down there!

This is a real, fossilized tooth. Oh. My. Goodness.


And, proof that I touched a sting ray (:
We had fun there for about 2 hours, but my goodness, it was so packed with little kids! I felt bad going right up to the glass and taking pictures instead of letting them see, but honestly, I was probably more excited than they were.

We were super hungry when we left, so we went up to Tucanos in the Gateway mall.. We wanted to go somewhere that wasn't a "normal" place to go to celebrate on our actual anniversary. It was delicious, and of course I didn't take any picture.. (stupid!). We picked up Dexter, went home and wanted to relax one last time before we had to go back to our crazy hectic school/work schedule. So we drank some yummy grape "bubbly" with popcorn and M&Ms, and watched The Office, followed by Despicable Me to fall asleep to (:

It was the most perfect, relaxing, and fun vacation, and a great way to spend our first anniversary!! So, happy anniversary Cody! I love you more than ever and am so grateful for all you do for our family! Here's to a million more anniversaries with you!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Dexter

You already know how much I love our little puppy. Because he is just so cute and kind and forgiving and lovable. Well, I'm here to let you laugh a little bit (: These are some pictures from his first bath a while ago.

He kept trying to get out.. poor thing.



Look at those little chicken legs!!
To say he hated it is a complete understatement. And of course I was laughing my head off the whole time while simultaneously feeling bad and saying "Aw.. we're so mean!" And that's what I say every time we've given him a bath since. It's just so funny sometimes! He hates any water now, of course. Although we haven't taken him to a lake and let him swim around, but I don't think he'd go for it anyways.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Target / Anniversary weekend

As I was looking on Blogger, doing my regular morning reading of the blogs I follow, 4 BLOGS IN A ROW talked about how they went to Target within the last two days. 4 ladies. And they all blogged about it! Is that a sign, or what?! I might need to make a little pit stop there today, because apparently all the sales are pretty awesome.

On Monday, January 21, 2013.. IT'S OUR ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!! That's in 3 days people. And guess what?? It's a 3 day weekend! From work AND SCHOOL! So we get to be together all day on our actual anniversary! Thank you, Martin Luther King day for being on the 21st this year!

We made our hotel reservations last night, and we're bringing Dexter with us (legally this time). I couldn't justify leaving him for a whole weekend with someone else. We're staying up in Salt Lake, getting massages, and my favorite part.... GOING TO THE LIVING AQUARIUM!! I blogged last night about how I'm teaching about Penguins today, and on Monday, I'll actually be able to see them again! You guys, I love the zoo, and I'm sure I'm going to love the aquarium!! This will be the first time I've gone to see any type of animals while living in Utah. WHAT!?? I've lived here for 4 and a half years almost, and I've never gone to the zoo, aquarium, NOTHING! So yeah, this Monday has been long anticipated.

Anyways I'm off to stress my brains out about how today is going to go in the Preschool with me teaching by myself. Seriously, pray for me. I'm stressin.

Preschool

As you all know, I'm getting my degree in Early Childhood, which allows me to teach in a preschool, or have my own. Well, as I'm in this last semester of school at UVU, I am in a class called Practicum. It basically means that I'll be practicing teaching and being in the classroom, under supervision, and getting graded on it. Which is pretty sweet, if you ask me. Put me in a classroom twice a week for 4 hours at a time and give me a grade for teaching and playing with the cutest, funniest 4 year olds? While at the same time getting GREAT teaching ideas from the fellow teachers! Hello, heaven.

Seriously though, it's the greatest thing I've ever done, and I'm so excited to do this as my career! I recently posted a status on Facebook saying "Second week in the preschool and I've already written a lead lesson plan, centers plan for a whole week, and a literacy plan! And I'm teaching by myself tomorrow!"  Then I realized that people probably don't know what a "lead lesson plan" "centers plan" and "a literacy plan" is. So, here I am now to describe in detail! But I'm only going to describe one at a time, so I don't bore all of you that don't care about teaching preschool.

When the children come in at the beginning of the day, they have their "free play" time at different areas in the room which we call "centers". There are multiple centers, including but not limited to, sensory table (this week we've had different activities concerning ice, next week will be water, last week was cotton balls and the similarities they have to snow.. etc), blocks, writing, dramatic play (last week we had a tent and a pretend camp fire where they could roast marshmallows, there's always dress up clothes.. basically the area that they can pretend to do anything they can imagine), kitchen/play house,  and a library area. We have goals and objectives for each area, so they are secretly learning while they are playing! (Yeah, we're pretty sneaky :) It is so much fun! So when I said I created a centers plan for the whole week, it means that I choose a center, and create activities for the children to do everyday they are there (if they choose) with a common theme. I chose water, so one day they'll be exploring which items can float/sink (example), another day they will be measuring water in cups, bowls, spoons, putting water through funnels, etc. Another day they will be experimenting with pepper and dish soap (example), and the last day they will be experimenting with mixing colors by using condiment type squirt bottles (example)!

There are 16 children in the class that I'm student teaching in, and there are 3 other student teachers, one main teacher, two assistant teachers, one aid teacher that helps two girls with hearing aids, and every Thursday and Friday, there's a nurse accompanying one girl in a wheelchair. So yes.. there are sometimes 9 ADULTS in the room with 16 children. Yes, it is stressful. If I got claustrophobic, it would definitely be happening when this occurs. In a few weeks though, when us student teachers get the hang of things in the preschool, the two assistant teachers will be sent elsewhere to do other tasks outside of the classroom. I can't wait for that day.

So wish me luck that I catch on to things quickly (I'm already doing spectacularly, if you ask me :)

Also, wish me luck/pray for me tomorrow as I am teaching about penguins for the whole day!! I'll tell you how that goes (:

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Bunco

You guys.. BUNCO IS SO AWESOME!! I'm so glad Ashlee and Aubree invited me to join their little group a while ago! It's one of my favorite things every month to look forward to! If you are bored or need one day out a week with some girls and play a game that will possibly give you a heart attack from suspense, then you need to start your own Bunco group! We do it every 2nd Thursday of the month, and it's hosted at a different girl's house almost everytime. We have table snacks and then a mid-way snack. We each bring a $10 prize, and then we all leave with a $10 prize, either our own or one that someone else brought! It's the perfect way to pamper yourself or your house once a month for cheap! Here are a few of the bunco prizes that I've come home with!
This was today's win (: I've been wanting this watch for a while, it's only $10.88 from Walmart!! And yes, I took my own prize.. I got 4 buncos!!

Super cute candle holders!!

Family is forever sign!

Adorable picture frame!!

Centerpiece that is usually on our coffee table, but it has tons of games on it right now.

Food scale!! I love this thing!! I use it for measuring how heavy my packages are when I'm sending out scarves... It's so perfect!!

Lovely earring holder!! As you can see, I'm not very good at putting my earrings back on here.. They're all on my end table!
If you aren't convinced by now.. Well, I don't know what will do the trick. Maybe that you can meet new people, learn a new game, and get really really excited over and over and have permission to scream in excitement?

Sunday, January 6, 2013

My one word for the year

I've seen a bunch of people doing this lately, and I think it's a fantastic idea to pick on word to focus on for the entire year. I've decided on the word "Choose".
I have a really hard time with my mood when something dumb happens to me, or when I wake up cranky, but I'm going to try my hardest to CHOOSE the mood that I'm in. I will focus mainly on my attitude and mood, but I will also let it flow into other aspects of my life.. like CHOOSING to do the dishes on a daily basis so they don't get piled up until Friday. I will CHOOSE to put my clothes away instead of throwing them on the floor. CHOOSE to make my husband happy every chance that I can.

 Anyways, hopefully I'll stick to this. I'm going to print out something that says CHOOSE on it and hang it up in my house somewhere. Or multiple somewheres.