First Day

Hooray! Today was my first day teaching at Westlake High School. I am not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous about everything because I didn't know exactly how everything was going to go... but everything went wonderfully. Like I said before, my friend Emily just had a beautiful baby girl and needed a long term sub while she is on maternity leave. It worked out perfectly for me to be able to take over for her.

I didn't talk about it very much on this blog because I didn't want to tell everyone that I was going to do it, and then have something not work out - but now it is officially official. I am a long-term sub at Westlake High! I will be interviewing later this week for the permanent teaching position. There is nothing guaranteed - so I am not getting my hopes up too much - but it will definitely be to my advantage to be in the classroom already with the students. Today I taught Interior Design 1, Interior Design 2, and Clothing 1. Tomorrow I will be teaching Foods, Clothing 2, Clothing 1 and Financial Literacy. I've never really understood how the AB schedule works, but now that I have been thrown into it... I really like it!  

I love being in the classroom. Seriously, it rocks. The best part is that I have no supervising teacher (like I did in student teaching). I feel completely comfortable and am excited to be able to have control over how I run things. (Obviously I am just a sub right now, but I am still able to teach the lessons with my own personality without having to worry about someone else judging everything that I do.) Also, I really love the subjects that I teach here. They are absolutely perfect for me.

We still don't have internet at our house, so I am blogging this from my classroom. (It's so cool. I am like a real life grown-up!) I still haven't talked to David about his day, but today was his first day at HBM as well. The first two days are training, and then he will dive right in. I had to be to work about an hour earlier than he did - so we woke up and he made my lunch and then went down to scrape my car for me. (He really is the BEST husband.) I was surprised when he came back in the apartment after less than a minute, but he just smiled at me and said, "I forgot that we live in Lehi now and not Logan. I didn't even have to scrape."

*sigh* I could really get used to not having to scrape my car on a daily basis.

I realize that there isn't much of a point to this post - but I will be going home today and will be without the internet for the rest of the day. (Unless I stop at the McDonalds on the way home and sit in their parking lot to use their internet. Which, I must admit, has happened frequently over the past couple of weeks.) I just wanted to share my excitement of a successful day and my relief that nothing terrible happened. I will definitely keep you posted on my many adventures in the classroom.

Merry {belated} Christmas!

Hello again. Have you missed me? We haven't seen each other in a while due to the fact that David and I have been incredibly busy over the past few weeks. David finished up his final semester of college and graduated with his Masters of Accounting. We both finished up our jobs, packed up all of our earthly possessions and moved to Lehi. We actually haven't spent much time at our new apartment due to spending the holidays with family but it is slowly coming together. 

I've had a bit of bloggers block - but I figured that I should blog about Christmas before we really get started into this new year. So here we go...

Our Christmas was wonderful. We started out with my family in Morgan. We stayed there for Monday through Saturday and had all sorts of fun getting ready for Christmas. 

On Christmas Eve my family went to see "Tangled" at the movie theater. I absolutely LOVED it. It was so cute. I don't consider myself a movie owner (as in - I don't purchase many movies for my personal collection because I don't generally like to re-watch movies) but this is definitely one that I would like to own. It's darling.

Here is the whole gang (minus Melissa who was at work and David who was taking the picture).

My beautiful sister Jenna and I. Don't judge me and my red eyes. I definitely cried during the movie.

Here we are! We had such a great time.

We are a little crazy. Also, this is a demonstration of my strange tendency to stand on things so I am taller than everyone else around me. I think it stems from my subconscious self-consciousness of being the oldest but shortest of my whole family. 

 

This is our delicious Christmas Eve Pizza. Yummm...

On Christmas Eve we pulled all the mattresses in by the Christmas Tree and slept there.

This is the only picture that we got from Christmas Morning. This is one of the presents that David gave to me. Isn't it wrapped so pretty? 

This is what Christmas looks like at the Peaden home. With over 20 people in the family the presents tend to pile up. It's a beautiful sight to behold! 

David and I before the great un-wrapping began.

Overall our Christmas was wonderful. We were so blessed to be able to spend so much time with our families and to be able to relax and enjoy the break. We were also grateful to be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. There are so many reminders of his love for us during this season - it's amazing and makes me even more grateful for the blessings that I have.

Thanks for reading and... Merry {belated} Christmas!

Happy 1.1.11!

I can't believe that it is 2011. Time has flown by and so much has happened since January 1, 2010. David and I were still living in Logan, still going to Utah State, still working at our on campus jobs, still living basically the same life that we had been living for the past four years.  Two-thousand-eleven is already full of changes for us. A new town, a new apartment, a new car,  new jobs.
All that and it's only the first day of 2011. Whew! 

We will start out 2011 at our new apartment in Lehi, UT. After searching and searching for a decent apartment at an affordable price, we finally found the perfect place for us. It is about the same size as our last apartment, it has a little balcony, radiant-heated floors, and a jetted bath tub. We absolutely love it. We haven't been able to decide exactly where we want to hang things - so there is still nothing on the walls, but we have unpacked our bedroom, the bathroom, the living room and the kitchen. (The second bedroom/office is still fairly untouched.) Everything is organized for the most part. As soon as we get things on the walls it will really start feeling like home. 

David will be starting work at Hansen, Barnett, and Maxwell on Monday January 3rd. They are a public accounting firm and David will be working in their auditing department. He is really excited. HBM is an awesome firm and they are such a perfect fit for us. We went to the HBM Christmas dinner and I was overwhelmed with what a great company they are. We are definitely where we are supposed to be.

I will be teaching at Westlake High School in their Family and Consumer Science department. I will be starting as a long-term substitute but there is the possibility that it will turn into a permanent position. My friend Emily was the teacher, but she just had a beautiful baby girl and will be resigning her position after her maternity leave is over. I would love to be hired on for the permanent position, but I am excited for anything that may come my way. I will either keep teaching at Westlake, stay home and really focus on Red Ladder Design, or find another really great job somewhere else. I really can't wait to find out what the future holds. It's going to be great. 

Because we both got new jobs - we needed a new car. Unfortunately, It was something that kept getting pushed to the back burner. Our complete focus was on getting David graduated, surviving packing/moving, and celebrating Christmas. There was no way we could look for cars and do all of those things, so it just didn't happen. That is, it didn't happen until the Monday after Christmas when we decided we needed to bring that to the center of our focus. It was either get a car this week or borrow David's parents car and try to car shop in the evenings and on the weekends. We really wanted to get a car this week so that we didn't have to worry about it during our free time on evenings and weekends. We started looking on Monday morning, looked as loads of cars all day and finally found one that we really liked. By 2:00 pm the next day (Tuesday) we we the proud new owners of a 2007 Hyundai Accent. We love it and we got a great deal on it. (When I post pictures of the car, I will post the story. Just know that there was some pretty intense bargaining going on.) 

I am sure that there will be more changes that come our way throughout this year. We only hope that 2011 is as good to us as 2010 was. 

We are thankful for all of your love and support and we wish you a very Happy New Year!