Happy Thanksgiving!

My parents came to spend Thanksgiving with us. They arrived on Wednesday close to noon.

They had their Tacoma packed with stuff we'd asked for or that they brought for us. Their old neighbors gave them this shed, which they then brought for me.

As soon as we got it unloaded, my dad, the project man, started right in on it. He recruited us all to help.

After some work, things got put together nicely . . .

and now I can put my lawnmower and other odds and ends in there instead of in the small garage. Taking out the trash will be a breeze now!

Here's some of the gang taking a little break after exerting so much energy getting that shed put together.

My dad was already off on the next project - patching up the hole in my ceiling in the game room upstairs. It was just a cosmetic thing. He had to mud it.

Here's a close-up. The next step will be to texture it and paint it the right color. Thanks, Dad!

My brother Adam, flew in that afternoon. Later that evening Nate and Abraham came over for some fun. Here's part of the group watching bits of some of the cool movies the Giant has on his computer.

Thanksgiving dinner today was at our house. We had Maylene, Darrell, Jen, and Shanna Call; my whole family, Adam, The Eric Bushmans, and Bridgette Solomon and her boyfriend Jason. It was a fun group. I forgot to take a picture when we were eating, but here's my after dinner shot. Sorry about this one, mom! I caught you mid-chew!

Eric was excited to play my dad in ping pong - which is also something we played a lot on Wednesday night.

You can see from Eric's shirt that it was a little hot up there! I thought it was supposed to be cold on Thanksgiving!

We also had fun watching little Brandt. I kept trying to get picture or video of him dancing, but I didn't have much luck! He sure is a cutie.

Much of the afternoon was spent on the Wii. Eric brought Rock Band so we all had a good time.

My dad had to get a picture with the two Wendy Bushmans!

Adam leaves tomorrow morning. It's been fun to have him here for almost a week.

We'll sure miss him! I hope everyone else had a WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING!

Thanksgiving at school

On Monday the first graders at my school had their annual Thanksgiving performance.

I recruited people from our FHE group to come and help out. Adam was in town so he joined the fun as well.

Nate and Nichole were among others that came along to help out. Thanks, guys!

Here's a shot Susannah took of most of the kids during the performance. If you look closely, you can see me in the background running the sound system. I much prefer that to being out front!

Tuesday Adam came up to school to have lunch with Susannah. Our lunch times were way different from each other that day due to our duty schedules. Adam sneaked in my classroom, hid under my desk, and scared the dickens out of me!

Chick-fil-A Olympics

Our school had a fund raiser with Chick-fil-A. We have a school night there and really promote eating at the restaurant to our students and they give us a portion of the proceeds. To really get people interested in coming, it was decided that we should have an Olympic competition between our administrators and the two grade levels that were hosting the fund raiser - first and third grades.

They wanted each of those three groups to have a team of 3. Our team was myself, Lindsay, and Amanda. We even made matching t-shirts! This is us pre-olympics.

It was an eating competition. The kids were packed around and there was NO space. You can see in the background of this picture that people were even outside trying to see. The girl in the background outside the window is one of my students!

Lindsay started things off for first grade with a HUGE cream pie. All 3 participants were moving pretty slowly because it was pretty hard to swallow the stuff. They called that race after people had finished about 2/3 of the pie.

Amanda went next with the nuggets. They brought out a plate of 30 for each of the 3 contenders. Nobody ended up finishing. They called it even though Amanda was totally prepared to finish them. We got an even start on the final event.

I had the last task - the milkshake. I had to chug a 32 oz milkshake! This event actually went all the way through. The best part is that I WON! I was pretty excited about it. I froze for 30 minutes after that, though!

Here's the winning team right after our victory!

This is our entire first grade team celebrating the win.

I had to get a picture of the backs of our shirts. I thought they were pretty cool.

They did give us prizes for the win. We each got a little Chick-fil-A stuffed animal and 52 certificates for free meals from Chick-fil-A - food for a year! Yikes!

We had to be at Chick-fil-A from 5:00 to 8:00pm. This is the group left winding up the fund raiser.

One of my favorite things of the night was seeing old students who are in middle school. I saw two students from my first year of teaching. Clayton is one of them. I had him get in a picture with one of my current students to show the span of my teaching career! I'm in my 8th year of teaching first grade!

Alaska

My parents went on an Alaskan cruise back in September with a bunch of my Dad's brothers and extended family.

My mom just posted some pictures of it on Facebook and I LOVED this one! Are they not the cutest people in the world?!?!?!

Team Party

The first grade teachers at our school are a lot of fun. We've decided to have a party each month and we'll take turns hosting. In October, we went to Amanda's house for a fantastic party.

I got November. Susannah helped me do Navajo Tacos. They turned out pretty good. We played Apples to Apples after that for quite a while. We then enjoyed some "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handy. Before everyone left, we posed for some pictures.

We had to illustrate the sign we have up in our entry way. It was a fun night!

The Pilot

Ever since I bought my house, my dream car has been a Honda Pilot. I've kind of talked myself out of it because they don't have the best gas mileage. In the future, I may go for a CRV. ANYWAY, Susannah and I took our cars in to the Honda dealership for their regular check-ups on Saturday. They accidentally hit Susannah's car with a golf cart and scratched the back bumper up pretty good.

They had her bring her car back in on Monday and she got this PILOT for a loaner car while hers was being painted. NICE! It was pretty amazing, and yes, I still want one.

We actually got to keep it overnight. It hardly fit in the garage!

Randomness

I don't really have anything to post about in my life at the moment. Things are great - but nothing exciting right now. I was browsing around Facebook and on people's blogs and I found some pictures that I loved and thought I'd share.

These first two I "borrowed" from Dionna's Facebook profile. I loved this one of Adam. He's so handsome!

These are the last cousins of the Bushman clan. Dionna, in the blue shirt, is the youngest. Adam's next and Shanna's the 3rd youngest. Lance isn't next in sequence, but we like him anyway! I'm glad they all got together for some cousin fun at BYU.

I got this last one from Kristal's blog. She scanned it in so now I don't have to. It was another fun trip down memory lane. This was Homecoming my senior year of HS. My best friend, Jinny and I went with boys from our rival HS. Those were the days!

Fun Visit

It was a lot of fun to have Adam here for a visit. It felt like he never left. Our Friday night was filled with the Halloween stuff. Saturday we went on a bike ride, made food, and stole each others phones, wallets, keys, etc. for old times' sake.

We also dragged Adam to a little birthday party for Zain and Nadia. Their mom threads our eyebrows. She really wanted us to come to the party. The kids were really excited! Zain is 8 and Nadia is 5.

We then met up with Nate at the driving range to hit some golf balls. The guys were pretty good - Susannah and I had a bit of a rocky start, but we each got some good hits. This picture is not particularly flattering of any of us. That's what we get for trying to look "cool."

This little struggle happened during some key stealing moments at the range. Adam pulled a "too heavy" face right when I snapped the picture. Stinker.

We had to take a picture of "the gang" since we were all together again. Fun night. We ended up playing Scum and then watching "The Singles Ward" which is no longer on a list of movies that I particularly enjoy. For those of you who have missed seeing pictures of Adam - stay tuned. He's coming for Thanksgiving!

Tagged!

Jessica tagged me! I'm skipping the first one - it's 4 things you love about your husband/wife, but since I'm single, I'll just go to the next one:

4 jobs I've had...
1. Fast Food/Food Service (Taco Bell & the Cougar Eat)
2. Early Morning Custodian at BYU
3. APS - I helped out at the shop and in the Environment depts. one summer.
4. First grade teacher - on my 8th year!

4 movies I've seen more then once...
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The 3 Amigos
3. The Princess Bride
4. Lord of the Rings - that's right - ALL OF THEM!

4 TV Shows I watch...
1. Survivor
2. The Amazing Race
3. The Office
4. LOST

4 places I've been...
1. Belize
2. England
3. Israel
4. Egypt - 4 continents down, 3 to go!

4 places I've lived...
1. Joseph City, AZ
2. Provo, UT
3. Makawao, Maui, Hawaii
4. Humble, TX

4 favorite foods...
1. Homemade stuff
2. Mexican
3. Italian
4. Chocolate

4 places I'd like to visit...
1. New Zealand
2. China
3. Australia
4. Italy . . . the list goes on and on.

4 people I tag...
1. Valerie
2. Heather
3. Julie

4. Kirsten

Garden Update

It's been a long time since I posted about the garden and I just wanted to do a quick update.

I'm happy to say that we had our blackberry bush, green pepper plant, cantaloupe and pumpkin plants survived Ike. Our cantaloupe are really growing. You can see the biggest one in this picture.

I put my hand up for scale.

Here's an ultimate close up of one of the tiny little guys! Love the garden!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween started out as an "as normal as can be expected" school day.

One of our teammates - Janelle, bought our whole first grade team these cool witch hats. We were going to get a team picture, but could never get together at the same time. Amanda and I will have to do!

The biggest surprise of all was Adam coming in to town to surprise Susannah for the weekend. She wasn't as surprised as she could have been because he dropped too many hints! She was really excited, though. He showed up at our ward party and even joined in our group as one of the . . .

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES!
Kirsten was Donatello, Susannah was Michaelangelo, I was Leonardo, and Adam was Rafael. Kim was Splinter and Jennifer was Shredder. We were just missing April, but nobody wanted to dress up as her. It would have been a lame costume compared to the others.

I LOVED Kim's Splinter stuff. She actually glued batting on her chin for that beard. Yeah for Elmer's!

The Chappells were Sonny and Cher. It was hilarious! This was also the fry party like last year. There were way more people, though.

I loved Carrie and Michael's costumes. She was Velma and he was Voldemort. He made that mask with plaster and then she put the make-up on it. He looked fantastic!

We had to do an action shot. Nate the cowboy played the victim that Shredder was attacking. We were saving him. Adam was too tired of pictures AND his costume by this point. We were tired of our masks for sure. Those pants we wore were hideous as well. We did have real weapons and read belts. Jennifer brought them. It was fantastic! We left after awhile and watched "Wait Until Dark" at our house.