UPDATE 2004

Well everyone….I guess it is time again!
So much has happened in my life since the last time I did a little update. I can’t believe it has been so long. So…here it is!

ME – I’ve been doing well. I have kept myself busy with everything going on. I recently moved home for the summer. I’ll be here until I find a job…which should be around the middle of July or beginning of August. Then I will move into an apartment by myself depending on where I get a job. My cell phone died during graduation so I got a new one. It is just like my dad’s only blue. I thought I had lost my phone numbers from my other cell phone, but I managed to get them (I had to squeeze and twist the phone to turn it on and push the keys really hard!). I’m headed to New Hampshire (July 11-18) to get trained in image making. I got to experience this during student teaching, and now I am going to officially get trained. I guess I should explain… you paint different ways on to pieces of paper. You end up with many different types of papers. Then you create a picture from those papers by cutting shapes out of them. In the end you have many different pictures that you have created from the pieces of paper. Then you set all of the pictures in front of you and write a story from them. I’ve done one called “Little Elephant’s Long Day”. I really like it and I’m very excited about getting officially trained to do this. I got back from Grapevine on the 12th of June. I was up there for a convention with my parents and sister. We had a lot of fun and the hotel was great! We stayed at the Gaylord Texan… huge hotel and really fun! Jay and I went to Ring Dance together. We had a great time and it was fun to get all dressed up. It is the last time I’ll get all dolled up for a while.

FAMILY – My family is doing well. My sister played in a grand concert where 20 students play a song on 10 different pianos at one time. It was pretty neat seeing all of them work together. My grandparents left for Wyoming on May 16th. I’ll be heading up to Wyoming with them, and my family on June 29th. I’ll be there for only 10 days, but it will be a nice break from the Texas heat.

FRIENDS – For those of you keeping up, Victoria has made it through her first year teaching in Humble. She is teaching Junior High science. She enjoys it and enjoys the teachers she is with there. Jennifer Beal (“Bealio”) has a job in Temple teaching Pre-K. She graduated the same day I did. Her dad has a job being the offensive coordinator at Bryan High. Jay is doing well. He finished working for the American Red Cross and is moving on now. We’ve been playing a CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) computer game. We time ourselves and see who can solve the crime first. There were 5 cases and he won 3 and I won 2. I recently bought a CSI board game. We, along with my sister, are looking forward to playing it soon. I went with Jay, his dad, and some other friends from church to Colorado for Spring Break. It was very beautiful and I loved it so much. It was really nice to relax and spend some time away from the Texas weather. Lisa Day will be spending her entire summer in Colorado at some Navigator training. Gje Greene just graduated as well. She has already started working. Tiffany, my roommate, is in Germany for the first part of the summer for some study abroad stuff. She is doing so well though. She and Zoe won’t be living with me in the Fall, but I’ll still get to see her and go get some ice cream!

SCHOOL – I graduated! Yep, May 15th I graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies…aka Elementary Education. I finished my student teaching on April 16th. I was at Harvey Mitchell in a 1st grade classroom. I had 22 students for 12 weeks. I absolutely loved it! I got to have the classroom all to myself for 4 weeks total but I taught other subjects all of the other weeks. The first 2 weeks I had complete control we did a unit on Texas. This worked out great because my mentor teacher is not from Texas, and I have lived here all my life. We learned about the state symbols and all about cowboys. We even had a cowboy come and visit…he was a scarecrow that I dressed up. The kids named him Cowboy Rick and we used adjectives to describe him. We also had Travis Catalina from Catalina Hatters come and talk to us about how cowboy hats were made. The second 2 weeks I had complete control we studied plants. We actually created a 10ft tall flower in our room…complete with roots that stretched to all the kids’ desks, petals and a butterfly ready to pollinate it! The kids really learned a lot about plants and got a lot of hands on experiences. My mom got to come in and talk to the kids about what we get from plants. We also did a writing activity where a mystery man (one of the teachers next door) brought magic beans (lima beans painted with glow in the dark paint) for us to plant just like in the Jack and the Beanstalk book we had just read. The kids loved it and they really believed it! I got to experience my first kid throwing up on me. I made it through and it wasn’t bad at all. I also went on a field trip with them and got put up 150ft on a fire truck ladder! I got some great experience from my teacher and with my kids. I really miss the kids though. The day I left I had one little girl latched on to me and not letting me go. She was screaming and crying saying she didn’t want me to leave. After about 15 minutes I got away and had to leave her with some after-day-care people crying in the hallway. It got me and I started to cry as well. It is amazing the impact you can have on kids in that short amount of time. I can’t wait to have my own classroom!

CHURCH – I finished up my year-long commitment to Fellowship Team at the beginning of May. I am really going to miss all the great meeting and spending time with all those people. We still do volleyball on Monday nights together though. We found out that there will not be a fellowship team this coming year. At first I had a really hard time dealing with this, but after a while and after talking through my feelings with some people I understand and know that this is God’s will. As hard as it may be, I will follow this decision and support it.

EXTRA – So my new craze is CSI. I watch it all the time and really enjoy trying to figure out the crime scenes. I get it some of the times. I have watched the entire 1st and 2nd seasons and have seen most of the 3rd and some of the 4th. It is great show. If you get a chance you should watch it. It is on CBS on Thursday nights. I have a new camera. It takes videos and digital photos. I also got TIVO. It is the recording device where it records shows onto a hard drive. My dad has one. I got it for graduation from my parents. We had a lot of rain here on May 13th. Hearne really got hit hard. Many houses got flooded very badly. If I still lived in Hearne, one of those homes would have been mine. The creek that my house backed up to flooded very badly. The Zeigs and the Amos’s (I went to school with Joey Zeig and Krystle Amos) home got hit hard. All of Robertson County and Brazos County are still recovering.

Well…that is it. I know that was a lot but so much has happened. The last part of this are some of the pictures are of some student teaching experiences, the giant flower I created with my kids, my trip up the fire truck and my trip to Colorado and other happenings from the past few months. I hope this finds you well! Hope to hear from you soon!