a dc wedding

    Last month Kade and I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC for my brother Stephen's wedding.  He married a sweet girl from Spain named Claudia.  It was a great trip.  Because Jonny lives so close to DC his house became the meeting place for everyone.  And I mean everyone! All the family came out for the wedding! Having everyone together was so much fun.  And I was also able to see Aaron for the first time in 2 years!!  He had just got off a mission in Chile before the wedding.

My brothers are such studs!

     We flew into DC on Friday night and were picked up by Stephen and Claudia driving from WV.  It was the first time I was able to meet Claudia.  I really wish I knew Spanish better because that's all she knows.  We went to Jonny's house that night to see everyone before going to the hotel.  The next morning we all got ready for the wedding and drove to the temple.

This was Kade's first time seeing the DC temple.  It is such a beautiful temple!  The ceremony was all in Spanish, so about half of the people in the room understood, and the other half got a few tidbits of what was being said.  It is such a wonderful thing to see two people so in love get sealed to one another forever.

     After the ceremony, we all went outside to take pictures. Even though it was the end of September it was really hot and humid that day.  Maybe I'm just not used to the humidity anymore, but I was sweating to death!  And I was even in a dress, I don't know how the guys were standing it.  Oh, and by the way, I made the dress I wore.  I thought it came out really good.  This was a second attempt for a dress.  I started with a different pattern but I made it too short even after adding about 4 inches to the pattern!  But my second try was with an easier pattern and it came out good.  I was able to make both dresses while Kade was elk hunting in Colorado.

    After pictures, we ate lunch and went to do some sight seeing in Washington DC.  Kade had never been there before so we were excited to go.  We wish we would have had more time to see all the sites, but we got to most of the important ones.  We went to the Smithsonian natural history museum and took pictures in front of the white house, though they wouldn't let us get very close.

  After touring DC, everyone went to Jonny's house for dinner.  Stephen and Claudia also cut a beautiful wedding cake made by Megan, she's so talented!  The cake was gorgeous and delicious!  After talking a while, we went back to the hotel.   The next morning we went to Jonny's church and ate lunch before saying goodbyes and heading back to the airport. 
     Because we weren't expecting much traffic for a Sunday we were a little late getting to the airport.  We had the same plane back to SLC as Aaron and Timmy.  So we were all in kind of a hurry to get through security to get to the plane in time.  It was the funniest thing seeing slow motion Aaron and Timmy going through security.  Kade and I were standing on the other side of security going crazy wondering why they were going so slow when they knew we were late.  I think its just guys that age, they are always so slow! :)
But, we got to our plane on time and even our bags made it, so everything was good.   It was a short trip, but it was great to see everyone!
Wedding Pictures
DC Pictures

student teaching

     So I noticed that I never wrote about my student teaching at the beginning of this year.  In order to finish my elementary education degree I had to complete 4 months of student teaching.  I was placed in the school down the street, Sonoma Heights, in a 3rd grade classroom.  While I think I probably would have done a little better in a younger class, I struggled tremendously through the whole thing.  I would have to say it has probably been the most stressful 4 months of my life.  Thinking back, I don't know how I finished!  Actually, I do know how I finished. I had awesome people helping me through the whole thing, my amazing mom and wonderful husband! Plus others who probably have no idea how they helped.  Going into it I knew it would be a lot of work, but I had no idea what teaching was really like.  College doesn't really prepare you for the reality of it. 
    As you probably already figured out, I'm not going to be a teacher, its just not for me.  I can write lesson plans all day long, but actually get up in front of a room full of kids and trying to get them to do what you want is torture to me.  It didn't help that I had my teachers constantly there to judge and criticize what I was doing.  Most of the time the kids were pretty good, and I got to liking quite a few of them.  But I don't miss teaching that classroom at all. 
   Still today I'm kind of embarrased by the fact that I spent almost 5 years trying to get my teaching degree, and I have no plans on actually teaching any time soon.  It's kind of awkward for me when people ask if I'm trying to get a teaching job.  Luckily for me if I don't want to explain the real reason I can just say that there are no teaching jobs, and there really aren't!  I just wish that I could have experienced the real thing at the beginning so I could have chosen a different career before it was too late. 
   After student teaching, I worked on the farm with Kade cutting and baling hay for the summer.  It was a nice change from the classroom, but it didn't leave much time for anything else.  I was able to teach a little girl piano lessons for the summer and I realized how much fun it was.  So later in the summer I started trying to get the word out that I was teaching piano lessons.  Now I have 8 students and I love it!  But with only 8 students I still needed something else to do.  I had applied and was hired to work at a new preschool.  The hours were terrible and would not work with piano lessons, too. So I decided not to take it and bet on more students.  I'm so glad I did because I know I would not have liked it very much.  I was blessed when my bishop offered me a part time job in his office.  Now I work part time in the morning in an attorney's office and come home to do piano lessons in the afternoon.  It's working out great and I'm so grateful.