Teaching School

It's been a crazy few weeks.  I decided I'd better write down what's been going on, because my brain is fried so much all ready that I'll never remember it all!

It feels so great to actually have a job again, and to be fully part of a team.  Some of the highlights have been:

• Getting the name plate on my door
• Hanging posters in my classroom
• Getting my KEYS
• Meeting our two student teachers and knowing that I never have to do that again :)
• Making new friends
• Trying to teach my students how to say my name.  Most of them still call me "teacher" or "Mrs....um...."
• Being introduced in the first-day assembly

There are some things that I'd never anticipated struggling with.  The schedule is pretty rough after four months of nothingness.  I was so exhausted for the first week that I had a hard time keeping up with everything!  Also, I'm the only new teacher in the school, so it's been a challenge keeping up with everything that everyone else already knows.  I've never used the phrase "What does that mean?" so many times in my life!  They have their own Franklin language for sure, but I'm catching on!  I've also learned that teachers are crazy when it comes to free stuff, especially EXPENSIVE free stuff (like a brand-spanking-new printer.)

Luckily, though, I work with a great staff.  I'm serious.  They're always just stopping by to chat, offering advice, giving me free stuff (awesome), or just smiling at me when I've had a horrible day.

Most of all, though, I've had a great mentor.  In our district, first-year teachers are assigned a veteran teacher to mentor them through everything.  My principal, knowing that I already had a good relationship with Marci, asked her to be my mentor.  She's a rockstar.  She spent a lot of valuable setup time the first few days showing me the ropes: introducing me to other teachers, helping me haul books to my classroom, loading me up with teaching material, giving me advice on everything.  I'm so glad I have her around!

All in all, the first few weeks have been great.  I still have a LONG way to go and a lot to learn, but I'm getting there!

Island Park

Last week the kids and I were invited to spend a week at the cabin with Jake's family.  Jake had to work so we thought it'd be a fun way to pass the time!  Since it was during the week, we were men-less until Jake's brother-in-law Chad came on Friday.  We had a fun few days with the girls and the kids.

It was really stressful actually getting there.  We got home from Bear Lake Saturday night, had to speak in church Sunday morning, and Jake left Sunday night.  I spent most of Monday making treats and doing laundry and rushed to leave Tuesday afternoon.  I left a messy house and forgot a lot of stuff, but we were on our way!

One of the best parts of the cabin is having the lake right there.  We didn't have a boat this time but the dock provided plenty of entertainment for the kids.  It's so nice having a private dock!

Mindy and Jessie were so nice to swim with the kids whenever they wanted.  I really didn't feel like swimming while I was there so it was nice that they took over for me :)

 

Dalyn, Maddie, Sayer, and Ridge

 

We took a quick trip to West Yellowstone one afternoon.  This is Say and Sari all ready for the ride!  Notice Sari's pretty car seat cover.  I got "inspired" by Kandice's rennovation of her car seat a few months ago.  I also discovered that "inspired" is code word for "labotomied".  There's a week of my life I'll never get back!  But I'm glad it's done :)

The closest we'll ever get to a bear!

Jessie and Grandma were nice enough to bring some projects for the kids to keep them busy.  It created quite a mess for us to clean up but the kids really had fun.

Cole, Dalyn, Ridge, Sayer, Maddie, Sari, and Halee.  All the grandkids, minus AyBree and Haysten.  While we were in West, Grandma bought all the grandkids new T shirts and we wanted to get a pic of them together.  Taking pics of the grandkids on this staircase is a Davis family tradition (there are dozens of them), so this is the next generation of kids!

 We also went to Big Springs to see the fish and Johnny Sack's cabin.  This is Maddie and Sari.  Maddie really took care of Sari while we were in Island Park.

Sayer wanted a picture next to this antique chainsaw.  Unfortunately I cut most of the chainsaw out of the pic!

It was a fun few days with the Lilyas, but boy, were we glad to get home after two weeks away!

Bear Lake '11

Every year my family takes a trip to Bear Lake with my Uncle Howard's family and my Aunt Jan's family.  This year, Uncle Howard's family wasn't able to make it but we had all of our fam and all of the Henscheids.  It was really fun!

The lake was way high so the beach, which is the main attraction at Bear Lake, was pretty much nonexistent.  The kids weren't bothered by it, though.  Fortunately, the water was still very shallow for about a hundred yards off shore, so we didn't have to worry about the kids playing in the water.

My kids are so not water babies.  It's always been the one thing Sayer was afraid of.  This year, we'd progressed to him playing in only the water he could still touch bottom in, which was a huge accomplishment.  Sari wanted nothing to do with it, but really enjoyed the sand!







 
My dad has a really huge chair he got from Jennifer for Christmas last year.  The kids always love sitting in it together!


 
We love loading the boats up and finding a nice deep spot to swim.  The guys have diving contests and try to reach the bottom and the rest of us just jump off the boats and swim-unless you're my kids, and then this is what you do the whole time:

Sean's dive:

 
Jake's dive:


 
Boyd's...somethin'...

 
This is my nephew Chance and his girlfriend Stephanie.  I don't care if he is eighteen, he's still too young for a girlfriend. ;)  And if he makes me a great aunt before I'm thirty, we're gonna have a serious talk...

 
This is a cute pic of Teera and Athena.  Teera just had a little baby boy named Ammon about a month ago, and she already looks amazing!  I'm jealous! :)

 
Kandice also took some great family pics of the Henscheids since my cousin Landon is about to start his next tour in Afghanistan, but if you want to see those you'll have to visit her photography blog here.

We had a great time!  Can't wait for next year!

Sayer turns FOUR!!!!

I can't believe that my sweet little boy has gone from this:

To this:

Sayer turned four last month!  I was so grateful we'd gotten moved; I really wanted him to have his birthday in his own home.  We decided to have a barbecue with our family and also invited his cousins to go see Cars 2.  It ended up that only Dewey and Aedan were able to come, but the three of them had a blast!

Jake and I have really enjoyed doing crazy cakes for Say's birthday.  This year, I copied an idea Kandice had used for Aedan's birthday last year and made him a backhoe cake out of all kinds of goodies.  It was a huge stress and I'm grateful for Jake's slightly feminine side, since he did most of the decorating!

Say had a great birthday.  He got a tool bench, a wheelbarrow, a slip 'n slide, lots of cars and candy, and some new clothes.  It was a fun day.

New House and New JOB!!!

June was a weird month for us.  It was one of those periods in life where everything seems to happen by accident at exactly the right time and in exactly the right order!  For our entire married life, we've sort of been "on hold" waiting for me to graduate.  Everything was talked about in terms of future plans and we were afraid of making anything too permanent before I finished my degree.  This summer, however, it was like the puzzle pieces finally just fell together by themselves and we have definitely seen the Lord's hand in our lives.

After I'd graduated and we got home from Vegas, we knew the next step was job and house hunting.  I put in my application for a few high school positions and kept my eyes open for the one I really wanted at Franklin.  We started checking out house listings and couldn't really make up our minds on a price range, let alone a house!  We weren't sure how much house to buy; we were hoping for me to get a job but not sure, and not sure if we wanted to become dependent on two incomes.  It was really confusing and we had a dark week or two when all we felt was confusion and discouragement on both the house and job front.

Then things started happening really quickly.  The job at Franklin was posted, which I quickly applied for, and Jake stumbled across a listing for a house for rent.  We weren't really looking to rent but something prompted him to call.  He found out that this family had been trying to sell the house for a year and needed to rent it right away until they could sell.  We met with the lady a few days later and she agreed to take the house off the market and give us a year to decide if we want to buy it. 

It was a perfect situation.  We were leery about buying until we knew if I'd have a job, but really wanted a place of our own, and this house is wonderful!  I will post pics in a few days (I hope).  It's only 13 years old and is a three bed, two bath home on 1/2 acre in town.  We live in a quiet little neighborhood and have a great new ward.  The best part is that the lot goes right back to the river, so we have an incredible view! (And yes, we put up a fence first thing.  Totally useless, because my kids love the front yard and rarely go in back!)

We signed the lease and started moving that weekend.  I got called for an interview at Century High and decided I'd better take it, but I was still confused since I really felt like I was supposed to work at Franklin.  At the last minute, the Century interview was postponed, and I was called for a Franklin interview the next day!  Long story short, I interviewed at Franklin, got the job teaching 8th grade English, and ended up canceling my interview at Century.  I interviewed once and got the job-I have a 100% interview success rate :)

It was a huge relief for us.  All summer long I've had this image in my mind of Heavenly Father putting together the massive puzzle that is our life, and every time something crazy happened, it's almost like I can see him picking up a piece and putting it exactly where it goes.  We really felt like the house was right for us but would have made us really tight on Jake's income alone, so when I got hired, everything made sense  We are grateful that we followed the promptings we both received and are loving our new life!

Summer Lovin' (and Vegas!)

Major break from blogging is, hopefully, over!  We have had an incredibly busy summer and I have decided today is the day I catch up on everything!
Our summer in review:

• Trip to Vegas
• New house
• New JOB!!!! (!)
• Sayer turned FOUR!!!
• Bear Lake
• Island Park
• Everything in between!

I'll try to do a separate post for each of these since that would be a massive post if I tried to do them all together!

First, I'll start with our trip to Vegas.  Originally, Kandice and I had planned a trip to Washington, DC with our parents for graduation.  It ended up not working out, so Jake and I decided to use the money we'd saved to take our own trip.  We chose Vegas because it's super cheap and Jake promised me when we went two years ago that he'd take me back to see Terry Fator! 

My mom and dad took our kids for the week so we could have some time to ourselves.  It was so fun!  Other than the weather being bad and our flight being delayed both ways, we had a great time.

The night we got there, we were reeled in by one of those timeshare gimmicks.  They promised us $10 Terry Fator tickets and free breakfast if we'd listen to their "presentation".  We knew exactly what they were doing but since we were already planning on paying retail for Terry Fator tickets, we took the bait.  If you've never done this before, do it once just for the experience!  They bused us to their new resort and really laid it on thick.  We listened politely, turned them down, and walked away with $200 worth of tickets for $20!  It was definitely worth our time.

The M&M employee apparently didn't know how to work the flash!

Outside the Luxor

WAHOOO!!!!!!!!  WORTH EVERY PENNY!!! :D

M&M car

 

We also went to see Bodies (awesome), the Titanic exhibit (awesome), and the CSI Experience (terrible waste of money). 

It was the first vacation we've taken by ourselves since the kids were born, so it was nice to get away!

Graduation! Goodbye ISU!!

Pretty much said everything I have to say about graduating and my related feelings, so I'll just share some of the highlights of my last ISU event!

Wednesday night the College of Education held a celebration dinner for the graduating student teachers.  I was glad they did, because the people there were the people I've gone through most of the program with!  We have had a great time together and I've made some wonderful friends who I hope to see in the educational world again very soon! :)

Today was the big day!  It was crazy long and mostly boring but I'm glad I chose to participate in the ceremony.  I got to sit by my friends in the College of Ed and hear, "Amy Lilya, Bachelor of Arts" and the subsequent crazy cheering from my fan section.

 

My sweet nephews offered to watch the kids so they didn't have to sit through the ceremony.  Best idea ever!

Some of my friends from the College of Ed-Leah, me, Brieanne, Emily, and Candida.  I have gone through a lot of classes with these girls and they are all awesome!  They will make amazing teachers for sure!

A little blurry, but we are getting ready to march.  This is our college's banner.

 

The bell.  The guy behind it has a beard that's about five feet long.  The whole setup was so random and funny that I had to take a pic!

 

Dad, Kandice, me and Mom.  The orange thingys are called stoles of gratitude.  We were supposed to give them to someone who had helped us through our education.  We decided to give them to our parents.  They cried. :)

My super rockstar husband.  What a rock he is for me!  I would have never made it through the last six years without him.  What a lucky girl I am to have him for an eternal companion!

Me :)

Me and Kand.  We made it together!  You'll also notice the pretty corsages we have on.  My mom was so sweet and thoughtful to think of it, and it really set us apart from the other grads.

It was definitely a wonderful experience, and so well worth it!  The one feeling I'll always remember, though, the one that was recurring throughout the entire day, is that my education is not done!  I was very affected by watching the doctorate students be hooded by their advisers.  I had the distinct impression that this was my new goal to aim for.  I'll give myself a year or two to recover, but then I plan on returning to school for my master's and hopefully, eventually, my doctorate!  Luckily, my husband didn't laugh or cry when I told him my plans.  In fact, he had the same feelings :)

We came back to Mom and Dad's for a barbecue with family and friends.  I also got a lot of thoughtful gifts-a KINDLE from Jennifer, a week's worth of babysitting from Mom and Dad while Jake and I go to Vegas in a few weeks, and lots of nice cards and money from other family members.  It was nice to be recognized and wonderful to have our family with us on this important day!