Update

This past week has been very busy. There were a lot of things that happened, both fun and not so fun. Here is a summary.

We had Thanksgiving. Now this was fun! We went to dinner with the Proctor side. Instead of a home styled Thanksgiving Dinner, we went to Chuck-a-Rama. I have never been out to eat for Thanksgiving before, and I must say, it was a little different. We got to spend lots of time playing with the boys while we waited to be seated, including me teaching Blake a song about how Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. There was definitely a large variety of food to eat and I went home extremely full.

My sister Jennie came into town for the weekend, which was a blast! We don't get to see each other very often, because she lives far away :(, but it was fun to see her this weekend. My family has a tradition of going to black Friday together. For whatever reason, the last two years, instead of us all going to the same store together, it has gotten broken up. We all seemed to go to different stores this year, and then we met up later in the day. I ended up taking my mom around. I must say, we hit 4 stores before 7 am, how great is that! Thanks mom for choosing stores that weren't swarming with tons of people!

We enjoyed many activities with my sister and her family (and our whole family combined.) We went to build a bear and watched all the kids get new buddies and or outfits. We went to the movie Bolt, which is funny! I loved the hamster! We had pizza and played Monopoly. I wouldn't suggest playing with a 6 year old who quickly loses interest and only plays because he is told when he stops playing the game, he has to go to bed because it is way past his bedtime. However, same 6 year old makes some awesome trades on properties, and if you are lucky, you win by having more than 10 million more than anybody else. Hmmm...wish that was real money.

I had the opportunity to meat my cooperating teacher yesterday. I will be teaching 10th and 11th grade English and I get to choose what I teach. I am sooooo excited! My unit that I am writing on Tess of the D'Urbervilles will get to be used!

I also had the opportunity to do my teacher work sample. This is where I go into a classroom and observe 1 day and teach 2 consecutive days. I have to do some type of pre-assessment and post assessment to gauge how the students learned what I taught. It was so much fun! I went into a 9th grade class and taught vocabulary words found in A Christmas Carol. Who would think that vocabulary could be fun? The students had fun with the activities that we did, and they were great for me. I did learn that I definitely need practice in bringing a class back from group work, but I will get there.

If anyone knows of any work out there, please pass it on. Mike was laid off from his job last week and has been applying to try to quickly find work again. It really brings home all the news reports about how bad our economy is when it happens in your own household. I am just grateful that we only have Mike and I to worry about right now, and Jake, but he is pretty laid back and goes with the flow.

There is a quick update on our happenings for the last little bit. We hope that everybody else had the most enjoyable Thanksgivings out there (try to beat ours...we have awesome families!) We now get the opportunity to turn our thoughts to our Savior as we remember He is the reason that we celebrate this season.