I'm 23!

This week was another busy one, but that's no surprise. On Tuesday I woke up feeling REALLY dizzy and my right ear was almost completely plugged up; I could hardly hear out of it. I knew I needed to go to my classes, though, so I pushed myself to get ready and get to campus. I was ok for most of the day, even though my hearing was really off and I had trouble walking fast because of my balance issues. The only scary part of the day was when I was going down the stairs in one of the buildings on campus, and almost fell down them because I had a dizzy spell. Thankfully I didn't fall!

Friday was the first day we got to go into our classrooms with our assigned teachers at the middle school and actually meet some of the students. We'll be working with two of the 5th grade classes, since they rotate like at a high school. When we first got to the school we went to an assembly about Abraham Lincoln. A man who travels around the United States performing speeches as Lincoln was in Rexburg to do an event at BYU-I, and one of the 5th grade teachers we're working with convinced him to come to the middle school and perform the Gettysburg Address for the entire 5th grade, answer questions, and all that jazz. My partner Haden and I are teaching next Friday about Fort Sumter and since neither of us are history majors, we've been really struggling trying to get enough information to be able to teach the kids. So after the performance, we hurried over to talk to "Mr. Lincoln" and get some information from him, and it was so helpful! I'm definitely feeling more confident about our lesson. We went back to our classroom to meet with our fellow teachers in training and have a bit of a discussion, before we went over to the 5th grade classroom we'd been assigned to. We only got to meet one of the periods since the first group was at the assembly, but it was so fun! We were told to bring something called a "What's In the Bag?" for our classroom. You bring a brown paper bag with a small item inside, and tell a story about that item and somehow give an inspiring message to tie in to your story. I brought a plastic Easter egg and told this story:

On the morning of Mother's Day, when I was about 9-10, I woke up really early and decided that I wanted to make my mom breakfast. For some reason I thought that EVERYTHING you made, in terms of food, was made in the microwave. So when I decided I'd make her scrambled eggs, what did I do? I put a raw egg, shell and all, into the microwave for about 2 minutes. The egg EXPLODED! There was goop and nasty shell pieces everywhere inside the microwave, and the sound had been so loud that it woke my mom up. She came out and saw the mess in the microwave, and just stared. I started crying because I felt so terrible, and didn't know what to do. My mom, instead of yelling at me, said "Thank you for trying to make me breakfast. I'll clean this up." And she never brought it up again, or yelled at me, or anything. And sometimes at school, we're going to make mistakes. Hopefully we won't put an egg in the microwave, cuz that's not a good idea, but we might do stuff that's not really a good idea or a smart decision. And we need to remember to help each other fix our mistakes, and not tease each other about them.

The kids really loved the story, especially since I asked them questions about what they thought was gonna happen, how my mom reacted when she saw the mess, etc. It went pretty well, even though I was really nervous! At the end of the day, when we were back with our ED361 class, everyone found out that tomorrow is my birthday...and decided to sing to me. Anyone that knows me well knows that I HATE being sung to in a group setting; if it's one person doing it that's fine, but a huge group of people? No, thank you! So I sat there and smiled and felt super awkward, and it felt like the longest rendition of "Happy Birthday" I'd ever heard. But I survived!

When I got home from school that day, Jake had gotten off early and was waiting at home for me. He took the car and said he had to go run a few errands, and was gone for about an hour. When he came home he made me hide in the bathroom so he could get some stuff inside, and then had me come out to see. Sitting on the couch was some chocolate, flowers, brownies, and some cream soda. It was the day before my birthday and he was already spoiling me, that dork! He was just too excited to wait to celebrate. That evening we had pizza for dinner, which was a nice treat too.

Saturday was my birthday! I'm a whopping 23 years old. Jake had me open my presents, which were some chocolate, clay face mask stuff that I love, and some scrapbooking paper. Then he gave me a folder filled with letters that some of my little ones in Twitterstake had written to me, which was SO sweet. He'd talked to several of my Twitter kids and asked them to send him letters, and collected them to give to me. I'd been wondering why Jake had been getting so many handwritten letters in the mail, but I didn't think much of it, so it was a fun surprise!


After presents, we went to see the new Avengers movie and it was SO AWESOME!! Jake and I both
loved it, and it was fun getting to see a movie in the "normal" movie theater, as opposed to the cheaper and not as nice theater out here. The last movie we saw in a regular theater was Captain America 2...so it's definitely been a while! After the movie, we came home for a while and then headed over to the local park for my last birthday surprise. We waited for a while until a car pulled up, and Jake went over to sign some paperwork...and then we were handed a HUSKY PUPPY!! There's a new company out here called Pups4Play, where you can rent a puppy for an hour or two for a pretty reasonable price. I've been wanting to try it for ages, but it just hasn't been doable. Our puppy's name was Royce, and he was a lot of fun to play with! It was definitely a great birthday present.

That evening we had cheesecake and Jake sang to me. The cheesecake was SO GOOD; Jake said it tasted like Cheesecake Factory! So we are probably never buying cheesecake again, since this recipe was also super easy to make, and amazingly yummy!

This Week's Spiritual Thought

Today in Sunday School we read John 7:5, which says "For neither did his brethren believe in him." I assumed that the brethren referred to in that verse was the apostles, but apparently it's talking about Jesus' literal brothers; other children born to Mary and Joseph. Learning that kind of blew my mind, since I had never heard people talk about Jesus having earthly siblings before!! I definitely learned something new this week!