Roses

Some of you have already heard about my huge weed - I mean, flower - bed. When we moved into this rental, someone had already planted bushes and flowers in the front bed. Our landlord mows the lawn for us, so I just assumed he also took care of the flower bed. However, at the start of this summer (after realizing that he hadn't done anything in it last summer), I could tell by the size of the weeds that apparently he was leaving that to us - and we had been miserably failing!

So, I went out and bought some clippers. With the help of my visiting teaching companion and one of the girls I visit teach, plus my husband, I finally got all the ivy and weeds cleared out. (That literally took two entire days!) We had FIVE gigantic bags of weeds to dump out, but the front of the house has looked a LOT nicer!

Well, back in July I had a nice surprise. The rose bush in the center, the one I thought was dead because it had never bloomed, finally started blooming! All it needed was a little more space! I had about 6 roses, which is 6 more than I had ever had before!

But I got ANOTHER nice surprise over this last week! The bush bloomed for a second time! I guess it's been mild enough for plants to re-bloom this summer, and this second time, the bush was totally covered! I got about 15 roses this time! I can't wait to see what it will look like next summer!

Confession

All right, I've seen it once before. But it's been a while, and I forgot the storyline. So when Mike and I watched Rudy the other night, I have to confess... I bawled! Yeah, I know - Michelle, cry at a football movie?! But it's true!

So are there any other Rudy fans out there? (And if you haven't seen it yet, this is my official recommendation to you! Great movie, and awesome music, too!) Did anyone else cry? :)

Prayer Works!

So, just in case you needed another testimony, here it is! My Young Women are very spread apart. We had 3 active Laurels, no active Mia Maids, and 5 active Beehives. However, this summer one Laurel graduated from high school and moved to Relief Society, and the other Laurel moved away! This left just Lani, a high school senior, to be ALL ALONE with 5 Beehives every Sunday and Wednesday - not the best situation!!!
Well, I've been praying for Lani to have someone - either for someone to move into our ward or for someone to get baptized. I knew she needed a friend. She's had many people take the discussions, but no one has joined the church... until now! One of her best friends announced tonight that she's getting baptized! Yay for prayer, and welcome to our ward, Dani!

Carpools

Yay for saving gas! I found a lady who works in Webster City and lives in Fort Dodge, just like me, and we're trying out a carpool for 2 weeks to see what we think. So far it's lots of fun to chat with her, and I am so excited about saving gas money! Hooray!

Don't Give Up!!!

Augh! It's already been a week since I've posted last! I knew I would go downhill when school started, but I didn't realize just how hard it gets to keep up a blog! I will valiantly try, though, so don't quit checking because you assume I won't ever update... I will!

I started school this week. I was barely sort of ready, thanks in large part to my sister who came to help. Rebecca was here for 3 days en route back to BYU from her mission in Nauvoo. She was so good about coming to my classroom with me and just working on things while I taught the kids. She copied my entire first math unit for me, plus got all the kids' folders labeled, my plan book set up (all the dates written in), my Steele Bucks cut out, my helper chart ready, and a million other things I can't remember. She was seriously my angel this last week. Thank you again, Bex!

My new bunch of eager 3rd graders has been really fun so far. I only have 17 kids in my class (all of my teacher friends in Utah can stop drooling in envy... I know, isn't it crazy?!), and they're shaping up nicely. My team is also meeting together much more often this year than in any other year I've taught, and it's been a really nice feeling to have everyone on the same page. I think this will be an exciting year!

No pictures for this post (sorry!), but I'll take some soon. Keep checking back!

Unpacking

Sorry I haven't written much lately! I finally got a call on Monday (well, the message on the phone when we got back from the State Fair) saying that I could go in my classroom now, so I've been out in Webster City a lot over the last week. In fact, Mike came with me a few nights (he did grunt work and watched the Olympics since we don't get them here), and we were in the room until 1:00 or 1:30 at night a few times!

My room is BEAUTIFUL!!!! I moved to an old kindergarten room, so the room is a little different than my old one. For starters, it has its own bathroom with a 1 1/2 foot tall toilet! (We won't use that; I'll just use the bathroom for storage. It's too short for 8 and 9 year olds!) The white boards in the room are also lower than my old ones. But the nice part is that the old kindergarten kids colored on the walls, so they had to re-paint them this summer. I got to pick the color - a nice bright white! Also, the floor had some problems with flooding, so they re-did the tiles. (That's what took them so long to let me in my room.) Again, I got to pick the new color - nice bright white! That makes my room look bigger than all the other rooms in the school! It's SO PRETTY!!!

Our open house is tomorrow evening - that's when parents and students come to see the room and meet me. It's still not done, and I have meetings all day Monday beforehand, but I have faith that I'll be able to get it all done. And if not, it's at least close enough to be presentable.

So anyway, here's the fun part. I've been taking progressive photos as I worked! The most interesting progression has been my storage shelves, but I'm also throwing in a few of some cupboards and shelves that are mostly done now. It's fun to see the progress I've made!

Here's a lot of the boxes that I finished unpacking already.
Here's some shots of the back of the room that are mostly finished, or at least presentable enough. I'll get there!

State Fair Part 3: Would you like that on a stick?

(Go read State Fair part 1 and 2 if you haven't yet.)

You didn't think we didn't EAT anything, did you?! The food is probably 3/4 of the State Fair experience! We tried corn dogs, hand-dipped and fried right there in front of you. We had ice cream (Michelle) and a float (Mike). We tried honey lemonade (but I thought it was disgusting, actually). We had funnel cakes, which I had never had before. (Very good, but heavier than I imagined!) We also got a bunch of food samples from a lot of different places. Not a good place to go if you're on a diet!!!

The strangest thing to me, though, was how EVERYTHING was on a stick! You could get corn dogs on a stick, or ice cream bars on a stick, obviously.

You could get cheese curds or hot dogs on sticks, not quite so obviously, but still not too bad.

You could get fried Twinkies, Oreos, or candy bars on a stick - still not out of the realm of possibility, I guess.

Or, you could get some of the things that I just had to stop and take a picture of! There's:

Cheesecake on a stick,

Salad on a stick,

Pork chop on a stick,

and an egg on a stick!I even saw a sign for fried pineapple on a stick! I guess it must be the State Fair joke (would you like that on a stick?) because I even saw this in the quilting room:

What a fun time at the fair!

State Fair Part 2: What we Saw

(Go read State Fair 1 first if you haven't yet.)

In addition to doing things, we also saw a lot of interesting things. I thought I'd share some of them with you!

We went to the vendor show and saw lots of booths. We each got our blood typed - O+ for both of us. Upstairs from that was the Threads and Fabric show. They had quilts, stitchery, crocheting... basically anything you can imagine sewing! I took a picture of the winning Halloween costumes section because it was just so cute! (Plus, it reminded me of you, Mom.)

We went to the horticulture show, where they had all sorts of beautiful plant and flower arrangements.

We saw the infamous butter statues. Yes, these are sculpted out of butter! I thought it was a little gross myself, but I guess it's Iowa State Fair tradition! By the way, the girl is supposed to be Shawn Johnson, although Mike and I both agree that it looks nothing like her.

We went to the antiques barn. To my untrained eye, it mostly looked like a bunch of dusty old junk, but my trash is someone else's treasure! They had this miniature barn inside, and I had to snap a picture of it for Mom. (I'll have you know I got stuck with a barn restoration flyer for appearing so interested!)

We also heard lots of performances. There was a harmonica competition (awesome performers!), the army band, a dancing show, and a dog show! Here's a picture of the dog jumping over a 48-inch pole! (Look closely.)

We also went to the food center, where they had all sorts of food that people had entered to be judged. Here's a shot of some of the prize-winning treats. The hot-dog-looking thing is actually a decorated sugar cookie!

We also went to a craft boutique, wandered around and saw more carnival rides, saw a horseshoes competition, saw a bunch of tractors, hot tubs, and other assorted items for sale, and watched several rides that we didn't go on - the giant slide, the huge bungee jumping machine, trampolines, etc. What a lot to see and do!

State Fair Part 1: What We Did

Neither of us had ever been to a state fair. In fact, here's all I've ever heard of them: 1. When I was roommates with Ashley, she could only afford to go home once that year, so she chose to stay in Utah at CHRISTMAS so she could go home to see the state fair. I thought she was nuts. (No offense, Ashley!) 2. I knew there was an old musical called State Fair. That's it.

However, everyone out here has been talking about it non-stop, so Mike and I decided to try something new. We headed down to Des Moines yesterday to see what all the fuss was about!

Parking was CRAZY, but the carnival atmosphere was very fun. Here's a few of the things we did.

We went browsing through the tents filled with all sorts of crazy things to buy. My favorites were some disappearing ink and these two hats. (Look closely at the tops of our heads!)

We rode the Skyglider, which is this thing that lifts you in the air and takes you slowly over the park. It was fun, except for the time that we stopped right over a dad changing his little girl's diaper!

We went on the Old Mill ride. It was basically just a boat ride in the dark, so I couldn't get pictures inside of it, but here's the old mill and us in the boat just as it started.

We rode the gravitron. (Yeah, remember that old thing that spins you around so fast that you can't lift yourself or your arm or head off the wall?) We were both kind of dizzy after that!

We went to a cooking show. They were selling cookware. Very EXPENSIVE cookware, I might add, which meant that (of course) we wanted to buy some. But we didn't. The show was still fun, and the sample food was still very good.

And of course, we went to see the animals. That wasn't my favorite part (a little too stinky for my tastes), but you have to do that at the State Fair!

General Musings

Sorry I haven't written much lately. We don't get any channels on TV, and Mike's computer isn't working right now, so he's pretty much taken over my computer at all times so he can get his Olympic fix.

A few things to share:

Here's the latest news on my classroom. We've had some big changes in the district this summer. Our 2 elementary schools were previously each K-4, but are switching to have one school be pre-K, K, and 1st and the other be 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Basically, that meant that everyone at both elementary schools had to move classrooms this summer. They promised to call us when our room is ready. At the beginning of August, when I still hadn't been called, I started calling in. I found out that they were re-tiling my floor, and they said my room should be ready in a few days. A few days later, I called again and they said it would be another week. A week later I call back, and now they are telling me that it won't be ready until the end of next week. I start teacher meetings on Thursday! I have NO IDEA how I'm going to get the entire room ready for the open house a week from Monday when they won't let me in until next weekend! Aaaaaugh!!! I'll keep you posted!

I have been worried about some things going on at my job with Sylvan. Several employees have started telling me about some things that they think other employees are doing wrong. It gets really complicated because I don't ever want to say bad things about other people. However, some of the things they are saying are true and shouldn't be happening. I try to suggest that they tell the other person and not me, but neither one will. Any suggestions for how to handle that tactfully?

Last of all, update with my callings. Choir is officially on a break until school starts. It was getting too hard to try and rehearse around everyone's vacation schedules. Young Women has also been sparsely attended for the same reason, but the girls I have are gold. One of my Beehives is doing a great job with her Personal Progress and is already doing her 10 hour project for Faith! I had one Laurel move out (we miss her!), so I'm praying for some more girls to move in or become active! I love these girls!

Well, that's all for now. I'll have an exciting post next Monday - we're doing something we've never done before! Until then...

Tubing Adventures

My friend (and YW counselor) Natalie invited me to go tubing with her the other day. I hadn't been in a while, so I was excited to go. The crew consisted of Natalie, her sons Bryce (8) and Gage (5), Natalie's sister Stephanie, Stephanie's sons Connor (6th or 7th grade) and Tyler (freshman in HS), and me. (Mike would have come, but it was during the day and he had to work.) Sorry no pictures - I didn't want my camera to get wet.

Around noon, we drove down to Boone together and went to this very friendly place that loaned out tubes. We decided to haul them ourselves since we had 2 pickup trucks and it was a lot cheaper. However, the route they showed us was going to take about 4 hours to float. We thought that was a little long for a 5-year-old, so we decided to get off a little earlier than they showed us. We decided to park one of the trucks at a sooner point on the map so that we could get out a little faster and be able to drive back up to the truck at the start.

Unfortunately, there was construction all around the area that we tried to park in! We drove around for about 2 hours trying to find a way to park at the beginning and end of our shorter route! That's a long time for little kids to be patient, but they were great!

We finally found somewhere to park, and we got out to look and make sure we would be able to get out from that sandbar. It looked good, so we left one truck there and drove around to the top of the route. By this time, it was 2:30! We still had to find the top of the route, park, tie our tubes together, and get in!

We FINALLY got in the river around 3:00. The water was dirty but very warm - much different from the rivers in Utah. It was wide, slow, and lazy; the sun was overcast but the air was moist and warm. Basically, a perfect day to go tubing! We had a blast talking, laughing, floating, and swimming down the river.

When we finally got to "our" sandbar, we all had to jump out and wade in. During this process, we all got covered in sand. Poor Connor even lost one of his shoes in a sandbar! We wandered around looking for shells and having fun. Bryce and Gage were particularly fun to watch - they would get so excited every time they found a clam shell. They even found 3 live clams! The hunt for shells went on for about 45 minutes before we finally realized that we were on the wrong sandbar!

Luckily, we hadn't passed ours. All we had to do was hop back in our tubes and float for another 5 minutes to get to the right one. Poor Connor then had to hop back to the truck with one shoe missing!

At this point, it was already about 5:30. We still had to drive back to the top to get our other truck, drive back to the rental place to return the tubes, drive back to Farnhamville to Natalie's house, and I still had to drive back to Fort Dodge from there. I didn't get home until 9:30 at night! Definitely not how we planned it to go, but sure a lot of fun nonetheless!

Choir Music?

I am the ward choir director. I just decided today to have the choir take the rest of August off until school starts again - it's too hard trying to rehearse when people are in and out of town. However, I wanted to use the time off to find the music we will be singing at Christmas so I don't have to scramble in a few months. Here's the vital information:

I have about 7 men that are dedicated and come weekly (or at least fairly regularly). I have one or two on each part (bass and tenor) that are strong music readers, and the other 2 or 3 on each male part can follow if they hear someone singing it well.

I had 4 strong altos, but 2 have dropped out due to rides or illness. That leaves me with only 2 strong altos, who both happen to be the only other pianists in the ward besides myself. Since I have to direct, that means one or the other of my altos always has to play the piano. That leaves me with just 1 alto.

I have 2 sopranos that come regularly, but they can't read music and can't follow a part unless they hear it many times. I have 2 or 3 other sopranos that will come sporadically, but they aren't there often enough to know the music and/or help the struggling sopranos.

So, to summarize: my choir is too small for a traditional SATB. The women (I know, what a shock!) are my weak link. However, we could do a song for STB, or even a SAT or SAB song (but put the tenors on the alto part and combine all the women). Any children's songs or duets would also work.

My question for you readers: Does anyone know of any great Christmas songs that are fairly easy but still good? Two or three parts would be ideal, but if it has four, we'll manage. What are your favorites? What do you have fond memories of? (Yes, we have access to the LDS hymnbook and the Choirbook.) Help me figure out what to sing!

Mini Golf

Yesterday was such a perfect day that Mike and I decided to go mini golfing. Fort Dodge is not the most stellar town, so we only have one mini golf course, and it's fairly basic. In fact, we were joking that we should design our own course and make a killing! But, it's not what you do, it's who you do it with. I'm so glad to have my sweetie back in town - it was fun being with him even though he did beat me by 10 points! I even got a free game on the ball return hole! We'll have to come back to use it soon!

My Triathlon

Those of you who know me very well probably saw the title of this post and went, "What?! Michelle doesn't do sports!" You're very right - normally I don't.

However, I've been riding my bike a lot this summer. I wanted to save some gas, and biking is a good workout. (Plus I just got a gorgeous new bike a few weeks ago, which makes biking even more fun!) I happened to mention this to girl I visit teach, and she ended up asking me if I wanted to join her for a team triathlon. She was the runner, her co-worker Ellen was the swimmer, and they were looking for a biker. I had some big reservations (namely telling her that I would make our team lose!), but she insisted that it was just to participate, not to win, so I ended up deciding to try something new!

This morning was the big day. I was very nervous (ask Mike - I think he was chuckling to himself in the car), but it was also neat to feel the spirit of the race. It was a very fun and exciting atmosphere. Here's a picture of our team at the opening ceremonies.

We were team 100, but they didn't have those nice bib numbers that you see on lots of athletes. Instead, we got labeled on our arms and legs in permanent marker! Here's some pictures of my lovely labels - thank goodness they washed off! (Can you imagine going to church with those on?!) Team number was on the outside of each arm and leg, and your age was on the back of your right leg. (Yes, I got some funny looks when Mike and I went out for breakfast afterwards!)

(Sorry the picture is sideways - I couldn't rotate it and it takes too long to download it again.)

Swimming was first, with biking in the middle and running last. They kept track of our times with a time chip that you wore around your ankle. It beeped every time you crossed the time mats: when the swimmers started, when they came onto shore, when they jogged 100 yards to the transition area where the bikes were, when the biker left the transition area, when the biker got back in, when the runner left, and when the runner crossed the finish line. Since we were a team, we had to pass the time chip off when it was the next person's turn.

These pictures show me leaving the transition area (you couldn't get on your bike until after you crossed the time mat) and coming around halfway through. I biked 20 k (12.4 miles), which was 2 laps around the lake. Mike and my teammates were waiting to cheer for me there (and take my picture).

Our swimmer was the last one out of the lake, so I was the last biker who got to start. That meant that I didn't see any other bikers during the race except the really fast ones who were coming around for their 2nd lap as I was doing my first. However, my favorite part was how supportive everyone was! All of the people watching, and nearly every single biker who passed me, cheered or waved. They would call out, "Go 100!" or "You can do it! Keep it up!" It was so neat to feel so supported and encouraged when I was doing something that was very challenging for me.

I'm sure you're all wondering how we did. Well, we all finished!!! We weren't even the slowest total (although we were near the end). As for me personally? Well, Mike and I went out to the race site last weekend so I could see it and do a practice ride, and I came in at 59:54 last week. My personal goal was to beat that time, and I did it! I came in at 52:33, averaging 14.2 mph. I knocked off almost 7 1/2 minutes off of my time!

(And I tell you what - Mike is salivating over the results page! He's saying things like, "I could totally beat that guy's time!" The competitive athlete in him will never die! I tried to get him to enter on his own, but he didn't think the had the right equipment and was worried about the swimming part. However, I think he didn't like just watching. I wouldn't be surprised if he did his own triathlon sometime!)

Did it leave me sore? ABSOLUTELY!!! Sitting down or standing up has been a major challenge all day. Was I tired afterwards? YES!!! Am I glad I did it? YES!!! Would I do it again? YOU BET!!! And I bet I'd even beat my own time! Who knows... maybe next year with Mike!

My Cards

Since Mom asked, and since I have made a ton of cards while Mike has been gone, I thought I'd put a few of my favorites on here.








Sort of a black, red, and white theme going, isn't there? I guess I must like those colors together! (It might also have something to do with the fact that I'm using some of my leftover cards that happen to already have black trim around the edge. I had to kind of get creative!) Any other card-making fans out there?



P.S. Mike comes back tonight! Yay!