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!