the one about being thankful

Can I just say......? I love Thanksgiving. I really do. I love the feeling of it all. The family, the love, the food (of course), the cooking, the smells, and I even kinda like the football. Don't tell Brett though. He gets too excited when I say positive things about football. I don't want to give him any ideas. Anyway, fall is my favorite season too. I just really love this time of year. Even though we are entering the ugly part of fall, I still love it.

I have so much to be thankful for, too. I am really extra blessed and I am sorry for all of you because I know I have it better than all of you. Sorry. It's true. I have the very best child in the entire world. It doesn't get any better than him. I have the best husband. I have the best friends. I have the best grandparents ever. My mom is the best. My mother-in-law and the rest of my in-laws are the VERY best! I love my big brother and all of my brother and sister in-laws and my sweet nephews. I have the cutest car. I have the greatest cat. And even though it is still new and not really super permanant, I love my new job as a substitute teacher. I subbed again today, first graders. LOVE IT! They were super great. I also feel like I have the best calling in the whole world. Some my disagree, but I am the Sunbeams teacher (3-4 year olds) and I just love it. I am also the enrichment leader, and I am starting to love that. Sorta.

I am not super thankful for this though.... one cute little girl in my class totally puked all over the playground. Raunchy. I ate school lunch with my class today and I saw everything I ate on the black asphault. I nearly lost my own. But I had to be super tough and tone down the gag reflexes. I got her to the bathroom, cleaned up a little bit and another teacher came to my rescue to take her to the office. I had to get back to the playground because I was on recess duty. Then I had to sit there and look t it because the custodian was busy. Ohhh, it gets worse... there was this other super cute girl in my class who was jumprope-ing right in the middle of the puke. the jump rope was spreading it all over. All of the kids were crazy facinated with the vomit. I have never seen anything like it. Seriously, it took all I had not to lose my own lunch. Just thinking about it is getting me a little sick.

So, my mother-in-law called last night to see if we would all like to go to dinner and a movie. Of course I jumped on the opportunity! We went to wingers and I had a burger. It was so good. then we went to Fred Clause. It was sorta corny, but cute. I really quite like "corny." Gleneita does too, so we often like to hit the retarded movies. It takes every ounce of begging I have to get Brett to a movie, so I thought that if I threw in the "your mom is loanly" card, he might budge. He did. And he was a good sport. I think he hated it actually, but he didn't complain. Quayd LOVED it and Gleneita and I thought it was good. we went to BEE Movie a few weeks ago, and Quayd got invited to a Birthday party this weekend where we will watch it again. Sounds good to me! He is my movie buddy. Well, no, Janice and Kandice are my REAL movie buddies. We go see all of the chick flicks. But Quayd is pretty good company too and he likes it when we can say we are going on a "date."

I am just feeling really grateful today. My heart is super full and I just really love my life. I wish I could tell everyone on a personal level just how I feel about them and how much they have enriched my life, but I am not that good with words. I feel like I add too many "likes," "maybe this sounds dumb's" and "I'm sorry's" in my conversations. Anyway, to all of my friends, family and readers, I love you! Thank you for making my life so easy and special. I am the luck, luckiest girl.... in the world!!!!

the one about my first 2 sub jobs

I don't really have much time to write today, but I wanted to share my latest news on the job front. I had my first 2 substitute teaching jobs! And I feel really good about them both. I hope I didn't totally suck. The kids seemed to like me ok and we completed all of the things the teachers asked me to. So we will see. I guess if those teachers call me again, I must have done ok, right? Yesterday I worked with 4th graders and today I taught 1st graders. I have another job Monday with a first grade class at another school.

Yippee!!!!

the one about my Holly-day

So, I am official. I am a substitute teacher. Cool huh. I got my "Welcome to the School District" letter today. I can start as soon as I get a call. I am so excited!

Today, I had such a great day with my dear friend Holly. About a week ago, she asked me to help her make a baby quilt for her new baby niece. Her name is Sydney and she is quite a little miracle. She was born 3 months early (on September 27th and wasn't due until January 27th) and is doing surprisingly well. Holly found some cute material and asked if I could machine quilt it for her if she put it all together. Well, I love machine quilting, so I was super excited. My friend Robyn has a quilting machine, so we went to her new house and quilted. I got Quayd off to school and then Holly came to pick me up. Holly, Spencer and baby Jacob came along too. Robyn is so sweet and a total blast to be with so I was glad to hang out with her. I need to get my butt sewing again and go play with her. Anyway, after we sewed, she brought me home. We sat in my driveway and visited for awhile. I looked at the clock and saw that is was time to get Quayd so I asked her to take me to the school so we could get him and still visit. Then we decided that we hadn't had enough of each other so we went to lunch. We talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. It was GREAT! Once we left lunch, we ran a little Christmas shopping errand then she brought me home. Baby Jake was hungry, Holly needed to potty and Quayd and Spencer were having fun playing, so she came in for awhile. We talked and talked some more while Jake had a bottle.

Holly is such a special friend to me and I appreciate her more than she will ever know. She is a wonderful example to me. She is a great listener and I love hanging out with her. We haven't seen much of each other for awhile, just busy lives I guess, but I really miss her. She has four great kids and Spencer is my little buddy. He yelled "Hi Mandy!" in sacrament meeting yesterday because he was so excited to see me. I don't think he stopped talking to me this whole day. He told me knock-knock jokes, all kinds of stories, songs and he told me how he kissed Baby Jake in the library. He was so much fun. I think he was about to drive Holly nuts, but I loved it. When Holly was running her errand, I stayed in the car with the kids so she wouldn't have to haul them in. Jake started to cry and I asked Quayd to look in Jake's carseat for a binky. Quayd found it and put it in his mouth. He stopped crying and Quayd was so proud of himself for helping the baby. Of course, Jacob started to cry again, so when the binky wouldn't work, Quayd talked to him, played peek-a-boo, touched him and danced for him. It was so cute. I hope he grows up to love babies and kids as much as I do! Holly is going out of town for a couple of days and I get to help her with Scott a little. He is such a good boy and I am glad he and Quayd are friends. And I am glad that Holly and I are friends too!

Speaking of friends, I went with Holly, Kandice and Janice to BINGO Saturday night. Brett, Gleneita, Talia and Kandice's mom Julie came too. We had a blast. Seriously, it was so much fun. My only wish is that I could have looked a little bit more stupid in this picture. I don't know what is wrong with me that I take such a bad picture lately. Or maybe I am just realizing what a dog I really am. Interesting. Janice won Bingo once, and almost another time! Right, Janni? ;) and Brett and I won a turkey in the turkey raffle. But that was our only winnings. It was still fun though. Brett, Gleneita and I go every year. And we always see Tara and usually sit by her. It was no different this year. She was there with Shae, the spaz that broke her collar bone playing football with some friends. Not cute BOY friends though. (Duh, Shae!) We have so much fun every year, and one thing is for sure, we NEVER EVER win!!!

the one about playing catch up

I have been so busy this week and I haven't had time to blog. I am amazed at the people that have called or written to make sure we were ok. Thank you, my faithful friends, for being concerned. I say that i have been busy, yet I don't feel like I have accomplished anything. Well, I guess I did accomplish something sorta big. Big for me. Something I have been wanting to do for awhile now. It happened on Thursday. But I won't tell you that easy.... I will go through my week and you can find out when you get there!

Monday: We had a little family home evening lesson about working and helping out around the house. Lately I have felt like I am all alone in this department. Quayd is old enough to do his chores, but he somehow finds a way to get out of it. So we started an allowance program and we talked about tithing. So far so good. We will see how it works. Then after FHE and dinner, Quayd and I went with some friends to see Bee Movie. Brett doesn't just love the movies so we left him home. The movie was cute. Quayd loved it! Morgan was all over me the whole time, and I loved that. She is my little buddy and I just love her to death. She wanted to sit with her BF, me and her BoyF, Quayd. It was great. Janice and Greg kept apologizing about it, but seriously. I loved it. It means a lot to me to have a 2 year old that loves me that much. Kandice said she thought the movie was dumb, but I kinda liked it. I know the kids loved it, but Janice, Tari, Tara.. what did you think?

Tuesday: I did my usual... helped in Quayd's class. This has turned out to be my favorite time of every week. I love the kids in his class. I love his teacher and I just love being at school. A little known fact about me... I wanted to go into Elementary Education when I "grew up." I have one year of college under my belt and since helping in Quayd's class, I have realized how much I really love it and have actually started to consider going back to school. Shhhhhh....... don't tell anyone.

Wednesday: BUNCO! It was at Marcie's house this month and it started out great. Marcie always makes super good food. She had Chicken enchiladas and chips and salsa. She has 3 different kinds of yummy salsa and finished it all off with orange rolls. So good!!! Well just as we were getting ready to start rolling, Brett called my cell phone and told me that Quayd started throwing up EVERYWHERE! Well we all know how weak Brett's stomach is. (For those of you who don't know, he passed out during my C-Section because he couldn't handle the smell.) I could hear Quayd crying for me in the background, so I thought I better go and help out. I came home, rubbed Quayd's little back as he leaned over the toilet and watched Brett dry heave as he cleaned up the mess in the bedroom. We just got it all cleaned up and I rocked Quayd in the front room, and he puked all over me! This went on all night. He threw up hard until aobut 11:00 pm and at least once an hour until 5:00 am. It was a long night. He really moped around on Thursday, but he started feeling better that evening and was able to go back to school on Friday. Now he is back to normal. Brett also got some new teeth since his got all busted up after his motorcycle accident in September.

Thursday: This was the day I said I did something that I have been wanting to do for awhile now.... I built it up to be a big deal, and it's really not, so I hope you aren't dissapointed. I have been thinking about becoming a substitute teacher for quite sometime now. I metioned how much I love being in the classroom and I though it might be a good way to decided if it is something I would really like to persue. Quayd is getting older now and I need something to do, so I thought a part time job where I can make my own hours is a good idea. Anyway, they offer a substitute orientation at the school district office about 3 or 4 times a year. I have been planning on going for a few weeks now but then Quayd got sick. I called the office to see when they might do it again but it wasn't until February so I knew I needed to go. Quayd hadn't thrown up for awhile, so I called around, and everyone was very willing to help, but he decided he wanted to go to Ga and Pop's to be rocked. They said he did fine, and my orientation was about 3 hours long. I had to go to the jail to be fingerprinted. It was super scary. I have never been to the jail before. And I hope I never have to go again. I passed all of my stuff off and as soon as my background check comes back, (24-48 hours) I am good to teach in the district! For now, I just want to stay at Quayd's school. Then maybe next year when he is full day, I can do some more. We will seehow it all works out. I am actually pretty excited to start!
Later Thursday, I had volleyball. We lost both games. But it sure was fun!!!

Friday: Friday was my catch up on crap around the house day. I cleaned and worked all day. As I was vacuuming with my 30 year old vacuum, the bag broke and I had dirt flying EVERYWHERE! I ran to the store to get a bag. They didn't have one, so I went to another store, and another. Apparently, they don't make those bags anymore, because I am the only one in the U.S. who still uses this piece of &%$^ vacuum. So i had to buy another one. I just got a $50 one cuz I didn't really want to spend money on a vacuum right now. I got home, started putting it together and had major buyers remourse. But what was I supposed to do? So I called Brett, thinking he would be so mad that I bought a new vacuum, but he said, "Oh, it's about time. We needed one bad." So I got it all put together, still having major regrets. I plugged it in, turned it on and..... I THINK I AM IN LOVE!!!!! It really sucks! Like, REALLY sucks good! I couldn't believe how clean my carpet looks. It almost looks like I shampooed it. So my buyers remourse is gone. And I have a new best friend.

So that is my week. Not to exciting. In review, we had the stomach flu, substitiue teacher orientation, new teeth, and a new, super sucky vacuum!