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!

Dog the Bounty Hunter

To all of you that know me and know that I actually watch Dog and enjoy watching Dog you are going to love my adventures today in First Grade.

Today in my afternoon class I was working with the whole class on a graphing assignment where we looking for who had the longest name and the shortest name in the class. I did it like a guessing game. I randomly pulled kids name out of a jar and the kids would write the letters to the mystery students name in the boxes on there paper. Don't worry, this is just background knowledge all you really need to know is, I was spelling students names and allowing the kids to guess who's name I was spelling. After I gave one letter they all started guessing.

I came to on child who's name started with a "D". I said, "First letter is a "d", I heard some logical guesses, then I heard one that caught me off guard. One little boy who sits right next to where I was working said, "D" Dog. I didn't really think to much of it because he is known to say random things before. Then I gave the next letter, "E" I over heard him again, "Its got to be dog." Now your thinking this is kinda funny because dog is spelled with an "o" not a "e". Well, when I gave the next letter it was all I could do to keep myself from laughing out loud. I said to the class, "the next letter is "r". I then heard the little boy say, "r?" "Darn it can't be dog." Then he says to himself, "that's okay because Dog the Bounty Hunter isn't in our class any way."

I just wanted to laugh out loud after that. I'm so glad I had on my good listening ears so I could catch his little conversation with himself. I'm also glad Dog the Bounty Hunter is not a student in my class.

On a side note, I had my first student burst into tears today, and I thought I had a pink eye outbreak. I had a student come to school after being diagnosed with pink eye yesterday. Then today I had another girl with all the same symptoms. I sent her off to the nurse, and disinfected my desks right away. Come to find out later, when I was reading my students information sheets, I read on the little girls sheet who I thought had pink eye, that she has sever allergies and gets read puffy watery eyes that sometimes can be mistaken for pink eye. OOPS!

I survived!!!!

I just survived my very first day of teaching! It is 9:00pm and I just got home for the day but I survived. I even had a little fun. None of my first day of school nightmares came true I feel like I had the class under control and no one was called in to supervise or assist. I think that counts for something.
I did have some interesting things happen, I had a student pee her pants and we had to call her mom. I had my class fish die over the weekend and no one noticed it including me until after lunch. I was hoping no one would think to look at the fish since no one in the morning even mentioned it but without fail one student had to come over right before class ended and say to me rather loudly, "Hey, what happened to the red fish?" This then caused a ripple effect and soon I had the whole class chiming in where's the fish or what fish?, or I can't find the fish? If anyone says anything tomorrow I'll just say I decided to take the fish home!
Wish me luck as now I have to be back tomorrow at 7:30 am to do it all over again!

It's finally done!

This post is dedicated to my wonderful family!
Thank you for all you have done to help me get where I am today. All the time and effort you have given me through the years and the past few months. Thank you for supporting me from the very beginning. Thanks to all those that stayed up with me and let me cry on their shoulders that encouraged me when I wanted to give up. Believed in me no matter what!

Thank you Mark, for putting up with me, late at night when I was freaking out over something that seemed really big at the time, but really was small in the end. Thank you for letting me spend a little extra money to make my room feel more complete. For putting up with late night take out or lack of sleep so I could get one more thing complete. Thank you for your prayer and blessings to helped me get through school and life. Thank you for just being there!

Thank you Mom, for putting up with me from the very beginning of things. Thanks for putting up with my melt downs and still encouraging me to keep going. You never gave up on me. Thank you for the hours of cutting and coloring and other time and effort you put into projects to make me stand out and helped me go above and beyond. Thank you for still helping me when I get frustrated and take it out on you even though you didn't deserve it. Thank you for your creativity and pushiness. Those little things you pushed me to do really did make all the difference. Thank you for all the hours you have spent and the money you have spent. And also even though I said I didn't want it, thank you for the fish in my room.

Thank you Dad, for supporting me and encouraging to keep going in your own special way. Thank you for, letting mom be gone all the time to help me. Thank you for not shooting her when she bought another thing for me and my classroom. Thank you for coming after work to help mark the cupboards in my room it really made a difference. Thanks for coming and examining the globe in my room or providing comic relief when we have been working in my room. Thank you for all you have done.

Thank you Amanda, for your willingness to help out. Thank you for all the hours and hours you have put into making posters, and post cards, and writing my class list 500 times on 50 different things. Thank you for dragging your boys to my classroom to help me put up bulletin boards. Thank you for all of your encouraging remarks and telling me how proud you are of me. Thank you for letting me call you or text you all the time just so I can ask you what you think about putting a certain sign in my room. Thank you for always being the big sister that wasn't afraid to be honest with me. Thank you for everything you have done for me.

Thank you Cameron, for letting me steal your wife time and time again. Thank you for taking the boys all day on a Saturday so Amanda could spend more time helping me.

Thank you Tait, Blake and Miles, for enduring hours and hours of time in a small classroom watching movies on a little TV while your mom and I set up my room. Thank you Tait and Blake for sharpening all the pencils in my classroom. Thank you for trying your very hardest to be extra good while we completed just one more thing, in hopes that Aunt Rosie would keep her word and take you out to the playground. I owe you a few hours on the playground. Thanks for hanging in there.

Thank you Mike and Becky, for being willing to help out in any way. To come up to help me organize books even if it fell through. Thank you for your willingness Becky to cut out hundred of word wheels while we camped. Thank you for always being interested in what I was doing and how the classroom was coming. Thanks for just being willing to talk about school.

Thank you to my grandparents, for supporting me through the years and always being there to encourage me. Thank you Grandma Winnie for always asking how the classroom is going and telling me what a wonderful teacher I will be and how proud you are of me. Thank you for giving me a love of reading and all the books you have given me over the years. Thank you!

Thank you to all the other people that have helped and supported me along the way.

I am so very lucky my Heavenly Father blessed me with such a kind, loving and supportive family. I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't have them! I hope that by me reaching my goal to become a teacher I help a few others feel like they too have reached a goal. I hope I can help and encourage anyone else to reach for the stars and make their dreams a reality.

This slide show is for all those that helped me reach my dream!