Since I know my favorite part of blogs are pictures I decided I'd better upload a couple of them! Here's Sydnee last week at her school Halloween parade. She was a Ninja. And the one below was taken a couple of weeks ago of my mom and dad, (Laura and Brett) sister Amy, brother-in-law Steven, my three nieces, Naomi, Layla, and Mazie, my nephew Elijah, and my daughter Sydnee and me! For my most recent news read the next oldest blog. :)

A Week to Remember

Fall is my favorite time of the year, and this fall has been eventful for me. This week in particular has has changed my life. Backing up a bit...I have been substitute teaching regularly at Sydnee's school this year. I also signed up for a class at Dixie State called cognitive neuroscience. And aside from my favorite time (being with Sydnee) I have been occupying myself with those two things and studying to take the GRE (like the ACT/SAT but for graduate school) and working on graduate school applications. My plan was to take the GRE and get all of my graduate school applications in this winter and then look for full-time work. I was hoping to get into a PhD program for clinical psychology. A month into my cognitive neuroscience class I decided to switch to auditing the class since I don't actually need the class, and because I wanted to be able to substitute teach on those days as well. Things were going nicely along that path, and then this last 10 days happened.

Thursday, October 29th I substitute taught a 5th grade class at Vista Elementary (vistautah.com). Vista is a new charter school that is right up the street from me. The school has an emphasis in performing arts and technology. The students spend half of the day going to art, history, dance, musical theatre, choir, Spanish, and there are more electives. Some of the classes are required (like history) and the others are in categories from which the students choose one or two electives. The other half of the day the students go to their block class where they learn math, science, reading, writing, and spelling. I substitute taught for the block class.

That Friday the teacher of the class I taught quit for reasons I don't know, and suddenly vista was in need of a new teacher. I decided after much contemplation and after talking with Matt and finding him willing to help out with getting Sydnee to and from school to apply for the job. It wasn't what I was planning. But after a lot of thought I opened my mind to the possibility and thought that maybe graduate school could wait a few years. I was interviewed on Saturday, and Mr. Goodman the principal asked me if I would substitute for the week so that he could observe me in the classroom. In the meantime the school started interviewing a lot of people. They wanted to find a great teacher to join their team, but they also wanted to get their permanent teacher into the classroom to be with those wonderful kids.

Monday and Tuesday were rough days. The kids were so sad to lose their teacher. They loved her so much. And they were also anxious to find out who their new permanent teacher would be.

Tuesday night I was sitting at the desk in the classroom looking at the list of students. As I was looking at their names and thinking of each child the strongest feeling came over me that I should be these kids' teacher. It was a very powerful intense feeling. Then I looked up and thought with panic, "What am going to do if they don't hire me!?" Suddenly graduate school seemed like a trivial consideration. Right then I knew I wanted to be in that classroom with those kids. My entire way of thinking shifted. I don't know how to explain it. It was like I was speeding along this one path determined to get to a certain destination as soon as I possibly could. And abruptly I came to an immediate stop, turned, and wanted desperately to go down this other path that I'd never seen. And what would I do if the path was blocked? I knew it was this path - this school - these kids - that I wanted.

Well, I substitute taught the class on Wednesday as well, and the feeling grew stronger. Matt dropped Sydnee off at the school, and she and I were in the classroom when they called me down to the office over the intercom. I asked Sydnee if she was okay hanging out in the classroom for a bit, and she was. So I went down and met with Principal Goodman, Marie, and Jamie. We talked about some various things, Sydnee popped her head in to let me know she needed to go to the bathroom, (she's so sweet and didn't want me returning to the classroom and find her missing) and finally I was offered the job, which I happily, gratefully, and excitedly accepted!!!

On Thursday I was so excited to share the news with the students, and I began my first day as their official teacher. I am so genuinely happy about this. I am nervous and overwhelmed as well. Thankfully the other teachers and staff have been so helpful. So many have offered to help out with whatever I need.

Then on Thursday night the school had parent curriculum night. I was to do eight short presentations presenting the the curriculum, with which I had just been familiarizing myself that last five days!!! Marie Ehlers (the curriculum specialist) and Miss McMicken (the other 5th grade teacher) helped me in planning what to go over. Thankfully it went beautifully. The parents were supportive, interested, and are willing to help me with grading, supplies, volunteering in the classroom and anything else I might need. Marie was there both times parents asked questions to which I didn't know the answers.

I hope this path will end up taking me to graduate school at some point, but right now my thoughts are on finding a balance between spending and enjoying time with Sydnee (which means focusing my thoughts on being in the moment with her) and being a super teacher. I am so excited and happy about this.

With much love, and with appreciation for the miracles that happen,

Twila

Forgot the password

It's pretty sad that I haven't blogged in so long that I forgot my password! So here's a quick update on what's been going on with me.

I started school back at SUU the first of January, and have decided to change to a double major with Psychology and German. I have three German classes and two psychology classes...one of which (Human Relations in Group Dynamics) I am co-facilitating. It's an awesome class, and I'm so grateful to be in it. In my other psych class I'm going to be conducting my own research. We'll be doing a class project around the theme of same-sex marriage. And my project will most likely focus on the theme of divorce. I'm taking two German literature classes, so I'm reading A LOT, and a German grammar class. Hopefully I can start using article endings declining nouns correctly. I'm also the statistics teaching assistant this semester. I figured I struggled so much with it I might actually be able to help the poor souls. And I'm the teaching assistant for the experimental analysis of behavior class again. And at the end of the semester I'll be working for another of my professor and will be grading papers.

It's not all work for me though!!! I have some great friends who I love to spend time with. This last weekend I spent the night at my friend Nikki's house. Sylvia, Nikki, and I stayed up somewhat late (I think I was the first to drop off...yeesh...I'm the party pooper) watching our new tv addiction. Well, it's my new addiction thanks to Nikki. I'm not sure what Sylvia thought!

Oh, and I'm hoping a lot, a lot, a lot, to make some changes to my yard this spring. I really don't want these dreams to have to wait another year.

A couple of weekends ago my dad came over fix some stuff. He put in a new faucet in my kitchen sink, which I LOVE! And he fixed my bedroom door, so that it can now be closed and locked...I can finally sleep in peace, which means the two cats have to find somewhere else to dominate. My mom and sister and brother-in-law and my three nieces came over a little later, so it was quite a fun day.

At 11:59:58 on January 15th, my nephew Elijah Richard Clyde was born. He is so sweet, and makes the cutest squeaking sounds. My sister, Amy is healthy and doing well, and so is Elijah. They now have three girls and one boy. It has been fun spending extra time with them and making my traditional three blankets for my nephew! I got him the cutest dinosaur print and one that looks like dragon scales.

After taking time to relax and spend quality time with Sydnee over Christmas break I looked over my time spent each day and decided I needed to make a priority to spend time reading with Sydnee every night again. The habit we'd had from when she was an infant died out sometime over the last two years with the changes that we went through. But I've now re-instituted that tradition, and it has been nice snuggling up with her and reading each night. We've been enjoying some of the American Girl books. My favorite is Julie.

Today was kind of a hectic day, as I almost got stuck up in Cedar. I got to school at about 8:30 this morning and when I went to leave around noon I think there must have been at least 8 inches of snow on my car.

Hopefully I'll get the pictures of my handsome nephew onto my computer in the near future, so that I can post them here. He really is so cute. On Saturday I was over at my sister's, and right before we were leaving he was pursing his lips like he was drinking through a straw. One more thing really quickly...my nieces are so cute. They decided the following: Naomi is the prettiest, Layla is beautiful, Mazie is gorgeous, and Elijah is handsome.

Surprise! Last week I got called into the bishop's office. What did I do!?! They asked me to be the activity day's leader for the 8 & 9 year old girls!

I'm going to go and read some more about group therapy from Yalom, now.

I'm sure more has happened in the last five weeks, but, alas, this is all for now.

Snow Day

Wednesday night Sydnee and I got home to snow on the ground. It was late, and we were cold, so we snuggled up on the big bag by the fire and admired the view out our back window for a while. It was so lovely. We read a chapter from Junie B. Jones - Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. Then I thought about the fact that it had also snowed on Monday, but by the time Sydnee got out of school it had pretty much melted. So despite the late hour and the darkness, we decided to build a snowman. We donned layers of clothing and went out into the quickly falling snow.

This is what he ended up looking like. We didn't realize until we were finished how crooked he was. We tried to remedy the problem, but he was so heavy there wasn't much we could do at that point!

After we got done building this guy Sydnee started attacking me with snowballs. I think she lost the fight. I'm a MEAN mom.

Since I LOVE sledding I got the crazy idea of trying to sled down our sloping driveway. It worked! It was a lot of fun.Finally we came inside and had hot cocoa and warmed up by the fire. I had just gotten Sydnee tucked into bed when I got a phone call saying the school would be closed the next day!! I ran into Sydnee's room and excitedly told her that she didn't have school! She and I both squealed with joy!

The next morning we woke to a world covered in snow. This picture was taken around 7:00 am. We're lucky to get snow to stick to the ground here...and it hardly ever sticks to the roads!

Alas, our snowman had fallen during the storm. Sydnee and I rebuilt him...now he stands straight, but he shrunk! :(

After we got done building him I decided I would risk the mud to go and explore the area behind our house. Behind the houses in our development are acres of open desert. Sydnee and I often go walking back there, but we hadn't been after a snow storm. It was lovely as you can see from this photo of Sydnee on a red rock.

Brain Surgery and Pee

Today I got to see brain surgery! I had just finished weighing the pigeons (who did quite well in class tonight - BTW) and was going out into the hall in the science building when one of my professors passed. I spoke of my desire to take her brain and behavior class, and she asked if I would like to see brain surgery. I was like, "Heck yeah" and followed her into the lab. I threw my backpack and purse to the floor and rolled up my sleeves eager to see what she would do. Well, first she checked on how the other little gal was doing on whom she had just finished surgery. Her breathing looked regular and she seemed fine, so my professor proceeded. (My professor's name is Lynn. Not Dr. White. Not Dr. Lynn White. She prefers to be called Lynn. She's from Canada and is just over 5 feet tall I would guess. I'm nearly a foot taller than she is. She has such a funny personality - I love her. She gets so excited about stats that I can't help but laugh when I look around at my classmates who often look as lost as I feel at times. We don't seem to share her enthusiasm.) But back to brain surgery...that's exciting. So Lynn needed to sedate her next patient and showed me the muscle she would inject. When Lynn was showing me the rat, the rat actually peed on me! After apologising and me reassuring Lynn that I do not care about a little pee, she grabbed the needle, and I started to, well, pass out. But I sat down on the floor - just in case and collected myself...determined to watch and learn. So she injected the patient. I did not pass out. We watched and waited 10 minutes for the drug to take effect as the little thing slowly calmed down. In order to reach the operation site Lynn had to shave a small part of the rat's head. Then Lynn anesthetized her with a second shot. And that rat was out. Lynn did a couple of tests to make sure that she was all the way out. She was out. Man...then came the part where precision is, uh, important. Lynn put the rat over in this thing. Okay, I don't remember the names of all these things. It was cool though. She puts the rat in this thing that hold the rat's head very still. Then this machine thing has measuring tools that measure three dimensionally down to a fraction of a millimeter. So, she used a tool that cauterizes as it cuts the skin to open up a flap of skin to the skull. Then Lynn pulled back the skin to reveal the skull. Then she had to make sure the head of the rat was exactly flat. That took a few minutes of careful measurement. Once the rat's head was level she used the coordinates she had already gotten from some sort of scan to find the two places she needed to make holes in the skull. She made the holes and then stuck this metal thing down into the brain at the exact right spot and did something to the hippocampus. I am not exactly sure what she did, and I did not want to ask questions during the surgery! But she will do something to the hippocampus on half of the rats and then do the same surgery in every way except not do anything to the hippocampus on the other half of the rats. Then the students will observe the behavior of the rats. After she finished the surgery she cleaned the rat, stapled the scalp back together, put this antibiotic ointment on the rat's head, then put the rat in a bed with a little heating blanket-like thing. It was so cool that I got to watch, and if I don't get into grad school, I think I will have to take that class next time it is taught!

Torture...

The worst torture for me that I can think of is to write poetry or scrapbook. It amazes me that some people actually enjoy doing those two things. If I even think about having to do one or the other I start to feel sick to my stomach and start hyperventilating. Torture is the word that best describes them.

Over homecoming weekend I went camping with my family up at Fish Lake. It was beautiful up there, and freezing. The fall colors were lovely, and though it is hard for me to understand why exactly people enjoy camping (I can understand it for certain purposes...but not when I have a perfectly good house just a few hours away!) I did love the beautiful country we saw.

Mazie is helping me study my

drugs and behavior book.

This is us at the lake. My daughter is so cute. I had to hold the camera for a while until she removed the scarf from in front of her face to get the picture. The kids had so much fun. They made little "campfires" and rode their bikes, and played pretend. I envy their creativity.




My favorite part of the trip was going four wheeling. My dad, brother-in-law, Steven, and I took the four girls out. As my dad has hunted extensively all over the area he knew some beautiful places.

This is Sydnee and me with Fish Lake behind us.

Sydnee, me, and Layla. Yes, my lips are covered with dirt!

It is not a good idea to put on lipgloss and then go

4-wheeling in a dusty area. Well, unless you enjoy

having dirt covered lips.

A storm came in pretty quickly after we'd been out for about an hour. We headed back as quickly as we could, but didn't make it back before the rain began pelting us. It was pretty fun, and I loved having the girls snuggle in close to me for warmth and protection from the rain...

Overall, the area is so beautiful up there. It was enjoyable, but I think I was preoccupied with school stuff and not able to focus on enjoying it as I should have. I will MAYBE give it another try. :)

KITTENS! YIKES!

Officially the cat lady - yep - that would be me.

A couple of weeks ago Matt's dad texted (Seriously, what is the past tense of text? It drives me nuts to say or write texted.) me asking if I would like to take his two kittens for whom Sydnee is particularly fond because he and his wife would be doing extensive traveling. Well, now Sydnee vacuums the house more often and they stay outside a LOT.

Okay, so I'm actually beginning to like these kittens. I admit I was cynical at first about them, but I'm enjoying the crazy cats. They have a lot of energy, run around the house, fight a lot, play with the hangy-thingys that hang almost to the ground when our blinds are open, and, unlike Max, like to cuddle and sit on peoples' laps and be petted (if petted is the appropriate past tense).

I now have some cuter pictures of them, (THEM are named Puff - the light one with the puffy tail, and Patches - the black and white one. We have had Max for almost two years now.) and I have a video of the two fighting, which is adorable.

And now I think I'll go and watch my favorite romantic movie of the moment.