3 down, 33 to go

I can not believe that I have already been teaching for 3 whole weeks. It has flown by. Every day is different so it makes it seem so fast. I am always surprised when it is already 7th hour.

My first week was awesome. I was exhausted ALL the time but I think I'm finally getting used to how draining it is to be teaching all day everyday. My kids were great that first week, thank goodness. Unfortunately, that's changed a little bit.

My second week was wonderful in math, and not so much in science. I think it's because I did so well at making math so structured. Every day looks similar. Science is just not that structured. I didn't get them into a routine and they were crazy this week. Not to mention I was really sick. So that was just no fun at all.

However, I killed it the third week. I made science more structured. I stopped being scared to discipline. I even gave out detention to two kids. Thanks are getting much better.

I don't have a whole lot to write about. It's been a super fast and crazy three weeks. I just needed to update. Which I need to do more frequently anyways. so I'll do that. Then I will be able to remember more about what's going on.

Okay. That's all I guess for now. I'll do better next time!

-Kristina

First Day Of School

I'll be posting pictures of my classroom before too long but first I want to talk about my first day.

I can't even believe how fast it went. It was 7th hour before I knew it.

I survived, obviously. The worst of it all was the heels I made the stupid decision to wear haha. I'm thoroughly impressed with how awesome my students were. For example, because I have the same kids twice in a day, math in the morning and science in the afternoon, I didn't want to have to introduce myself to them twice. So I decided to do something a little different. In math, I did a powerpoint that had lots of facts about me, then in science we played a game of charades. The students had to act out things they learned about me from my powerpoint. One of the words was France. Had I been a sixth grader, I would've had no idea where to even begin, but my smart little sixth grader didn't even hesitate. He immediately began acting like a mime, the students instantly knew he was miming, and then quickly made the connection to Paris and then France. They are awesome!

While I know that the first day is probably the easiest when it comes to discipline I had very few problems. There was quite a bit of talking at times but I understand, it's rough hearing the rules and syllabus for 7 classes in a row. I'll keep them busier in the future.

One of my science classes is an inclusion class. This means that almost half of the students are on some kind of science class and are in a special education class. Because there are so many in one hour I was given a paraprofessional to help with them. At the beginning of the hour, it didn't bother me at all having him in there, then he told me that he taught 7th grade science for 20 years. Awesome.... I was nervous then haha. I really don't have a lot of experience teaching science so that should be interesting. Either he could think I'm awful, or he could be a huge help....we will see.

I was also surprised at how well these 6th graders were following the dress code. Apparently that isn't a huge issue yet.....I'll wait till the end of the year haha.

Okay. That's all I got for now. I'm so excited for the rest of the year!

-Kristina

Future Sandite

I haven't updated my blog in six months. I can guarantee you this is not because the last six months have been uneventful. It's because of how busy I've been. But, I'm back. Hopefully to post much more often than I have recently. Here's for a recap of some of the biggest things that happened in those six months.

• Lucas graduated from college! And he got accepted into grad school! I am super proud of him but also so worried about how we are going to work this into our already stressful lives and continue to ensure that we get plenty of time for us. But, we can do it!
• We moved back to Owasso. This was kinda a long drawn out decision but it has been absolutely wonderful being back near our families while we can. I know we will be here though high graduate program, but after that we could end up anywhere. I'm going to enjoy our time here while it lasts, and who knows? Maybe we will end up here for good.
• I got a teaching job. While looking I was continually getting discouraged because I wasn't hearing back from ANY of the jobs that I was applying for. I applied for Sand Springs on a whim and actually didn't even fill out an application. I e-mailed the principal and got a response within an hour to set up an interview. I think the wait was well worth it and I couldn't be happier with what I'm teaching. I'll be teaching three hours of sixth grade math followed by three hours of sixth grade science. Be prepared for lots of postings about my first year as a teacher. 
• Lucas and I celebrated being together for 5 years! I can't speak for Lucas but I feel like we are both so happy and both feel so blessed to have one another. I love him!

These are just a few of the many things that have happened. Expect much more detailed posts from here on out.  =)

-Kristina

Valentine's Date: Chopped

This year, Lucas and I celebrated our very first Valentine's date as a married couple. It was our fifth altogether! Anyways, I wanted to do something kinda different and fun. So I had to figure out what we could  do that would have special meaning to us. I came up with doing a at home version of Chopped. For those who don't know what Chopped is, here is a excerpt from wiki. 

The challenge is to take a mystery box of ingredients and turn them into a dish that is judged on their creativity , presentation, and taste with minimal time to plan and execute.The show is divided into three rounds: appetizer, entree and dessert. In each round, the chefs are given a basket containing between three and five ingredients, and the dish each competitor prepares must contain each of those ingredients. 

We changed a few rules but for the most part is was very "Chopped"-like in nature. Because at our house we do not have a completely stocked pantry like they do on the show, our biggest change was a trip to the grocery store. After we saw the ingredients in all three baskets, we went to the grocery store and had 15 minutes and 10 dollars to get any extra ingredients that we might need for our dish. 

Our first basket was for the appetizer round. The ingredients: instant mashed potatoes, apples, canned chicken breast, and graham crackers. We had twenty minutes to make a presentable dish with these ingredients. Let me first say that 20 minutes goes incredibly fast when you are panicking and have no idea what you are really doing haha. 

Appetizer Basket

I made an apple chicken salad. I shredded the chicken, added mayo, sour cream, apple chunks and celery. I also added some potato flakes to thicken it up a little bit. I then sprinkled it with graham cracker because I had no idea what to do with it. It was surprisingly really good. 

Kristina's apple chicken salad with a graham cracker garnish

Lucas made a sauteed chicken/apple/onion mix that was delicious, with a side of mashed potatoes. Obviously neither one of us had any idea what to do with the graham cracker cause he ended up with a sprinkle of graham cracker on his, too.

Lucas' apple chicken deliciousness with mashed potatoes

The second basket was our entree round and included white rice, pork stew meat, cream cheese, and baby carrots. I'd never had pork like this before but I feel like I will incorporate it more into my food. Pork is so much better for you than beef. 

Entree Basket

I cooked the pork and carrots, and then heated up some cream of mushroom soup with added cream cheese. I then mixed this all with rice. I liked it a lot but it looked kinda blah and wasn't very creative. I basically just mixed everything together.

Kristina's cheesy pork and rice casserole

 Here's an action shot of Lucas because I got done a bit early.

Lucas' entree was kinda a pork stir fry with carrots and green peppers and onion which he put over rice. He used the cream cheese to make cream cheese corn which was very good. I was really surprised with how well we both did. Both of our dishes were edible and pretty tasty.

Lucas' pork stir fry and cream cheese corn

And finally the dessert round. I was most excited about this round. I love all the ingredients and was curious if the idea in my head would translate to the plate haha. Our ingredients: popcorn, peanut butter, pie crust, canned peaches. I realized after this round that they all started with "p." Oops haha

Dessert Basket

Since I had pie crust and peaches, my first thought was peach pie, but I didn't have enough peaches for a whole pie and I wanted to be a bit more creative. So, I made heart shaped peach pie empanadas. I just want to say that they were DElicious. I WILL be making them again. Yum. I then cooked the popcorn and make a peanut butter cinnamon drizzle. I left some of the peanut butter drizzle on the plate for dipping. Yum. 

Kristina's peach pie empanadas with peanut butter drizzled popcorn

Throughout this whole round I could not figure out where Lucas was going while he was cooking, he had so many things going on at once haha. What it turned out to be was peanut butter coated popcorn pie with a peach marshmallow icing. Sound good? I didn't think so either. Boy was I wrong. I ate like a fourth of this thing and that was after I ate my dessert. I even tried to get some out of the fridge the next day...it didn't refrigerate very well. But still. It was good. 

Lucas' popcorn peanut butter peach pie

This was so much more fun than even I thought it was going to be. I think that it made both of us a little more confident about our cooking because we both did so well. While we had full intentions of having a winner, we declared a tie. It is Valentine's day after all. I won appetizer, he won entree, and we tied the dessert.

-Kristina

January

January went way to fast. I feel like I didn't have an extra moment to spare for blogging. But now I will blog over all the wonderful things that happened in January.

I started subbing. I sub almost every day and while it is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, I do actually kind of enjoy it. The kids at all the schools I sub at are starting to recognize me and say hi to me in the hallways. It's really cool to me that even as a sub I am able to build at least small relationships with the students. Because I haven't been in the same classroom twice, I am able to get lots of ideas from lots of different classrooms. It's so interesting to me to see the different ways that the teachers run their classroom and set everything up. I'm even more anxious to have my own classroom now though. So I'm really needing a job. =)

Lucas and I have made a huge effort to get involved at Sunnybrook Christian Church. I thought that it was going to be really hard for me to find a new church family and fit in but it hasn't been at all. We've joined a lifegroup, we attend the college age bible study, and we go to church Wednesday nights for the adult services. I think we are going to probably cut out the Wednesday nights because 3 nights a week is a little too much for our busy schedule. But the point is, we have been very welcomed. We placed our membership last weekend and this weekend we went on a retreat with the college age group. It was a lot of fun! We're really starting to get to know everyone. 

On January 20th, Lucas and I got to celebrate our 2 month anniversary. Sometimes it feels like so much longer than that but most of the time I'm just so surprised that we are married now. I love it so much. We have a lot of fun together I think. On the 29th we celebrated being together for 4.5 years. That's a long time!

Lucas and I have started trying to work out a lot during the week. It's so hard for us to find time. It's crazy that we're so busy when neither one of us really have full time jobs. Not cool. 

I think I hit all the important parts of January. I'll try to not wait so long before the next post. 

-Kristina

The first day of the rest of my life: 11-20-2011

6 weeks ago, I walked down the aisle and married the love of my life. Here's that story:

I woke up that morning so ready to go. I hear so many stories of people feeling uncomfortable and not ready on their wedding day. I had absolutely no feelings of doubt. I was ready. Sierra and I were scheduled to meet our photographer at 8:45 that morning, and then be at the hair salon by 9:00. Pretty sure Sierra and I didn't leave the house until 8:45, but it was okay because we weren't the only ones running a little bit late. We then went to the hair salon where the lovely Pam Bell did my hair. She did a wonderful job.

Next we headed to Stokely event center to start setting up. The event center staff arrived late, so we were slightly worried about getting everything done. But it all worked out. Here's a picture of my dad and I taking the wrap off of the wedding arch. Pretty sure me helping do that lasted about two seconds because I was tearing up my nails.

Instead of spending money on cakes and centerpieces, we saved money by making our centerpieces cake. We put a round cake in the center of each table and then surrounded it with our engagement pictures and then scattered some Hershey's kisses. I was happy with how it all turned out. Apparently the day before the wedding, the cake people called and said they didn't make round cakes anymore, my dad let them know that they better make 16 round cakes. So they cut 16 square cakes into circles. I'm glad they didn't tell me about all that until after we got the cakes. 

Next was time to get dressed. I don't think we were planning on it taking as long as it did for us to all get ready and during this time was probably when I was most stressed. I felt really rushed and was frustrated that it was taking so long. But again, everything worked out fine and we started the wedding very close to on time. Here's my favorite getting dressed picture. The most important part of my dress to me was that it laced up. I think I only tried on one dress that didn't lace up. 

Time for the ceremony. I was sitting in the room where I got ready and someone ran up and was like it's time for you. I had no idea that the wedding had even started so this was funny to me. I had to like run down the stairs to get out the door in time. One last hug before we were out the door:

Our ceremony went perfect. Thanks to Tim and Matt for making it so special.

The first kiss. Lucas grabbed my butt. Haha.

We immediately went and signed the marriage license. We wanted it to be official as it could be haha. My sister was my witness and one of his groomsmen was his witness. 

We had so much fun at the reception. We danced.  

We ate.

We laughed till we cried. 

We toasted. 

We danced some more. 

And then we left for our honeymoon. I loved how well the bubbles work. The lack of wind that day made it perfect. 

And that was the end of my perfect wedding. Once again, I loved it. I'm enjoying very very much being married. 

-Kristina

The last three months

Once again, I have waited entirely too long to blog. I think this is probably because over the past two and a half months, I have been incredibly busy getting things checked off my bucket list. For example, I finished student teaching, I got married, I graduated, and I went on a cruise. How's that for a thesis sentence? Now it's obvious exactly what I'm about to talk about. =)

First off, I did the second half of my student teaching. I want to start out by saying that the second half started off horribly. This is not an exaggeration. I came home for the first week and I was just so anxious for it to be over. I was uncomfortable around the teachers, I didn't like the school, I didn't like the principal, and the students were quick to tell me about all the other student teachers they had had and how awesome they had been. After the first couple of weeks things started to settle down quite a bit. I started enjoying it quite a bit more. It never could live up to the first half of my student teaching, but everything turned out okay.

Right in the middle of my student teaching I got to marry my bestest friend. I can honestly say that up until now, that was the best day of my life. I don't think that anything could have been more perfect. Everything that I had worked so hard on and stressed about for the past 9 months just fell into place. It was wonderful. I feel like this day deserves a whole blog of it's own so sometime in the next week, that will happen. For sure. With all kinds of pictures.

Three weeks after my wedding I got to walk down another aisle of sorts as I graduated. While the four and a half years seemed to take forever, as I walked across the stage I realized how short it had been. My high school graduation took place in the same building that my college graduation did. It literally felt like I had just walked across that stage to receive my high school diploma. It's so crazy how time flies. I'm so glad that I now have my college degree and can work towards starting my career. When I look around at how much debt other people have gathered through student loans I feel incredibly blessed that I was able to do it almost completely debt free. I'm confident now that I made the right decision going to TU instead of OSU. God definitely knew what he was doing pushing me there.

Immediately after graduation (literally), I left with my new in-laws for a cruise. I was apprehensive about going right up to the minute I stepped on the ship. After the business of the last semester, I really just wanted to go home and be with my husband. However, I had an amazing time on the cruise. It was very relaxing and fun. I'm already looking forward to the next cruise that Lucas and I can go on. I think it might be my vacation  of choice now. =)

Here's an updated bucket list:

1. Run a 5k    10/16/2010

2. Learn to play guitar

3. Become a certified elementary teacher

4. Attend a major sporting event, i.e. NFL game, Olympic event

5. Swim with a dolphin

6. Spend time traveling Europe

7. Run a 10k

8. Take a cake decorating class

9. Be an audience member at a TV show filming

10. Visit Hawaii

11. Take a dance class

12. Ride in a helicopter

13. Run a marathon

14. Do some sort of –athalon: bi- or tri-       4/17/2011

15. Go scuba diving

16. Walk through a tree in the Redwood Forest

17. See an eclipse      12/21/2010

18. See a meteor shower

19. Sleep under the stars

20. Learn how to juggle

21. Pay off a car all by myself     3/26/2010

22. Pay off a house

23. Go do a concert, a big one

24. Get married       11/20/2011

25. Raise children

26. Earn a college degree     12/17/2011

27. Watch the ball drop in Time Square

28. Shoot a bow and arrow    6/6/2010

29. Shoot a gun at a shooting range

30. Visit Sydney, Australia

31. Go skiing

32. Go up in a hot air balloon

33. Earn a black belt in taekwondo, or other martial art

34. Read the entire Harry Potter series in a week

35. Crochet an entire blanket      12/28/2010

36. Try vegetarianism for a month…or week

37. Start a collection, and own 50 of that object

38. Fly first class

39. Go on a cruise         12/18/2011

40. Go snow-shoeing

41. Stay in a yurt

42. Survive my first year of teaching

43. Earn a minor in French   5/6/2010

44. Dance in the rain    5/27/2010

45. Watch all six Star Wars movies in a week

46. Fake a sick day to stay home with my husband

47. Name a daughter Hannah

48. Be in two places at once   7/6/2010

49. Have 3 tattoos

50. Stand at the 4 corners

51. Have at least one friend that I know I can count on

52. Adopt an animal from a shelter

Well on my way to completion someday.

-Kristina