My students' opera

I just realized that my last post was the beginning of the school year, and now here it is the end of the school year. 
My wonderful home teacher came and took pictures of my students' performing their opera.  Here is a link to see some of the pictures.

http://bitly.com/2012opera

Getting Ready For School

The last couple of weeks have been crazy trying to get everything ready for school.  I am so thankful for family and friends taking extra time to help me get things prepared.  My room is pretty much ready now, which is good since tomorrow is the students' first day of school.  We had back to school night on Thursday this week.  I have been looking through my yearbook from my last year of teaching trying to remember students' names so I could call them by name when I saw them.  It was mentally challenging to try to remember so many names, but I did a pretty good job, and I think it will pay off in the long run.  (Now on to learning all the new students' names...)
Here are some pictures of my classroom.  I got an extra white board in my room which will be really helpful.  My theme for the year is the song "Engine, engine, number 9, going down Chicago line..."  focusing on the Chicago "L".  I'm starting with a cute book called "Jonathan Cleaned Up--Then He heard A Sound or Blackberry Subway Jam" by Robert Munsch.
It took me a lot longer to get things ready without my parents' help, but I think things turned out pretty cute, don't you think?

My composer wall, outside my door way

 Antonio Vivaldi, Amy Beach, and Louis Armstrong entering composer station turnstiles

I will put up student Treble Clef drawings on this board

 Pictures of me in Chicago (these are all pictures from my blog if you want to look at them closely)

My instrument wall

 Instrument Family train cars...String family

 Woodwind family car

 Brass Family Car

 Percussion Family--Keyboard subgroup

 Percussion family 

 Word Wall--The Chicago "L" map

Each train line (color) will represent a different grade.  

The words they learn will be placed on like stops on the train line.

 North end view

 North-East view

 South-East view

 South view

 South-west view

North-west view

Summer

I can't believe that I am getting ready to start school again.  I feel like I just got out of school, but at least this time I will be the teacher rather than the student.  I got to spend a month living at my twin sister's house, and spending lots of time with all of my family.  This last weekend I moved into my own apartment and I start meetings in the next few days.
My nephew Connor had such a fun time playing T-ball this year.  I got to go watch and cheer a few times he played.

We also had a family outing to the Wasatch County Demolition Derby.  It was so fun to be there all together.
It was a great derby this year.  Lots of exciting events.

A Typical Day

I've spent the majority of my time since I've gotten back to Utah with my nieces and nephews.  I'm constantly with one family or another.  Recently, I have been trying to put together things for my classroom this coming year.  I've always had my mom to help me, but since she is in the Philippines, I've been doing it by myself.  So, combine nieces and nephews and classroom preparation, and you get this:

I did a superhero theme a few years ago and Connor saw my posters from before.  He wanted to keep them, so we compromised, and I said I would draw a few.  However, it turned into a reward system, and every time he helped his mom do what she asked, I would draw him another superhero.  Thankfully, we finally ran out of room on the paper.  The amazing thing is Connor knows who every single one of these characters is, and then some. (For my future reference: Violet--Incredibles; Superman; Dash--Incredibles; Wonderwoman; Robin; Batman; Captain America--Avengers; Iron Man--Avengers; Hawkeye--Avengers; Wolverine--Avengers; Silver Surfer; Spiderman; and Elastigirl--Incredibles)
By the way, my theme this year is Chicago, and big city life. (public transportation, skyscrapers, etc.)  I'll share more about it when I have my room a little more ready.

4th of July

The 4th of July has been a huge family holiday ever since I can remember. I love it!  However, with my parents gone, and without a place to do cotton candy, the entire day was a little different this year.
We got together with family and had a barbeque and did fireworks, but it was a much smaller ordeal than usual.  Most years I'm completely exhausted by the end of the day.  This year I got to spend a lot of time enjoying being with my family.  Both are good, but it's different.

Lizzy in Chicago and moving home

My twin sister, Elizabeth, flew to Chicago to help me drive home.  She had never been to Chicago before so we spent my last day in Chicago exploring some of my favorite things.  We got to see Millennium Park together, go to the Art Institute, and for our last evening, we went to Beauty and the Beast.  We packed my car Friday morning (July 1) and drove all day.  We stopped in North Platte, Nebraska at midnight, then drove all of Saturday and got to Liz's house by 6:00 Saturday evening.  The kids and Jeff were all excited to see Liz.
I loved that I got to spend one-on-one time with her throughout the trip.

And we ended the night by getting cheesecake at the Hancock Tower Lounge. It's on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in Chicago, and has amazing views of the city--although the funniest thing is that the absolute best view is from the women's restroom. The whole wall is a window that looks down on the city. And we were lucky enough to get to see a lightning storm over Lake Michigan while we were up there which was absolutely gorgeous!

Lucie's last day--Monday, June 27

Sunday the weather was perfect all day.  Monday...not so much.  I was sad because there were so many things that are so much better to do when the weather is nice.  We woke up and it was pouring rain though.  it cleared up, but the weather on-line said there would be severe thunder storms starting around 2:00.  We decided to go for the architecture boat tour during the couple of hours of not stormy weather since that was one of the things Lucie really wanted to do.  It was foggy, but we didn't get rained on at all.  And to everyone's surprise, the weather turned nice in the afternoon, so even though I was wearing rain boots, we went down to the Taste of Chicago Festival (it was supposed to be tornados in the evening) for lunch, then headed to Wrigley Field to see if we could catch the Cubs game.  I bartered with a scalper and got our tickets down to $20 each.  (They would have been $36 dollar tickets, and the cheapest tickets you can buy are $18 tickets.  I was pretty proud of myself.)  We saw three home runs during the game and the Cubs won, which hasn't happened a tons during this season.  We walked back to my apartment, ate dinner, then headed back to Taste of Chicago for a concert which showcased a few musical numbers from several different musicals that will be in Chicago in the next couple of months.  After, we walked back through Millennium Park and stopped for another concert of a local band.  It was supposed to be raining and stormy, but it was a really good day overall.