It's December!

First, I want to say that I had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I am so blessed to have two amazing families to share the holidays with. And both of them are so helpful in working with each other to ensure that Lucas and I am both able to spend the holidays with our family. It's a beautiful thing. Now, on to December.

I feel like I have a completely renewed energy now that it's December. So many exciting things happen in December. So, I'm gonna tell you all the things I'm excited about.

One thing I am most excited about is the end of this semester. I am very close to being done and it is really relieving. I have worked incredibly hard this semester so I'm so anxious to see my grades and feel somewhat rewarded for all of my hardwork. Not to mention I'll only have two semesters left after this one is over. And one of those is student teaching!

Another thing I am excited about is Christmas Break. Lucas will be home for probably around 3 weeks. This is a wonderful wonderful thing. It's going to be a really good break because this long distance thing can really wear on your relationship. However, I can say that me and Lucas have handles this semester fairly successfully I think. Only a few (hundred) breakdowns on my part. Luckily, he's strong and I can lean on him when I really just want to give up on life.

This is probably a pretty obvious one...but...CHRISTMAS. I don't think I've ever been happier with my gift ideas and I just love Christmastime. The whole Christmas atmosphere is fun. I love Christmas movies, and Christmas lights, and Christmas songs, and Christmas church services, and just Christmas. Everything about it. I bought some cute snowman Christmas decorations that I have throughout my house and it just really brightens my mood. Next on my list of decorations to purchase: a nativity scene. It's definintely not Christmas without Jesus.

My friend Emily is getting married in December. I'm really excited for her because I know she's been waiting for this for a long time. They'll have been engaged for like a year and 8 months I think. That's crazy! But, I'm excited for that.

Last but not least, I'm excited for the date Dec. 17th. This will be the point where my graduation countdown finally rolls over to less than one year. I could not possibly be more excited about this.

So see, like I said, I have tons of things to be excited about in December. This is really gonna help me to be patient and happy with where my life is right now.

-Kristina

An Early Thanksgivings

With the upcoming Thanksgiving, I've decided to go a little bit early and tell a few things that I am thankful for. These are in no particular order.

1. The wonderful opportunity to attend a good school like TU at almost no charge to me. It's a great feeling to know that I will graduate with a very small amount of student loans.

2. Living in America. We have freedoms here that people in other countries would not even begin to dream about. I love that I am able to freely choose my religion, as well as smaller things, like the clothes that I wear.

3. I'm thankful that, at least here, women are allowed to wear pants.

4. My wonderful family. I absolutely love my family. I cannot even imagine where I would be if my family didn't support me and care for me in the way that they do.

5. My trumpet. And my guitar. And my voice...which is awful. I love music. Ever since I started band in 6th grade music has been something that I am extremely passionate about. I love listening to music, and, even more so, making music. The times that I am not doing one of those two things are few and far between. I think that when I am home alone, I sing 75% of the time. The other 25% I have my music blaring.

6. My friends. I don't have many. And the ones that I do have I am not incredibly close to. But friends are important. Very important.

7. Cereal. I wonder how many meals this semester I have replaced with cereal. Or ice cream. Haha. I'm very healthy.

8. My goal-oriented attitude. If there is something that I truly want to do, I will find a way to do it. This has gotten me many places in life.

9. My job. Well, my jobS. I really enjoy my coworkers at TU, and I even like working at Cracker Barrel. It's rough. But they are both jobs that I enjoy.

10. My ethnicity. Though it's not something I express often, I really enjoy being able to say that I am Native American. And no, it's not just for the money that they give me. It's a pride thing I guess. My great-grandma was 100% Cherokee so I just think it's neat. However, I know very little about the Cherokee culture. It's definitely something that I need to work on.

11. Children. Being able to be an elementary teacher is something that I am ridiculously excited for. I love being with them. My second graders are even growing on me.

While there are hundreds of other things that I am thankful for. I'm going to wrap it up with one last one.

12. My boyfriend. Not a day goes by where I don't fall even more in love with him. Him and I have been through so much and yet we still have such a strong relationship. Things are hard, with him being gone, but we have made it through almost another full semester of long distance without too many problems. And even though he's not here, I know that he would drop everything and be here as soon as I said I needed him to come home. I love you, Lucas.

-Kristina

PHEW!

What a crazy last week it has been. I've been so busy that I've hardly had time to breathe. The good news is, even though I hate to admit it, I'm starting to like my second graders a bit. This week I had a lot of fun with them. They just say the funniest things. Here are some examples:

Melissa: What's your name again?
Me: My name is Ms. Hickey?
Melissa: HICKEY?!?!
Me: (thinking oh my 2nd graders know what Hickeys are?...but then she finishes)
Melissa: That sounds so much like hiccup!!


Me: Khalid, what are you drawing?
Khalid: Um...well....well...um...my momma says I'm real creative.


Teacher: Jeremiah can you measure your pencil is?
Jeremiah: It's 6 and 3 lines.


Me: Sean, tell me about that story you are writing.
Sean: Well it's about a sun and his friend who is named wind. And they are best friends. And they do everything together.

I wish sometimes that I was still that young and my biggest worry was whether or not I got candy for reading my sight words correctly. Sigh. The ease of being 7.

Another thing that happened this week was my partner, Kaitlin, and I presented our final projects to the class. I had spent so much time working on this and I was so worried about how everything was going to go. I just want to say that I don't think it could have gone better. Everything went so smoothly. Let me tell you, it's difficult to write a 45 minute drama lesson, but we succeeded, and even had a little bit of fun with it. I think our biggest worry was that it wouldn't be long enough, and we were at 50 minutes when she cut us off, and we still had more stuff to do! Another worry was decoration, we didn't have decoration, and we were terrified that she would complain. But she didn't. She actually said she liked how we used the projector and videos as decoration. Which wasn't what we were going for...but it worked. So we'll take it.

Oh yea! Intramural soccer started this week. We're 2-0 right now so that's super exciting. The first game ended pretty dramatically with a shoot out. But we won. It was awesome! Then the second game the other team forfeited, but we still stuck around and scrimaged, so it was still fun.

So, like I said. I've had a crazy busy week. Now I'm just ready for the weekend and some much needed time with my boyfriend.

-Kristina

One of the best weekends

While some people may disagree, or agree, or not care either way, I think that this past weekend was one of the best weekends that I have had in a long time. To be completely honest, the people I spent the weekend with might not even agree. But that's fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fridays are always so good. They are the first day I get to see Lucas in awhile and I always look forward to them so much. The never disappoint. This one was no different. We went on one of the best dates that we've had in awhile. We started out the evening going to Fat Guy's Burger Bar. This is a small restaurant on Greenwood in downtown Tulsa.

Personally, I thought it was delicious. Mostly cause I love hamburgers. And partly because I don't get to be with my boyfriend very often so I like everything I do when I'm with him. I had a double cheeseburger with BBQ sauce and lettuce. Yum. He had a double bacon cheeseburger with mayo and jalapenos. I'm 99% sure that's what he had. But it was delicious.

Then we walked to the Center of the Universe. This is also downtown. The walking there was just as much fun as being there. I just love being with him. But anyways. Most websites define this place as a sonic anomally. It's really cool. You stand in the middle of a circle and you can hear yourself echoing. Unless you are the one standing in the middle of the circle, you can't hear it. So it was really neat to play around there for a while. Here we are in the center of the universe.

Then we drove around for awhile trying to decide what to do. Eventually we ended up at Halloween Express. It was fun to look around here at all the different costumes. Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory. We had a ten dollar gift card so we decided to go use it on some dessert. I love cheesecake. I had a lovely piece of white chocolate caramel macademia nut. He had dulce de leche. Yum. It was delicious.

That was the end of Friday. Saturday was pretty exciting as well. Sleeping in....always fantastic. And then I went to Lucas' house for some pumpkin carving/painting. Here are some of our creations.

Candi painted Elphaba from Wicked

Connie painted a pretty sweet tree scene.

Connie also carved a tree.

Me and Lucas carved a haunted castle/house thing.

Then it was Sunday. We had my mom's birthday get together and we played a game all afternoon. It was so much fun. I absolutely love spending time with my family and the game we played, "Dicecapades," was so much fun!

I think that's all.

-Kristina