What do you do in the summertime?

I get eaten by mosquitoes.


This is one mosquito bite. It measured 130 cm across.The doctor says it will most likely get worse before it gets better. In the mean time I have nick-named it Gigantor.

Girls Camp!!!

I survived my first girl’s camp as a leader.
It was a little strange going to girl’s camp as a responsible adult. I'm not sure that I actually fulfilled that part of my calling, the responsible part, that is. I felt as if I was just another one of the girls. The leaders joked about how this year at camp there were 14 girls and one leader, and sadly that one leader was a Laurel.

On the last day of camp we modified one of the camp songs to fit our ward a little better. Here is the verse we modified:
The leader down at camp Shalom they say are mighty fine.
They play in Biffy water and act like they are nine.
Oh Gee I wanta go to camp shalom!


I guess we just thought the leaders needed to have some fun too. While the girls were doing their stake certification hike we went hiking too. This was so the leaders that were married could call their husbands. We also made sure to take advantage of the snow on the cliffs. We went sledding down a glacier. I know it is shocking; to hear that scrardey pants Rosie went sledding down a glacier. It’s amazing what a little peer pressure will do for you.

When returned from our hike four hours later we started our scripture study for the day. In the middle of the scripture study a water line burst by our cabin and water was spraying everywhere. A few minutes later the leaders of the 8th ward were having a mud fight. Don't worry our girls never left the fire and continued with their scripture study. What can I say we had the most righteous girls at camp.

We did have a spiritual experience at camp. The stake did a wonderful job with speakers. Each day we had a new speaker and they all did a wonderful job. We had everything from a recently returned solider who spoke on what the flag meant to him to Nephi, who shared with us his feelings about the gospel and what the vision of the tree of life meant to him.

I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to go to girl’s camp. I felt as if I learned more from the girls then I could have ever taught them. They have such strong spirits.

The spirit was so strong at camp and it helped me to strengthen my testimony of the gospel. I am so thankful to be a member of this church and to be able to work in the young women’s organization. This truly is the Lord's Church

P.S. I am waiting for some more pictures from one of the other leaders. So I will post more pictures and videos when I get them.

SORRY!!!

I know, I know, all my blog entries start off with how I'm still alive and how I haven't posted anything in a really long time. Well, here I go again.

I'm still alive and I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a really, really, really,long time. I just haven't been in a blogging mood. I still am a faithful reader and check all the blogs each day. I just haven't had any super exciting news to share. I haven't recently had a baby like Amanda. I'm not pregnant and going to find out the gender of the baby, like Mike and Becky. I've just been doing the same thing every day.

I'm grateful that this past week has been spring break at school. My patience was running thin with all the events that have taken place in my classroom with crying.I was really looking forward to some rest. I must admit I was a little disappointed to wake up to this today. I had to steal the picture off mom's facebook page.


I have used this week off to rest, clean up the house, and prepare for girls camp that is less then 2 months away.

Overall, Mark and I have been doing great. We have been slowly looking for homes and trying to get things in order to hopefully be in a new place by the end of the summer. Mark is still working with Taylor and he really enjoys his new field of work. We just got a letter informing us that he has been selected to be interviewed for a scholarship, and we are hoping he can get the scholarship and start school this fall.

As always I will end my post with the promise to try and be better at blogging but I can't promise anything.

I know many have wondered if we are still alive. It has been over a month since our last post. We are alive, we are just busy. Here is an update.
Mark is still working for Taylor Electric and he loves it. He is currently working on the new high school in Heber. I haven't worried about him working up there until the snow started to fall. I guess I'm just a little paranoid about that canyon with snow and ice. Luckily Mark car pools with some guys from work so he is not driving the 2 wheel drive truck up there alone.

I am preparing for my last week of teaching before the much needed Christmas break. I just want a few days to myself where I don't have to be teacher or Mrs. Curtis. I am still enjoying teaching for the most part. I will admit there are some days that I want to quit and be done but I'm hoping these feelings are just because I am a first year teacher trying to get the hang of this.

For Thanksgiving this year Mark and I headed down south to be with his family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at his parents. It was my first Thanksgiving away from my family. It was a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Mark and I got up early the following Friday to participate in “Black Friday”. We even got Nancy to come along since she has never attended. We thought being down in a small town like Richfield, the crowds wouldn't be so bad. Boy, were we wrong. The line for Wal-Mart was the length of the parking lot and there were two lines. We decided to go for an $8 jacket and some entertainment. Instead we came out with a George Forman grill, a video camera, a portable DVD player, a toy for my nephew and a jacket. I don’t think we should go shopping on “Black Friday” for entertainment anymore.
I told Nancy that I wanted her to come up north next year and go shopping with me. She was the best part of shopping. She is true shopper and so I was surprised she had never gone. Mark stood back why Nancy and I immersed ourselves into the crowd of people grabbing cameras and DVD players. I trying to be polite was walking around the crowd trying to find the most polite way of entering the mob. Pretty soon I hear Nancy scream “Rosie”, as she pops here head up from the middle of the crowd. Then, I hear her say, “I got two”, as I look over I see Nancy holding up two portable DVD players.
As I make my way closer to Nancy to help her with the goods, she screams, “Do you want a video camera?” Before we knew it we had two DVD players and a camera and everyone was asking where we got them.
We then left Wal-Mart and headed over to K-mart. We had a blast and I can’t wait to take Nancy to some real crowds next year.
On Saturday, we carried on our new tradition and headed up to the mountains to cut down our Christmas tree. I was so excited to actually get to cut down our tree in the snow. There was about 2or 3 inches of snow where we were.
We invited Mark’s friend Kevin to come along and I’m sure he enjoyed walking all over the mountain with us as I critiqued every tree we came upon. We finally found a tree I was satisfied with and cut it down and brought it home. After we cut down our tree we took the 4-wheelers a little higher up the mountain to play in some more snow. Although it was cold we had a great deal of fun.

We finally got the tree decorated and the Christmas decorations up. With both of us working this year, I’m not as into the decorating and Christmas feel as I was last year. We have decorations up but that’s about it. I’m hoping to be a little more excited once Christmas break is here.
Merry Christmas!

Halloween 2008

This Halloween was nothing I would have ever expected.
I have been sick on and off for two whole weeks. I thought I was on the healing route this past week, but boy, was I wrong.

I went in to the doctors office for a cold I had for a week and it just wasn't getting any better. He gave me an antibiotic and it helped a lot. but the minute I was done taking the dosage, all of my symptoms were back. I tried to just take it easy but on Wednesday the following week I felt like I had the flu. I called a sub and went to the doctor where he gave a stronger antibiotic. It was called Factive. I started to take it and I was feeling a little bit better. Last Tuesday I took my last pill. I wouldn't say I felt like a million bucks but I was feeling better then usual.
That night I had to go to my new teacher cohort meeting in Pleasant Grove and then I had to hurry back and for my visiting teachers to stop by. As I was leaving the Elementary school I noticed my legs were a little itchy. I lifted my pant leg and noticed a few red bumps. I didn't think much of it and carried on with my schedule. Later that evening after the visiting teachers left I went into the back room to talk to Mark. The whole time I was just scratching away at my leg. Mark called my attention to it and I lifted up my pant legs and my legs had more red bumps. I pulled up my shirt sleeves and my arms had a few red bumps too. This was when I began to think that I had hives. I called mom to ask if it was common to get hives after taking the full dosage of medicine. She said that it can happen but its not as common. I decided to take some Benadryl and go to bed. I knew I would be okay in the morning.

When Mark woke me up the next morning I was a little surprised to find I was covered from head to toe with red bumps. I quickly got ready for work and headed to the school. I was supposed to go to a new teacher math conference that morning so I had arranged for a half day sub already. I decided I would just extend my lesson plan for a whole day and call my sub and just make arrangements for her to stay the whole day. I didn't even think twice that maybe my sub could not sub the entire day for me. Thanks goodness my fellow first grade team members helped me find a sub for the second half. I headed home to rest and take a heaping dosage of Benadryl.

I slept the day away and it seamed that the hives were just getting worse. By that evening Mark came home and was preparing to go to Young Mens. I decide to get up and walk around for a minute. The minute I got up I became faint and I blacked out. Luckily Mark was there to catch me. Mark helped me to the bed so I could lay down and relax. We decide right then I needed to get to a hospital. Mark called for our Home teacher to come help give me a blessing. Mom and Dad came over to help get me in the car and get me dressed to go outside.

Mark took me over the the Orem Community Hospital at 6:45, and just our luck they were busy. We got registered at the desk and then we had to wait for the 3 people in front of us. When they finally called my name they whisked off into a room and started to check my vitals. My blood pressure was very low, I had a temperature of 102.8 and I was dehydrated. They hooked me up to an IV and then I waited. They ran some more test on me and found that my white blood count was very high. Mark was a little upset with the doctor that came in and told us that from what he could see I had an allergic reaction to something and that was why I was covered with a rash, and I had some kind of infection for my white blood count to be so high. We kinda already knew all that. So he wrote me a prescription for something to help with the itching and told me to stay home for the rest of the week unless i started to feel better. Needless to say the ER doctor was very helpful. We finally left the hospital at 11:30pm.

We went home where I slept for a few hours but was up with uncontrollable itching and coughing. I went into the bathroom to find my face swollen. I couldn't get back to sleep after that, and I was keeping Mark up. I stayed up for the rest of the evening on the couch watching Ocean's 12. When Mark's alarm went off for him to go to work, I called mom to see if she could come over and get me so I could get my prescription filled and to stay with me because with the swelling in my face, the doctor was worried that my throat might swell up and cut off my air supply. Mom came and got me and found me looking like this.

I was just lucky enough, once again to have my team help me find a substitute and prepare my classroom with sub plans.

I ended up at the doctor later that day where they ran more tests on me. They decided to give my body some time to rest and they wanted to see me again in the morning.

The next day was Halloween. I was going to have to miss my very first Halloween as a teacher. I didn't have to worry about finding a sub thank goodness because my team had already arranged one. As much as I wanted to go I knew I couldn't go looking like this. This is what my body looked like as of Friday evening.

This is my leg.






















My back.



My arm.













Thank goodness the swelling in my face finally went down too.

So I guess the moral of this story is... I won't be taking Factive anytime soon.
I'm so sad that i missed my first Halloween. On a funnier note I did have mom take me up to the school so I could see all the kids dressed up. I was able to walk in my room and it in the back and watch my kids for 15 minutes with out any of them noticing me. I also was able to poke my head into my mentor teacher's classroom and say hello and she had to ask who I was.
As of today my arms and face are starting to look like normal and the red spots that cover the rest of my body are starting to look lighter. I am going to attempt teaching school tomorrow in slippers.

One down one more to go!

I just finished my first ever, parent teacher conference tonight and I have one more to do tomorrow. I know a lot of you have wondered what in the world has happened to me. I'm not dead I'm just busy. Now that I have finished up with one parent teacher conference I'm hoping things will run a little smoother. Well, as smooth as a first ear can go.
I do have one more obstacle this month. I have my first principal observation and then maybe I'll feel better.
I am enjoying teaching most days. I get tired really easy and of course some days I want to give up, but thank goodness for, Mark that won't let me and my family that push me a long and help me in so many ways.

I do have some things to post about, like the brand new king size bed Mark and I bought that I love so very much. Also, Mark and I are planning on going out this weekend to finally try out the 4 wheeler we received from Mark's parents a while ago. I also have fall break next week so I can get some posts up with pictures.

I get bored easily!

Mark was gone for a few hours on Saturday and I decided I had, had enough of the ponytail. These are the reults!