General Conference Weekend

Wow...what an inspiring General Conference weekend we just had! Justin and I watched most of the sessions at the stake center with the missionaries, other ward missionaries, and an investigator from our ward. I loved the talks so much. I took pages and pages of notes. Sunday morning session was especially inspirational to me. I'm so grateful for living prophets who guide us in these latter days!

Friday night Justin and I attended the temple with our ward for ward temple night. Tuesday and Saturday night I went to teach with the sister missionaries. We have new assignments as ward missionaries for people to visit. We really love our calling and our ward! 

Girl's basketball open gym last week went well-ish. I didn't have as many girls attending as I would have liked so I'm still trying to recruit. Today, however, I had a great turn out and some of my students came even though they are guys. It's been fun! This week our school is doing a "Students vs. Staff" basketball game that I'm playing in and I'm so excited! I've been talking trash to my students all week. 

We are scheduled to get our tax return this week and thanks to Justin's accounting skills we are going to get a nice one! Woot! 

This week Justin's brothers and Keaton get to come visit us and we are going to the Grand Canyon. I've been reading "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon" for the trip. I've read about people dying from dehydration, drownings, flash floods and literally falling off the edge in the canyon. It's so interesting but slightly unnerving as we are visiting at the end of the week...  But we are very excited to have family come down and we can't wait!

That's pretty much our update. Nothing new has really happened. I'm teaching about earth history right now and the students are doing month-long CRT testing so nothing exciting there. Student teaching is way too long in my opinion and I'm totally over it. Until next week!

We Did Something Crazy!

There is so much to write about. Last Wednesday I had my student teaching portfolio review. In the morning I was expected to teach a regular lesson and I was told that some random BYUI faculty would eventually show up to watch me teach. In the morning one of my students came in to get some missing assignments and she had a friend with her that I didn't know. I asked her what her name was and she told me and then she said, "Everyone talks about how awesome you are." I said, "That is very kind of them," but inside I was like WAAAAAAAA!!!!! That made my life. The BYUI faculty didn't show up until 3rd period but I was ECSTATIC when I saw who walked through the door! I have three top favorite professors from school and one of my top three walked through my classroom door! Ahhhh! I almost started laughing on the spot I was so happy! He and two other faculty with my supervisor sat in the back of the classroom and watched me teach the next hour. I had the kids doing stations so I was able to chat with my teacher and he had so many positive things to say. I left after 3rd period to meet with the other student teachers at a nearby church building where we waited for our turn to be interviewed. They have been known to ask questions like "How did you plan to get all your students to 100% understanding?" within the unit we showcased to which I'd like to respond, "How do YOU plan to get all YOUR students to 100%?" because lesbehonest the answer is "It's impossible to get 100% of my students to 100% understanding," but I had prepared to come up with some "fluffy" answer anyway...well I go in for my interview and they didn't ask me ANY hard questions. It was the easiest thing ever. They loved my portfolio. They thought it was immaculate and that ALL student teacher portfolios should be based off of mine for reference (WOOOOOOT!!!!!!). They were "effusive" (to use one of their vocabulary words) in their approval of my performance so far. They were very complimentary and it was very encouraging. Go me! #totallyrockingstudentteaching

After the portfolio review my fellow student teachers and I went to Cafe Rio to celebrate. It's weird because we've proved ourselves to the school so we've "passed" student teaching... but we still have seven more weeks of teaching to complete...so it's weird but whatever. I went to get my hair done after Cafe Rio. I used my birthday groupon gift card to get my hair styled and highlighted. I love my new style and color, but I wanted more blonde...so I may go in again in a month to put more in but we'll see. After getting my hair done I taught a lesson with the missionaries to an 11 year-old who is very excited about going to church and learning more about the gospel! I love going out to teach with the sisters. It is such a fulfilling experience to share my testimony with so many people!

Before...

During!...

After! I love the layers; they add so much.

Friday we went out to dinner with Trisha and Travis. That was fun to see them for the evening while they spent their weekend in our neighborhood. That was all we saw of them as they were busy with their own adventures but we were grateful we got to see them while they were here.

Saturday I spent the day driving the missionaries around to meetings they needed (they were at the end of their miles for the month) and then we attended the General Women's Conference that evening. Oh my goodness....it was so amazing! The meeting was incredible; the spirit was so strong! I don't know if I've ever enjoyed a women's meeting so much in my life! I saw that Mom went with Shae and it made me miss going to events like that with family. Seeing the mothers with their arms wrapped around their daughters in the choir made the whole congregation teary. Priceless!

Sunday we had an interesting 5th Sunday combined 3rd hour meeting. Some "guest teachers" came and taught about depression. They referenced Elder Holland's talk last October Conference "Like a Broken Vessel." Based on what they taught it sounds like there are plenty of people out there who have depression but they are not diagnosed! That's sad because it's very treatable. The lady that taught was great because she currently treats her depression to the best of her ability but she still has hard days so she is very relatable to those who struggle. She also recommended some books that I wrote down for that day when I have kids and they are making me a crazy person in which case I could very well go through a spell of depression. It's good stuff to know and nothing to be ashamed of! I'm grateful that our society is becoming more aware that mental illness is metal illness the same as a person with cancer or diabetes has illness. Thanks to modern medicine 80% of people who seek treatment for their depression find reprieve. Anyway...just good to know. 

Sunday night we did some visits to people in our ward. We visited my visiting teacher Rachel just because we felt like seeing their family and we noticed they are in a similar situation we were in a few months ago...they moved here the same time we did and had to leave everything behind just like us! Their sweet family of seven children was there enjoying the TV but having to sit on the floor. Well...Justin and I found a free couch just a week ago, so the next day I asked her if we could give her family our sectional! She said they were looking to get a couch in the near future but until they upgrade they agreed to use it for the next little while. They need it more than us! We got done with work on Monday and helped our friends Christine and Todd Brooks move into their new apartment. We worked hard for two hours moving furniture out of the storage unit into their upstairs apartment. After we were done moving we went out to eat at Red Robin and then used The Brook's trailer to take our sectional over to Rachel's house. Their family was SO HAPPY. It was such a good feeling seeing those sweet kid's faces light up that they didn't have to sit on the floor anymore! They are so sweet...and they are basically the Von Trapp family. Every one of them can sing very well and each is talented in ballet, cross country, music, and the like! They are performing in stake conference in a few weeks. 

So now we are enjoying our free couch that we've moved in from the back porch along with a little more space since the sectional is gone. My supervisor observed me today and gave me all 4's out of 4! Oh, and yesterday I started my first day running girl's basketball open gym. Only a few girls showed up so as it continues throughout the next seven weeks or so I'll get a better turn out. Tonight I'm going out with the sisters again to teach another lesson to another investigator. Justin and I look forward to general conference this weekend. Both our families did special food for it so we're going to make some fun food. That's it for an update!

Prepping for some skills and drills.

Our couch for now

I'm Feelin' 22!

This week I had my 22nd birthday and what a birthday it was! A few updates before I get to the details: the investigator I've been working with (Jonna) has made a lot of progress. The sister missionaries joined us on Monday for FHE with her and they are joining us again tomorrow for FHE with her and her husband. At the last minute she couldn't come to church today (Satan!) which was too bad because church was so good! But she's doing well and we're excited for her! Also Justin's 90 day review went really well! He is doing very well and his coworkers love him! He had a pay raise as well so we are so very blessed and grateful! Nice work sweetie!

Thursday was our birthday: Keaton celebrated up in Rexburg with all his buddies. I had a student teaching meeting I had to go to in the afternoon and a relief society activity that evening so we didn't celebrate until Friday. I did, however, receive lots of birthday love from family and friends via text messages, facebook messages, and phone calls. I was showered with love and thoughtfulness! I have such wonderful people in my life. The relief society activity was so good and I brought Jonna with me. We had dinner and the stake relief society president spoke about trials. Jonna loved it and had lots of questions. I was able to bear my testimony and teach her a little about the atonement. Being a member missionary is so fun!

Friday after I got home from school the fun began. We both got ready and Justin started my birthday fun. He organized a scavenger hunt all around Henderson! He gave me a series of clues and choices that led us through dinner, dessert, and other adventures!

He wrote the scavenger hunt as a story of an adventure for the two of us. After we had visited certain tasks he would give me a clue to "hold onto" until later in the evening.

To start off the adventure I  had to pick a game and we couldn't move onto the next adventure until I won so we played Guillotine for a few rounds. After winning the game I had a choice of choosing the clue in my closet or a clue in my purse on the couch...so it was like a 'build your own' scavenger hunt: what we did depended on what I picked! The next adventure I had the choice to eat dinner at four different places. I chose Claim Jumper and we had a nice early dinner there. The next adventure led us to a place in Henderson that has a Marshalls, Target, and Ross right next to each other AKA my favorite places to shop! I got to shop around and then Justin had a really fun thing planned but it fell apart. It consisted of me answering trivia questions from the store cashier to find my husband who had been 'kidnapped' and I was supposed to find him at the library down the street using a QR code and my GPS...but if didn't work the way Justin had planned so we moved onto a riddle that I had to solve to take us to dessert which ended up being Cheesecake!

I got the oreo cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory...to die for!

We made our way home where we finished the adventure and I had collected all three clues. The three clues led to three different envelopes in the house which were three different gifts: a new hair-do, perfume, or Chacos (I've been wanting a pair for a while). Justin had been hoarding gifts that family had mailed me so I got those too! We finished the night eating cheesecake and watching Frozen. It was definitely my favorite date I've ever been on with my favorite person! 

Trying to solve the riddles...this took me a while.

Birthday Gifts!

We didn't have candles...so Justin lit cue-tips on fire. Excellent.

Saturday I tried to get my hair done to fulfill gift number one. One of my birthday gifts was a groupon gift card and I found a groupon for getting my hair cut, styled, and highlights for $50. Score! Right before I left for it Justin found a really bad review for the hair dresser I had an appointment with. I thought I'd risk it anyway. When I showed up for my 10 o'clock appointment I had to wait half an hour before she was ready for me. When I explained I wanted highlights the girl was being crazy. She was trying to juggle her taco bell and 'hair chart' while telling me what I really wanted was ombre. Umm, no. Then she proceeded to tell me it would be $30 more because of my long hair. Umm, what? No. I pretended I thought she was right and said I would need more time to figure out what I really wanted and had Justin pick me up. I spent the day using birthday money to shop. That night Justin took me out again (spoiled much!) to Red Robin for my 'free birthday burger' which they have if you have a rewards card. They even sang happy birthday to me and brought me a free ice cream sundae. So fun!

This week I have my portfolio review and interview with the BYUI faculty. I'm ready to rock that and be done with it. I have seven weeks left of student teaching. I'm officially running girls basketball open gym on Mondays for the next while. They start next week! Also, someone tried to throw away a couch on Saturday so Justin and I claimed it. It's now our porch furniture, which I am sitting on now to write this blog post. Score again!

That's all our news for this week! Until next time! Cheers!

Teaching and Preching

Disclaimer: this will be a long post. Hey, I have two weeks to catch up on! Hmm...where to begin. The past two weeks have been a lot about two things: student teaching and missionary work.

Student teaching: I am totally rocking it. I'm going above and beyond the call of a student teacher...and honestly, above and beyond the call of a regular teacher! Take yesterday for example: school starts at 8:00 A.M. I got to school at 6:00 that morning to grade student work for three hours (1st period is my prep). During my grading for one of my advanced classes I started seeing a pattern of total laziness from my students: incomplete sentences: things like "#coldfront #thunderstorms #lightning..really? That prompted me to do a serious intervention. I put together a powerpoint for my expectations and gave each of my classes a little talking to. I labeled my first slide "Justice" and laid down the law. I gave examples of acceptable and unacceptable work. After that I showed the "Mercy" slide (bringing the principles of Christ into the classroom: oh yeah!). They can always correct their work or do missing assignments and turn them in for full credit. Here was their opportunity to fix the half-effort, sloppy, and lazy work they had submitted for full credit.

I emphasized that if I saw them doing a crappy job and didn't do/say anything, that would mean I didn't care and that I'd given up. This was tough love. This was me showing that I love them and care about them!

I had a video about thunder planned for the day so they could watch and work on their "Doodle 4 Google" submissions or their missing work in class.

The response was amazing. In every class the kids were lining up to talk to me about fixing their work and bringing up their grades. When I'd give them what they needed I'd hear a very emphatic "Thank you Mrs. Rose!"

I had originally planned to get in early that Friday morning to finish the grading and then work on my student teaching portfolio while the students watched the video. I didn't get home until 4:30 that afternoon but it was a day spent laboring in love with my students. One day when those kids have crappy teachers who don't care, they will remember Mrs. Rose!

In other good news: I am most likely going to be running open gym for girls basketball for the next 7 weeks that I'm here...I'm so excited!

Shirt says "Schofield Basketball"...and we got chocolate pie for Pi Day!

Sap story over: student teaching has been awesome. My administrators came and observed me and liked what they saw. I'm half-way through it and it feels like a total breeze. That was bound to happen after a 19 credit semester with a part-time job! 10 credits, no job, and I feel like I'm on vacation. This leave lots of time for us to do missionary work!

Last Saturday we fed the sister missionaries taco salad and I went to do visits with them that evening for an hour and a half. I know the missionaries are protected and all, but I am so happy I know self-defense! Walking around at night in parking lots as we move from duplex to duplex...not my favorite thing. But finding people to talk to and share a message about Christ?.... my new favorite thing! I've been doing visits with them once a week or more and it's so fun. There's nothing that will strengthen your testimony more than to bear testimony to someone on a specific topic you feel prompted to share. And I'm overcoming the Beal Curse: I haven't cried once. Wednesday I had the opportunity to do a 'member present lesson' with the sisters to a lady in our apartment complex and I plan to take her to the "Birthday Dinner" activity with me this next Thursday (p.s. this 'Birthday Dinner' happens to be on my birthday...coincidence? We shall see). We could tell she felt the spirit, and at the end when we invited her to pray for the closing prayer she started to cry...so sweet! She is going to have FHE at our house this coming Monday with the missionaries. I love having the chance to go out with the sisters and bear testimony to people for a few hours a week.

This last week I taught about the different storms: thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. I built my tornado box and we 'built a tornado' in each of my classes that day. The kids loved it! For hurricanes we evaluated the similarities and differences between hurricane Katrina and typhoon Haiyan. If the kids don't think I'm awesome, at least I think I am. ;)

I've been compiling my student teacher portfolio for the past week. Yuck. It is extremely tedious. I'm almost done with it though. On the 26th we have to show our portfolio to representatives from BYUI that come down to evaluate us and interview us. It's during this time that they decide if you're going to be a teacher or not. I'm confident I'll be just fine.

Yesterday Justin and I went to a St. Patrick's Day event put on by the city of Henderson. They had a huge parade and carnival. We watched the parade in the morning. The place was packed so we just walked along the sidewalk the whole time. Justin noticed a family walking with their little kids and then he noticed that the family had stopped but one of the sons hadn't: good thing Justin was paying attention! He stopped me and said the boy was lost so I crouched down and asked him his name and we helped him find his mom and dad...talk about a scary situation! When we found the parents they hadn't even noticed their son was missing...well they're lucky someone was paying attention.

Storm Troopers! They had a really good Boba Fett too. 

And a wookie...ha!

We played an extreme game of ticket to ride: we each had two sets of trains. Our final scores were in the two-and-three hundreds!

As for Justin his update is, "Work's going good." He has his 90 days visit with his boss next week. We look forward to that. I turn 22 next week! Woo...that's all for this week.

Trouble in Vegas: All In 2014

Justin and I played in the annual "Trouble in Vegas" ultimate tournament this weekend. The theme this year was "All In." They had the usual "5 Ultimate" paraphernalia : shorts, shirts, stickers, hats, you name it! Justin bought some new white shorts that look awesome! We also got some free shorts and jerseys so I inherited some new red 5 Ultimate shorts: sweet!

Friday night the ladies all got in around 3:00 so we practiced and went to dinner with them at Red Robin - of course! We need to branch out...

Justin's T-Rexburg club team reunited for the event. Several of the players have graduated but they all came down to play. The men stayed at our house Friday and Saturday night. We had 10 twenty-some-odd-year-olds sleeping in our one bedroom apartment Friday night! I'm surprised they all fit. I made two breakfast casseroles to feed them all Saturday morning. Their registration got messed up so they ended up playing in the "club mixed" division, meaning club teams that have both guys and girls. Since they didn't have any girls, the other teams were MAD, and most of them were RUDE about it. Oh well. They ended up winning all three games. Nice work guys!

This picture is funny to me

(top left to bottom right) Mark, Taran, Dallin, Ryan, Warr, James, Justin, Zen, Skaggs, Todd, Russell, Jeremy, Shawn, Sparty.

As for the ladies, we had the biggest team we've had yet. Last year we only had nine players, but this year we managed to get 13. It was wonderful that we had so many because we had five games! We started playing at 8:30 and played until 2:00 where we had a two hour break and then played out last game at 4:00. Every game was an hour and a half so after we finished one game, our next game would start two minutes later. Killer!

We played a variety of college women's teams. We played teams from Seattle (Laura- they were from PLU!), Miami, California, Arizona, and the fifth team I don't know where they were from. We won three out of five games: our best record yet! We had so much fun. I can barely move today; I am so sore. Take note: I played every sport you can think of in high school, so I know what it means to be sore after a day of tournament play. MAN -- every part of my body hurts! It hurts to get dressed. Virtually any movement hurts. I took a few bids and had a few collisions. I ended up coaching the team so that was fun for me. The weather was cloudy all day and a little breezy and I was grateful for that. No sunburns! It was a very successful day: I can't wait to do it again next year!

My face...

Farmer's tan much!

Add caption

T-Rexburg: RAWR!

(top left to bottom right) Stacey, Emily, Kaziah, Bonnie, Heidi, Jessica, Janelle, Amanda, Christine, me, Jessica, Nichole.

After playing all day we went out to eat at Mongolian Grill where you build your own bowl of meat, noodles, rice, vegetables, whatever. The guys enjoyed soaking their sore muscles in our hot tub that evening and I was asleep by 8:30 - talk about a huge day!

Today we had a nice fast and testimony meeting. I bore my testimony about our miracle in December with Justin finding a job and me finding an apartment in our time of need. We are enjoying our time as ward missionaries. Next week we are having the missionaries over for dinner and they are bringing an investigator to teach the lesson with us so we are looking forward to that.

This week has been successful with student teaching and work. Justin is doing great things at his job. He's been going in early almost every day, and his boss loves him! We are so blessed. I taught all about the atmosphere this week and tomorrow we start with clouds and weather fronts - woop woop! Friday I pulled aside my students that are failing and while my mentor teacher made rootbeer with the rest of the students, the failing kids did all their missing work and we brought most of their grades from F's to B's and even A's for some of them. I really like what I do!

Yesterday Justin and I celebrated a year and a half of marriage. Our air mattress is failing us. We've been refilling it halfway through the night. We have resorted to sleeping on the couch. Gazelle intense! Our week pretty much revolved around the tournament, so not much news other than that. I had a really nice video of a play we did after a time out but it's not uploading to youtube -- I'll have to show it another time. Until next time!