Great Grandma and Lori Come to Visit Provo!

Last week we had a wonderful visit with Tyler's great grandmother and Aunt Lori. Thanks for coming to see us and for the thoughtful gifts! We love you both.




This picture is with Great Grandmother and all her grandchildren/great-grandchildren in Provo. Although technically I am an in-law, they let me into the picture anyway! :)

Hunting Fever!

My hubby's most recent obsession. Do not worry though. There will be no dead stuffed animals in our house while I'm still alive!

Birthdays! Jennifer, Ron, Kate and Leah

Many birthdays occur between September 18th and 19th, so Ty and I wanted to publicly wish all our loved ones a very happy b-day!

The first b-day shout out goes to my favorite sister, Jennifer Proffit. My sister is pretty much the best sister anyone could have. From a young age she looked out for me. She sang me primary songs when I was afraid at night, she told me when it was time to shave my legs, and continued to help me grow up by teaching me all about boys and even having children. She always has good advice and is there to listen and care. I love you Jen and hope you had a GREAT B-day.

The next shout out goes to Ronzo-Ponzo (Ron Ellis, Tyler's father). "Well this should go out to my old man, but seeing as how he's getting up their in years, he probably can't make out the fine print. Seeing as how he can't read this I could take this time to say terrible things about him for everyone else to enjoy. But the truth is that there is nothing terrible to say about him. He has been a model husband, father, career man, and disciple of Christ, and I love him more than a birthday shout out can express." --Tyler's first contribution to the blog. Can you feel the love?

The final shout out goes to Kate and Leah Scoville. Kate and Leah have been beacons of joy over the last year. It is impossible to be negative or unhappy in their presence. In addition to the happiness they so naturally bring, they are pretty amazing too. They can feed themselves frozen peas, dance hip-hop and even walk across a room without any help! We love these girls and are so glad we live close so we can watch them grow up. Not to mention the regular baby time keeps us content as aunt and uncle, rather than mom and dad. ;) Happy Birthday Kate and Leah! We love you!







Kate and Leah got the picture space...sorry Jen and Ron, you just can't compete with a 1 year old!

Pictures of the Duckies

I believe many of you have heard about the pet ducks we housed for a short time while Kerstin, their mama, lived in the dorms. These pictures were taken last April when they were still cute little duckies. They are now full grown and loyal companions to Kerstin's father and mother. Who knew ducks were one of the most loyal pets? :)

The Teachers Side of Parent-Teacher Conference - Stream of Conscience

I can't believe we have already been in school long enough for midterms and therefore Parent Teacher Conferences. I just spent the last 3 1/2 hours meeting parents and discussing the grades of their "little darlings". Although I am exhausted, I am actually pretty grateful for Parent-Teacher Conferences. It gives me a chance to talk up my good students and make them and their parents really happy, or to help my students who need to do a little work to improve.

Although, sometimes, like tonight I wonder if I am too nice. I want all of my students to succeed and often bend over backwards helping them to get there. With 200 students who should probably be learning the cruel rules of the real world, I should probably not help them SO MUCH. But it is a hard balance, because as a teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to know how they are doing and be there to tell them and help them when they need improvement.

I just can't escape my nature to people please. I want to please the student by helping them succeed. I want to please their parents, by bragging to them about how much their student has improved or how great they are. And I want to please, I guess, the administration by showing them that I am a good teacher and care about my students. In addition to being a people pleaser, I am afraid in my job I am a bit of a perfectionist. I cannot relax and even sleep if I know I haven't given my student every opportunity to succeed. This does not mean all my students pass with A+'s in my class. All it means is I often spend my lunches and after school helping students catch up on missing and absent work.


I guess I just feel that these students are at such a crucial stage in life. I can help determine whether or not they gain confidence in their ability to succeed and therefore set a standard for what they expect of themselves throughout high school and college (even if it is just for history). This is a huge responsibility. If they leave my class and know very little about history, I will be a little disappointed. But if they leave my class feeling like they are "bad" at history or "bad" at school I will feel like a total failure. How else can I boost this confidence if it is not through regularly knowing how they are doing in my class, giving words of encouragement and discussing their grades and behavior with their parents?

I guess I will keep doing what I am doing because I know it is right. :)

Pleasant Surprises

Yesterday, Monday the 15th of the year 2008, as I headed out from a long day of teaching joyful 13-year-olds about mountain men, explorers and colonization and hurried to meet my dear husband for a quick car swap before I headed to BYU to teach a group of college students about culture and lesson writing I was very pleasantly surprised. . .

Tyler and I have been happily married for 1 year, 9 months and 10 days. For 1 year, 9 months and 10 days we have also happily enjoyed driving everywhere together because we have shared a car. Sharing a car has been great. It has given us a lot of time together.
This April Tyler was hired by NY Life and by June he was working full time. Our happy little simple life, started to be not so simple anymore as we both worked full time in two different cities.

The struggle to get us both where we needed to be when we needed to be there while we still shared one car, was greatly alieviated by generous friends and family members. Thank you Heather and Kerstin for the many times you let us borrow your cars over the summer and to the countless others who have picked up, dropped off and given us rides.

Back to my surprised.

As I raced to Alpine Village to give Tyler the Mazda, who would give Kerstin her CR-V back and then rush me up to campus by 4:15 to teach, I found myself in the parking lot searching for Kerstin's CRV, which should have contained Tyler. As I quickly turned the Mazda around and speed dialed Tyler, a 2006 Hyundai Tuscon with a handsome man in a gray suit and a big smile on his face rounded the corner.

I quickly parked, jumped out of the car and gave Tyler a quick kiss as I checked out our new car. I absolutely loved it immediately. It is a small SUV with 4 wheel drive. It will be great for our sporting activities and, when the time comes, transporting children (this is not an announcement). It has an automatic transmission and is very easy to drive.

I was very pleasantly surprised :)

*The picture above is not of our actual car. It is dark now so I can't take pics. I post some later!

Back To School

So I started my second year of teaching last Monday, on August 18th. I have made it through 7 1/2 days of class to the moment, although my hopes of a smooth second year have been dashed so far. When I arrived on Monday I came to find that my 25 student class limit, had been surpassed to as many as 36. I only have 28 seats in my class so it has been rather uncomfortable for everyone the past 7 1/2 days. I started to hassle administration right away and got the run around for a while well everyone 'looked over numbers'. The solution to the problem is I am giving up on of my prep periods (the time of peace when I have no students) and will now be teaching 9 classes of 7th and 8th grade history, 4 on one day and 5 on the other. I am surprisingly not too worried about teaching all day without a prep. I feel really confident going into my second year and think I will be able to run my classroom smoother than last year. I do anticipate taking quite a bit of work home at night and over the weekends, but it will be worth it to have smaller classes, plus the extra pay for my prep. Well lunch is almost over and 7th graders are getting ready to stampeed my door down. Eeek! At least I have DMB concert to look forward to tonight! :)