Turkey Trot Fun Run

I spent my lovely Saturday morning working at our annual elementary school Turkey Trot. Apparently they've had five of them but this is the first one I've ever gone to. (I had to work to fufill comp time hour requirements for my job.) Students and their families bring canned food as an entry fee to the High School track and then walk/jog a mile, or however much they want to run, with their families. We give out turkey tokens that the kids can tie on their shoes and the kids like having the mile they ran today count towards their jogging logs at school. It was more fun than work for me which was awesome except for the fact that it was FREEZING this morning! I was completely (think block of ice) frozen the moment I got there and did not warm up until after running my fourth lap. (That’s one mile for me!) The best thing about being a teacher is that you are an instant celebrity anywhere you go with kids. As soon as I started jogging around the track I had kids running behind me, beside, and in front of me. I swear some of them were trying to trip me for fun. I didn’t want them to think their teacher was an old lady so I had to run extra hard and try not to embarrass myself, something I am starting to pay for right now. (I just popped in four Advil and propped my feet up.) Despite the fact that I now think I actually might be an old lady, the morning was a huge success and I am now eligible to get the two days off before Thanksgiving, since I met my required comp time hours. (So it’s a win for everyone.) Happy Turkey Trot day everyone!

Halloween :)

Happy Halloween everyone! I pretty much spent my whole weekend finishing a huge research paper on the Library of Congress for my graduate class. So basically I had oodles of fun. I did almost eat my body weight in Smarties candy. (Extremely hard to do as they are a very light weight candy.) Here's a video of a super cool Halloween costume I saw on the news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIzKK2tVrsQ

Have a scary night!

Grand Canyon

My family and I travelled all over New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado (in that order) the summer before last and it was a fantastic trip for several reasons. I'd been to the Grand Canyon when I was smaller but had a hard time remembering it. We decided to go back to take Hallie this time and also to visit the North Rim, which we had heard was awesome too. (And it was!) The Arizona 09 trip also made the Taylor Family "vacation hall of fame/shame". (The trip ended with my dad throwing out his back and us rushing back to Texas right before we were going to take a Jeep up the side of a mountain. We never made it up but had to pay for the jeep rental and an expensive back surgery anyways.)

Anyways, the cool thing about the Grand Canyon is its surreal-ness. It doesn't look real even when you are standing right in front of it. The whole time I was there I felt like I could reach out and touch the screen that must be projecting the picture out front of me. It was so huge and out of this world it had to be an image rather than real. Trying to look at the Canyon and comprehend how massive and intricate it was made me feel sort of like those people in the bible (I'm thinking of Moses, but there had to be more) who tried to look directly at God. They weren't able to comprehend just who He is and how awesome He can be and neither can I! It was an incredible experience and number #6 on my list of awesome life moments. It made me feel so small and insignificant, but in the best and most humbling way. :) Lesson learned... God is definitely GREAT!

Carolina

To celebrate the advent of my fantastic new job, I bought myself a new BFF: Carolina. Carolina is my new Kindle, an electronic reading device from Amazon.com. Since I'm home sick on a gorgeous October Friday night, I finally have the time to pen a love-blog to my favorite new piece of technology. I decided to purchase Carolina after a homework assignment I had to do for the cataloging class I am taking right now. If you have no idea what’s going on in my life right now, I’m in grad school at UNT so I can become a children’s librarian. And yes, cataloging is the worst idea for a class ever, and yes I thoroughly despise it. The best thing to come out of cataloging 101 was an article review I had to do on modern technology relating to the library. I chose to read an article on electronic readers, and from then on I pretty much had to have one! The new job gave me a great excuse to get a Kindle and Carolina is so incredibly cool! The new generation Kindles have free 3G so you can buy and download books everywhere. I also figured out how to check my email on it and it works globally so I can take it with me to Paris this spring. Super excited about that! I already got a bunch of free books from amazon.com and the not so free ones are still really cheap to buy and download. Check it out on the amazon.com website if you are interested in getting one. I love my new toy!

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B003FSUDM4/ref=sa_menu_kdp33

Here is a picture of Carolina the Kindle. I bought a cool “skin” to go over her, so now she looks like a mini-library.

New job!

I have seriously been neglecting my blog lately because I have much more important things to be doing- namely, my new job! I have been trying to get in with any school district since I graduated from Texas State last December and FINALLY a position became available last week and I got it! I am, as of Monday this week, the new P.E. aide at Marble Falls Elementary. This is incredibly exciting for me for several reasons...

(In no particular order)

#1 I can now get in to all home football games for FREE! This is a raise in itself as I was paying $7 each week to watch Hallie in the half time show. (Have yet to really watch any of the actual game.) Go Mustangs!

#2 I can get into the football games using my new employee badge! This is the thing I was most excited to get. It's super shiny, has my picture (which I made the guy retake about 7 times before he could print it), and is the most lovely shade of purple.

#3 I have to start paying for my own insurance now. This is not a perk at all, but does make me feel so grown up, in a broke sort of way.

#4 I am getting super skinny and in shape doing P.E. all day. Downside... I have weirdo tan lines and they will get much worse as we go outside more to jog.  


As you can clearly see the pros vastly outweigh the teeny tiny “cons”. I am so happy to be "in" with the district and with my new job! Here is a picture of my brand-spanking-new badge I get to wear every day.

Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain was definitely my favorite spot in all of Rome. It's way bigger in person than you think it would be and in way smaller of a square than you would think. (There's plenty of fountain and not very much room for it.) The sculptures (done by Nicola Salvi) were amazing and true works of art. All these surreal looking figures just seemed to rise up out of naturally flowing marble, blended together in this ethereally beautiful way.

There were always tons of people there, and not just tourists, yet I always felt secluded. Some of my favorite memories are of that spot and of the Tiramisu gelato I enjoyed there with my friend Madison. Just thinking about the water and enjoying my time in the eternal city. The trick to the fountain is to hold the coin in your right hand and then throw it in backwards over your left shoulder. This way, and only this way, is how you guarantee your return to Rome. (Giordano, my Italian tour guide, taught me that.) Arrivederci Rome! Until we meet again!

Here is the front, my friend Madison, and that amazing Tiramisu gelato!

Mi hijo

This weekend I got to spend some time with my nephew, a hispanic baby named Juan Carlos. My sister Hallie is taking child development this semester and had to take home for the weekend a screaming, crying, fake pooping, computerized bebe. For the first four hours he was pretty boring and pretty creepy. As it turns out he is entirely made of plastic and yet somehow makes breathing noises. Chucky, anyone? Hallie spent the first night feeding him and changing his diapers at 1:00, 2:00, 3:30, and 5:30 am. Why didn't she just ignore him like any good parent would, roll over, and go back to sleep, you might ask? Because apparently if you ignore the cries he just gets progressively louder and the computer recording her grade drops lower and lower. I'm happy to say that we survived the weekend and Juan Carlos got deported first thing monday morning. The good news... Hallie made a 100 on the assignments. The bad news... my mom and dad won't be getting grandchildren from Hallie or I for many, many years.

Me with my mexican nephew. :)

When you feed him he makes actual sucking noises. So weird!