Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had such a fun and busy Thanksgiving yesterday. It started out at about 7:30 am and we got home at about 10pm last night. Mike organizes a friend/family football game almost every year on the morning of Thanksgiving. The kids and I went to watch and snap pictures of the guys playing football. After the game, we raced home to take showers and go to Polly & Marlon's house. We ate dinner at about 2pm then played on the Segways and golf cart. The weather was perfect and added to the feeling of Thanksgiving - it even started to HAIL at night! Once the hail started coming down we all retreated to Polly and Marlon's game room to look at pictures while the kid's played pool and the guys watched the Cardinal's game.

Here are some of the pictures that I took yesterday. I hope that everyone had a great day yesterday, we sure did!

Quick Update

Dang, this week flew by! I can't believe it's already Sunday afternoon! Mike is at the Cardinal/Giants game today with Brian. The kids and I just got back from church. We stopped by the buffet on the way home, ugh ... I am so full! "Big Girl ... Hearty App!"

The kids spend the night at Darcie and Brian's house last night. They had a great time, as usual! The kids are pretty predictable in terms of what they want to do over there (and believe me, the kids call the shots when they are visiting over there:-) 5 and Diner, Toy's R Us, and home to play. Darcie bought Kaelyn and her little friend play cell phones. They could actually text each other with them, I thought that was pretty darn cool myself! Mike and I went out to dinner, then to the movies - Role Models. The movie was okay, quite a few cheap laughs.

I got my cap and gown on Tuesday - Yippee! Only 16 more days left .. excluding weekends & Thanksgiving Break it's only 10!!

For Thanksgiving we will spend the day at Polly and Marlon's house. Let's see .. it will be Darcie and Brian, Melody and family, Polly & Melody's dad and his wife, Steven, Trisha, and some of Marlon's extended family. I think Darcie and Brian are bringing the Segways so we can have our 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Day Segway Tour! I will be sure to take pictures!

Kaelyn and I started talking about Thanksgiving 2009 today (Collard Family Reunion). She is totally excited about the snow, bunk beds, and lots of cousins and family members! I am excited too:-) She is very concerned about having the proper snow attire. I assured her that we'd go shopping before we leave. She's already making a mental list of all the things she'll be needing ... a planner ... just like Aunt Polly:-)

Mike & Brian at the Cardinals/Giants game

Go Cardinals!

Cassidy and Kaelyn with their cell phones

Final Stretch!

Okay, tomorrow I will start my last full week of student teaching. I am so excited for this semester to finally be over with. Although the time went by pretty quickly, it was very stressful at times. I tried to explain it to Mike by telling him that student teaching would be the equivalent (in the business world) of having your boss work in your office for 15 weeks and watch everything you do and give his opinion about how you could do things better. On top of that, I often I had principals and ASU supervisors coming into watch me teach. It was like I was in a fishbowl for 15 weeks!! Don't get me wrong, my mentor teacher is a good guy, but it wasn't always easy working that closely with another person for that long. On a positive note, I learned SO much and I am thankful for the experience. I formed some great relationships with the faculty as well as the students.

Next week (week of Thanksgiving), I will give back Math, Reading, and Language Arts to my mentor teacher. During that time I will go around the school to observe different grade levels.

The week after that I will give back all teaching/prep responsibilities to my mentor teacher. This will be my very last week. I will observe other grade levels and teachers all week long.

FINALLY!! The end is here! I am super excited for a break! After Christmas Break, I will begin substitute teaching so that I can sniff out a teaching position for this fall.

Kaelyn and Zack are doing great! Kaelyn started taking showers (instead of baths) this past week. It brought back the memory of my first shower .. it started with me begging my mom to let me take one. She repeatedly said no so I proceeded to throw a fit. Then she finally gave in ... I remember her standing on the toilet looking over the shower curtain watching me and telling me what to do. I remember feeling like a "big girl". Kaelyn didn't get quite as much coaching as I did. When I was towel drying her hair I noticed that she didn't do a very good job rinsing the shampoo out of her hair .. o'well.

Zack is SO SO SO SO into reading and spelling. He asks me ALL DAY how to spell everything he looks at. As much as I am pleased that he is so interested in learning, it wears a mama down! One day after I had been asked to spell about 7,000 words I asked him to "please stop spelling". After I said it, I started laughing because it sounded so ridiculous. Seriously, you have not seen anyone love to spell until you have seen Zacky. Instead of toys, he carries around a piece of paper with letters written on it. If you think I am kidding, I'm not! Everyday, several times a day, he asks Mike and I to draw his ABC's in bubble letters so that he can color them and carry them around with him. It sounds kinda strange, but maybe he will be like one of those home-schooled kids that wins national spelling contests ... only he won't be home schooled of course.

Mike is great. His job is going well and he is still working out like a maniac. I wish I had about a tenth of his drive in the fitness department. 430 a.m. appointments at the gym should be illegal in my opinion, but he enjoys it:-) He is getting to ride his mountain bike about once a week lately and he also picked up road biking (a while back). He's a great example to us!! The weather is finally getting nice enough for us to break out our cruisers and go on some family bike rides. FUN FUN!

Beef Cake!

Okay, as I was posting my last blog entry Zacky came in my room crying .. our conversation went something like this ....

Zack: Mommy, I put my shirt on right but I can't pull it down.

Me: Come here let me look .. (starting to crack up)

Zack: Mommeeeeeee!

Me: Hold on let me take your picture.

Zack: No Mommeeeeee!

Me: Just hold on ... smile.

Zack: Mommeeeeeeee stop.

Me: Just a couple more pictures!

Anyway, isn't he the beefcakeyist??? I am not exactly sure how he got his undershirt so tangled up around his arms and neck, but here are a few pictures I took of him. Zack always wants to be so independent ... he probably tried to figure this out himself for a long time before finally giving up and calling on me to help him out.

Veteran's Day

Kaelyn, Zack, and I were off school today for Veteran's Day. We went to the park today ... here are some pictures that we took.

I'm not sure what's going on here but Zack was insistent that I take a picture of him doing this, enjoy:-)

Kaelyn

They spend A LONG time putting these flowers into the little holes on the ... the ... the whatever this thing is called that they yell into and it carries their voice to the other side of the jungle gym.

I was making up obstacle courses for them which all ended with them running into my loving arms at the end for a kiss. I couldn't resist getting some video footage of them coming up to the finish line. Here's Zacky coming towards the finish line for his smoochy! I was all ready to get Kaelyn running towards me too, but she fell off the monkey bars and hurt her back pretty badly.

Quick Hello

Okay ... not quite the miracle I was hoping for, for John McCain. But, today is a new day and America has spoken ... rather clearly might I add:-) Hmmm ..... well enough about that for now.

The good news is ... I only have 31 more days until I am done student teaching! I have SOOO enjoyed 4th grade this semester! They really are the perfect age ... old enough to be somewhat responsible but young enough not to think they are "too cool for school" ... (they still love ya and think teachers are wonderful). It would be absolutely lovely if I could get a job teaching 4th grade, I have lots of lesson plans and activities all ready to go!! But .... my number 1 priority is to get a job at Kaelyn's school. Unfortunately, I'm desperate so I'll take what they have opened:-) I haven't observed or taught in a grade that I didn't like, so I'm sure that everything will be just peachy!

Election Day!

I hope that everyone VOTED today! Kaelyn and I are watching CNN closely to find out the results ... the anticipation is nerve racking to say the least!!

We are praying for a miracle -- Go McCain!

I voted early, but rather than mailing it in, I hung onto my early ballot until today because I wanted to take Kaelyn with me to drop it off at the official voting site. I thought it was important that she come with me and "experience" the democratic way for herself. I imagined myself walking past 100's of people standing in a long line .... right up to the front to drop my early ballot in the box. HA HA HA -- Not really the way it happened, there were only 2 people in line when we got there .. bummer (for us, not the people waiting in line)!! We ended up waiting in the line and then I let Kaelyn drop the ballot into the box.

Talk tomorrow!

Trick-or-Treat

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween this year! I wasn't sure that I was going to make it after such a LONG day at school! I came home with a headache and a tight back/neck ... planning and carrying out a Halloween Day for a class is much harder that one might think. I was stressed out to the max by the time I got home from school, but my students had fun and that's what is important. Nothing like 15-30 minutes of alone time and a couple Advil to take care of a long stressful day!

We have a great neighborhood for trick-or-treating so we invited our friends over to pass out candy with us. We set up camp in our driveway and ordered pizza. We sat in the driveway passing out candy, eating pizza, and hanin out for several hours -- It ended up being a really fun night!

Kaelyn was a nurse this year and Zack was Spiderman.

Here's Jenna and baby Mckenna the bunny. She was the cutest little bunny in the world! Her costume was adorable.

Here's a close up of the cutest baby in town! I seemed to have caught "baby fever" last night. Can you imagine why??

My little Spiderman

The kids just came back from trick-or-treating. They were showing off the goods!

Missy, can you believe you will have a little munchkin next year?

Pretty Polly and Cute Kaelyn

Jack & Jacky Lantern

In our family, we give an name to ABSOLUTELY everything. Every toy, stuffed animal, doll, picture of a doll (you get the point) has a name. Kaelyn probably has about 500 stuffed animals and dolls. Every single one of them has a name and a middle name and she REMEMBERS all of them. It's actually quite impressive! Naturally we had to name our pumpkins too.

Now I never said we were very original, so here's Jack and Jacky Lantern:-)

Kaelyn and I got bored from watching Mike carve the pumpkins so we started

taking pictures of ourselves.

After 6 years of watching her mother, Aunts, and all their friends snap pictures of themselves, here is Kaelyn's first picture of herself. In case you are wondering, all you have to do is pick up a camera, hold your arm out, point it towards yourself and SNAP! This was a "big girl" milestone in our family:-)

Wacky-Wacky-Yay!

Kaelyn took a pictures of Zacky and I (as of now,

Kaelyn wants to be a photographer when she grows up).

Zacky is picking out the "guts".

A little pumpkin guts never hurt anyone:-)

Best Dad in Town!