We're not homeless!!

This week has been filled with craziness for us! We were thrilled on Monday when we were finally able to pay off my car and become debt free (for the next two months.... before starting Grad. School in Arizona) It was a big relief because we didn't think we were going to be able to get it paid off before we moved. Thankfully, a miracle occurred, and we were able to make it all work and now the car is officially ours!! Wahoo!

We also put our Provo apartment up for sale and had about 15 million people look at it. It sold after about 24 hours, and so we're set to go when we move. We were getting a little nervous, however, because we had applied for housing on campus in Arizona about 3 months ago, and still hadn't heard back. Luckily, we heard back yesterday and WE HAVE A HOUSE!! We got an apartment on campus, so Brett will just have to walk across the street to go to school. This is a huge blessing in itself, since we'll only have 1 car when we get out there, and I'll be working for a while.

I tried to get some pictures of what the apartment looks like, but they won't let me copy them.... so let's just say, it's a bit of a step above where we are right now. It has a REAL fridge and a REAL stove. Not a mini-fridge and an easy-bake oven!! I'm so excited about that, I can barely stand it! We also got an apartment that has 1 bedroom and a den. So, a little more space than we have right now. I'm so ridiculously excited about the move-- now that we have a place to go. It's making it seem a lot more real. I think it's incredible that it's only 2 months away. Ok, well that does it for the rambling today :) Yay for having somewhere to live!

In Memory...

Unfortunately, about 2 weeks ago, my mom had to put our precious puppy down. She spent a wonderful 14 years with our family and we will miss her immensely. Here are some of my favorite things about my Jetta.

* Running and flying off the porch to go catch those birdies or cats in the back yard.

* The pitter-patter of little paws running to get her food. (We so should have put her on a dog food commercial.)

* Trying to get Jetta to disobey rules and come upstairs or to come sleep on my bed. :)

* Blowing on her ears and making her rub her head all over the floor.




* Watching her run around the house going crazy after a bath.

* Seeing her after she gets shaved like a lab puppy.

* Chasing after all of the candy after we broke the pinata at Christmas time. (After cowering under the piano bench while we were hitting the pinata.)



*Being my best furry friend for the last 14 years. Puppy Heaven just got a great addition. We love you!!!

ALOHA!

Welcome to the Islands! Brett and I were super tired of the freezing cold that we've been experiencing recently, so we decided to bring some warmth to our lives by having a Hawaii party with a couple of our friends. We had Hawaiian Haystacks, made "sand castles" out of brown sugar, and watched Surf's Up to wrap it all up. I also made Pineapple Upside Down Cake for the very first time in my life, and was very pleased with the results. :) Here are a couple of pictures of our fun night...


Toni and Sage had an AWESOME castle. They made a super cool arch/doorway to the entrance of their castle. Toni loved it and kept abusing Sage after he had knocked it down. AWESOME.

Derek and Kori with their "Golden Bullet" castle. They wanted to have little Lego men and start a war with our different castles.... if only we had thought of that detail...

Our lovely creation. We were the first ones to run out of brown sugar.... we were just living by our family motto-- GO BIG OR GO HOME. Since we were already home, we had to go big :)

Derek and Kori next built a sugar man and decided that using the measuring cup for a nose was a good idea. Silly, silly.

Well, that's about it. We're counting down the days until Melissa (Brett's sister) gets home from her mission-- that would be 12 days, getting ready to celebrate Sar's birthday, and looking forward to a three day weekend soon :)

Venting of an Irritated Commuter

So, I just really need to get my feelings out about the last week. The weather has been so terrible and I am SICK of it! Last week was pretty stressful at school because we had such a crazy week. It was full of assemblies, and special programs that made my kids absolutely CRAZY. Then, to top everything off, the icky weather moved in. I love Utah. I love the mountains, and the changing of the leaves, and the joy of living in a bubble, but I HATE SNOW! I don't know if I am cursed and that's why Utah has had the worst winters in the world the past 6 years that I've lived here, but I am so tired of seeing white stuff falling out of the sky. You know, it IS pretty, and really fun to look at from the warm indoors. However, driving in it is a totally different story.

I know that most of you have heard this story, but I will put it into print for everyone to see. So last Friday, I was driving to school (it was raining on this particular day) and as I was driving on the freeway, my windshield wipers decided that it was a great time to have a huge fight. They attacked each other and the right wiper (unfortunately) won. Therefore, I am driving on the freeway without a working left windshield wiper. This was unfortunate because a) I couldn't see anything b) cars kept driving by me and splashing my already soaking wet car c) I thought I was going to die. Luckily, that didn't happen and my wipers are now fixed, but I am still SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired of commuting. It is so stressful, especially when the weather is bad. I am so looking forward to Arizona where there will be no evil snow....

Ok, the end of my rantings and ravings about the evil weather.

Welp, Here's an Update for YOU!

Ok, seriously, I know that I am World's Worst Blogger, and I take that title very seriously. Sorry for the long lapse of silence, and I would make a promise that it will never happen again.... but I would just break that, so I'll put it on my New Year's Resolutions list to be better about updating the blog. (Although, that will probably go out the window as fast as my efforts to become skinny again.... we'll see.)

Well, I guess I better just start with the most exciting news. THE PRAXIS HAS BEEN PASSED! I got a lovely surprise last month when I was able to look at my scores online and realize that I had passed. Both Tara (my co-worker who took it with me) and I passed a good deal above the "passing line" so we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. I am just so relieved that I never have to think about the stupid Praxis EVER again. Not to mention, it will look super great on my applications to Arizona. Whew, glad that stage in life is over.

We got to go to Colorado to have Christmas with my family, and what a glorious vacation it was! We got to use our new video camera a great deal, and had a blast hanging out with my mom and dad, watching Chuck in a serious marathon, and eating a TON of ridiculously amazing food. No wonder I look like a balloon. Mom, Sar, and I even got to have a girls sob fest while we watched Marley and Me. Ps- if you are putting your dog down anytime soon, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE! We were sobbing like little school girls for the better part of a hour. And I'm not talking little tears, I'm talking SOBBING hysterically, and having a mother who won't share Kleenex with you. Our amazingly cute (but slobbery at the moment) puppy is going to be put down soon because of the ginormous tumor she has in her mouth. It was very unfortunate timing for our family to see the movie. Needless to say, we went straight to Jetta when we got home and petted her until we couldn't stand the stench anymore.

We also got to hang out with our amazing friends, the Seegmillers and have "Happy Duke Year" where we spend New Year's Eve shoving fondue in our faces, and laughing so hard we almost wet our pants numerous times. It's almost "baa-thetic", you know? Seriously, there's nothing like Dr. Laura and the Nerds of a Feather to really get you going. ( and that would be an Indian (dot, not feather) princess-- thank you Dan.) If you didn't understand a single word of the past several sentences-- don't feel too bad, just be sad that you missed Happy Duke Year. We had no plans whatsoever to stay up until midnight, and indeed, planned to celebrate the New Year with New York, but had so much fun playing Balderdash that we didn't even start our dessert fondue until 11:30 and had to hussle to get our cups filled with "bubbly" to bring in the New Year. This was all happening, however, as Dan was peacefully slumbering on the floor-- he is such the party pooper :) I believe it was the best Happy Duke Year yet, and I was so glad to be a part of it.

Well, now we're back to reality. Brett started working full time today, and I headed back to the classroom. I was very excited to find a new whiteboard in my room instead of the evil, poo-brown, chalkboard that resided there earlier. Can we say, Welcome to the 21st century?? It's nice to be out of the Dark Ages. So, that about sums it up. Maybe someday I'll actually get some pictures up here so you can ogle at the amazingness of our trip.... but then again, I have to hold up my "World's Worst Blogger" title, and that just might blow my chances....

OH! PS-- Brett graduated from BYU too. That's pretty dang exciting. Minus the fact that he doesn't get to walk until April. Seriously, why is BYU so lame with the whole graduating thing? Let him have the cap and gown and diploma, for goodness sakes!

The PRAXIS is OVER!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, who knows if I passed.... but I am DONE! It is such a load off to have this week finally be over! I also had my SET (principal observation) this week, and had to plan 2 new units. My husband told me, "Welcome back!" when I got home today because I haven't seen him in about a week. It's been crazy! Luckily, I think the test went pretty well. It was 2 of the most intense hours I've ever faced in my life. I got a severe hand cramp and felt like my brain had melted by the end, but I got it done. It was my #1 goal just to finish the test. So 24 multiple choice and about 50 billion essays later, I welcome back my normal life with a huge smile, I am so relieved!

My husband SOOOOOOOO loves me and totally cleaned the whole house while I was gone (and I mean CLEANED the house.... even the stove! Is he not the best ever?) and bought me flowers and a congratulation balloon. He is so cute! I'm grateful for his constant support AND for the fact that he was able to give me an amazing blessing this morning that helped me through the whole ordeal. Marrying him was the best decision I've ever made!

So, that's the scoop for now! Hopefully, I'll put the good news of passing the test in about a month (when I get those dang test scores!!) Happy 7 school days until Thanksgiving Break! (Not that I'm counting or anything....)

"Rocktober!"

Man, I still cannot believe that the month of October has come and gone already! So many great things happened this month that I need to share! We'll see if I can get this all in on one post!

Let's start with some school stuff... at the beginning of the month we celebrated Red Ribbon Week. Now, Tara (my co-worker) and I had been planning to prank our fellow co-worker, Scott, sometime but hadn't found a way to do it yet. Scott graduated from Utah State and rags on BYU ALL the time. We decided that when the time was right, we were going to BYU his room and cover it with all things BYU. Our perfect opportunity occurred with Red Ribbon Week. Each day had a different theme to it and on Wednesday, the theme was something having to do with sports (Wow, it was so long ago that I don't even remember the official theme.) Tara and I decided that we would BYU his room the night before so that he would walk in that morning on Favorite Sports Team day and his room would have BYU all over it. Genius, huh? Well, it turned out that Tara and I had a class we had to go to Tuesday night and we couldn't go back to school afterward. Therefore, to pull off our plan, we decided to be at school at 6:30 the next morning to get the job done. Woo! Here are some of the amazing pictures we took that early, early morning!

Here are some shots of Scott's room. My kids helped me make all of the Y stuff to put around the room. They were pretty stoked about being to help out with a prank. They thought it was the coolest thing EVER!

Tara and I are so proud of our amazing prank! Too bad Scott got us back that same weekend. He took my desk and put it in Tara's room, and took Tara's desk and put it in my room. That was a fun thing to walk in to on a Monday morning! We sure got a work out moving them back to their respective classrooms! Let's just say, we won't be playing anymore pranks on Scott this year....

Here's just a quick, fun thing. So, for Red Ribbon Week they had a crazy hair day. Can we just say that I had the BEST hair ever? It was so hairsprayed that it didn't move an inch the whole day. That was also the day I almost set the school on fire.... so much fun!

Ok, next on the list....

Halloween Fun!

Brett and I dedicated October to a Murder Mystery Game. We had a Nikki night and a Brett night with the people that we invited. I got to invite my old roommates, Lisa and Stacey, and then my good friend Brady. It was entitled Pasta, Passion, and Pistols.... cool, huh? It was an Italian Mafia sort of game and it was a blast. I made dinner for both nights that consisted of tortellini, garlic bread, green and fruit salad, and fruit pizza for dessert. YUM!

So, here's the 1st crew: Mary and Brady Wilde, Keith and Lisa Jones, Stephen and Stacey White and of course, Brett and Nikki Waite :)

Pretty, pretty fruit pizza! Brett told me that it could have been a restaurant. He's funny!

Here's the 2nd crew: Steve Plowman, Ashley Barber, Tiffany, Ben Plowman, Mike and Lisa Lindquist, and Brett and me. Wow, what a fun night that was!

Ok, one last thing before I go, we obviously need to post my Halloween costume picture. I always put off finding a Halloween costume and just decided to go as a "nerd." I've done it before, and knew that I could do it again. It was a crazy day, but it was fun because I (along with many other teachers) performed the Thriller Dance in front of the whole school. Yes, Thriller, dressed as a nerd. My kids told me that I was DEFINITELY the best dancer up there. Aren't they so sweet?

Well, I think that's where we'll leave this never ending post for now. Happy November to you all!