Student Work

Today I was finishing a lesson on word choice and making sure to include sensory details in writing. I had the students pick an event or place and then fill out a chart of what they could see, hear, smell, and feel. Finally they had to use the details to write a paragraph. Here are two of my favorites from a pair of my boys. I have corrected spelling, but not grammar.

The Mall

It was late Friday night and I just arrived at the mall to see a scary movie. In the mall there was two girls next to me and my brother. They were hot and pretty. The girls screamed.

As you can probably tell I stopped them after a time limit so some didn't quite finish and that particular student is one of my low-level students anyway.

BYU Basketball Game

When I went to the BYU basketball game I was excited. I could see the players but before they started they sung the national anthem. I heard everyone singing along and then they brought down the big white sheet and then they showed a video on the sheet of people playing basketball and turned off the light. Then dropped the sheet and started the game. It was crazy everybody yelling in my ear and I hear the ball bouncing on the court. I also see the players running toward the ball and make it into the hoop. Everybody started screaming yelling and I could see people spilling their drinks because they were cheering on BYU. I felt lots of excitement and happy that BYU was winning then they finally won.

New Look

Once upon a time in Stafford I made a best friend. Years later things happened and we grew apart. Some time later things weren't perfect, but they were a little patched up and the friend redecorated my blog and made me a nice banner in a fun, bright color. Anyway, this is my thanks to Heather for doing such a nice thing for me. I definitely appreciate it.

Heather and her fiance Drey (yes, I stole this picture directly off her blog).

Physical Contact

I've done a brief search and I don't think I've blogged on this subject before. If I have please feel free to skip this post.

My family is a touchy family. Not touchy meaning sensitive, touchy meaning we make physical contact. I would not consider us to be a family of huggers and there are definitely some members that would prefer you only rarely hug them when it's a definite necessity. Our contact is more casual. I'll sit right beside my mom on the couch rather than on the other end like I would with any other person. Holding hands with my little brother or mom in public is not a big deal to me. We have no problem standing close to one another and for someone to sleep in your bed with you for a night for whatever reason is not uncommon. Other (probably more normal) methods of casual touch also happen on a regular basis. Maybe that makes us weird, but I just wanted to give some context for my experience.

I rarely touch anyone in my life right now. I will, on rare occasion, pat a student on the shoulder and even that touch feels foreign to me. I sometimes reach over and pat a friend lightly on the back or arm or leg just for the contact. There are a few guy friends that I'll hug when we greet and that might be the highlight of that social event for me (depending on the event). There is a point to all of this weird rambling and it's that I don't have physical contact with anyone and it's something I miss and something I crave.

Great. Now the whole world (or at least those that read my blog) think I'm a crazy nut-job or crazed for a boyfriend or some other equally as disparaging idea. I guess I'll just have to deal with that a keep on gettin' on.

Baking

I've been in a baking mood this weekend. As I mentioned in my post about wickedness I burned the rolls I was going to use for hamburger buns for the super bowl party. I saved them and late Friday night I made some sugar free bread pudding. It's delicious and I maybe ate it for breakfast this morning. Yum.

Saturday morning I wanted to bake some more and I'd gotten this recipe in my email. I know Sarah loves raspberry chocolate things and I knew I wouldn't be baking for myself because of the no sugar thing and the fact that I had plenty of bread pudding. I'm a big fan of Sarah's roommates too, so I thought it would be a nice Valentine's Day gift type of thing.

I had a lot of fun making the brownies, they smelled great (excepting for the fact that I don't like fruit and chocolate put together) and were pretty simple. I love trying new recipes and I love getting them right. Sarah's mom already asked for the recipe so I'm taking that as a good sign. Also, everyone who tried them said the brownies were delicious.

And they don't look too bad (though they're not as pretty as the picture on the website).

Touching Moment

BYU played tonight. It was the game against Utah so it was of course a big deal. Sadly, Jimmer was off and only had 8 points in the first half. Really unfortunate. The second half didn't start any better for our home-boy Jimmer and it looked to be a tragic win for the Cougars. I don't know what sparked it, but the crowd began all at once to chant "Jimmer, Jimmer, Jimmer" repeatedly to show our devotion to him despite his lack of success on this evening.

No one will ever know if it was this cheering that pumped him up, but Jimmer went on to get 12 more points in the next couple minutes (maybe three or four) and 23 on the night and you could tell he was excited. He did the Jimmer yelling face and the Jimmer screaming face and ended the game with my personal favorite, the Jimmer happy face.

How cute is this picture? Lovely. I think it's fantastic.

The thought that maybe it was the crowd showing their devotion that kept Jimmer going and turned his game around really was touching to me and I'm not being sarcastic.

Oh yeah, let's not forget how much of a BAMF Jackson Emery is and how awesome Charles Abouo played tonight.

So Far This Weekend

Welcome to the weekend. I'm beginning to think teachers look forward to the weekends more than the students. Since I'm a student teacher I look forward to the weekend about double the amount anyone else does. That being said, the weekend isn't the same as it used to be. I would love to have time to spend Friday night doing absolutely nothing and then finish all of my homework on Sunday. It's completely impossible when I'm trying to plan lessons for a whole week at a time and make sure I don't need to go buy anything to make my lesson possible.

Since I'm this busy I got to work not long after I got home yesterday (well, first I went and signed a contract for somewhere to live next fall). I spent a few solid hours planning lessons with some TV playing in the background (don't judge, it often helps keep me focused because I'm not bored). I watched a documentary called Jesus Camp which was super weird and freaked me out with all the little children speaking in tongues and that sort of stuff and also watched A Little Princess. It'd been so many years since the last time I saw that movie. I was transported back to my grandmother's (Mammaw's) basement during "rest hour" as a kid. I miss the simpleness of those times.

No matter how busy you are you can't spend all of Friday night at home alone (at least not on a regular basis) so I went over to Sarah's parking garage for a dance party. There weren't many people, but there was fantastic music and I was able to let go for the most part. It was a blast for about an hour (probably less) until about eight police officers showed up to shut us down. Disappointing. We tried a Glennwood party that turned out lame before just heading home for the night.

I spent until 2am baking for fun and listening to podcasts, but I'm planning on writing another post soon about what I've been baking lately. That post may or may not get written, but it probably will and will hopefully include some pictures.

That is all. Please forgive the boringness and general update-like tone to this post.

Wickedness

Last night I was cooking up a storm for our super bowl party today. It was getting extremely late so I decided to take a quick shower. Somehow I forgot that I was in the middle of baking the rolls I was planning to use for slider buns and they overcooked. I only had enough rolls left for half a batch so I decided to go out after church today and grab some more rolls from the store. I didn't feel like it was a wicked decision because I was not going to ruin the feast I'd been working on for a bajillion years. It's not like I go shopping every single Sunday or anything. Anyway, I went to the store and felt fine about it until I pulled back into my parking garage and realized I'd have to enter my apartment with a grocery bag. I contemplated how I might be able to hide my goods in my bag or pretend I had just left the groceries in the car the night before.

This is dumb. I know people will judge people for this kind of thing because I've heard it happen, but it's stupid. It's not that big of a deal if someone has to grab something from the store on a Sunday. So, those people can STOP JUDGING ME IMMEDIATELY. The end.