Christmas in Idaho

We spent our whole 2 week Christmas break in Idaho at my house this year. It was a very much needed break from teaching and was so much fun. We had lots of yummy homemade meals that I didn't have to cook, we read lots of books we haven't had the time for, played Rock Band, watched some good movies, went to dinner and the movies, went shopping, and really enjoyed spending time together. Chad's parents even drove up to my parents house to have Christmas with us and stay a week. It was a lot of fun to have both of our families there. Luckily, they all get along great. We did a lot of really cool things over the Christmas break. The pictures and explanation below are going to be a little out of order. Sorry!

Here is us with Chad's parents on Christmas

Chad told me before we left DC that he wanted to really experience what Idaho has to offer this vacation, so on Christmas day after we opened presents we all went skeet shooting in the hills near our house. It was Linda's first time, so here is Chad teaching her how to do it. Almost everyone hit at least a couple of clay pigeons, so that was fun. Cara hit 3/3 when she first started!

On Christmas eve day, to show Chad a little more of what Idaho has to offer, we took our four wheeler to the mountains and did some four wheeling and sledding. We didn't last too long on the four wheeler because our faces were getting so cold, but it was fun to be enjoying the outdoors and time with family. I love that in Idaho, even when it's really cold, you can just dress warm and be totally comfortable (as opposed to DC where no matter how warm you dress the cold humidity chills you to the bone).

While we were playing around in the snow, Chad lost his cell phone. He didn't realize until the next day (Christmas) that it was missing. After searching the house and cars, Chad was convinced that the only place his phone could be was in the snow in the mountains where he had fallen. So after skeet shooting we drove back up to the mountains to look. Most of us didn't really think we would find it, and if we did, if it would even work after being in the snow for 24 hours. Amazingly though, Brandt found it in a little hole, right where Chad had fallen the day before and it was perfectly fine. We were all very relieved that it was still there and hadn't been buried by more snow! Our mothers called it the Christmas miracle! We played around in the snow for a little while and then headed home.

Michelle and Chad skeet shooting

After Christmas, we decided to go to the Bruneau Sand Dunes near our house. They are the tallest Sand Dunes in North America. There's not much to do there when it's cold outside, but we did hike up one of them.

Chad and I learned how to make beef jerky while we were there. We bought the beef, cut it into slices, marinated it, and put it in the dehydrator. It turned our really well and was fun. We really love my mom's beef jerky recipe!


Chad, his mom, Brandt, and Cara all went night skiing/snowboarding one night at Bogus Basin.

My family (minus Brian who is in the Philippines, but will be home in less than 2 weeks!)

One of my family's Christmas traditions is to make gingerbread houses with homemade gingerbread. We struggled with getting our roof to stand up, but finally got it to work. We bought way too much candy and decorated it with everything we like to eat. I guess we forgot to take a picture of it all done.

Another Christmas tradition - matching pajamas to be opened on Christmas eve. Very comfy and cute!

Chad and I got a new PS3 for Christmas.

It snowed a couple of days after Christmas, so we took our four wheeler to the park and went hooky bobbing. It was a lot of fun! That is one of my favorite things to do in the winter.

Before we went to Idaho, we went to see the D.C. Temple lights with some of our friends.

Thanks Chad!

I truly have the best husband! I woke up yesterday morning to breakfast in bed - scrambled eggs and toast and jam. It was so yummy and such a nice thing for Chad to do. After breakfast, he did all of the dishes and cleaned the house. He does the greatest job at taking care of me! I don't know what I would do without such a wonderful, supportive, unselfish husband. Thanks Chad!

White House Christmas

Yesterday I got to go on a tour of the White House and see the special Christmas decorations. It was really amazing! Most tours don't allow you to go through the Library, Red Room, Blue Room, and the other areas that they let you see on the Christmas tours. It was fun to get to go through the front doors of the White House and see what is behind the walls that I had only seen from behind the far away gates until now. Special thanks to my friend who works on Capitol Hill for helping me get this opportunity! Unfortunately, Michelle had class last night and wasn't able to come with me. The other cool thing is that they let you take all the pictures you want during the holiday season (normally they don't even let you bring a camera).

Our First Thanksgiving

Michelle and I had a really fun Thanksgiving break. It was the first Thanksgiving we have hosted and planned ourselves. All in all everything was great! One of Michelle's best friends and her husband drove up from Florida to stay at out place for the break so luckily we had them to help us plan, cook, and figure everything else out. I guess I should stop saying that 'we' cooked and 'we' figured everything out, it was really the wives that did all of the planning and made the big decisions and did the important cooking. The only thing I can really claim credit for is washing a lot of dishes. We also had a couple friends from Syracuse over for Thanksgiving that recently moved down to Virginia near where we live. It was great to spend Thanksgiving with good friends. Michelle and the ladies really put together a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. We made a turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, home made pumpkin pie, rolls, stuffing, and a nice salad. None of us had really made a turkey before so all you veteran Thanksgiving chefs can probably guess the rookie mistakes we made. We ended up not thawing it earlier enough so that set us back a couple hours and somehow we also didn't realize that only having one oven would make things a little tricky. We cooked the pies while the turkey was defrosting and then cooked everything else after the turkey. It worked out just fine though because we had plenty of appetizers to hold us over while everything cooked. We also played the Wii and had some really intense games of our favorite game Big Brain Academy. I think playing it with six people was the most fun I've ever had playing the Wii. Thanksgiving dinner was outstanding. Everything was delicious, a little too delicious maybe...I think I might have gained a couple pounds just from that meal.

Having friends stay with us over Thanksgiving break also motivated us to get out and see a lot of cool stuff here in DC that we hadn't seen yet. On Friday we waited an hour outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to get a tour of where they make money. The tour was very interesting. We literally saw millions of dollars being made before our very eyes. Apparently the people working there have a good sense of humor because there were lots of signs on the walls that said things like "How do you think I feel? I see my lifetime salary get made every couple of minutes." Another sign said "So close yet so far." Michelle and I toured the Mint (where they make coins) in Philadelphia over the summer so it was nice to see where they print the money. After that we went to Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. It is always cool to see airplanes and space shuttles and tons of artifacts related to them. They have a neat exhibit there right now about the Wright brothers. I don't know how, but they've got the actual plane there on display that the Wright brothers flew for the very first time. I can't decide which is more amazing: what the early planes looked like and the fact that those things could actually get off the ground or how far technology has progressed and what planes/space shuttles look like now.

On Saturday our friends had to leave to go back home but before they did we took them to the National Archives where over 9 billion documents are stored, including the Constitution, the Declarationof Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta. It was a real treat to see these sacred documents and learn a little bit more about our nation's history. You honestly can barely read some of those old documents but its still nice to see them. If you've ever seen the movie 'National Treasure' with Nicholas Cage, the National Archives is where they went to steal the Declaration of Independence. While at the National Archives we decided to go into the research area and look at some of the old books they have. Frankly, I am surprised they let the public look at and touch some of the older books. Granted you have to have ID and sign in but it just seems like you should be wearing gloves or something to handle some of the books in there. One interesting book we found was an 85 year old 'Yellow Pages' from the DC area. It was massive, but pretty similar to what they look like now.

On Saturday night Michelle and I volunteered at Ford's Theater Ford's Theater is where President Lincoln was assassinated. The theater is kind of a double treat to visit. You get to see and learn about a historic (although tragic) place and moment in U.S. history and they also still put on phenomenal productions there. We were the ticket scanners for the play that night, which was 'A Christmas Carol.' I must admit it was amazing. I would give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend going to see a play there to anybody. When Michelle and I first volunteered at Ford's theater a couple years ago (when we were interns in DC) they didn't have the museum about Lincoln's life that they have now. It is a great little museum and they've got John Wilkes Booth's actual pistol that he used.

"DC things" we've been up to lately

We are continuing our quest to see and do everything in DC. In the past couple weeks we have visited one of the Smithsonian museums and the Holocaust museum. Here are a few pictures from our trips to these museums:Us on the Metro. I thought this was a cool picture because you can see my arm holding the camera in the reflection in the window.
My cute wife standing in front of the Holocause museum. There are no pictures allowed inside so this is all we have. This is a remarkable museum. It is quite moving and not easy to forget.
Here I am with the real Raphael at the Smithsonian American History Museum. This is a really cool museum because they have sections of the museum dedicated to things like American movies and music.

Michelle with the real Kermit. In real life he looks just like he does on TV and he hasn't aged a bit.

¿Verano en Sudamerica?

A couple days ago the ESL teacher at the school I work at told me that she was thinking about visiting her home in Bolivia this summer. She said if she does it she would fly to Peru and then take a bus to Bolivia because flights to Peru are incredibly cheap right now. She told me they are only $300 right now, and I, being a generally skepticle person said I thought that would be amazing if it were true but that I would have to see for myself before I accepted that round trip flights to Peru were really that cheap. I looked it up that day and to my great surprise she was right. Flights are around $300 and after taxes the round trip flights from DC to Lima and back are under $400! Michelle and I were trying to decide what we should do with our summers off from teaching. We could make a few extra bucks teaching summer school, or we could utilize these summers before we have kids while we are both still working and go on some extended once in a lifetime vacations. We most likely wont be teachers forever and thus we feel we should make the most out of these two years tht we get two month long paid vacations each summer. We were really on the fenec about what to do until we learned how cheap it is to go to Peru. I have no idea why it is so cheap to fly to Peru. Quito, Bunos Aires, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and everywhere else I looked are all at least twice as much. I honestly wouldn't be able to explan it but it is true. We would love to tour some other countries besides Peru and fly home from another country but even just a return flight from another country is much more expensive. We are still thinking about it, spending a couple weeks making sure we make the right decisino and not rush into anything (as we did last year and were very forutnate to get refunds on plane tickets to Peru). We would probably go for a month or maybe even 5 weeks and try to at least visit some of the other surrounding countries. Since we would have plenty of time we would be able to save boat loads of money on transportation throughout South America by taking the bus instead of flying. I served my mission in peru and am pretty familiar with how much it costs to fly versus take a bus to different regions. It costs a couple hundred bucks to fly from Lima to Cusco but only a small fraction of that to take a bus. You lose a day on the bus but if time is not an issue you don't have to worry about it. The bus rides in and of themselves are scenic and you get to stop at some neat places. Bolivia is close enough to not have to fly to, but I am not sure about Chile and Ecuador. Wherever we went we would have to make sure we were back in Lima to fly home though. So we have a lot to consider, this would be a kind of big deal and you can't really change your mind. Pay off student loans or spend a summer in South America?

Halloween in Alexandria

Yesterday was the most fun Halloween I can remember since when I used to go trick or treating, which when you are a kid is basically the most amazing thing in the world (free candy!). We started off Halloween by going to our ward's Halloween activity because we are part of the activities committee. There was a chili cook off and lots and lots of other good food! Michelle and I helped man the station for little kids to make ghost suckers (blow pops with a tissue wrapped around it a scary face drawn on it). Oh and I should mention that Michelle and I were crayons (non toxic ones of course) for Halloween. We got the idea from a website online for easy costumes. After the ward activity we went to a really fun party that some friends of ours from the ward put together. They organized games and lots of great food there too! Michelle and I were on the winning team in a scavenger hunt/survivor/fear factor type of game that was a lot of fun. Michelle and I were the last leg of our eight man team and we brought home victory by popping all the red balloons and forming the word 'skeleton' with the letters in all the balloons. We were awarded a gift certificate to five guys! Also, the award for funniest costume was awarded to a girl who came as Nadya Suleman ( better known as Octomom). It really was hilarious, she had those big red wax lips, a wig of long black hair, and carried a bunch of cabbage patch kids around in a blanket or in her shirt or something. She deserved the prize. Also funny is that her husband came as a TMZ paparazzi. She is easy to spot in the picture of all the girls.

First Grade Thinking

Here are some funny/cute things the students in my first grade class have said or done this week:

1. Look! I see Old McDonald! (a boy looking out the window of the bus on the way to the pumpkin patch. I think he just saw a farmer. He also told me that he wants to live in the woods.)

2. Look! The bus is driving itself! There's no one there! It's going by itself! (also on the way to the pumpkin patch - we were in the back and the driver was short).

3. A girl in my class used all of her allowance to buy everyone in our class candy for Halloween. She put it all in cute little bags and brought one for each person. She also brought everyone a book (short ones you can print off line). She comes from a very poor and needy family and I was truly humbled to see how unselfish she was even when she herself had so little. I need to follow her example. She is one of the sweetest students in my class.

One of these days I will write about how teaching is going, but for now...back to work!

"Man, my life has changed!"

I read an article this morning online about President Bush giving a motivational speech in Texas and he said he was recently walking his dog and carrying a bag on his hand for scooping up what the dog might leave behind and he realized, "Man my life has changed!" I too have been thinking about how my life has changed over the last few months. It really has changed dramatically in almost every way. Let me try and explain how much and in what ways my life has changed -- improved rather -- from the time Michelle and I lived in Syracuse, NY just a few months ago.

The first aspect is the time I wake up every day. In Syracuse, I had a relatively easy schedule only going to grad school classes. I only had class two days or three days a week almost the entire year; and since I had no job that meant that I stayed up really late and slept in ridiculosuly late most days. Boy oh boy have things changed in terms of what time I wake up! Michelle and I wake up at around 6:15 am each day. That is what time we need to get up to be able to get to get ready, eat breakfast, and travel to the respective school we teach at by 8:00. On Saturdays I usually wake up early to go running, sometimes even earlier than on weekdays. Our church starts at 8:00 am on Sunday so really I don't sleep in past 7 ever. I guess I am, by force, a morning person now. It actually feels great! Getting up early helps me make the most out of every day and be the most productive as I have ever been since my mission probably.

My exercise and eating habbits have also changed dramatically. In syracuse, I reached the most unhealthy and overweight point that I had ever been in my life. Its not rocket science why I got or why anyone else in the world ever gains weight: overeating and lack of exercise. I could go into more detail, but basically for those two simple reasons I put on a lot of weight. I will say one thing about my eating habbits in Syracuse though, just because it is so pathetic it is hillarious. My eating habbits were so bad that around Christmas my diet consisted of home made Christmas cookies and tater tots. 'Nuff said about that! A few months ago though, motivated by the fact that I was going to be the best man at my best friend's wedding, I started to eat right and exercise regularly. This has helped me lose 40 pounds (while gaining muscle so perhaps I have lost even more than 40 pounds of fat) and I think I am in the best shape of my life. I eat tons of fruit and vegetables now and I feel so much better. Michelle can wrap her arms around me easier now too :) I am training for long-distance races and lifting weights a couple days a week so I am really just on a completely different level now than a few months ago when we lived in NY.

My overall schedule and level of business has gone up as well. I work full-time and then take public transportation home (but Michelle picks me up from the Metro so its not too bad taking the metro home) so weekdays are just really busy, plain and simple. I have extra meetings, trainings, and lots of miscellanious little things like phone calls to make for work as well. I am also taking two grad school classes so I have class at American University one night a week and an online class that has assignments due one day a week. I also have professional development trainings one weekend a month. I have to find the time to run and train for my race as well. Our ward is incredible and there are always fun things going on. Add to all this the fact that you could live in DC forever and still not see and do everything that there is to do and see (even though our goal is to see and do everything, lol), there is never not anything exciting to do here. Add church responsibilities to the equation and weekends get pretty busy too.

Hopefulyl in describing how much things have changed I have been able to convey that everything that has changed has been a change for the better and one that has made me happier. We thought and prayed very hard about whether or not we should embark on this adventure to move to DC and do TFA because we knew it would be challenging so it is very humbling and gratifying to know that by doing what we felt was right and following our instincts things have worked out so well! I feel better about myself and I can tell I am so much more productive than I was before. Its kind of the old "the busier you are the more you do" type of thing. I can only imagine how much busier it could be with kids! One of these days Michelle will have to write about how busy she is because her schedule is much more hectic and stresful than mine! She teaches first grade and the planning she has to do for her class is just a totally different creature than what I have to do for teaching Spanish.

Tourists in Our Own City

Michelle and I continue to hit up all the tourist attractions here in DC. I feel like we are tourists in our own city. Our goal is to see and do everything in DC before we leave in a couple years. We have been two more tourist attractions. On our list of unique-to-DC things to do here I think these places would be numbers 6 and 7. The first place is the National Cathedral. What really sparked our interest in visiting the National Cathedral was reading about it in The Lost Symbol. Pretty much everything in the book is true: there is a moonrock in one of the stained glass windows, there are 10 rocks from Mt. Sinai, and they have a gargoyle of Darth Vader. I consider our visit to the National Cathedral one of those pleasant surprises when you don't really know what to expect but really enjoy the experience. It was pretty similar overall to the cathedral in Montreal that we visited earlier this year. The tomb looking picture is where President Woodrow Wilson is buried. His wife, the first and only acting female president, also remains at this cathedral.



The second place to visit is Freedom Plaza. Freedom Plaza is really more of a place that you visit when there is something planned there like a rally or a protest; although you could go there just to walk around and check it out. It is a really long story that deserves its own blog post, but in a nutshell, the union that Michelle and I belong to (you pretty much are automatically members by becoming teachers here in Washington) had a rally on Freedom Plaza to protest a number of things going on right now with the DCPS. I did not necessarily go to full on protest but more to observe and simply show unity with my fellow teachers at my school. It was a very interesting experience and I am glad that I got to participate in a protest that actually involved both me and michelle.

My 1st 7 Weeks of 1st Grade (Again)

It's been a really long time since I've been in first grade, and I have a lot to learn all over again...I have just finished my first 7 weeks of 1st grade. It has been a crazy 7 weeks. I really love teaching first grade. There have been a couple of days where the class is out of control and things aren't going well and I wonder what I got myself into, but most of the time I have a lot of fun. I really do love it! Due to a 40 million dollar budget deficit in D.C. public schools, over 300 teachers were laid off last week. Chad and I feel very blessed and excited to still have our teaching jobs. Because of the layoffs, my class and situation at my school has been changing quite a bit since school started. I started the year with an aid and 13 students. Then I got a different aid, and then a different one. Then I was told to combine my class with the first grade teacher next door. We were going to co-teach a total of 27 students together. That lasted 1 day and then she was told she was going to teach 2nd grade so the next day I had all 27 students by myself (my aid was moved to kindergarten). Then the next day they were split again and I had 20 by myself. Then the next day I had 20 with a co-teacher. I co-taught for about 2 weeks and then my co-teacher was just laid off this past week. So now...it is me teaching 18 students by myself. It has been really crazy with all of the changes and especially hard on the kids, but I think everything should be stable now. 18 is still a pretty good class size and while there are advantages to co-teaching, I think I prefer to do it by myself.

Anyway, like I said, teaching first grade is a lot of fun! The kids are really cute (most of the time) and make me laugh. They are always making me cards and giving me I love you notes. One boy in my class keeps telling me how fun school is which makes me feel good. Here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks:

1. Show 'n tell last Friday: One little boy sang the whole My Girl song to the class and it was the cutest thing ever. Another little boy sang I'm Proud to Be an American - again - so cute. These two boys made my week.
2. We learned about the bald eagle in social studies and now my students point it out everywhere we go on school signs. They really remember what they learned.
3. We learned about living and non-living things a few weeks ago and every time we go outside my class continues to show me what is living and what is not and how they know. It is great to see them continue to use what they have learned.
4. My class is doing really well in reading and math and really progressing. I have seen so much improvement in so many students throughout the 7 weeks!
5. There have been so many great days, cute things said, and fun experiences. I can't think of any right now, but there are always tons! I'll have to post on a more regular basis all of the cute things that happen.
6. I had a formal observation this past week by the vice principal and she said my lesson was exemplary and she was very proud! Yeah! (It's a good thing she didn't see my math lessson that day!)

Right now the big challenges are the behavior of 2 of my students who are out of control. They are slowly getting better, but really have problems. The next big challenge is the time commitment. I work about 70-80 hours a week planning lessons, grading papers, calling parents...Sometimes it gets really overwhelming, but Chad has been very supportive and helpful and is doing a great job keeping me sain! I had no idea how much work and energy it takes to be a teacher. I am truly grateful for all of my teachers and their hard work. I had no idea what it took. There are so many things to keep track of - grades for 6 different subjects, attendance, uniforms, behavior, contact with parents, who turns in what, who completes which centers, assessments...I have always considered myself a really organized person, but wow - I can't seem to get organized anymore!! The 3rd challenge is that my students cannot read, so it takes a lot of thought to figure out how to give them assignments they can do and especially how to test them. I have to do a lot orally, which takes a lot more time. They can't read directions and I find myself explaining how to do things over and over again. Part of that is my fault too. The 4th challenge is just learning how to break things down simple enough for a first grader to understand. Sometimes I think I am presenting something in the most basic way possible, but then I realize it still needs to be broken down more. I am still learning what a 1st grader is capable of and still practicing how to bring things down to their level.

Overall, I love teaching first grade and it is not as hard as I thought it would be. Hopefully I can continue to say that and it only gets easier.

Runner's Rite of Passage

As I mentioned before, I signed up for a half marathon and the training I have been going through has been a huge part of me getting into shape and losing a lot of weight. Just for the record, I have lost (as of this morning) 40 pounds since I started running and eating right two and a half months ago. In the research and reading I have done about how to train for longer races I have noticed that a lot of people refer to a 'rite of passage' that every runner must go through, and that rite of passage is to run a 10 mile run. I fulfilled that rite of passage today. It was hard but it felt good to get through it. It was 2 miles further than I ran last Saturday, which is a little bit more of an increase to your 'long run' than is recommended but I knew that if I ran 9 miles I would not be able to stop there and would just want to do 10, so I just decided to do 10 miles today. There are some amazing running trails here is DC. Today I ran along the Potomac River here in VA and crossed over into DC at some point and then turned around and ran back. It is nice to see the beauty of this city as I run (it is way better than the treadmill). I could see the river and lots of trees most of the time, and across the river I could see the Washington Monument and the US Capitol. My half marathon is 36 days, so I still have a lot of training left to do to reach my goal, but I feel I am well on my way.