Happy Birthday, Warren Brown!

Thanksgiving weekend also marked Warren Brown's "Surprise" 30th Birthday Party that Cary had spent the better part of a year planning. With all of his family and friends in town, Cary planned several amazing activities, from activities at a park, a concert of Warren's Band, and a morning of ATV/Quad riding up in the hills. Unfortunately, Jon spent the better part of the weekend being sick in bed, so the kids and I made it to what we could. It was all a lot of fun. Happy 30th Birthday, Warren Brown!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving! Jon and I hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner at our house this year, with the Howards, Browns, Huffmans, and Kathermans--that's 10 adults and 15 kids, for those who are counting. The whole dinner was delicious and fun, and we ended by heading to the Howard's home for dessert and a little Rock Band. What a perfect Thanksgiving!!


Jon and our beautiful bird--man, I love turkey!


The Howards and their amazing turkey--lovingly tended to by Paul himself. That guy is truly a master when it comes to the kitchen!


Cami Brown entertained us all with her mud-antics in my back yard. It was all well and good until she decided that the other kids should be involved as well and started hucking mud balls at them. Sarah, the girly-girl that she is, was devastated when she got nailed in the center of her pretty pink dress by Cami's mud slinging two minutes after she went outside. After that, an abrupt end was put to all mud activities. My home took several days to truly recover from all the mud that we found tracked throughout the house.

Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot

On Thanksgiving morning, Jon and I, along with several of the Brown family, participated in the Annual Queen Creek Turkey Trot 5K Run. This year was even more special to me because the proceeds went to benefit my favorite principal, Eric Samuels, who was diagnosed with a rather advanced cancer very unexpectedly in the middle of this last semester. It was a huge blow to our school, but he's doing quite a bit better now and should even be able to return to Ranch Elementary this January. Anyway, the Turkey Trot was a lot of fun, and Jon and I finished the 3.2 miles together in 32 minutes. Not too bad! Also, it made us feel a lot less guilty when we started stuffing ourselves later that day!


Jon and Cary before the race began.


Jon and I right after we finished.


My pricipal, Eric Samuels. This was the first time he had been out of the hospital in over 6 weeks. It was really great to see him there! His wife, Beth, actually pushed him the whole route, so he could finish his own Turkey Trot!

Halloween Night--the Kids!

Halloween night was a lot of fun for all of us. Cary and Warren brought their 4 cuties down to our area, where we combined with the Howards, the Roses, the Dunns, and for a while the Harmons, to make our our trek through our neighborhood. We actually didn't hit quite as many homes this year as we did last year, but it was still fun and the kids still managed to come home with a load of sweet stuff--which we have been carefully portioning out in small, controlled amounts since. =) Our last stop was at the Dunn's, where we all hung out and talked outside while enjoying some homemade rootbeer (and a few pilfered treats--shhhh!) Aaah, and it's only the start of the holiday season. =)


Aaron "fighting the bad guys" on Halloween night as a firefighter.


Princess Sarah waving to her fans.


Aaron loved the Howard's red wagon and insisted that he hop in between every house, even though the next house was only a few steps away! I guess this was his version of the red firetruck!

Sarah and Spencer sat down and examined their finds once we got down to our final destination--the Dunn's home.

Halloween Night--the Big Kids!

The adults had almost as much fun as the kids, which is usually the case. Peep decided to wax nostalgic and go as a younger version of herself--an award-winning gymnast (hence the medal around her neck), and I decided to wax prophetic and go as a queen. Oh, wait, maybe that's getting ahead of myself. =)


This picture was supposed to be of the three girls, but our picture got crashed by Jamie in the back. Oh, well, it's a good thing we like him!

Me and Cary--no picture crashers this time.

The boys--don't ask me what Jon was doing in this picture!

The girls outside of Tami and Jamie's house.

Carving the Pumpkin

Jon did a great job carving our Halloween pumpkin. The kids were fascinated, watching everything Daddy did. Just as a word of note, the second picture, with me, Sarah, and Jon, was taken by Aaron. Not too bad of a photographer for a 4-year old!

Field Trip to Schnepf Farms

On Halloween, I had an opportunity (thanks to the 3rd grade team) to take my kids on a super fun field trip to Schnepf Farms. What made this trip extra fun was that during October, Schnepf Farms has their big Fall Festival, with all their rides and shows (including pig races, my kids' favorite!) open. The kids and teachers were invited to wear their costumes, and wanting to keep in the spirit of the holiday, but not wanting to don my complete Queen attire for a whole day on the farm in 95 degree heat, I opted to go as a less constricting black cat. I thought my homemade ears came out particularly cute. =)

The other teachers all got enough chaperones to basically take the day off from kid supervision, but I chose to spend the day living it up with my favorite 14. Although the weather was hot, the kids were whiny, and we did have one minor heart-stopper--I lost one of my 1st graders in the corn maze for 20 minutes!--I still think everyone had a fun time and I still would have chosen to spend the day with my kids instead of completely pawning them off on chaperones. But a few extra sets of hands (eyes, ears, etc.) could have come in handy, though. Maybe next field trip, I think I'll do some things a little differently.


Okay, so maybe the rides weren't Six Flags worthy, but it sure beat a day of reading and writing!

During the Pig Races, individuals were chosen from the audience to come up and "represent" one of the racing pigs. Ironically, someone from my class (including me!) was chosen for each of the 4 races, and 3 out of 4 races, we won! (Okay, I was the only one who didn't represent a winning pot-belly.) My 3 girls each won pig noses for their swift swine, which they wore with pride. =)

Trunk or Treat and Chili Cook-off!

Saturday, October 25, our ward had its annual Halloween Chili Cookoff and Trunk or Treat. As always, it was SOOO much fun, but even more importantly, out of over 20+ chili entries from our ward, I came in 2nd with my already prize-winning white chicken chili! Okay, it wasn't 1st place this time, but considering the greater number of entries I was competing against (some that included white chicken chili, so I didn't win this time on the novelty of my non-beef and tomato chili), I felt pretty good about my culinary accomplishment! Woo-hoo! In the picture, I'm holding my prize, a bottle of Tabasco sauce. Okay, so we don't use Tabasco sauce, but I may have to display it on some shelf anyway, so it's just as well. =)

As you can see, Sarah and I had a whole costume theme going--I was a queen and she was my princess. Yes, we felt very royal. Too bad we couldn' find Aaron's knight costume that he wore a couple of years ago, but he sure looked cute in his fireman costume. Sorry I don't have any pics of him--he was having too much fun to sit still long enough for something as mundane as a picture! And Jon opted not to dress up this year, going as his everyday World's Best Husband and Father. I know...what a cop-out! =)

Happy 30th Birthday, Rebekah!

Okay, so even though Rebekah's actual birthday isn't until next week, we did the big Girls' Night celebration tonight. Following what has become our usual format, we started the night at Pei Wei (gotta love that Mongolian Beef and Brocolli!), and ended the night with a giant Pizookie at BJ's. It was so fun to see some of our friends like Darice and Nicole that we haven't seen for a while. (Seeing how big Nicole's "baby" is reminded us what horrible friends we've all been for not getting together sooner!) The whole night was a ton of fun, but all of it was just to celebrate Rebekah's big 3-0! I think having me and Hilari hit 30 first kinda eased the blow for her--she's finally catching up to the big kids. (Okay, so I hit 30 a while ago, but who's counting?) Well, Happy 30th Birthday, Rebekah! We all love you!

Halloween Fun!

Rebekah, Hilari, and I just couldn't wait until Halloween to get our cute kids all dressed up together (that, and I was off from work this week!), so we had a fun little Halloween party for them this morning. Aaron and Sarah, my fireman and princess, loved being dressed up and were so cute in their costumes. All the kids got to decorate goody bags, played musical chairs, decorated their own pumpkin and ghost sugar cookies (which turned out delicious--I'm so proud!), and munched on "mummy" dogs for lunch. Of course, our kids rarely need any organized activities to have a good time together, so they spent the rest of the time running around the house and yard entertaining one another. It was just such a great morning! =)

My ELD Class

So, we may not have won Spirit Week, but we sure came in close! My class did awesome dressing up for all the Spirit Week days--crazy hair, hat, socks, pajamas (my favorite!), and sports jersey (go Y!). I've included a couple of fun pics from my class. Man, I love these kids!

Here's the whole group--yes, they always have this much energy. =)

Sports Jersey Day--those without pinned paper jersey numbers to their backs.

Pajama Day--this really should be everyday. =)

Crazy Hat Day--gotta love the black with orange feathers!

Time flies...

Wow, I can't believe another month has flown by. So, I've officially finished my first quarter teaching ELD 1-6 (yes, I have 1st through 6th grade all in the same class--guess you can call me Laura Ingalls Wilder in my one-room school house), but it has been fun. A crazy whirlwind, but fun. I finished all my parent/teacher conferences on Friday afternoon, and they all went great. Big surprise--one of the kids I've been having the hardest time dealing with this quarter (one of my first graders) is....AUTISTIC. Yep, that explains A LOT. Kinda wish I would have known that earlier. Well, at least that will help me approach him a little differently moving forward.

Well, enough about my school kids, the best part is that now I'm on a week of Fall Break, and get to spend every waking moment with MY kids (insert Happy Dance here!) I mean, I hate to brag and all, but does everyone realize just how cute my kids are? I know Jon does, but I guess he's a little biased, too. But really, do kids really come this darn adorable? Sarah has been cracking me up this whole week, and Aaron is as darling as they come. I have to admit--I really do feel blessed.

Moving from one biased topic to another, my cute husband just finished his Fall break and went back to work this week (lousy timing), but at least he got to spend his break working near me. Jon needed to finish his observation hours for his Master's program, so I hooked him up with my district's head counselor, Maria. Jon had an amazing experience working with her for two weeks, and may seriously be considering leaving high school Spanish teaching for elementary counseling. The only holdback right now is, of course, economics, but we'll have to see. Long-term, this is something he'd love to do.

Speaking of long-term, it seems my long-term plans may be changing a little. I always knew I wanted to go back and get my Master's (and Jon just happened to do the exact program I want to do), but we might be looking at moving up the timeline a bit and having me go back to school starting in January. It would be a whole lot of busy and a whole lot of crazy, but it kinda makes sense, too. I'll keep you posted on what we decide.

In the meantime, we're both still teaching, Jon and I are finishing up our Ironman Triathalon challenge (we're almost there!), and I'm getting ready for my 3rd Primary Program as the Primary president. This year Aaron gets to be in it!!

I'll be posting some more pics soon from some of our fun-filled activities this last month. Make sure you check back at the end of this month--I'm sure our Halloween pics will be worth checking out!