Unemployed!

Well I am officially unemployed! It is pretty scary but really exciting. My last day of work was Thursday and it went really well. The ladies I work with took me to lunch on Wednesday and gave me some really cute teacher decorations for my classroom. It was bittersweet going out to lunch with all of them because I have seen them almost every day for the last five years. I have developed some really great long lasting friendships with them and plan on keeping in touch will all of them. On Thursday Dr. Heiner had a surgery meeting so his wife Chris (who is one of the kindest people I have ever met) took us all to lunch. The girls had bought me a cake and hung up a banner that said “We will miss you Carli!” It was funny because all day the patients coming in the office were asking me where I was going and if I was coming back. I have come to know some of them really well and will miss seeing and helping them. It is going to be an adjustment for Brian and me because I have worked at least part time our whole marriage! I think I will adjust fast to not having to be somewhere at eight in the morning pretty easily! I am really excited to just focus on school for a few months and get ready to bring home a baby! I took some pictures with my cell phone on my last day so they are not the best quality but I wanted something to remind me.

All the Girls

Funny Faces

Liesel and Paola (Pretending to work! lol)

Kelli and Connie

Connie

Gina

The banner they put up for me

Back to School!

Well it’s back to school time and I don’t know if I will survive! I started back last week and it is pretty overwhelming. Between the six classes I’m in and training a new person at work it’s a lot. I am getting excited to be done working. I have worked for the last five and a half years at Dr. Heiner’s office and think it’s time to move on. Just being a full time student is going to be a change for me because I have been working full time for the last two years while attending school. Brian is getting busy with his taxidermy shop. He has had a few things brought in that will keep him pretty busy throughout the winter. We are both trying to stay afloat with all that is going on. Hopefully things will run smoother with school and being done with working will come soon.

Yellowstone

Our trip was so much fun! It was nice to get out of town with just Brian and me. We drove a lot so that we could see the entire park while we were there. It is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen.

It was amazing how the wildlife didn't get spooked easily if they did at all. These elk were only a few yards away from the hot pot that a lot of people stopped at.


You can’t see it very well in this picture but we saw a black bear on the first day in the park. After we saw this one, we went around another bend in the road and saw a mom black bear with two cubs. We saw five bears that day. It was really neat. Brian hasn’t ever seen a bear while in the park and we were lucky enough to see all of these.

It was rainy and cool the day that we went to see Old Faithful, but really fun anyway. We got there pretty early in the morning and didn’t have to wait very long for it to erupt.


The buffalo were amazing! They walked right on the road and didn’t seem to care about the hundreds of cars passing by. One wouldn’t even move off the road. We had to go around them. It was crazy!




Artist Point


Overall it was a great vacation! I think that the next time we go we are going to drag our families along. I think that Yellowstone is a place that everyone can enjoy and it’s close enough to where we live that we should take advantage of it. Now it’s back to work and school for me and work and hunting season for Brian. I’m really grateful that we were able to go and am blessed to have a husband who plans well and makes vacation more enjoyable!

Yellowstone here we come!

Brian and I decided to take a little vacation this summer. We realized that after four and a half years of being married and a baby coming this winter, this will probably be the last time we head out with just each other. (Even if we do something later we will have to make arrangements for a babysitter and all of that good stuff) Well anyway with my school starting back up in three weeks and hunting season starting again for Brian next week we decided this week would work great for a vacation. I have never been to Yellowstone and Brian hasn’t been since he was a kid so we decided to head up. We drove to Pocatello, Idaho yesterday and today we are driving the rest of the way to the park. Hopefully we will get to see some great wildlife and the fabulous Old Faithfull!

Wiki's and Pod Casts

In class last week we talked about using wiki's and pod casts. I like the idea of using pod casts in my classroom. I don't love the idea of using wiki's in the classroom because they seem so unreliable. I think that there are better types of technology out there.

Class for the week of July 7th

In class this week we looked into the credibility of a web site. I used a form from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/evalelem.html to evaluate some educational web sites. It was interesting to see what makes a good web site and some of the ways you can tell if it is credible. This was an interesting thing to do and I found some great web sites that can be used in my future classroom.

Happy 4th of July!

Scofield was a lot of fun this weekend. We went up Friday to my parent’s cabin and went to the parade and booths on Saturday. We decorated our float Saturday morning and had a great time. We threw a ton of otter pops. It worked out good enough that every one of my siblings and their families came. All seven of us in one location is hard to come by these days. We ate, swam, visited, and ate some more all weekend. We had a lot of laughs and enjoyed being together.

Kinlie and Izzy at the cabin holding mom's puppies.

Cydnee, Maryann, Me, Lauren and Courtney separating some of the otter pops.

Ashley, Kayson and Lauren holding the puppies.

Brian working on the float.(Putting out the vibe!)

Chris working hard on the float.

Mare, Lauren and Kayson on the float.

Jen working on the float.

The Up Coming Weekend

It’s almost the weekend! I’m excited to be going up to Scofield for the holiday! It was hard to concentrate in class today. We talked about skyping. We worked together as groups on a few webquests. It is interesting how much information you can get from the internet and how you can use that in your classroom.

June 30th Class

Today in class we had to opportunity to learn how to use the program Picasa. You can crop and improve all of your pictures with this. You can download it for free from picasa.google.com Try it out it is easy and most importantly it is free!

Technology Class 4 Topics

Today in class we talked about using power point in our classroom. I think that this is a great tool to use as a teacher. They help make a great story with an outline. We also talked about copyrighting. I think that the rule that you should only use ten percent of someone else's work if you don't know if it is copyrighted. This is a good rule of thumb. We also talked about web quests. We need to decide what type of learning we want the students to do before using the web quests. A web quest is an activity where most or all of the information comes from the web.

Technology week 3

This week for my technology class we had to make a lesson plan. I did a lesson on making and using protractors for fourth grade. It corresponded with fourth grade standard four, objective one. It was fun hearing the great idea's everyone else had. I also enjoyed hearing the presentations on how technology has changed the way we learn and think.

It's a..... Baby!

Well ready or not we are going to join the parent club. Brian and I are expecting our first child at the end of December (the date has changed a few times). We are getting excited especially after we heard the heart beat last Monday. I haven’t been feeling that great but the doctor said that it will be getting better soon. Yea!

Week Two Lesson Plans and Technology

For our second week in class we talked about lesson planning and using technology with your lesson. We were able to watch an experienced teacher show us some cool things that can be done with a smart board. I have seen these used a lot during my observations at the schools and they are amazing. The students love to use them and they are very efficient. I am hoping with some practice to be able to use a smart board for many lessons in my classroom. It is important to plan your lessons but also important to remain flexible. It is ok if you don’t get to everything on your lesson plan but not okay if you didn’t plan enough and the students are left with time they are not learning.

Summer School Week One

For my technology class this summer one of our assignments is to post on our blogs each week what we learned about in class.

For our first week of class we talked about designing our own blogs as well as students in today’s world and how technology savvy they are. Last week we also had to take a teaching PE class and our teacher seemed to be really impressed with the technology that we brought to class. She was impressed with everything from the MP3 players we used to being able to type up our lesson plans in class on a laptop. It is important to be up to date on these things so that the students we teach don’t leave us in their dust.

We also had the chance to visit the Utah Educational Network (UEN) website. This is full of great resources not only for teachers but for parents as well. The website allows teachers to comment about things that they have found helpful.

Summer School

Summer school has officially started! I was very excited when I got to class last night and found out that our first assignment is to start a blog! I was even happier when my teacher said that I can keep the one that I already have. It was also great that all of the ladies that I go to school with are having to join the blogging scene. I've been trying to convince them to do this for a while now! Yea!