The Disney Renaissance

Tonight we were trying to figure out what movies were in the "10 year Disney Contract". There were debates about when it started, what movies were in it, when it ended, etc. I did my research and here is the answer.

It was known as the Disney Renaissance; when Disney returned to making animated films that were based on fairy tales. It actually started in 1989 and finished in 1999 - one each year, except 1993. Interesting. They are not all the "Classic Disney" movies you normally think of. Nor, do they include all the great princesses. The list is a follows...

• 1989 - The Little Mermaid
• 1990 - The Rescuers Down Under (I never would have guessed that one)
• 1991 - Beauty and the Beast
• 1992 - Aladdin
• 1994 - The Lion King
• 1995 - Pocahontas
• 1996 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• 1997 - Hercules
• 1998 - Mulan
• 1999 - Tarzan

Spiritual Students

Several people have requested more stories about first grade drama so I thought I’d do another post about my wonderful first graders. However, since it’s Sunday I figured I’d write about their spiritual sides.

Since I teach in Payson, Utah – I have mostly little LDS kids in my class (in fact, I’m pretty sure all but one is LDS). Sometimes they confuse school with Sunday school and mix church and state a little too much.

One little boy (the Bishop’s son) is very spiritual. One day we were talking about finding settings in stories. Their assignment was to pick their favorite setting out the book we read and draw a picture of it. This particular little boy picked Egypt as his favorite setting. In his picture he included Moses and a burning bush.

A few days later we were talking about nouns and we were compiling a list of nouns that started with a “T”. The same little boy came up with tithing.

One of my absolute favorite kids is a little girl who has several handicaps (physical and mental). She can do most of the things but it just takes her a little while longer to process. Also, when she gets really excited she rocks back and forth and shakes her arms. She also talks very loud. She really is the sweetest little girl though and is always SO happy. I love her! Okay, so there’s a little picture for you so now here’s the story – every morning we have “share circle” where 3 kids can sign up to share something during our morning meeting. This girl was really excited to sign up one morning and unfortunately she was gone at speech during share circle so she didn’t get to share. The rest of the morning she was so upset and kept asking when she would get to do her share. After centers I called everyone back into share circle so she could share. This is what she says…

“In primary we are getting ready for our program and we are learning songs and my favorite song is Called to Serve and will everyone stand up and sing it with me and we can march too.”

The best part is all of the kids was like “Oh, I love that song!” and stood up to sing it. The 1 non-member also claimed she knew the song. Don’t worry. We didn’t sing it.

I HATE THE DENTIST

Reasons I hate the dentist...

1. I hate the gritty toothpaste.
2. I hate the forceful flossing.
3. I hate how they always tell me I don't floss enough.
4. I hate the rubbery fingers in my mouth.
5. I hate the hygienist who tries to ask you questions while her fingers are in your mouth.
6. I hate the warm water that squirts your face.
7. I hate the suction thing that never gets all the toothpaste grit out.
8. I hate the X-rays - how the things they stick in your mouth pinch your cheeks.
9. I hate the taste of fluoride.
10. I hate how the dentist always tells me to move my tongue - I don't know where to move it to nor how to move it!
11. I hate how I never know where to look - straight into the dentist's eyes? Up his nose? Do I just close my eyes?
12. I hate how my teeth hurt for hours afterwards.
13. I hate the smell.
14. I hate how I always gag.
15. I hate the spit I collect in the back of my mouth.
    

3 years ago my mom called me and told my it was time for my 6 month check up. With all good intentions, I said "I have dental insurance through work, no need for you and dad to pay out of pocket for me, I'll go on my own." 3 years later I have not been to the dentist. I honestly tried to find a dentist but quickly got discouraged and gave up.

Last week I was eating a Starburst (something I do regularly) and it kind of hurt. So I went to the mirror to see what I had stuck in my tooth. To my surprise, I saw that I had a hole in my tooth! Could it be? My first cavity EVER?!?!? I think so. After crying for 45 minutes I have scheduled a dentist appointment. Tomorrow, at 5:00, I will take my "big girl pill" (thanks mom) and face the consequences of ignoring my dental hygiene for 3 years. Wish me luck.

Donut eating contest

Here is the video of the donut eating contest.

Halloween

Our friends the Olsen's hosted a Halloween party that we went to Friday night. There were costumes, a game of splash and donut eating contests. Here are some pictures of the highlights.

COSTUMES:
Winners: Becky and Russ

Russ as a guy from Guitar Hero.

Brianne and Jeff as Bride of Frankenstien and Frankenstien (Jeff was more dressed up earlier in the night and looked more the part)

Suzanna and Jeris as hippie and mexican wrestler

Adam and Becky as WT and polygamist wife

Jonathan and Ali as Greek God and Goddess

Leslie as MoTAB membe

Splash Game

Winner - Brett

Boys Donut eating contest

Winner - Justin

Girls Donut eating contest

Winner - Stephanie

Justin vs. Trevor

Who can eat 8 donuts the fastest?

Winner - Justin at 2 minutes 56 seconds.

Crazy Hair

I feel like a lot of my posts lately have been about my students -but here goes another.

Usually I wear my hair straight. However, on mornings when I have less time I will use the diffuser and do my hair curly. Well, I was standing in the hall today talking to a parent when a first grader (in a different class) came to school late. He walked up to me before hanging up his backpack and said...

"Oh man! I didn't know today was crazy hair day!"

Tagged

I've been tagged by my sister Wendy to write about 6 quirks that I have.



Here are the rules to the Quirks Tag -

• Link the Person who Tagged you.


• Mention rules on your blog.


• Tell about 6 quirks of yours.


• Tag 6 fellow bloggers to do the same.


• Leave a comment on their blog to let them know.

While reading Wendy's "quirks" I was thinking "What am I going to write about? Wendy and I have all the same quirks and I don't just want to copy them."

So, 6 things about Wendy

1. Apparently we share quirks. Here are the quirks we share...

• To Do Lists - love making them, LOVE crossing completed items off with a black sharpie marker.
• "Guess Who I Saw" - one of my FAVORITE games. I'm best at playing it with my mom. We can always figure out the person in minimal guesses,
• I love using up things, especially things that come in large quantities. Examples - q-tips, vitamins, rice, toilet paper package, Vaseline, etc. I love feeling that accomplishment of working my way through something.

2. She's very good at buying gifts for people. She is always looking well in advance for gifts for people and always gets very thoughtful gifts.

3. She is genuinely interested in other people and their happenings and will always give you a fantastic reaction when you tell her news.

4. She was some how able to get hundreds of people (strangers too) to travel multiple times, an hour and a half, in the snow, up the canyon to Grandpa's cabin for cabin parties. I never understood how so pulled that off.

5. She's very good at planning. She planned the Unforium. She planned the Operation Christmas in the Capitol. And she will one day start planning the Weiler family reunions (similar to the Lambert family reunions). She doesn't know it yet - but she will.

6. She can talk for hours about the same thing. It's amazing.

Now the original "Quirks Blog". I racked my brain to come up with other things so I wouldn't have to copy anything from Wendy. I think I did it so here I go.

FONTS - I love having a variety of fonts, especially in my lesson plans for school. I have downloaded over 350 fonts so I have a huge variety to choose from. I love it when my font goes perfectly with the newsletter theme or worksheet title. Yesterday I was typing up my lessons plans. They were already written in my paper/pencil plan book and there were only 3 days of school to fill in but I spent about 1 1/2 hours adjusting the fonts and sizes so it looked just right.

Does anyone know how to incorporate more fonts onto blogs?

HOT SHOWERS - I like my shower HOT! Not just warm or very warm but hot. I like it so hot that it hurts when you first get in. Sometimes, I have to bring a water bottle into the shower with me to drink to help with the lightheadedness that I get from the heat. When I get out of the shower, my legs are bright red with dots all over them because of the hotness of the shower. I love it.

SUDOKU - I've recently started doing sudoku puzzles on a regular basis. I've found a website that I play on and I justify it as brain exercise. Anyway, on this website there are 10 levels of difficulty. I've worked my way up so now level 6 is my challenge. However, I can't sit down and just play level 6, I have to start at level one and work my way up. Same thing with minesweeper - I can't just start at expert, I have to beat the first two levels before I can move on.

T.V. VOLUME - I don't know why, but I like the TV volume to be on increments of 5. If the TV is on and I don't know what the volume is, I'm fine - but if I watch the volume be set the number either needs to end in a 5 or 0. That just feels right to me. It drives Jonathan crazy because often he thinks the perfect volume level is somewhere in between there.

GET IT DONE - I take after my mom in that I like get things done well in advance. This mostly applies to school. If I know I'm going to have to do something I would rather spend 10 hours at my school completing the project rather than 30 minutes a week until it's done.

Examples:

• Homework - each week I send home a homework packet for my kids. Rather than spending 15 minutes on Monday during my planning time stapling it all together, I spent my conference weekend stapling packets of homework. It took 2 sessions of conference but now it's done for the year. I love that.
  
• Literacy Centers - I am doing something different this year for my literacy centers and needed a lot more centers than I originally had. Each week I introduce a new center to my kids so they have another option as a fast finisher. Instead of getting one center ready each week, I currently have 18 of the 20 centers prepared, in their color-coded labeled tubs, copies made, ready to go for centers (even though I won't be introducing some until March). I'm still working on the last 2.

This obsession I have to finish it right away and not let the project linger really causes me problems sometimes because this year I have 2 parents who come in for an hour each week to help with projects. However, I usually stay late and just get them done because I don't like the thought of an unfinished project lingering for the 3 days until they come.

FALL ASLEEP TO TV - I prefer to fall asleep to the sound of TV. I've been this way ever since I was about 12. The noise sooths me and prevents me from hearing creepy noises at night which make it so I can't fall asleep. However, it must be a show that I am familiar with. Consequently, if I'm going to bed later than normal and am not in the routine of my 10:30 Seinfeld, then I will lay awake for hours searching for a show or info-mercial that I have seen before in order to fall asleep. Now we have a DVD player in our room so if there is nothing on I usually fall asleep to The Office episodes. Once I have a good show, I'll roll over and be asleep in minutes. Jonathan also hates this because he gets hooked on the show and is up for another 1/2 hour watching it where as I am sound asleep.

BONUS - I don't like chocolate chips in my chocolate chip cookies.

Those are my quirks.

Ashley, Laurie, Aaron, Stacey, Brianne and Jeff - you're it.

Cabin Clean Up Day

Saturday we had "Cabin Clean Up Day". My Uncle Jim has done a lot of work in remodeling part of the cabin and so we were glad we were able to help out.

So far, the newer half of the main floor and all the bedrooms upstairs have new carpet.

So, we moved all the furniture that had been taken out of those rooms and stored on old carpet, back into those rooms plus all the other furniture so the rest of the carpet could be laid.

I guess they are going to put up a stone wall on the outside of the new bathroom addition, so we gathered rocks and cleaned them.

We also cleaned out all the stuff from underneath the cabin and got rid of that as well as sorted through other things in the cabin that needed to go/be cleaned/or get a new paint job.

This is the foundation for where the new bathroom will go. And in the cement hole, they will put the water heaters.

Hopefully with all these changes the cabin will get more use because it will be easier to go up in the winter and stay longer periods of time.

Concentration Pills

I have a certain student who I have had to develop a lot of patience with this year. Sometimes I think that ADD is over diagnosed but after meeting this kid, I realized that some kids really can't control their constant noises and movements. "I know I'm not supposed to do it, my brain just makes me" is what he'll say to me when we talk about why he had to leave the carpet.

Today he left around lunch. When he came back to school I asked him where he went. He said, "I had to go to the doctor. He gave me concentration pills. They will help me in school to concentrate."

Hopefully we'll turn a new leaf with him.

Organization Station

Some of you might remember that last year I received a grant for myself and 2 others teachers to purchase rugs for our classrooms. I have LOVED my rug ever since I got it and don't know how I managed without it.

Around the same time I found out about a website where teachers go and submit proposals for classroom items and then random people/companies fund the projects. I decided to ask for something that I really wanted but didn't really need because who knew what would actually come of it. I submitted my proposal on January 10th, 2008.

Nothing ever came of it...until yesterday.

I received an email saying that on September 9th (the day before my proposal expired) my proposal of $442 was fully funded and all I had to do was accept the donation and they would purchase and send me my order this month. (Really, my item only cost $299 plus shipping but this website tacks on a bunch of other "fees and donations which I think is kind of lame but I won't complain because I didn't pay a penny.)

Anyway, I am so excited! I pride myself on being one of the (if not the) most organized teacher in my school - having everything filed neatly, color-coded, and in their own compartments, containers, and "homes", and knowing where everything is. I know this donation to my classroom will only make things even better.

Stay tuned...I'll post again when I have all my literacy centers organized in this!

Coming Soon

Are you as excited as I am? September 25th!

A good Mom

A good mom knows how to bake good cookies. Ever since I was 10 and killed a fish with my cookies I've been convinced that I would be a terrible Mom because I have since, never been able to make a successful batch of cookies. Well, tonight my failing streak came to an end. After a TERRIBLE try on Sunday, I found a new recipe on the Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats blog. I made them and they turned out pretty good. I'm not sure I've quite found the best cookies ever, but I'm on my way and feeling like there is hope for me to be a good mom.

Wicked and Mean

This is what happened my second day of school...

I was in my room getting things ready before school and I was paged for a telephone call. I went and answered the phone. It was the mother of one of my students', let's call him Jimmy. She told me that because I had picked Jimmy to be our first "King of the Day" (and therefore sent him home with a beach bag that he was supposed to fill with things about him and return the next day) he was bullied on the bus. This is the beach bag I sent home.

Apparently he was picked on on the bus ride home because he had a purple bag and purple meant gay and how dare I send it home with a little boy. I told her I had used that bag all last year and never had a problem with that. I told her I was very sorry and asked her who was picking on her son so that I could get the principal involved and we could talk with the other student and try and get this taken care of. She said she didn't know who the bully was but it was ridiculous and she was furious. She told me she would wait until after school started and the halls were clear of all bullies to bring him to school that morning.

Jimmy never came to school that day.

I told my principal about the phone call. He asked who the student was and then informed me that the mom is just like that. Weekly, the school got calls from that parent last year about something happening to one of her kids. He told me not to worry about it.

Later that day this mom called the school again and talked to the principal. He asked her to come to the school and identify the bully so he could take care of it. She said she didn't want to have to do that. My principal asked what she'd like to have done and she said she wanted to pull her son out of the school and send him to a different one. My principals response....

"I'll have the papers ready for you to sign in 10 minutes."

She came to the school that afternoon to sign the papers. She threw the bag on the secretaries desk (which she had tied a purple balloon to) and announced,

"I'm taking Jimmy out of this school because he has a wicked and mean teacher."

So, I guess I'm wicked and mean. But now I only have 19 students. And according to all the administrative staff in my school, I did everyone a huge favor.

Kneeboarding...or not?

3 days ago I went boating with my family. I'm happy to say that I did get up on slalom however don't have any pictures to document it. This trip I tried something new though. My sister did it first and was much more successful than I was so I have to give her the credit but I tried standing up on a kneeboard.

Boating Bruise

About a week and a half ago we went boating with my family. Jonathan has decided that he wants to learn to slalom (ski with just one ski) so he was giving it a try. The way my family all learned was by dropping a ski so naturally that's they way we were teaching him.

He got up and got comfortable on 2

He then barely lifted one ski up to practice balancing on just one ski. He did fine when he lifted up his left ski, but then decided to see if he would be even more comfortable lifting up his right ski. When he did, it caught the water funny and the ski came across and whacked his leg. He said it hurt really bad but went skiing again anyway.

While we were still on the boat we could see a big, golf ball sized lump on his leg. Over this past week though it become more discolored and bruised.

Long Overdue

Earlier this month Jonathan and I headed to California for a Snow Family Reunion. Before the actual reunion officially started, we had a pre-reunion with most of the family at Disneyland and a Dodgers game.

The reunion was at Big Bear Lake in California. We stayed in a bunch of little cabins on the lake. One day we went boating, went on water slides and an alpine slide the next day, and went hiking another day. Each night we had some sort of family game. It was great to be with the family especially since we don't get to see Jonathan's side of the family too often.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the trip...

Pre-family reunion at Disneyland - 26 of us went together.

Our nieces and nephews

Jonathan's high score at the Buzz Lightyear game

Main Street, Disneyland

3 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT DISNEYLAND...

1 - Everyone and everything is in character - costumes change from ride to ride, how they introduce the ride is specific to the ride, and an atmosphere is created while waiting in line.

2 - Attention to detail - the fonts, the paint, the type of trash can, and the speakers all fit the ambiance of the ride.

3 - Each ride holds so many people so the lines go quickly. And on top of that, they offer fast passes which make the lines even faster.

An example of what you see while waiting in line. They really set the mood. Tower of Terror

Our group was big enough for a personal welcome from Dodger Stadium.

The Actual Family Reunion

Where we stayed - Shore Acres Lodge

It went from a beautiful day to out of nowhere hail. All the white stuff on the seat is hail.

Jonathan going down the water slide.

Getting ready to do down the alpine slide

The whole group on our hike.

A Snow tradition - the game of Rubberbands (basically a big rubber band fight)