About Me

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I am a twenty-something second year teacher living in the midwest. I am a Christian woman and proud of it! I am the middle child of three girls. I am the proud aunt of the very beautiful Lil E and Lil C!! I love TV, movies, reading, and baseball. I am in my second year of teaching , but my first year teaching kindergarten. It has been quite the journey!

30 May 2010

I Love Books!!

A few weeks ago the Scholastic Book Warehouse near my college was having a big blowout sale. Lil sis agreed to drive there with me, as well as attend my fifth grader's rockin' musical.

I ended up getting quite a few books for only $45 dollars! It was so much fun walking around looking at all the books. I could have bought a lot more, but I tried to restrain myself :)

I got some fun chapter books:

1) Nine Innings- umm well I love baseball, and this book follows a family through nine generations (one per inning) and their affiliation with baseball.
2)Diary of a Wimpy Kid- haven't read it, but it's popular with the youngsters...
3)High School Musical 2- duh!
4) Dear Mr. Henshaw- I loved this book when I was in school.

Wayside School!
I think this is the third one, but my sises and I love all three!

Some Non-fiction

1) Big Cats- Kids love non-fiction, so this is an easy to read book about Big Cats
2)Technology- My fifth graders loved books like this! You'd never read it cover to cover, way too much info, but kids love to flip through it.
3)Astronomy- super adorable!
All of the planets and space stuff are these super cute little cartoons, plus good info!

Picture Books

1) The Pigeon Wants a Puppy- I love it; so funny! I first saw a Pigeon book when I was babysitting, the four year old read it to me (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus) They're so cute!
2)John, Paul, George and Ben- by the guy who did the Stinky Cheese Man- a Funny, semi-informational look at some of the founding fathers.

Multicultural Pic Books

1)I Lost my Tooth in Africa- a story telling about an American girl visiting Africa, while she's there she loses a tooth, introducing the African tradition regarding tooth loss and many other customs
2)Testing the Ice- a story about Jackie Robinson written by his daughter, it has parallel stories of Robinson breaking into the majors and overcoming his fear of water and ice.

Then, I also got some books at Goodwill for a total of $.75.


1) Nate the Great
2) The Boxcar Children
3) Miss Daisy is Crazy!

I love buying books for my future classroom!!!

23 May 2010

Lost!!

First watch this it pretty much sums up my love for Lost. Lil sis saw it and said, "I'm gonna need to see that again." We wanted to memorize it before the finale, but it's six minutes long, the weekend of my sister's baby shower and we only had like three days... But it is epic! My favorite lines: I feel like I'm trapped like I stole Rousseau's baby. You have to go from bad to good, so that you can get blown up, drown or shot. Kate only loved herself.

Tonight is the series finale of Lost :( It breaks my heart to even type that. This is a show I have emotionally invested in for the last six years and tonight it will be over. The characters I've loved, the stories I've waited for with bated breath, the mysteries I've been confused by...

I remember seeing the commercials for Lost in the fall of 2004. I thought it looked interesting, but we didn't watch the Pilot (at the time I was a junior in HS). My family and I watched the second episode and were hooked. Over the next two seasons we fell in love with Charlie, laughed at Hurley's one-liners, disliked Sawyer, longed for Jack and Kate to get together, hated the Others, and generally were confused. When the Others kidnapped Walt, we freaked out. When Aaron was born, we cheered. When Boone died, we cried. We fell in love with Desmond, when he emerged from the hatch. We came to hate Ben Linus, but be amazed with the awesome talent of Michael Emerson. ("You just killed everyone on the freighter." "So?" Ben you kill me!)

I was away at school for most of season 3. I remember heading down to my dorm's great room every Wednesday to watch Lost with a group of rag-tag dormmates. We never really talked, except to comment during the commercials -"Did that really happen?" "Do you know what's happening?" "What the heck?" Good times. Season three had its ups and downs... But then came the season finale.

I was home for the season finale, in my opinion, one of the best season finales of any show ever, it blew my mind. Throughout the episode I remember noticing that Jack was using a Razor phone in what I thought was a flashback. I thought I was awesome that I noticed that the producers has made such a silly mistake. Until the final scene, when Jack met up with Kate... I thought "They knew each other before they were on the island?" Then he yelled, "We have to go back." Consider my mind blown. It was epic and amazing and crazy good. Also Charlie died in one of the most (and first) tear-inducing episodes of Lost. At least he got a heroes death. That episode changed the way I watched Lost.

Season Four saw me back at school, but living in an apartment with roommates who could have cared less about Lost. But I got the TV pretty much to myself, so Lost was still on every Wed. During the commercials I would rush into my roommates room and tell her what crazy thing had just happened. She would listen and nod and over the next two years would come to learn characters names and relationships :) For me, starting in season four, Lost became a show that kept me on the edge of my seat for an hour. I would look at the clock and wonder how sixty minutes had already passed. It seemed as if before every commercial break something crazy, unexpected and game-changing happened. We spent the season trying to figure out how they had gotten off the island. The Constant slew me with it's romance and heart-breakingly tender moments!! I grieved with Sun when Jin (apparently) exploded with the freighter.

Before the start of season 5 I acquired a very large stuffed monkey I dubbed Cody. He became my Lost watching buddy. Basically I grab him when the episode starts, squeeze him when I'm nervous, anxious, freaked out, confused (basically the entire episode)until the credits begin. Poor Cody, his neck is much less stuffed than it was when I got him. When Sayid shot young Ben, I cheered, I hoped he died. I cheered for Sawyer and Juliet and loved the effect she had on him. I gasped when Ben talked Locke out of committing suicide, only to murder him moments later. I tried hard to follow what time period everyone was living in and enjoyed the humor of Miles and Hurley. I wondered why Richard Alpert never aged.

Season six began with a lot of sadness, we knew the end was near. Cody endured more abuse and my semi-Lost literate roommate moved out. But Lost continued to blow my mind and we got some answers. We know what the whispers are. We know why they were brought to the island. We know who Adam and Eve are. And now we've reached the day of the finale. The last time lil sis can sing, "Lost is on to-night, Lost is on to-night!"

Here's what I hope for the finale:
We get answers, but they tell a story.
Desmond and Penny end up together in some universe.
Juliet gets coffee with Sawyer
Jack gets to end up with his son (see also Jin and Sun)
We find out why women can't carry babies to term on the island
I am satisfied.

Happy Lost watching!

21 May 2010

Baseball, Baby!

I love me some baseball, well mostly the Tigers :) I’ve been to I think seven games already this season, two of which were in KC!! They have a 6-1 record when I’m there, which is nice.

Here is my list of essential items to take to the game:
A good purse. I like this one because it is a dark color so it won’t show dirt/baseball grime/beer that someone spills on it. Plus it is big enough to hold all of my stuff but not too big that it takes up lots of space.

Your tickets of course! Ours are fun this year because we bought a large enough ticket package that we get the players’ pictures on our tickets :)

All Star ballots we picked up at the last game. We’ve got to get some players representing the D at the All Star game. We take a bunch home with us, punch them out two or three at a time and return them at the next game.

Big League Chew- you never know when you’ll need to throw in a wad to start a rally. It worked in the Tigers 12-inning win over the BoSox last weekend!

I always need extra pencils for keeping score. Somehow I have a habit of dropping/ losing the pencil they give me to keep score with, so I always keep a couple of extra handy in my bag. (Last weekend I dropped my first pencil and the guy next to me noticed and commented that I came prepared. Then I dropped another one underneath his seat, but I just grabbed another one from my purse because I was too embarrassed to ask him for it… A few innings later he reached under his seat and gave it to me!)

The scorecard, which isn’t an essential to bring, but to buy at the stadium. (In KC scorecards are two bucks plus you have to pay a dollar for a full size pencil, in the D a scorecard is a dollar and a golf pencil is free!) One year my dad bought me a whole scorebook that I could just bring with me to every game, but it just wasn’t the same. That scorebook doesn’t give you fun “This Day in Tigers History” facts or list all of the players heights, weights and hometowns so you can play “Guess the lightest player.”

Go Tigers!

19 May 2010

Jillibean's Going to be an Aunt!!!

My sister is due with her first baby in August  We are so excited! It will be my parents’ first grandchild.

My lil sis , my momma and I are planning a baby shower next Saturday. We’re kind of freaking out because it is so close. Yikes! But I think we’ve got it all under control.

Theme: Our theme is books, because we love books with our whole hearts  We’re hosting the shower in the library Momma’s school, which has just been redone and is beautiful! Here’s my present-

Invites: On our invites (light blue paper with a border of pastel animals) we asked everyone to include a book as part of their gift. Momma’s gone a little overboard on this aspect…

Colors: When we started planning the shower we didn’t know the sex of the baby, so we decided to do pastel blue, green and purple as colors, figuring we could emphasize a “girl color” or “boy color” once we knew the sex. So we bought green plastic cups, blue napkins, purple tablecloths and plates and bowls in each color.

Décor: For centerpieces we are putting a children’s book on each table. We bought a sign to put out by the road so everyone can find the location. We also bought balloons to put with the sign and also around the library. My mom also bought some purple and blue flowers to place on the bookshelves in the library.


Games: We have planned two games. 1) Guess the first line from a children’s book. I created a list of twenty lines from famous children’s books and guests will have to guess the title of the book. 2) Guess the flavor of baby food. We’re going to pass around baby food jars without the labels and guests will have to guess what the flavor is.

Prizes: For game prizes we have a variety of lotions, photo albums, hand cream, chapsticks, etc.

Favors: For favors we created bookmarks. I designed them on Word and we printed them on white cardstock. Momma laminated them at school, we punched holes in them and then tied lavender ribbon through them. Pretty cute!

Birthday Wishes: We have a family tradition at baby showers that started when my Aunt adopted my cousin. Everyone at the shower gets a sheet of paper on which they write the baby a birthday wish for some birthday in the future. Each wish is then wrapped around a candle and tied with a ribbon. The Mom-to-be receives all of the wishes. Each birthday the baby chooses one wish from the bag and reads that with and puts the candle on his/her birthday cake. So the wishes have to be sort of generic so that they can work for any birthday, but it’s a really fun tradition. (We did a similar thing at Big Sis’s wedding shower for each of their anniversaries.)

Food: We’re ordering breadsticks from our favorite Italian restaurant, Chicken Caesar Salad, and a cake with the inscription “…And the Ryans lived happily ever after.” We are also attempting to make a baby carriage out of a hollowed out watermelon which will be filled with fruit salad.

Hopefully everything goes well!!

09 May 2010

Top Ten Outfits

My Top Ten Outfits (inspired by Busy Bee Lauren)

10)
An outfit I wore to school; flowered top from Forever 21, fab puple shoes from Payless, lavendar hair tie taken from a sweater.

9)
Just a cas outfit; plain brown tee, teal sweater and fun jewelry!

8)
Another school ensem; Steve and Barry's dress pants, long sleeved tee, cute white clearance hacket form Kohl's

7)
I wore this outfit to a Christmas party a couple of years ago; dark puple tights under a brown dress from Kohl's that would be just a bit too short without tights, a long sleeved purple tee, my long strand of gold pearls from Prom.

6)
My first time wearing my bright purple tights- I got a compliment from a random guy on campus; bright purple tights from Target, bright blue sweater, gray corduroy skirt.

5)
A cute outfit for college classes; my fav. jeans, black velvet jacket, long gray tank top, cute hat from GAP, berry colored scarf.

4)
I wore this for my fancy Student Scholarship Day presentation; new teal top from Target, brown corduroy skirt, bright purple tights, brown heels from Payless, Busy Bee Lauren headband!!

3)
I love this outfit! I wore to teach in, I was a little nervous at first because of the different patterns, but I love it; gray and white striped GAP skirt I got at Goodwill, gray and white polka dot cardigan from Target, light blue cami from Kohl's, tights, gray heels from Payless

2)
I bought this before I started teaching in January and I love it, especially the pockets; yellow flowered dress from Target, gray tights from Target, black/silver/whtie heels from Payless

1)
I've had this dress for forever (it's from Kohl's) and I still love it! It's classy and cute; polka dot dress, purple tights, Prom pearls, black lace bow headband from Target, homemade button earrings.

02 May 2010

I love me some headbands

If you've never checked out Busy Bee Lauren's headbands before, you definitely should! Her headbands are amazingspice!!!! I currently own four and have bought an adorable one for my future niece :)

I recently received two very wonderful headbands in the mail...

I love how Lauren packages the headbands, they're always in such cute tissue paper!

Then you unwrap the tissue paper to find two of my favorite headbands ever- Peeta and Troy named after two of my favorite (and Lauren's favorite) fictional heroes.

Here's Peeta!!! I love me some Peeta and I love the headband Lauren created with him as inspiration.

Here it is on, from the front:
and from the top:

I also ordered the Troy Bolton, inspired by Zac Efron's character in High School Musical- Love him! Again, Lauren captured him perfectly.

Front angle:

Top angle:

I can't wait to see what Lauren creates next!!

Jillibean's Momma

Jillibean has the best Mommy in the World.

Yes, yes I do! I had a big presentation at school for Student Scholars Day and she drove all the way out to school to attend it. Two and a half hours away!!! That’s love.

Plus she brought presents- flowers
and donuts from the best donut shop ever!!!!
She sure knows the way to a Jillibean’s heart!
The presentation went well, although I was a little thrown off when the Honors College Director came in to watch… which freaked me out and lead me to leave all my notes in my purse... which lead to additional internal freaking out... but it went really well.

Plus I got to dress up real cute.
My fifth graders complimented me on my "awesome leggings," "pretty shirt," and "cute headband."

I love my Mom!