My newest "New & Exciting"!

There's been SO much fun & excitement happening since my last random post! But for now, I'm just gonna put this little update out there!

I'm moving!

I'm moving next week.

Next week I am moving to Satan's Basement*.

*Satan's Basement is also known as Yuma, Arizona. Since Yuma is Hotter than Hades, I decided that to get hotter than Hades, you must be in Satan's basement. Hahaha!

I don't know WHY I'm going to Yuma, other than a Super Excited Principal who offered me an amazing job! But I am pretty sure that I'm supposed to go to Yuma. Here's why.

One Wednesday I sent out my resume, cover letter & letters of recommendation to about 12

school districts with Rodel qualifying schools. That afternoon/evening I got calls from 3 schools in the Crane District in (You guessed it) Yuma. I missed 2 of the calls because my phone only vibrated for calls, instead of ringing. The last call that night, I answered. I talked with a Principal who wanted to interview me for a 2nd grade ELD position, with 12 students in the class! That sounded amazing! She (like the other 2 principals who'd left me voice mails) wanted to do a phone interview on Thursday or Friday. I was leaving EARLY Thursday morning to drive through a lot of unknown cell phone reception, to hike all day of Friday, so.... Yeah. Instead of trying to set something up for the following week, she called me back about 10 minutes later & did the interview. .... & she unofficially offered me the job!! The next morning she called my references & texted me- excited to tell me my references were fantastic & officially offer me the job! H.L. Suverkrup.... I knew that if I went to Yuma, it would be for this job.

Thursday morning/afternoon 2 or 3 more principals

called me, again hoping to set up phone interviews. ... ALL of them were also from Yuma. The only other responses I got from those 11 or so other districts were a couple e-mails telling me the positions that had been open had been filled, & a couple districts telling me to fill out an application before they would even consider me. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! I just felt Yuma calling me... LoL... LITERALLY!)

This was about when I started asking myself... Yuma? Yuma...?? YUMA????

My phone died on that trip, & so bought me most of a week of more time to decide. I kept in touch with the Principal through e-mail, but by the time my new phone came on the Following Wednesday (A WEEK after our phone interview & job offer), she thought I was calling to turn down the position. (NOT because of anything I'd said, or lack of contact, she said, but because I'm "SUCH a good teacher, why would I want to go

to Yuma??" lol) She had asked "on a scale of 1-10", where was I? ... 1 being I'm unable to relocate, 10 being I'm absolutely coming. She was SO excited when I said that I wanted to say 10, except that I hadn't yet found a place to live. I went to Yuma the next day, got my contract & keys to my classroom, & started networking! Before I left Yuma on Friday afternoon, I'd found a place to live, with roommates, a different place for my sweet Bear to live for a year (*SAD thought, but....), & I'd already found some friends!

To be perfectly honest, changes can still be hard for me. I'm SAD to leave some amazing friends & roommates in a place that I love & that has really become home again. I'm scared, but excited! Yuma may or may not melt my brains out, that is yet to be determined. BUT, I know that Yuma will hold many adventures & hopefully a lot of growing experiences!

Labor Day Weekend

The weekend has been good, & it's kind of only half-way over!


Friday after work, meetings, & preping- a little, I came home & spent a little time playing with my nephew before I headed to the Valley. I got to see my former roommates, & had a lot of fun. On Saturday morning, Amber, a few of her friends, & I went to Tempe Town Lake & rented kayaks. It was fun! This isn't a picture of ME, but this is the lake, & the kayak.

I also started reading Breaking Dawn, which I finished on Monday. I Love the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, & I want to buy them all. I also want to read them all in a row, because I read 1-3 LAST summer, then earlier this summer I read the first & second books again, but didn't read the third one again before I read Breaking Dawn. My memory falters (to put it nicely), & especially with books & movies. I can read or watch again & again & have it be like the first time.

Another reason for visiting Mesa was to go to the Temple, & I was glad for that experience. It's a darn good place to be, especially when life feels crazy.

My plan was to come back on Saturday evening, but I was exhausted after rowing for miles in the sun, & playing the rest of the day, so I decided to come back Sunday morning. I did, & met Trenton & Seth at church!! YAY!

On Monday we decided to go out shooting. Trenton has a handgun (some of you may remember from an earlier blog enty...) & we went way out Perkinsville Road & found a place to shoot. I had to laugh, because when I've gone shooting with Mac, I'm GOOD. He even told me that with practice I might become better than him, but I couldn't hit ANYTHING with Trenton's gun! After a minute, he told me to just aim in the general direction we were shooting, & pull the trigger as fast as I could. He said it was great stress relief, & I guess he was right. It was fun anyway. I'll have to see if I can get pictures from Chelsea, because she was having fun taking lots of them!

Coming home, we had a ... pause, of sorts. We were driving back towards my Mom's house, when Cameron & Ethan, sitting in the back, found a centipede crawling around! We stopped the car, all got out, & Trenton & Cameron tried to find & kill the nasty little bug. They found it, but it went INSIDE the seat- in Trenton's brand new 4 Runner! We finally decided that maybe they'd hit the seat hard enough to knock it out, & that there was nothing we could do more without tools. We piled back in, but Mom & Chelsea didn't want to sit in the back seats anymore, & we didn't want to put Seth back there, so all three of them sat on my lap in the front seat. It was funny! Especially when Trenton reached down & tickled Mom's leg, & she thought it was the Centipede! She wiggled all over & screamed. Trenton laughed so hard he almost cried. It was an adventure, for sure! The sad part was that with our detour, I missed my good friend's birthday party! :o( That wasn't so fun.

Overall though, My long weekend, was a GOOD weekend!

Over 40!!

So, I was really excited last time I filled up my gas tank & checked my mileage!
I got over 40 Miles per Gallon!!!
What made this discovery even happier is the fact that most of that tank of gas was used with my new "commute" to work. So hopefully this will be the norm.
Yay!

** Update!
So, I have to fill up more frequently than I'm used to, since I'm driving much farther every day, BUT... I filled up again on Wednesday, and when I calculated my mileage.......

42.77 miles per gallon!!

Wow! I was so excited! Who knew that Hot Stuff could do so darn good!!?!

California... & Getting a new Sister-in-law

Last Friday morning I left my house. I haven't been back yet, and don't expect to get home for several more days. First I headed up to Prescott where I met up with my family & headed west to California. We got there pretty late & met up with Grammy & Seth, who had left earlier with Trenton. Cameron drove all the way to California, and almost into LA (Yeah, we're not going to talk about that)... ;) ... And then I became the LA driver. Almost the whole rest of the trip I drove Mom's car, with only a couple of exceptions.


Saturday, after sleeping in more than we'd planned, we headed to Six Flags to play at Hurricane Harbor. I'm proud of myself for the fear-level of some of the rides that I actually went on. We did really well at applying sunscreen before we left, & re-applying while we were out. After a day at a water park, my family who would usually be sunburned, only had a couple of pink spots.

We went to dinner with all of our family, including Terina & Brent, Grammy, Travis & Stef, & Travis' groomsmen. That was fun times... & really funny to be texting across the table because the group was too big to just have one conversation.

Sunday morning we went over to Santa Monica to meet Travis. Trenton & the kids played on the beach while the rest of us went to the Rehearsal Dinner. That was probably when I really realized that I was actually going to be IN the wedding. After the rehearsal dinner & everything involved in that, the girls all headed up to get our nails done. That was my first ever manicure & pedicure-professional style. It was funny to realize that Stef's Mom was giving me a graduation present too! I looked at the Bridal magazines with Stef. That was a little funny too.

Monday was the day of the first family wedding I've been to. I'm such a cry-baby, & cried as I stood beside the woman who is now my Sister, & my brother's wife. Her Brother became an ordained minister & performed the ceremony, & it was so sweet. He even included some... surprise vows. Vows like: "I will buy you junk food at odd hours of the night. I will watch old black & white movies with you whenever you ask." ... and... "I will close the cupboard doors when you leave them open. I will pick up your dirty clothes when you leave them on the floor." I wish I could have seen Stefanie's face when she had to repeat the one about the cupboards, because from the back it REALLY looked like she was going to refuse to say it. :) The weekend was a huge realization that there are a lot of people out there who know my little brother better than I do. I've seen him just 3 times-ish in the past 3 1/2 years or more, and I miss him. It's cool though, because despite the fact that I know so little of who he is now, & that I really hardly know Stef, I love Travis, & by extension I love Stef. I hope that I can find a way to make them a bigger part of my life. Same thing goes for my other siblings, for that matter, though I have spent much more time with most of them in the past many years than I have with Travis.
Tuesday we spent some time down in Hollywood, then headed home. We left after we knew we should in order to avoid the bulk of the traffic, but somehow it still didn't slow us down too much. Mom wasn't too happy with me keeping up with Trenton for the first leg of the trip, because it definitely dropped our gas mileage. After we filled up with gas I stopped driving, because the tired was kicking in. I slept for a while... after I helped Seth decide to be a good traveler again (because really he IS so good, always). After a while I started staying awake, because Chelsea wasn't doing too good at talking & keeping the driver talking & such. That was about when I got to start hollering at my MOM about her driving. It felt like a role-reversal of the stereotypical. We were all laughing so hard, and that was what made me keep it up. We did get home safe & sound, & tired, last night, even though the tired driving, curvy roads, & hollering gave me heartburn.

Now it's on to other places & things, & dealing with other feelings.

Busy, busy BUSY!

I am ALMOST done! I'm almost done teaching already anyway, but I still wouldn't have imagined that these last few weeks could be SO busy. I'm finishing up my big senior capstone paper for resubmition tomorrow, I'm down to 3 more spanish classes & my final, Student Teaching is going to be over sooner than I know (and maybe sooner than I'd like with only about 7 days left!), I will finally be done suffering through my spanish 314 class at ASU, and maybe I'll have a minute to sit down and BREATHE! That is, AFTER Travis & Stef's wedding, the trip involved with that (and the fun yet to be had), and my actual Graduation. :o)

For now I'm still running around like crazy, and working on all I have yet to finish.