Friday, April 30, 2010

Talent Day Extravaganza

For talent day this week, I invited kids to bring their family members to share talents and we performed in the auditorium. I also brought in a few guest performers of my own. It was a blast! We had a beautiful mother/daughter duet, a flute performance by another mom, a father playing the piano for his daughter's singing, a Broadway solo by a mom, a 4 year old brother showing us moves from his football training, a little sister's dance routine, lots of small group singing performances, lots of guitar performances, three boys juggling soccer balls, roller skating, basketball tricks, art work from a student and her sister-in-law, a father's photography, and more. While I can't show pics of my kids (which is a total bummer!) I have a few pictures from our guest artists!

Shalolo's sister Natalie played the violin so beautifully. I was thrilled when she played a song from the romantic period, which is the era in music we are currently studying in my 7th grade classes. Thanks, Noodles!


My friend Lane wowed the young audiences by playing harmonica and guitar simultaneously and also by introducing them to the mandolin. Lane = My Hero.



This little one's talent (above) was being so dang cute that she even converted Lane to someday wanting daughters when he thought he only wanted sons.


Emily joined me for a reprise of our talent show act from 2005, "Tell Him."


We like to get in to character.

Emily Hawkes is a rock star.


I felt like we had celebrities in our midst when Tina and Caleb came to do a ballroom dance routine for my students.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Inspirational Quote (?)

My classroom is downstairs, so I don't often get to visit upstairs. Today, a teacher needed my help during my prep period. On my way to her class, I walked by a wall that had inspirational quotes painted on it and had to do a double take at one particular quote:

"Not only use all the brains you have but all you can borrow." --Woodrow Wilson

Does anyone else find anything problematic with this quote for the wall of the middle school?

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Taylor, the Custodian Boy

Okay, so I have a little secret.

I have a pretend crush on the 22 year old janitor that takes out the trash in my room and vacuums the carpets. We struck up a friendship early in the year. He would come in to take out my trash and we wouldn't really say anything to each other at first. One day, however, we started talking about my job and became fast friends. We had a few precious moments, like the time we learned we both served missions in Brazil and he left a little message for me to find in the morning on my whiteboard.

Before anyone gets too excited, let me remind you this is a PRETEND crush. It has been going on all year. We have never once seen each other outside the four walls of the school building.

But back to my love story. During one of our first conversations, I learned that his name was Taylor. Of course, the song, "Taylor the Latte Boy" instantly came to my head. It's possible that every time I see him after school (when all the kids have scattered), I conjure up my most dreamy singing voice and serenade him with a little bit of that song.

I found out yesterday that he is going home for the summer and this is his last week. Sigh. It has been so fun to have a tall, dark, and handsome work crush all year long.

I love him, I love him, I love him.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Backfire

I love surprises. I'm not very good at keeping secrets, but I sure do enjoy the execution of a good shocker.

My little sister is living with me until she gets married in July. I am so excited! I wanted to surprise her when she came home from a weekend trip to California by moving all the stuff she unloaded in my room before she left in to the basement downstairs. I unpacked all her clothes and put them in the drawers and the wardrobes and I was REALLY excited. I accidentally gave away half the secret prematurely, so she actually knew that I had moved in at least some of her clothes. When she got home, however, she found her bed made, her suitcases put away, etc.

Aren't I an amazing sister?

That's what I thought, too...

Until I found out what I accidentally did. She had a laundry basket and a black garbage bag full of clothes. I put the laundry basket in a nice little corner and dumped out all of the clothes from the black garbage bag and put them away. They were mostly T-shirts, pajama pants, socks, and underclothes. I organized them all in the chest of drawers and was quite pleased with myself. I called my sister today when she got home from California to see what she thought. She said everything was wonderful, but she felt sorry for me for having to put away the entire black garbage bag full of dirty clothes.

Apparently all the clean clothes were in the laundry basket.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Star Search

Calling all Provo/Orem people!

I'm having a big talent day at my middle school on Friday and I'm looking for adults to come perform as guests throughout the day. It could be singing, guitar, dance, gymnastics, piano, violin, etc. PLEASE drop me a line if you might be available that day to come for a sliver of time! It doesn't have to be anywhere near professional. They'll think anything you do is cool!!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

False Advertising

One of my students had an unfortunate experience while campaigning to be the student body president.

During one of my 7th grade classes, a boy came in talking about how messed up __________ is who is running for office. I was a little surprised, because this candidate is a student of mine and a really good kid in my class. Apparently, he had made up a random phone number and put it on one of his publicity posters as part of a gimmick. A few students ended up calling the number out of curiosity and were surprised to find they had been connected to a suggestive hot line. Needless to say, this student was required to cut the "fake" number off his poster.

This reminds me of the time Christina and her friend Lexi were obsessed with how cute pre-mature babies are. They would talk about it all the time. Once, they wrote up a fake website they didn't think existed on the whiteboard in my dad's office involving pre-mees, just to be funny. My brother was in the office later and out of curiosity typed in the website and was shocked at what appeared. He quickly informed her never to advertise that website ever again.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

If you're happy and you know it, write on your blog!

I want to remember this day.

Did I know such happiness existed?

I'm pretty sure I didn't.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

I forgot a VIP!!!

In my post about Tina's shower, I forgot one of the most important shout-outs of all:

Special enormous shout out to my MOMMY who drove all day Friday with our neighbor, Mitzi, to be at the shower on Saturday!!

A Surprise, a Shower, and a Semi-Formal

This has been a VERY busy and exciting weekend full of 'S's!

A Surprise (and a Sleepover!):

My roommate, Tessa, is moving next week to Cheyenne, WY. We are going to miss her SO MUCH! She gave us the perfect gift on Friday night as a going away present to US. She got our other roommate, Melissa, in on it and they surprised Kate and I with packing lists on Friday night. We were told to pack a toothbrush, swimsuit, PJ's, etc. Kate and I started screaming with excitement and anticipation. We threw stuff in our bags and, about 5 minutes later, we drove in Tessa's car across the street to the Marriott Residence Inn where Tessa and Melissa had already checked in to the hotel room!! Inside the freezer was each of our favorite flavors of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream. It was a DCT (dream come true!). We spent an hour and a half in the indoor pool and jacuzzi playing teenage games. We talked and talked all evening. It was a blast!


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A Shower

Christina Marie Houston is getting married in three months. Because she is going on tour at the end of May and many of her friends are moving for the summer, we decided the end of April would be the best time for her to have a shower with all her Utah friends and relatives. It was a wonderful afternoon. We felt so blessed as a family to see all the love showered on Tina!


A special (enormous) shout out to my cousin Sheralyn who provided the incredibly marvelous cupcakes and cookies from "The Chocolate" (on state street in Orem) and the exquisitely delicious chocolate dipped strawberries. She also let us use her BEAUTIFUL home and supplied lots of extra beach decorations (and the majority of my outfit because I spilled on the original shirt I brought!). She is AMAZING!



A special shout out to my friend Daniel who helped set-up and clean up for hours before and after the shower (he also mixed the lemonade!).

A special shout out to Mollie Bridgers Olorenshaw (with her mom, Karen, below) who provided most of the beach decorations!



A special shout out to Jeremy's mom (and his grandmas and cute little sisters!) who brought the fruit kabobs, veggie tray, and the pictures of Jer and Tina!

From right to left (above): Jer's mom, my mom, Tina, Jer's grandma, and Jer's little sister.


A special shout out to Shana and Anna, our sisters who we wish could have been there!

A special shout out to my cute roommates who came to support Tina!



A special shout out to the bride-to-be!


A special shout out to Tina's roommates and friends, a few of whom who provided the games (including one where we all got a clothespin and if we said the word 'wedding' or 'Jer,' it could get stolen).


A special shout out to our sweet cousin Nicole and all the other guests who brought recipes to share with Christina in addition to generous, lovely gifts!


A special shout out to my mom's aunt, sisters and nieces who traveled long distances to come!


A special shout out to Grandma Carolyn, Grandma Marva, Aunt Kelly, Aunt Melissa, Aunt Karen & Nicole, and Kaylene from my dad's side who came to celebrate with Teenie.



A Semi-Formal

Our ward activities committee hosted a black and white semi-formal. They used a computer program to match up dates. It was beautiful and so fun!

Here are the couples!


Mike and Katie


Jason and Melissa


Kate and Darren


Tessa and all of us! Her boyfriend, Paul, lives far away :-(.

Above is a picture of all the ladies waiting for their food. All the boys were asked to serve the girls and themselves. We had soup, salad, rolls, fettuccine alfredo, and cake!


Afterward, we danced and actually did indexing as couples! It was a fabulous way to spend the evening.



Friday, April 16, 2010

Nice Nineties!

My friends and I used to say, "Nice" a lot in the 90's when something was cool, so I thought this title was appropriate.

I decided not to dress up today because, heck, why dress up if you can show them the real thing? I brought in my photo album from high school and showed them some pictures of my fashion in the late nineties.

In honor of nineties day, I asked my mom to email me some pictures she had from the decade:





My song choices for today were the following:

"Fighter" by Christina Aguilara
"Just the Two of Us" by Will Smith
"Fly" by Sugar Ray
"Peaches" by Presidents of the United States of America (I specifically remember dancing to this at a junior high after school dance).