Ward Ball

After a lot of planning and a lot of stress, the Ward Ball has finally come and gone. I'm the co-chair of the activities committee and we were in charge of it. It was a busy day. We were at the church decorating and getting everything ready all afternoon, and then after getting ready very quickly (with Robin and Nikki's help) Cassidy and I hurried to BYU Catering to pick up the food. We had about 135 people that came for dinner, so we were excited about the good turnout. After dinner, we opened up the rest of the gym for a dance.

~Karli

Left picture: Me, Ashlee, Cassidy, Brooke, and Rachel

Right picture (us + Matt) He felt really special

The Dance

Ashlee, Jordan, Matt, Cassidy, Brett, Me, Brandon Palmer

The clean-up crew! They were awesome!

Christmas Party!

We had a Christmas party with some of our friends last weekend. We had pizza and breadsticks. And because there were boys there, of course we finished watching the Jazz game. Then we make chocolate covered pretzels, which was followed by the card game NERTS!

Girls Night

A couple of weeks ago our apartment had a girls night! We were so excited because everyone was able to work out their schedules to come for the first time. First, Brooke introduced us to a new place to eat Gourmindise Bakery in Salt Lake. They had really good soups and sandwiches. Then we went to Temple Square. We probably should have hired a photographer to come with use because we had some much fun taking pictures.

At the bakery: Me, Ursula, Cassidy, Emily, Robin, Ashlee, and Brooke

Our favorite picture!

This was so fun, until in the end we were all left standing except Cassidy who was flat on her back. Her feet had slipped right out from under her.

The good and the bad

One of my favorite things in life is good news. I love hearing good news!! So I guess I'll share mine. I've been really stressed lately about life. I'm at the point in my schooling where I have to take action and make a lot of decisions! I can either do student teaching or an internship, and there are lists of pros and cons for each. I haven't been able to decide which way to go, but I went in and talked with a counselor the other day. As of right now, I need one more semester to finish my generals. That means putting off student teaching a semester and completely eliminating the option of an internship. It's not what I wanted to hear, but now I know exactly which classes I'm taking until I graduate, what is expected of me each semester, and whether or not I student teach. It has made life so much easier since then!

Although life has been on the upside since yesterday, this past weekend was really hard. My Grandpa, Clive Fenton Bybee passed away Nov. 23, 2008. It was a hard time for everyone involved. Grandpa has been living in a care center the past couple years because he was becoming less independent and my grandma couldn't take care of him. He's been struggling with many health issues and finally is at rest. My grandparents love each other so much, and it's hard to see my Grandma hurting! But she knows she'll see him again. I'm glad I got to know my grandpa. He was a good man and a good example. He was a really hard worker and supported and supplied for my grandma for nearly 60 years with 10 kids, 4 foster kids, and 51 grandchildren. He is a great man and I'll miss him a lot! I love you Grandpa!!!

~ash~

Turkey Lurkey

Well it's been forever since I've posted. Here are a few pictures of what I've been up to! Karli and I went with some friends before the weather got yucky and played at a park-so much fun! The next couple pictures are ward FHE's I've been in charge of. The first was a fairytale reinactment type activity. The next one was gingerbread house making! And we posed with our roomie Cassidy. Of course, the next picture is Brett trying to outdue himself yet again. Funny thing is the gum wouldn't come off of his face so we had to use peanut butter! haha And he got some stuck in his eyelashes. Next are the pictures of my Grandpa's funeral. There's my family, his casket, and one with all the kids (including Indian sister Rosie) and my Grandma Bybee.
Then there's Easty boy make his silly smiles! It's the cutest thing, if you tell him "say cheese Easton!" he'll give you the cutest little grin ever! Oh he's a sweetie. Love that baby!

I FIGURED IT OUT!

So after a rocky couple of days I finally figured it out! I once again know why I want to be a teacher! Although it's so much harder than I ever expected, and takes so much more time and effort than I ever dreamed, I love it!

Case #1: Last week I got to help a girl on her math assignment. We tried a couple of different methods until she finally got it. She was so excited! She said, "Finally I get something!"

Case #2: My field partner and I had the assignment of doing an "intervention" with some students who were not performing where they should be. The teacher asked us to help them with math. We were both pretty nervous. But my dad helped us come up with some activities for them and after a few short times of working with them they all improved their math test scores!

Case #3: When we went to leave the class on our last day.... I didn't want to. The students all clung to us. They told us they didn't think we should leave. One boy even stood at the window signing "I love you." :)

Although I'm just beginning to see the hard parts and have no clue what it's all about, I'm so excited to be a teacher!

~Karli

Field Experience

I started my field experience this week. My partner, Whitney, and I are assigned to a 3-5 grade class in Spanish Fork. I love being in the classroom and I love the students. But the teacher is very hard to get along with. I don't really like how he deals with the students and he doesn't give us much direction either.

During this week we have observed him teaching math. We have also had the chance to help the students create puppets as a professional puppeteer teaches them. They have 4 professional artists at the school this week and each students is assigned one to go to. For the first two weeks of field we are just observing and then during the last week we are going to be teaching the lessons that we have been preparing. SCARY!

I love the students. They all have their own personalities. One little boy is so shy and quiet. He comes up to me all the time and asks me for a pencil because he doesn't dare ask the teacher. Another girl asked me if I was coming back the next day. When I told her yes, she replied, "Good, because you're nice."

Although I have been so frustrated after this week because the teacher had such a temper and has been so hard to deal with because he gets into arguments with the other teachers and is unkind to the students, he told us to go observe other classes today (ya, kinda weird, I guess he didn't want us in his class anymore) but watching the other teachers I was reminded why I want to be a teacher again! It was so much fun to be in their classes.

Well sorry about my rantings, but that's what has been going on.

~Karli

Halloween

The week before Halloween we had a Stake Halloween party. They had lots of activities as well as a dance. Ash and I dressed up as Cowgirls. We did Karoke, bowling, facepainting, blacklight ping pong, pie-eating contest, fishing for prizes, and of course dancing. Here are some fun pictures from the night. Our friends dressed up like the 3 amigos, and we convinced them to get their faces painted.

Then the night before Halloween we had our ward Halloween party. We rented out the BYU Bowling Alley for our ward and had everyone dress up in costumes. It was really fun. Me and Ash dressed up like cowgirls again.

For Halloween night, we got dressed up in our REAL costumes. Our roommates had decided to be the characters from CLUE. We rented costumes. Brooke wasn't home when we rented our costumes so she found her own costume--she was the Joker. We planned a mystery dinner with and invited some of our friends. After we played Clue.

Miss White, Miss Peacock, Mrs. Green, Miss Scarlet

~Karli

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, so it has been forever since I have posted and so much has happened. First I will talk about last week. It was SO BUSY! But somehow I got through it all, and survived it. It was the week before I started my field experience so school was crazy. Somehow I survived working on lesson plans for 25 hours, on top of all of my other homework, prepared 3 group presentation, finished planning and had a ward activity, and went to a creative arts workshop! Luckily I had Halloween to look forward to all week. I'll post those pictures in another post.

Somehow being really busy, made me really observant at the same time. I noticed pinenut signs all around Provo. These reminded me of Grandpa Harward. I remember Grandpa buying pinenuts and cooking them and eating them with him.

At the end of the week I got to go to a creative arts workshop to learn how to integrate the arts into my classroom. It was really interesting and I won 2 tickets to Synergetic Dancing Company at UVU!

~Karli

Good News Update!

Good news moment! Well, I think I will list three good things that happened to me this week. 1) my mom picked my camera up from Manti! It has been living there since Lynette's wedding Aug 14, and been so lonely. 2) I asked a boy out. Yes, me. Actually I'm not sure if this is a positive thing or not? I've never done this before, but I'm really proud of myself! Besides the fact that Karli held my hand while I made the phone call and Emily helped me decide what to say, I did it completely on my own! 3) I don't work at Golden Corral tomorrow. Now I need money, but at the same time, I get to go see High School Musical 3 and get paid for it with my other job!
~ash~

Fall Fun

Last night our roommates had a first Halloween party. I got a really good recipe for Chicken Tortilla soup from DeAnn at work so I decided to try it. It was so good, and it was fun to try a new recipe. But we discovered that starting to cook real food when you are at college is expensive because we don't have all the ingredients on hand. Brooke insists that it tastes just like the chicken enchilada soup at Chili's so I was really proud of it!

After dinner, we had Apple Crisp that Emily made for all of us, and we carved pumpkins.

We only had one injury during the night. Cassidy cut her hand. We weren't sure it it needed stitches so took her to the hospital and had my brother-in-law look at it. She didn't end up needing stitches though.

~Karli

Some pictures from this semester...

Raintree held a tailgate party a couple of weeks ago. They had facepainting, a blow-up track, food, and lots of other fun stuff. Here are a few pictures from the party and from the game.

Me (Karli), Ashlee, Ursula, and Cassidy
Some of our roommates

News....

Mostly I haven't posted because I haven't felt like I have anything to post, but Ash wants me to post about my week. Mostly I've been doing the same routine of working and going to school. I love the Elementary Education program, but each week I think that I've hit my maximum work level, and they still tend to surprise me. I struggle complaining about a lot of the work though because it's not busy work, and I can see the benefits all the assignments, it just seems overwhelming at times. I feel like I'm learning so much in such a small amount of time, and it's exciting, but kind of scary at the same time that I am going to be responsible for teaching all that I'm learning to kids.

Thursday night I went to a Joshua James concert with Emily, Brett, and Morgan. I hadn't heard any of his music before we went, and although I probably wouldn't go out and buy his c.d. I enjoyed listening to the concert. Friday night I went to Homecoming Spectacular at BYU. I really enjoyed it. Tomorrow we're going to the BYU game, and we're going to freeze, but o well, I guess it shows that we're true fans? That's what they tell me, but I guess we'll see when we're sitting in the frigid temperatures.
~Karli

Rebuttal

So now it is my turn to post my rebuttal. I wasn't rebelling against posting, I just really haven't had time. I'm really not sure about the whole clean room thing either, all I know is it doesn't work the other way around. :) Love ya Ash. But I'll be better about posting, I promise!
~Karli

Back on track

Wow, I got way off topic here! So the blog for the day is a short summary of my week. About a month ago I started working with Community Work Program through the Provo School District. I love it!! I work with students who have been involved in special ed programs throughout school and now after they've graduated are trying to learn how to work in the community. It's a really fun job and I even get to practice my sign language with the students. So I work there mornings for about 4 hours and then at Golden Corral as a server friday afternoons. School is going pretty good, just really stressful somedays. I'm majoring in Special Education and am taking classes monday-thursday from 3-7 pm, so it keeps me pretty busy! Tuesday was probably my favorite night of the week! I went on a date with a boy named Ryan Kitchen from American Fork, and we doubled with Natty and Ryan (my cousins), which Ryan is Ryan's best friend (got it? No I did not go on a date with my cousin's husband, I went with his best friend) Anyway, we went to Olive Garden, had a blast, and then went bowling. To spice things up a bit, we decided on the second game that whichever couple lost (least amount of points), would plan and pay for the next date. Well, apparently Natalie and Ryan had some secret moves up their sleeves that they whipped out on the floor, and Ryan and I lost by a whopping 14 points. Lame! Oh well I don't mind planning dates...but just for extra support, does anyone have ideas of fun, cheap, and WARM dates? Let me know! This week was exciting because I got to see Easton, Linsi, and Jonathan a lot, and play with Coy, Ian, and Emma (Cassy and Brayden's kids). The Peck family (lins and jp) even came and visited me at work at golden corral! And then after work I went to the BYU football team fireside at my stake. What a day! (your turn Karli bug)
~ash~

Messy rooms and cotton candy

Ok, so I was wrong, or Karli is trying to make a point! She will NEVER write on this blog which seems pointless since this is both of ours. Just kidding Karli, this might sound a little harsh, but as soon as she reads it she'll write her own message. It's the same thing with our bedroom. If our room is a mess, (which happens often since we both work part-time and go to school full-time, and try to balance social lives on top of it!) and I have an extra 15 minutes to hurry and straighten it up, as soon as Karli sees it, she will drop anything she's doing and clean her part of the room! (Even if she's sicker than a dog laying in her bed with a migraine)
~ash~

We got a blog!!

Unbeknownst to Karli-bug, we now have a blog together! Yea! So for all you friends and relatives wondering what we're up to in our lives, here's the spot to find out. We will try to update this and tell about our lives, although I have a feeling Karli will contribute on a daily basis. (Not that I'm lazy...but this is more Karli's thing!)
~ash~