Mid-July what?

I'll skip past all the boring things I was supposed to have done for my classroom and curriculum by now and just tell you that I have not been very productive this summer. I blame my motivation sucking job and this awesome July cold that I can't seem to kick. It's fun. Onwards....
So about a month ago when we first moved into our new apartment Mark was doing dishes while I was doing something unproductive I'm sure and I hear the most awful noise. Turns out he let the disposal eat up one of my spoons. I was quite unhappy. We vowed to never let it happen again and threw the mangled spoon away. Well a few weeks went by without incident and then it happened again. So I was down two spoons. I was extremely unhappy and told husband he owed me a new silverware set. Today the hubs came home from an interview and had me come out to the kitchen (I was still in bed because of the cold) and guess what? I came out to flowers and a silverware set, boy sure knows how to make my heart swoon.

Today was also a really great day because I did my first load of laundry post-marriage without leaving my house. Oh man, I have been missing out on life. Amy and Jake decided to up and move to NC without us and so they gave us their washer and dryer. I may have promised Mark if he went through all of the work to move the washer and dryer into our house I would do all the laundry for the rest of forever. I woke up this morning with the mindset that if I accomplished nothing else a load of laundry would be done. And it was! This is going to last about two weeks folks. Oh motivation where art thou?
In other news this girl came home and I'm really happy, because I missed her loads and loads. Well this is a random posting....here's to hopefully feeling better soon.

Oh...hey.

Thanks for still checking back at my neglected corner of the internet. This summer has been kind of hard. The craziness of May made June a breath of fresh air, but it quickly turned stagnant as I fell into a routine of working my 40 hours at a job I greatly dislike and being frustrated that I can't just be teaching already. If nothing else this summer will teach me patience. I just hate this weird inbetween time where I am working at being a teacher, but not really being paid to be one. I just put in my two weeks notice and I've never been so excited to be done with a job in my life. Yippee!
Now for the exciting stuff!
Last week my sister-in-law Cheryl (or Cherelle as the fitting room attendant decided. How complicated can you make her name?) came in from Chicago and so my mother-in-law took all the girls to Park City for an overnight shopping trip. It was a blast and I was able to add to my "teacher" wardrobe. We got Cafe Rio and went swimming and I got girl time! When does that happen?
We also went climbing up Rock Canyon in Provo on Friday. Amy and Jake described it aptly as a "ball tingler". We did a multipitch up two walls to get to Ed and Terry wall which is what we really came up there to climb. Getting down was the rough part. We had to climb down and around the second pitch to a pair of chains in order to repel down. Have I mentioned that I HATE repelling? As I was clutching my slings (which were clipped into the chains) and standing on a 3 inch ledge I began to freak out. Jake noticed, and decided to belay me down in order to save my sanity. The next ledge was about 25-30 feet and I felt much better. I even repelled down that one. Boo-ya!
Even though my hands are actually falling apart...peeling skin EVERYWHERE. I'm dying to go climbing again. Mark and I have been going up Logan Canyon and it has been great. Oh, and pictures!

First....check out this handsome man of mine! He looks pretty legit does he not? 

 Second, the view from our little perch below Ed and Terry Wall. If you look closely you can see Amy's helmet....sometimes when you're really high up you whip out your iPhone for just as long as it takes to get a quick shot off, and then you put it away and realize later that you didn't aim well.

Words to the Wise.

Don't move in May when you are also graduating, have a brother graduating, have a family member pass away, have a husband in class 9-7 everyday, and be starting a new job.
Seriously, May was crazy. However, we survived Mark most of all. The hubs was in class way too long folks, but now that May is over I have him all to myself. It also helps we're working the same schedule for work too.
Hopefully there will be some major adventuring soon!

And just because I'm one proud big sister, here's of picture of Coulson and all his friends. He's the handsome one with all the money around his neck. I mean his last name is Rich after all. He's headed off to Argentina at the end of July and I'm so excited for him!

Officialness.

I'm a grown up.
I kind of thought it would never happen, but guys I HAVE A CAREER!
Cue screaming and squealing and a whole ton of thanking the Lord.
Prayer works. So does paying your tithing. Do this.
Anyways....the deets.
I'll be teaching English and Journalism at my beloved Mountain Crest High School. Since I'll be heading up the school newspaper I think we can safely just begin calling me Mrs. Shelton.
Except that all my kids just call me Pool-E. Emphasis on the E. It's my fault, since I told them my last name was like a swimming pool with an E. It just kind of stuck...well mostly I just answer to anything that sounds remotely like teacher. Including teacher lady.
I digress.
So my contract is for a year with the opportunity to renew in the spring as long as I don't royally screw this up. Do you feel better that the innovators of tomorrow are in my very capable hands? Good, me too.
This is kind of a rambling post. I'm just super excited to have a job and a pretty wonderful one at that. Bring on graduation!

all deliberate speed.

Isn't funny how we both dread and look forward to things? And then without any warning they are already here and it's almost as if time has speed itself up. This is how today felt. I've looked forward to this day for four months knowing that once it was over my life would not only go back to not being crazy (since doing student teaching and working part time equals me having NO time to do anything). Yet, all this week I've been dreading today because it means I have to let go of my wonderful kids.
No more essays to grade, tests to worry about, planning lessons, or being concerned over the graduation of certain students. This whole experience has been a huge rollercoaster of emotions and I am tremendously grateful for the it.
I know that I was incredibly blessed with two truly wonderful cooperating teachers, Mark and Gordon. Who taught me more than I can really articulate. They have been so incredibly patient dealing with my rants about grammar and transfer of skills, government and the education program. They have also been key in many successes I had in the classroom. I know they are standing on the sidelines cheering me on and hoping as much as I am hoping that I snag one of the openings at Mountain Crest and we can continue to have music battles in the hallways and drive everyone crazy.
My kids. Oh man I love them, every single one of them. Some of them don't believe that, but I do. I made a discovery this semester. I have maternal instincts, which is strange for me. Today when I told my last hour of kids goodbye I totally cried because I want to see every single one of them grow up and do amazing things. But I have to let them go with the knowledge that Mrs. Poole cared about them and hopefully I made an impact of some sort.
I was made to be a teacher, guys. This I know for sure.

Career what?

Just applied for my first REAL job. I mean like career job, not the job you take to get you through college which you would have considered a real job when you were 16. No I'm talking the big kahuna, the career job.
The application is in and I'm freaking out. Would be in serious love if they opted to hire me. Keep your fingers crossed.
Oh and only three more weeks of this craziness that is student teaching and working at the same time. Then I get my life back. Hooray!

Sometimes I Just Want to Hug Them.

Sometimes I just want to hug my students because they say the sweetest things like how they think I'm going to be a good teacher, how they like how I teach, etc.
I also want to hug them when I read their papers and they are nothing short of amazing. I also want to slap the kids who did a crappy job, but I'll save that post for later.
I'm lucky to have cooperating teachers who are very kind to me even when lessons are chaotic and I'm still learning about how to be a "real" teacher. There are moments in the chaos where I feel proud though. I'm actually doing this! You know how you dream about your future career and hope it will be as fulfilling as you always dreamed it would be? Well teaching does this for me. Those moments where a kid looks at me with new found understanding about a concept or I just know my kids are having a good time and learning too just fill my heart to the brim. It's also in the moments where a student realizes you really do care. For example, I told one of my students I would attend the school play he was in. He was so excited when I actually showed up, and couldn't stop talking about it the next day. It felt good.
The trimester ends this next week. I don't want to say goodbye to my kids, well maybe I'll be fine saying goodbye to a few of them....Really though, my kids are the best and I'm nervous about getting a brand new set and how that will all go down. Nervous, but excited.
I finally broke down and bought all the stuff to do gel nails at home. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I'll have fancy nails for more than five minutes!
Also we're looking at moving. Very seriously. Just waiting to know for sure where the teaching job will be at (I had an AWESOME meeting with my principal, since there will be two openings and MCHS in the English department at the end of the year). Keep your fingers crossed. I know we are crossing ours!

On this the day of Love.

I know my husband and I are made for each other. I know this because, I bought him chocolate milk and donuts and he bought me chocolate oranges (couldn't find these at Christmastime to save my life!).
Yeah, we like food over here.

Sweetest things.

Since my life and every ounce of my time currently belongs to MCHS I have a list instead of a real life post. Since some of life still needs to be documented especially the really sweet things:
- Mark dug the car out of the snow for me yesterday. He also warms it up every morning. That man. He's swell.
- Coming home to hot cocoa after a particularly long Monday.
- The student who told me that she loves the way I teach.
- Mark making dinner AND doing dishes while I sit in the spare room typing out lesson plans.
- Family members who ordered birthday presents for me from Spain.
- Our nightly activity of Lego Harry Potter, except when Mark hits me with a spell, then I get annoyed.
- University Supervisors who are really nice when your government class was a little chaotic during your observation.
Now back to lesson planning.

Surviving.

So to say this last week and a half has been a breeze would really be a load of crap. I am loving student teaching, don't get me wrong. But the whole working after teaching....kind of sucks. It doesn't help that I've got senioritis way bad and just want to be done working a job that doesn't include teaching English.
My kids are pretty great to far. No one is throwing things at me or tying me up, so I consider it a success. I confiscated a cell phone the other day, and it made me feel powerful and also very old. My mom said that I was being mean, but I have to be strict so that they don't walk all over me right?
So far I am surviving, and loving it. This has brought me WAY outside my comfort zone, but at the same time to a place where I feel like I belong. I get what these kids are saying and I'm trying to show them that I can teach them something worth while. I think that has been the hardest part of teaching, is showing them that what we're talking about will help them regardless of what they plan to do when they're done with high school. One girl told me she didn't need to write well and have good grammar because she was going to be a hair stylist, I told her to go home and do some looking into what hair school requires and what running her own salon would require. She came back and I think that she understands now that I'm not teaching something trivial. Or at least that is the hope.
 More than anything though, I have never felt better about the decisions I have made in my college career that have brought me to this point. I guess my 18 year old self really did know what she was doing.

Once.

Once upon a time there was a girl who decided to go to Utah State and become and English teacher. All of this sounded really good because it was a really far off thing. She assumed she would get over her fear of talking in front of people and feel like she knew everything there was to know about being a good teacher. Then reality settled in and she realized that in four years of education she still gets scared in front of people and she feels like she knows less now about how to be a good teacher than she did was she graduated high school....
In two days I am going to have my own classroom of juniors and seniors patiently waiting to attack me and eat me alive. I don't know how this all came so fast. I was supposed to be more confident now and not scared of being up in front of a classroom. Having gone through the education program I now feel that I know a lot of good theories of teaching, but very little of the practical stuff I'm actually going to be using. Seriously, only two days?
I still have loads of questions. Like where do I eat lunch and am I grown up enough to eat in the teacher's lounge? I probably need a parking pass....where do I get this? What if I totally BOMB this thing?
I have legit been having nightmares about teaching for weeks. Classes where I show up and I'm teaching something like chemistry and I have no textbooks and the students don't learn anything and I fail student teaching. Gah....I'm in trouble. Not because I'm teaching chemistry, but because I'm teaching writing and that is just as bad. How do you teach someone to do something that comes instinctively to you? Give me literature. Great scott, give me Shakespeare and I will teach it happily, but not so. I get writing and I hope that I might be able to do something of some use for these kids. I'm nervous, but I hope that in some way this nervousness eventually translates into something I can use to be a good teacher.
Two days guys. Cross your fingers.

Christmas Break.

I had all of these great intentions about blogging throughout Christmas break before life gets crazy busy with student teaching and everything, and then the Xbox arrived and pretty much everything I planned on went out the window. Oops.
Mark and I had a wonderful break.
Tucanos with my family plus Coulson's friend Jake. He's basically family.
Christmas on Christmas Eve with Mark's family. (I got an amazing sewing machine, and now I just need a project to use it on. My in-laws are seriously the best yo.)
Christmas Eve dinner with my family.
Christmas morning with my family. Halo party after breakfast with my dad, Couslon, and Mark. It was pretty epic. Coulson wasted all of us.
Playing our new game Ticket to Ride: Europe....twice on Christmas and once just about every day after that.
Shopping for teaching clothes. I look totally professional guys, I might actually pass as older than 16 in these awesome clothes.
Eye doctor and dentist in one day. Who planned that? Oh wait....I did. Boo.
Anniversary weekend at the Hyatt in SLC.
Les Miserables and Happy Sumo. Great combo.
Shopping in Salt Lake with the hubs. Plus he looked quite dapper in his sweater and wool coat I got him for Christmas.
Jessi's Farewell. This girl is going to be an amazing missionary. The people of Armenia are very lucky.
Room service. Since after a 9 a.m. farewell in PG all we wanted to do was watch movies in sweats at the hotel. Lazy Sunday.
Visiting Amy and Jake, and our sweet niece Charlotte. Charlotte put my shoes on and walked around the house, it was pretty much adorable. And then Amy beat me at Ticket to Ride, she has been the only one except Mark who can do that.
Back to reality. Are we lame because we went to sleep at 10:30 on New Years? Probably. I missed my bed though. Hadn't slept in it for a week and a half.
Now it is back to reality for the both of us. A week and a half off work was incredible break that we both really needed, and the PTO didn't hurt either.
Up next: skiing/snowboarding on Friday. It's not supposed to snow, but if you want to do a snow dance for us, we really would love some powder.