Birthday shout outs!

September is birthday month. I'm taking a moment here to tell these people happy birthday and to let them know how much they mean to me.
My dad's birthday is in early September, but I don't have a single picture of my dad on my computer. So, he doesn't get one. I'm grateful for my dad. He has some amazing qualities, and he's definitely passed some of those on to my siblings.

Hunter's birthday is on the 25th (along with my cousin, Emily!). He turned 25. I really am so grateful for Hunter. He is such a great brother, and sometimes I'm amazed I'm related to such a good person. This is Hunter driving the boat at Deep Creek in August. Paige O. is in the foreground!

Spencer's birthday is just the next day on the 26th. Spencer is a wonderful person. Basically everybody that knows him and meets him recognizes this. He is busy with his crazy family right now, and I know he's being a great dad.

And now we have Sierra! Sierra's birthday is on the 27th. She turned 28 this year. My birthday is in July, so I always hit the new age just right before her. I remember talking to Sierra on my 20th birthday and we both admitted to each other that we had been telling people we were 20 for the last couple months. Sometimes it's just easier to lie. I was doing this with my last birthday too. 28 just seems like an age that makes more sense to be than 27 (maybe it's the odd number that throws me off??). So, last night I was talking to Sierra and she tells me what a friend of Alli's (Sierra's daughter) says to her mom (Sierra's friend). Daughter says to mother: "Alli's mom thinks Alli is four, but Alli knows she is five." Alli has convinced her friends that she is 5 and apparently has inherited this tendency to lie about her age since she doesn't turn five until January.

This is a bad picture of Sierra and I, but it's the only one I've got. Sierra has been one of my closest friends for 10 years. I am so grateful for her and feel we could be sisters!

This is a picture of Alli. The girl is hilarious. I love talking to her. Her language abilities are amazing! I remember having full conversations with the girl when she was two. She was speaking in complete sentences at two! She's such a fun girl and so smart and inquisitive.

Happy Birthday to all of you! Hope you all had a great day full of festivities.

I heart blogging

I LOVE blogging. These are the things I love about it:

1. I love writing as it really is the art of expression

AND

2. I find that through blogging I am able to keep in touch with people and know about the everyday happenings of their lives. These are people I really care about, but there's just not time to have phone conversations with all of them.

I guess that's it.

But let me just tell you that if you don't blog, you should. People want you to. And it's kind of your moral responsibility.

And now, we come to this question ... If I really love blogging as much as I say that I do, why does it sometimes feel like a chore to blog?

I've come to this conclusion. I'm a lazy person. Well, I'm actually not lazy at all, but sometimes with everything I have going on in my life (reading, reading, reading, work out, eat, zone out occasionally in the front of the t.v. so that I don't go crazy before I have to go back to reading) I can't or won't do it. So, there's my explanation for not blogging. I've realized that I've had a consistent head ache for like the last two weeks and I was thinking that I really may be just taking in too much information. Is that ridiculous?

Love you all.

P.S. I've discovered Google Reader only recently, but I find how great a tool it is to keep all the blogs I read in one convenient location. Wonderful. If you haven't, try it out.

3rd Grade

I taught 3rd grade this summer. It was really wonderful. Third grade is just a great grade to teach. The kids are still cute and enthusiastic learners. One of my girls would give me a new name every morning based on the outfit I had on that day. She was so cute and creative. I loved hearing what she would come up with. A couple of my names were Ms. Sailboat (I was wearing blue and white -- it's really pretty amazing that she would pick up on this since her exposure to a sailboat I can almost gaurantee is null), Ms. Funeral (I was wearing black and dark purple), and I really wish I could remember more. This same girl was an incredible writer. I loved reading her work. This is a picture of Sierra hugging Lance. Lance probably reads at an 8th grade level. I told Sierra on the first day that one of my best friend's names is Sierra. She loved it.
The kids -- running on the second to last day of school bounce off the wall energy.
After my students "tracked out" (most schools in Vegas are year round schools, so they have different "tracks") I had to go into another 3rd grade class just to hang out, basically. There was another teacher still in there. This is a picture of me and John who is the son of the teacher whose class I was in. John is in 5th grade and is the class President. His fro is AMAZING.

I think Marshawn was absent on this day. Marshawn is a 4th grader I tutored in reading over the winter and spring. Marshawn and I would plan to have matching Transformer tatoos on some days.

While I don't plan on teaching in the traditional school setting, I am really grateful for the experience and training I've received in this area. The education system is such a difficult one to be in - especially at this time. While I know all school systems have the same problems, I think Vegas sees these difficulties at a heightened degree. It's just not a place that values education and for this reason any educated people who end up here realize relatively soon that they need to leave; so it's a transient place with high teacher turn-over. It's unfortunate that this is the case, because, of course, there needs to be good teachers here and everywhere.

I love kids and I love learning. I love being in this field. And with that, I'm off to read John Dewey's Experience and Education or my Educational Research text, or Schooling Around the World. Does the reading never end?? It really doesn't. I have SO much I have to read, but also so much I want to read. I wish I could take off a whole summer to read, or something.