The Goings on....

So many things have happened lately and I've been way too busy to chronicle them. So here's what's happened:

Every year I'm in charge of the Sadie Hawkin's Dance. Due to the fact that all they ever do is get matching shirts to come to the dance, we always choose a theme that will lend itself well to t-shirts. This year we chose "Arcade". Check out the decorations!

Yoshi's nest!
Pacman path to the entry door.
And the kids arrive. Most of the t-shirts were Pac-Man themed.
These are all of my actual students (students in the show or in my class). They were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The photographer had a green screen and they made a really cool arcade backdrop for the actual photos.
Next: Over Fall break this year I decided to take advantage of the fact that no one was on my stage. We've had all sorts of construction in the school the beginning of this year and so it was really the first time I had actually been able to get on the stage at all because the choir and band were having class on the stage while their classroom was being finished. So I decided to paint the stage. I'd never painted it before and it was looking pretty beat up after the 5 years I've been teaching and who knows how long before that. It was hard work.
Here's the before:
And the after:
After I painted the stage I headed out to Vegas for a couple days! My first time too! There's a bunch of people who live in my area who wanted to go and we have a friend who lives just a little ways away from the strip so we went!
Black light mini-golf

Very cool art piece on the ceiling at the Ballagio.
Coolest part ever (video below). The fountains at the Bellagio were incredible. We stuck around there forever. We saw 8 different shows!


It's been a busy few weeks after that. My show opened this past week so now I'm on catch up mode. I'll get pictures of the show up as soon as we get them!

Homecoming Parade

Homecoming week is always an interesting one. So much extra stuff to do, but Thursday night we had our Homecoming parade. Our new tradition is to do it at night and make it a light parade which is kinda fun and unique.

This is my principal. He always laughs about how I can get him to do things outside his comfort zone. Here he is on one of the kid's long boards. Yup, he knew I was taking the picture too!
This is my partner in crime, Angie. She's in charge of student council and I deal with them quite a bit. She and I hosted the talent show two years ago and dressed up as Gabriella and Sharpay from High School Musical. Then last year we dressed up as old ladies to host the Mr. Springville pageant. Good times. I have lots of fun with her!
Here's a portion of the drama guild getting all set for the parade. We didn't do much other than put glow sticks all over and walk around all crazy....cause we're drama kids!

Then they burn the "S". Our school is Springville and every year they have the tradition to burn it. I know we did it too at my high school (except we burnt an "E" for Eaglecrest!). Overall it was pretty fun despite the extra hours.
Oh, and our football team won 50-0. Good game. I love my job!

Family Reunion

Here goes a little taste of what was our awesome family reunion. All of us haven't been together in 4 years and so we took some time out to spend some time having some fun in Colorado. We started out doing an awesome bike ride through Glenwood Canyon. It was so much fun! There are so many pictures from this trip with all the different families. Here's one of my parents and me and Nicole. Brian wasn't able to make it for this part of the adventure so I got Nicole to myself!!

After Glenwood we headed up to the Lion's Den. We went hiking to Adams Falls by Grand Lake and then the next day went Kayaking!

Of course the time came for "Official Photo Session". We were able to get all sorts of shots with different sets of people. Here are the favorites that I have. Nathan actually has the more "official" ones.Yeah, then it was time for the 4 siblings. It's hard to get a real one. These are 2 of my favorites!

So much fun! It was so good to be all together and spend so much time with all my favorite people in the world.

Lightning!

We had a crazy storm the other night. Utah doesn't usually have these kind and I miss lightning storms like we get in Colorado. Well, these bolts were covering the sky and were incredible and so I tried my luck with a camera....and I got lucky!

Once again....classroom renovation!

Yet again, they are renovating my classroom. Our district was able to pass a budget to upgrade our old school (the current building is 40-50 years old) and one of the projects is to upgrade the performing arts wing. Last year I got new carpet and a new stage. This year I get a new ceiling (which was greatly needed), new curtain tracks and a new sound system! I'm totally excited! The choir and band room are being completely re-done, but my classroom is pretty cool as it is. Here are some of the pictures of it without a ceiling. It's dark, but that's because they had to shut off the power to the room since they were working on electrical. I hope it'll all be done for classes in August!

2010 World Champions: LA Lakers

Last night the LA Lakers won the NBA Finals in a very intense game. They were down MOST of the game! Well, most of you know that my brother, Dave is a HUGE Lakers fan....and therefore so is his family. After the Lakers won I headed up to their house to help them decorate their neighbors house. First, you need some background: Earlier this week some of their neighbors put this in front of their house:So after the Lakers won, we had the supplies ready: Notice the attire!I love this picture because it shows all the kids watching Dave do the "dirty work".
So we then headed off with supplies and kids in the car. Mind you, we headed out at around midnight...with the kids! Dave had 24 yellow and purple helium balloons to hang on the houses of the people responsible for the Celtics poster (there were 4 families involved). I'm not sure if he chose 24 because it's 2 dozen or if 24 because that's Kobe's number.
Here I am helping put signs on their garage. We had an entire ream of yellow and purple paper that says "We love LA. Lakers 2010 World Champions".
Kobe and Bryce were in charge of putting yellow and purple yarn all over the cars. Kobe really likes string and he's very creative. These people probably couldn't get into their cars because he was so thorough! Dave wrote on all the cars that were not protected by a garage!
He doesn't look excited, does he? He has yarn and he strung it all over their yard connecting trees and blocking their way out of the driveway and also attaching it to their doorknobs.
Here's Bryce helping Sarah. Lots of signs!
Here's the final product of the sign. Check out their faces! This is around 1 o'clock.
The girls didn't make it. Dave put a movie on and they stayed in the car and totally passed out. I don't blame them!After we tagged the 4 houses we still had SO many signs...so we tagged most of the neighborhood mailboxes!
Here's one of the front of the houses! It was SO much fun.
GO LAKERS!!!!

Lip Dub

I know some of you have already seen this on my facebook, but this is my high school's "Lip Dub". It's a big thing going around on youtube and our TV/Broadcasting teacher took on the project. The actual lip dub part is done all in one take!! It's pretty incredible. The goal is to get 1 million views. It's been on youtube for 2 weeks and has 11,000+ views! It's pretty amazing! Hope you enjoy it!

Graduation!

Today was graduation! It is always a fun experience for me. Yes, reading all the names takes an hour, but I love it! I get to see all the kids that I've had. Some of these kids I've had in my class all three years they've been in school. It's been truly difficult this week for me thinking about some of them leaving. I've grown so close to so many of them. Here are some of the pictures.

This is Greg and Keilani. They are two of my favorite students. They have spent more time with me and entertained me so much and they will be severely missed!!!!

Tom asked me at school the other day if I would hand him his diploma. I told him I wasn't the one who was assigned (thank goodness). So he found me afterwards and had me hand him his diploma.
These two have been in my classes (they're twins) for 3 years, but Caden has been a huge part of my tech theatre program. Emma has been in my drama 3 class this year. Caden is always carrying around my keys (they look like janitor's keys...I have 21 keys) and he made his own set of my keys using all the keys that we left in the lost and found that they were going to toss at the end of the year. He wore them at graduation...you can sort of see them in the picture.
I'm not the only one who has been crying. I've cried with the kids too. They are awesome!