Look out Apollo!!!!

Jaden and I went ice skating last night and you have got to see this kid! He is amazing on a pair of ice skates!!! I helped put them on and the he just took off walking around on them by himself. I thought he would need help getting used to walking with them--false. He showed off by walking forwards, backwards, sideways, and with his eyes closed!

We went to the Olympic Oval which is a speed skating track, not your typical skating rink. The oval is huge, about the size of a running track. We went around the whole track 5 times!!! Each time we went around Jaden just got better and better. The first time he held onto my hand and the wall. We basically just walked around on the ice with little stutter steps.We went pretty slowly but Jaden taught himself how to stop using the toe pick and stopped himself from falling quite a few times...but we did fall...a lot. Jaden was such a good sport, he just said, "I'm okay!" and got back up and kept going. After the first time around, which took about 30 minutes, we had to take a break because the zamboni had to clean the ice, which took FOREVER. Seriously, 23 minutes to clean the ice. We were getting antsy.

When we got back on again, Jaden started getting more brave and picked up speed. We went around in less time with fewer falls with every lap. Then he started actually gliding a little bit on the ice, closing his eyes, taking little jumps, weaving his feet in and out a little, and then...he let go of the wall...and then me! He started doing it all by himself. Then when he would fall, he would say, "It's okay to fall because that's how we learn." On the last time around he only fell 2 times! That is incredible because the track is ginormous and it was only his first time! Way to go Jaden! We had so much fun! He did say that he wished his family was there so that they could see how good he was. So here are some videos of him skating. Sorry they aren't very good, I'm not the most coordinated skater/photographer.

Movin on Up

I'm done!!! I took my last undergraduate final yesterday!!!

Also, I thought I'd show everyone what Nathan's stocking looks like. Mom is so good!

And if you notice the new location, it is due to the increase in population of the family. And look how far up the stairs I am!

In other news: I am now unemployed! Hooray!!! :o)

You mean there's a right answer???

Granite School District came to BYU to interview secondary education majors graduating by next August today. I received a call a few weeks ago telling me to sign up for an interview and since I didn't think they would call every single education major, I was feeling special and signed up. I'm still not positive if I want to try and teach first and pursue a Master's Degree or just go to school first. I figure it depends on if I can get hired or not, so I prepared for the interview anyway.

I got up at 6:30 this morning so that I could actually do my hair. No joke, this is the first time I have ever blowdryed, curled, and styled my hair since I've been at BYU. Then as I got into my car I noticed a gigantic run up my nylons so I had to go back and change them. My interview was at 9:00 but I was supposed to be there 20 minutes early to fill out paperwork. I realized at 8:00 that the resume I sent the district had a typo on it (how EMBARRASSING!) so I printed out a new one to hand into them, hoping they hadn't looked at the one I submitted online yet. I also discovered that my professor still hadn't given me the letter of recommendation I asked him to write on Monday, so I only had 1, instead of the 2 to 3 the district asked for. :-(

Anyway, I got there at 8:30 and started filling out the paperwork and tried to calm myself down because I felt like a lot of things were not going my way. I told myself I had 30 minutes to relax, spit out my gum (I wanted to have spearminty fresh breath), think of awe-inspiring reamarks to say in my head, and reapply chapstick. Five minutes later the guy called my name and I just stared at him like, "Uh...yes..." while thinking, "I'm not ready yet!"

So I go into this teeny tiny coat closet and sit down and there was no room to put all my stuff so I just sat there and held it, I had to swallow my gum like a teenager going to talk to a teacher trying to not get 5 demerits, and my lips suddenly felt dry and pasty. Then he pulled out my resume with the typo on it and I cringed. Then he said, "So you want to be a PE teacher. I saw on your resume something about soccer." I thought he was referring to my coaching internship so I started to explain it but then he said, "Did you see that BYU game with the girl?" (he started making hair-pulling gestures) I explained to him my familiarity with the situation.

The man says the HR person who scheduled the interviews got sick so he was filling in and didn't really know much and couldn't answer any of my questions, which was a little frustrating. Then we got down to business and asked:

1. What are the most important things to do during the first few days of the school year?

2. How important is it to work together with coworkers and how would you do it? (Seriously??)

3. What are the best teaching methods you would use...or something like that...I turned my answer into that question regardless of what the actual question was.

4. What kind of relationship do you want to have with students?

and the big one...

5. What is unique to you as a teacher? How will that help you to teach?

I felt like my answers were well articulated, I don't think there's anything I wish I would have remembered to say or said something else instead. But because my interview was so far ahead of schedule I had to sit outside the interviewing closets and finish my paperwork while the 2 interviewers talked and waited for the next interviewees. I overheard the man who interviewed me asking the other interviewer (a woman who actually knew what she was doing) about the questions and she said, "I have not been impressed with the responses I've been given so far. Nobody has gotten any of them completely right." I stopped writing and thought, "What?! You mean there are actually right and wrong answers? I thought they just wanted our opinions and were trying to get to know our teaching philosophies and stuff." She continued to explain that we get certain points for certain answers and then there's an overall score at the end...I had no idea. It felt like we were just shooting the breeze public school teaching style. Then I started to feel really dumb and juvenile. She said that the 1st question about the 1st few days of school no one had gotten right. She said everyone says that setting up procedures and routines is what is most important, (which is what I said and I was pretty proud of my answer) but the RIGHT answer is to learn everyone's names. What??? As a secondary level teacher with 150 students you think learning everyone's names is more beneficial than keeping everything under control until I can get a chance to learn everyone's names?! Fine. I missed those 3 points completely.

In conclusion, I don't think it went that well. But I'm okay with that. This interview is just the first of many and it was good practice experience...I guess. Schools don't even start posting job openings until April 1st so then we'll all have to re-interview or something anyway. I just thought I would let you all know. Have a good weekend! Only 3 more weeks until Christmas!

The Next Big Step

I got my student teaching assignment today. I'll be at Oak Canyon Junior High in Lindon, UT. I googled it and it says it should be an 11 minute drive from my apartment...excluding traffic...and snow...I don't know much yet except I'll be at that school the entire semester. They usually try to get us at a junior high for one half and a high school for one half, but I guess not for me.

Here Comes the...

We did it again! Saturday, November 7, 2009, Dad and I participated in the Telos Turkey Tri in Orem. It's a Spalsh Distance race in reverse order consisting of a 3 mile run, 10 mile bike, and 350 m swim. Zach Collins' work is the company that puts on the race (Telos) so he was there also. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of him. When we signed up for it in September we were positive that there would be snow on the ground and we almost didn't sign up because of it, but we were very lucky to have a warm, sunny Saturday in the 50's.

We got to the race at 6:45 and the gun went off at 8:30. Everyone all started at the same time, so Dad and I decided to start at the very back of the pack. We don't think there was a starting line to cross over that started our timing chips and I was waiting to start my watch until we crossed it, but we never found it. So we think our official race time started when the gun went off, which stinks because we started last, and my watch was off because I didn't know when to start it. Anywho, the race took place in a residential area, so we had to run and bike on the street with traffic. We also rode around the UVU campus. I finished the run about one minute before Dad and then about 2 minutes into the bike Dad zoomed passed me and I didn't see him again until after the Finish Line. Yup, he totally smoked me!! The swim was in an indoor pool and completely packed. Dad and I had to walk/doggy paddle most of the time because of slow swimmers ahead of us or there being 4 people traveling down a 4 ft wide lane as one solid mass.


The official times aren't posted yet but I finished with a time of around 1:15 and Dad came in a few minutes before that. Zach said he finished at 1:05 and we're all pleased with how we did. It was a lot of fun...except for a couple of things (both of which have to do with the blasted bike portion).


When I run/bike outside my nose runs almost as much as I do. I brought kleenex but left them in my pants, which was a big mistake. I was okay during the run but by the time I got on the bike, I was really struggling. I'm not very comfortbale riding a bike through traffic so I was very apprehensive to unglue my hands from the handle bars and effectively blow my nose (into my shirt). So I tried wiping my nose on my right humerus, but that only moved everything to my right cheek. So then I tried to push it back by wiping in the opposite direction on my left humerus, which was only slightly effective. This lasted for a couple of miles until I was sniffing so frequently and violently that my head was stuffing up and starting to hurt. So I did what I had to do. I just turned my head to the right and blew forecefully into the air. Apparently whatever muscles required for blowing snot rockets have not been adequately strengthened inside me because I just had crap hanging out of my nose...just dangling there. So again, I wiped once to the right and once to the left. At this point my lips were getting all dry and pasty too. So when I dismounted my bike and walked it back to the rack, I literally had to scrape snot and boogers off of my cheeks (I did this while passing a woman with a camera, I hope she was not the official race photographer) and those white crusties off my mouth. It was nasty.


Also while I was biking, I heard a loud crack. I got super scared that something had fallen off of my bike and I ran over it. I pictured my bike just toppling over or crumbling beneath me and then imagined the horrible road burn I would soon feel. I heard some woman behind me yell, "I think you dropped something!!" I looked around to see what could possibly have fallen off, but I know nothing about bikes so I had no idea what to look for. But then I noticed my pump was gone, so that must have been it.

(This is after the race. He doesn't even look tired!!)

Anyway, so we finished! And da da da da!!!! Dad finished second in his age category and got a silver medal!! Wooh!! Unfortunately, I had to leave early so I couldn't get a picture of the champion, but I am so proud of him! He did amazing!

Candy Apple on a Stick, Makes my Tummy go...I forgot the rest...Kare???

For Family Home Evening (FHE) our ward had a pumpkin carving contest. My roommates and I weren't very excited to go because...well, we're never really excited to go because we don't know anyone and all of our activities are in large groups. Even when we just have our individual families meet, our entire ward is divided into only 3 families, so there are at least 20 people in each family. Due to the massive gatherings, it's hard for us to get to know anybody personally, especially when it seems like everyone else knows everyone else already and they already have their little cliques. But for my roommates, the promise of potential treats and for me the self-gratification that I at least attended a church acivity, motivated us to go. We also made a deal that we would each meet one new person.

Realizing that the treats were the same as usual, popcorn and hot chocolate, my roommates almost bailed. But then the ward Dad said that the winner of the carving contest would receive a prize. With that promise of a potential treat, my roommates were back in the game. We picked the cutest pumpkin and got to work. Thankfully, Kristen is really strong so she could actually carve and Hillary is very creative, so I didn't have to do anything except pull the guts out and hold the pumpkin in place. Jill acted as our social representative and talked to some girl the whole time that we didn't know. (She was the only one to meet someone new...the rest of us were busy!)

(This is Hillary with our pumpkin. It says "I LOVE BYU" with an eyeball, a heart, and a Y.)

After about 45 minutes, we finished carving and looking around at some of the weak sauce jack-o-lanterns, we were feeling pretty good about our pumpkin. We waited around for everyone to finish. Everyone lined up their pumpkins and our's was still the best...and then we realized we were waiting on 2 last pumpkins...apparently the longer you take, the more creative and amazing the pumpkin turns out because these pumpkins were insanely ornate and done without a stencil. They definitely deserved to win and they won a big bag of candy each. Deflated, my roommates wanted to leave. We all wanted a reward and a real Halloween treat, so Kristen and I went to the store and bought two bags of carmel. We went home smashed up my leftover birthday Heath bars, and made the most hardcore candy apples you will ever encounter. We used apples from Costco that are the size of softballs, making it nearly impossible to bite into. Then they were so smothered in carmel that we couldn't tell where the stems or seeds or the bottoms were so we had to just eat the whole thing.

We made a couple of rules: the apples could only be eaten with hands, no knives; and you couldn't wipe your face until you finished the whole thing. This was really hard because everything was melty, the apples were huge and incredibly juicy, and a couple of us had runny noses so it was hard to tell what was snot and what was apply juice. But they were DELICIOUS. My poor roommate Hillary has braces so there was no way any metal machinery could have handled what we were undertaking. She tried to dip a banana into the carmel but the banana couldn't handle the stickiness, so she just sat and stared at us, trying not to throw up. And for some reason, someone put on Christmas music, so we enjoyed our Halloween treats whilst singing Cindy Lou Who's, "Where are you Christmas?"

(Heather, who is not my roommate, she lives next door, but she's always over. She's in my program.)

When we finally finished, I was cleaning up the kitchen when someone knocked on the door. I still hadn't cleaned my face, luckily someone else answered the door because I had forgotten that I was covered in chocolate. A girl from downstairs asked if we had a clog. We all started laughing because we thought she was referring to clog dancing because we had used a plate, a pot (which got bent in the process) and a hammer to smash up the Heath bars. We thought she was asking what was making it so noisy. But then she added that their sink was overflowing and they were having to use buckets to put all the excess water into the tub. She meant a clog in the sink. We said we didn't have a clog and she stared at us and left. I kept my back turned to her the whole time so she wouldn't see my dirty face.

(Jill and Kristen)

After she left we started feeling guilty because we were afraid that all our carmel had clogged up the sink and caused problems for them. About an hour later a dirty, old, (yet friendly) gentleman from the apartment's emergency pager number thingy came and said he had to go through our sink to fix the downstairs peoples' sink. Mind you, this was at 11:00PM. We still don't know if we had anything to do with the comotion downstairs, but oh well. We had fun...


...until the next morning. I was so sick. I spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom this morning, trying to coordinate with Kristen's showering schedule. Then I had to go and suffer through class and I felt horrible. But I think it was worth it.

Faja-razzi

The official race photos are online from the Daybreak Triathlon if you are interested in viewing them. I am unable to load them onto the blog, I think that may have to do with copyright issues, or I might just be retarded. You can download and save the pictures to your computer. And be nice...some of the pictures are really attractive.

http://www.ustrisports.com/daybreakgallery.htm

Finish Line:
Alli: 510
Dad: 641
Zach: 667
David: 691

Swim:
Zach: 9440
David: 9444
Alli: 9658
Dad: 9821

Bike:
Alli: 159
Dad: 290
We can't find Zach or David...5 gold stars to whoever can point them out.

Run:
Alli: 76
Zach: 9979, 9980...I think he ran in front of someone else's shot and ended up with 2!
David: 9353
We can't find Dad...a big gulp slurpee for the discovery of this photo.