Crocheting

After being inspired by my visiting teacher, Kensie,  I decided that I wanted to learn how to crochet sometime in my life, preferably sooner rather than later.  This Christmas break, I noticed that my mother-in-law can crochet and does so often, so I asked if she would teach me.  After the first few rows of stumbling my way through and trying to find a rhymthm, I realized it would probably look better if I stopped, took it out and started again.  As I was doing so, I ran into a snag and had to cut the yarn.

So then I was REALLY starting from scratch.  After working on it for about four hours Saturday and a little bit of time yesterday morning, this is what's I have so far.

 Then I worked on it a bit after church and through the evening. This is what it looks like now:

And I am so proud of it, messed up stitches and all.

Sick today

I've been fighting a cold since Monday. Today I decided I would actually try to get better rather than pushing myself through school.  It always amazes me and annoys me every time I'm sick and realize, "I can't just not go in, I have to do something so that my kids can still learn." I'm sure other jobs require some planning or something if you can't go into the office but for teachers you HAVE to have plans for a sub even if you're throwing up with the flu. 

In some ways (especially on sick days) it's incredibly annoying.

On other days it's kind of neat to think that I am, for those kids in my class, indispensable. Or at least my training, education, and the presence of a competent adult in the classroom.  But if I didn't write sub plans most subs wouldn't know what to do exactly and my students would try to help but probably wouldn't learn much that day.

Bottom line is: I don't like being sick. I don't like writing sub plans. BUT, I do like knowing that I am an integral part of my students' education.

Don't respond with hate

Normally I keep my political discussions between Cody and me. However, this is an instance where I want everyone to know that I don't believe in hate. Just because some people made a horrible, horrible decision, doesn't mean that I think that all Libyans, all Muslims, all Arabs are bad people. In fact, I believe most of them are all good, faithful, peaceful people, just like most Americans, just like most of the world.

Usually the news stations only focus on the negative: the American Ambassador in Libya was killed by some angry Libyans in response to an anti-Muslim movie made by an amateur California filmmaker.

However, the news probably won't show this and I think that this aspect is equally as important to know about.

Hate as a reaction to hate doesn't change anything, more people are hurt and nothing gets solved or fixed as a result of responding that way.  Don't check your religion at the door about this or other acts of hate.

In full swing

School has been in full swing for the past 3 1/2 weeks.  It's crazy to think about that sometimes.  I've been enjoying it a lot so far and have found it amazing how different classes and groups of kids can be from year to year.  I loved my class last year, but I think that this class will also have a special place in my part.

I've started my job as the PR person at my school, I wrote and posted two articles today. I was able to benchmarks yesterday and see where all my students are at reading-wise at the beginning of the school year.  I should be starting some reading groups next week to start helping them become more successful readers.

I've also been running for 4 1/2 weeks now.  I ran 5 miles on Saturday, the first time I've done that since my freak run back in April and before that I think it was a year, maybe longer.  I'm scheduled to run 6 miles this Saturday.  I should be able to keep on at this pace and run 10 miles by the second week of October. It's really exciting to be adding those miles up and I've found it helping to reduce stress.

When Cody and I went grocery shopping last week, we also bought a bag of Cheetos. They've been tempting me for the past three or four weeks and I finally gave in. This week was the best week to give in because of all the meetings I have.  Not only do I have running to reduce stress but I have Cheetos to make my soul happy.

Tired...

The past week has been really good. School started, I have a great class, I've been running regularly, Cody has been back, and Cody's family was here to drop off two of Cody's siblings for school at BYU.  It was great spending time with them.

Yet, even though the week has been good, man I have been tired today. So tired! I woke up tired, I guess I shook off a lot of the tiredness when I was at school, but as soon as school ended--BAM!--hit with the tired again.

Also, the last count for the number of students interested in being in French Club (after school program I'm in charge of) was 44.  FORTY-FOUR STUDENTS!! Aghhh! Hopefully some kind BYU students will want to come volunteer and help me out.

That satisfying feeling...

You know that satisfying feeling when you're standing in a room talking to someone else and a former student comes to the door to say hi and chat for a few minutes? Yeah, I love that. It means I did something right.

Trying to be healthy

The past month and a half I've been taking a deeper look at my nutrition and overall health. Cody and I started walking about four times a week which has been so fun for us, in addition to our Sunday strolls. We've been in the habit of eating fruits and vegetables since we started cooking together fourteen months ago.  I also started taking a multi-vitamin a few weeks ago.

And yet my problem of almost ridiculous tiredness persists, as does my problem with headaches.

I went to the doctor on Tuesday for a general check-up exam and to discuss my headaches with him.  He recommended having a routine blood-check since I had never had one and it would be good to check for diabetes, anemia, etc.  The overall doctor's visit was rather negative and I'll be looking for a different doctor because he made me feel incompetent, but I did leave feeling like what I had been trying to do to have a healthy life was working, but that there were still some things that I should try.

While the doctor's seemingly only answer to how to help my headaches was to take medicine for them (and if it gets to that point in frequency and/or severity, I'll do it), I feel like there is still more that I want to try before getting to that point.

After the new year for health insurance starts on September 1 I'm going to try and see a chiropractor which will hopefully help with my cracky body and headaches.  I think that a lot of my headaches are caused by the tension that my body is in a lot of the time.  And perhaps that is why I am sleepy a lot of the time too; I'm not getting the best possible rest at night because of the fight that happens between my muscles and bones when I'm sleeping.

I also started reading French Women Don't Get Fat a book that I first became aware of my junior year of high school when my French teacher, Kristin Lee, was reading it.  I was intrigued but stayed away from it because I didn't want people to think that I thought I was fat (which I don't, by the way).  I decided to get over those worries and checked the book out from the local library because my friend, Dana, said that it changed the way that she looks at food, cooking, and eating.  While I think I'm an average healthy cooker and consumer, it can always get better.

As I started reading the book this morning, I've really enjoyed it. It is written in prose and starts with the author sharing her adolescent experience when she gained 15 pounds on an exchange student experience in Weston, Massachusetts and how horrified she was when she came back to France a year later and her eating habits led her to gain another ten pounds in three months.  She shares some of the "old French tricks" that her family doctor shared with her: balancing pleasure and need.

I know that I don't need to worry about losing 35 pounds at all, but I'm excited to start looking at more healthy ways to cook, eat, and to view myself.  She focuses on equilibrium (which I'm a proponent for, especially since my body has pretty good techniques for trying to keep me balanced) and not on weight;  it's about how you feel in your clothes and your overall self-image.  Of course, weighing yourself every few weeks is fine, but it should be confirming what you already feel about yourself by looking in the mirror and seeing your body change.

I hope that as I try to research less sugar, less buttery, more vegetable-y, more fruity, and more serving-size portions that some of my fatigue problem will lessen or leave completely.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Everyone is creative

Ever since listening to this talk a few years ago, my ideas on creativity have changed. Everyone CAN create. It can be a nice meal, a clean home, a drawing, a song, a story, a clean appearance, anything!

Temples & Tents

Cody and I were able to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple today.  It was his first time going there since he was on his mission when they did the Open House and it was my first time being in there since it was dedicated.  Our experience today was different from the other times when we've gone in the past seven months.  We didn't realize we'd barely missed the previous session by three minutes, so we waited for another 57 minutes until the next session started.

As I sat there contemplating, my thoughts turned toward our stake's Pioneer Trek tomorrow.  It will be at Martin's Cove, a place I've never been, but that has a lot of significance when talking about the pioneers, especially those that came west by handcart. We won't be sleeping next to the handcarts for the next three days--we'll be in tents (that I just hauled over from our Bishop's house)--but the purpose of the three day activity is to help the youth feel the Spirit that those pioneers had over 150 years ago.  We won't ever know exactly what it was like, however much we study the stories of those that crossed the plains or however many pioneer treks we go on or however many books we read about it.  Then what's the point?  The point is that we'll be standing in a holy place, we'll be learning about people who left everything--who left wealth, comfort, families--to trudge across dusty, muddy, snowy, frostbitten ground to make it to a place they called Zion.  Why on Earth would anyone do that? Because they believed, because they had made a covenant to "stand as a witness of God at all times, in all things, in all places," and because they loved God. I think that's what the point of all pioneer treks is: to help us understand the love, the willingness to sacrifice, and the consecration of those early Latter-day Saints had and that we can do them same.

Grassroots Shakespeare Company

Last night Cody and I went to see the triple feature put on by the Grassroots Shakespeare Company--A Midsummer Night's Dream (all male cast), Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. The shows started at eight in the evening and finished just before 1am.  They were incredible, definitely some of the best (if not the best in terms of A Midsummer Night's Dream) Shakespeare performances I've seen.  The audience was a part of the play, there were groundlings, and even though we were sitting there for about five hours it didn't feel like it.

If you want to find out more--especially if you live on the Wasatch front--go to their website.

Just before the shows started 

Pre-show entertainment 

Just before Hamlet entertainment

Around 11pm

Oh yeah! It was in the Castle Amphitheater at the Utah State Hospital where Cody and I had some of our engagement pictures taken.  I'd been wanting to see a play performance there for three years and that dream was finally able to come true last night.

Planning for school...

I've been doing a lot of planning and creating the past few weeks. I've made a class website and gave my class blog a facelift and a new purpose. I'm really excited by it. I think it looks pretty good, too.


I've also been thinking about how I want to start out the school year to help alleviate some of the issues I had this past year (i.e. students who don't know how to solve their own silly drama problems), introduce the different subject areas, incorporate art history/criticism/creation into the school year, French Club plans, finding cool ways to have current events be a part in my classroom, teaching about the election process, etc etc etc.




I've been looking into Whole Brain Teaching more in depth (since I have more time this summer to plan than last summer).  I've been trying to think of ways to mesh it with also having my students come up with rules...I haven't come up with a great way to do that yet, but I'm sure that I'll come up with something as I'm drifting off to sleep.




I really love teaching.  I feel like that's one of the few things that I can really feel competent about. I like a bunch of small things, but I feel like I can teach kids and interact with kids (especially awesome 5th graders) really well.  At least Cody can keep me informed on the rest of the world or else I would be stuck in the 5th grade curriculum all the time. Though, if I had to be stuck in any one grade, I think I would always pick 5th grade.  It's way too fun.


Oh yeah, I started rereading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone...I was waiting for Cody to finish The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson and needed to do something.

Pruning is hard work

I never thought I would be as unimpressed with some of the things that I wrote in my story when I was in high school as I am now.  I thought I was brilliant.  I was just stupid and silly.  Thank goodness I can revise and change things, though I believe it will take a bit longer than I had anticipated.

New Pandora Station

I created a new station on Pandora and it was a really great choice.

Backstreet Boys radio.

Oh yeah, everything I've ever wanted to remind me of my childhood and adolescence. How can songs like, "Oops I did it again?" by Britney Spears, "The Hardest Thing" by 98 Degrees, "Shape of My Heart" by Backstreet Boys, etc. not make me smile?  Plus, they definitely made scrubbing the toilet and tub a lot more enjoyable.

I hope our neighbors don't mind me blasting the music to make it heard over the swamp cooler...

I started again...

It's been a year and I decided I won't have the excuse of completely falling in love with Cody to distract me this summer.  Distracted from what?  From the story I started 11 years ago. ELEVEN YEARS!! What is wrong with me?

And want to know the best part? I still laugh at my lame jokes in the story.  I was able to breeze through the first part of my story today--only took me an hour and fifteen minutes. That's probably because I'd started to go through it last May/June. It'll get harder as I keep going.  Parts 3-5 I haven't looked at since August 2008. TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT, people!  That's four years! That's a really long time to get distracted with school and dating and working and graduating and finding a job and dating the best man ever and then getting engaged to him (and then marrying him).

Four years.  Eleven years.  Who knows, maybe I'll actually finish going through it for real this summer and if I have any guts left in me after that endeavor, could I really go after my goal of trying to get it published? We'll see.  Kinda scares me and makes me want to write with a penname so that no one can trace my silliness to me but then another part of me thinks that I should be proud of it and not be scared.  Plus, one of the reasons I used to play around with pen names was so that if I got it published when I was still unmarried, it could still be traced to me (dumb, I know).  But I'll be Beth Knudsen forever and I don't need to worry about that.

Oh yeah, another thing I started again: running.  I mean I have been running (or doing yogalates--yoga and pilates) since the new year started, but I ran three times this week! The first two days kicked my butt, but the last day, that was great.

I've also started planning again for school next year (I'm such a nerd) because I want to do so much better at teaching math next year, especially with the new math standards for fifth grade.  I did an alright job and my students learned this past year but I know I can do so much better and I'm really looking forward to it.

Update: I'm married and school's almost over

I haven't written since November. Shame on me.

Old news: I'm married. It's great!

Newish news: I have a nephew! He's super duper cute.

New news: Only a few more weeks left of school. That means that my first year of teaching is almost over.

Newest news: I'm doing this cool science thing in the summer where I get to travel in the Great Basin and be a scientist and get paid at the end of the year. It's going to be really fun and hard and tiring and fun.

Bad news: I won't have a lot of contact with the outside world because I'll be in the middle of nowhere looking at rocks.

Not new news: I don't write in here much anyway (because I write on my blog for school everyday) so the fact that I'll be cut off from all civilization during my summer science excursion won't be different for anyone who might happen to frequent this blog once in a blue moon now that I don't write regularly.

In other news: I'm tired but I get to be at the BYU library when it closes tonight. Yipee!