Georgia Part 1

Brayden and I are currently in Atlanta, Georgia! His parents own a condo out here because his Dad has to fly out for work here every week. The rest of his family come in the next couple days. So far our Georgia experience has been great! Today was our first full day here. We started the day off by relaxing by the pool. We got our tan on and then went for a quick dip in the pool. After we cleaned up and ate some lunch we headed to Ritas. I had heard many stories from the Allen family of this place so I was excited to try it. Brayden had discovered this place on his mission in D.C. Ritas is famous for their Italian ice and custard. We all got the "Gelati". This is where the put some custard in the bottom of the cup, then some italian ice, and then a scoop of custard on top. Mmmmm, it was so delicous!

I got the vanilla custard with cookies n' creme italian ice. Brayden got the stawberry custard with strawberry italian ice. pic After Ritas my father-in-law drove us around the Atlanta area. We went around town and did a little car tour while of course doing some people watching. Georgia has some fun people to watch. After our car tour we headed home to clean up and get ready to go out to dinner at Maggianos. I was introduced to this amazing place quite a few years ago when I visited my sister Niki in Minnesota. I had very fond memories of delicious food and so I was hoping I wouldn't be disappointed as well as not disappoint Brayden and my father-in-law. I am happy to say that we were not disappointed and left feeling very satisfied. Brayden and I both got the chicken and spinach manicotti. Yummmmm! I even have left overs for tomorrow!

If you ever have the chance to eat at Ritas or Maggianos then GO! You won't be disappointed! Now we are off to go running and work off our delicious day of food!

Boston Celtics

So when I was dating Brayden I knew that he loved sports. He loves both playing and watching them. I don't think I knew how much he actually loved them until I married him. He absolutely loves watching pretty much any sport and his favorite channel is ESPN. So since I have been with Brayden my sports knowledge has probably tripled. I know more sports teams and more players than I thought I would ever know. Brayden's favorite team is the Boston Celtics. His favorite player is Ray Allen. He always jokes that we are going to name one of our boys Ray. That is probably not going to happen but it's fun to see him think we are. haha So during the NBA playoffs the Celtics made it to the eastern conference finals. They played against the Miami Heat (Brayden's absolute least favorite team). Brayden was a true fan and watched every game. I even supported and watched a couple with him (aka me in the same room doing something else while occasionally looking at the T.V). I do have to say that this was a great bonding experience for Brayden and his sister Nicole though. Nicole is probably the 2nd biggest Celtics fan I know and that's probably because of growing up with Brayden. During the games they would go crazy and would often hear comments such as "Let's Go Ray Ray", "That was a horrible call!", "That wasn't even a foul!", and my favorite: "LeBron is such a flopper!!!". Anyways, a couple days before the final game that would tell us who would be going to the NBA finals Brayden and I went and got ourselves and Nicole Celtics shirts. We were absolutely positive this would give them the luck they needed to win. This is a picture of us after the game...

Well from the picture you can tell that they lost and we were pretty sad. Then a month later we find out that Ray Allen decides to leave the Boston Celtics and go to none other than the Miami Heat. Brayden jokes and says that was the saddest day of his life. Brayden says he will still be a Ray Allen fan just not a Miami Heat fan.

Blogging and Teaching

So I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing. I had started a blog a couple years ago in college but probably posted a total of 6 or 7 times. haha I decided to make this blog for Brayden and I because I am absolutely HORRIBLE at taking pictures. I thought that having this blog would remind me to take more pictures and write about the things we are doing in our life. Also, my mom always asks what I have been up to and I always seem to not be able to think of what we have been doing until later after I hang up the phone. So this blog will help keep the family updated on our lives as well. You are going to have to excuse the HUGE picture of us at the top. I didn't know how to make it smaller. You are also going to have to be patient if I don't post very often. Brayden always makes fun of me because I love to look at other people's blogs. He jokes that I know all of their kids names and what their family is going to do this weekend, which sometimes is true. haha So hopefully I can put some of my time looking at other people's blogs and put that towards working on my own blog. For my first post I thought I would write about my teaching experiences so far. I have learned so much from teaching this past year. Can I just say if you ever get the chance to go thank your teachers! Teachers do SO MUCH! I thought I had a pretty good idea of what a teacher did when I was doing my course work up at BYU-Idaho and was able to go to the elementary school a couple times. It wasn't until my senior year that I truly got to see all that a teacher does. During the winter semester I took my senior practicum class. This is where I went to an elementary school twice a week all day and got to teach between 1-3 times during the day. It was a great experience and I loved my cute 3rd grade class.

Aren't they so cute?? During the spring I did my student teaching. People who know me really well know that new experiences terrify me. Anything new that I start in my life (swimming lessons, piano lessons, first day of school, student teaching, etc) I get high anxiety and feel sick to my stomach. (Side Note: one of the only new things that I didn't get this feeling about was when I was marrying Brayden. I guess that's a good sign right? haha) So basically I was terrified for student teaching. I had heard horror stories about getting a horrible cooperating teacher and coming the first day and her saying "ok here's the class now teach for the entire day." Luckily, that is not how it went at all. I was blessed to get the most AMAZING cooperating teacher. She has been teaching for somewhere around 40 years. Now knowing this you might think oh she must be one of those old grumpy teachers. NOPE! She was one of the sweetest, kindest, structured, and most helpful teachers out there. Pretty much everyone at the school would go to her for help. She even got the teacher of year award from the school while I was there. So ya like I said before she's amazing. My student teaching experience was so much better than I was expecting. Now that doesn't mean everything was perfect because by all means there were definitely some VERY hard times but it wouldn't have been a true teaching experience if there wasn't hard times. So I started out in a 5th grade class for 9 weeks with that amazing teacher I mentioned above and then the last 3 weeks I was in a 4th grade classroom. I had to switch to a different class because the school I taught at was a year round school.

My cute 5th grade class! So I realized that I just wrote a TON so sorry about that. I'll try to make my posts a little more condensed in the future! :)