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.