How Entertaining

My birthday this year was one of the best birthdays I can remember!  My mom and dad hosted which was awesome because my mom is a great cook and I didn't have to do dishes after the party.  My mom made a very artistic cake and a lot of my friends came.  Pictures don't really capture how much fun it was for me, but here are some anyway.

In other news, Tom and I purchased an entertainment center with some tall bookshelves.  I love bookshelves.  They make me happy.  I'm not really sure why.  You can see on our TV one of my favorite video games of all time.  Perhaps because it's so ridiculous. Plants vs. Zombies!  If you haven't heard the song, you really should.  "I know your type: tall, dark, and dead.  You want to bite the petals of of my head, then eat the brains of the one who planted me here..."  It will give you something to sing in the shower or when your baking or in the middle of class (although I wouldn't recommend that last one, your students won't know what's going on.)

Slowly we are making our new home feel more like home.  Next, we'll hang our paintings and picture frames.

School is going well.  We are participating in a month-long read-a-thon.  I volunteered to help at our kick-off activity.  I was in charge of a crossword puzzle station.  It took a lot of time because the point of the activity was to read, so I typed up text to go with the crossword puzzles.  The idea was to read the text then do the puzzle.  It was effective most of the time.  It was interesting to see how some parents basically did the puzzle for their child, but some parents wanted their child to do the work.  I think teaching has made me more inclined to encourage the child to do as much as he/she possibly can.

I'm enjoying teaching science these days.  We're doing a unit on the 5 senses.  I think it will always be fun to guess what's inside a bag just by feeling it.  I made a PowerPoint jeopardy "guess that sound" game. That will also be fun once I finally have time to do it.  Science is not the most essential thing to do in a day, and I always plan more than I actually do.  I'm sure I'll do this one soon, however, because I'm excited for it.  That always helps.

If you know anyone in our area looking for a TV or entertainment center let me know.  We are looking to get rid of our old ones.

Sweet Glorious Vacation

So, Lovetta and I just got back from a California Christmas vacation with our friends Rob and Lisa. We spent the first part of the trip at Lovetta's sister's place in southern California. It was nice because we got to spend some time on the beach and Lovetta got to have her art all-nighter.

The downside to the beginning of the trip was that we came in right after a gigantic storm, probably the biggest the state has seen in some time. What did that mean for us? We didn't get away from the cold very well :( For the entire week and a half we were in California, we only had maybe 2 warm days. So very sad. The beach also had ridiculous amounts of seaweed and dead sea creatures sprawled everywhere from the extra high tides.

The remainder of the time after Christmas was spent in northern California for my brother's wedding.  We spent a lot of our time prepping up to the reception.  We set up this beautiful tent kind of thing in the gym at the local church.  I wish we had pictures of it (I'm sure some will show up sometime in the near future from someone).  They also had this neat photo booth and props set up for guests to take their pictures.  Here's a few that we took.

All in all it was a great trip.  However, after so much time spent driving in a car (at least 30 hours), we're glad to be home now :D