Happy Birthday!

Bad at taking pictures and slow at writing about them, doesn’t make a very good combination for having a blog. But a little is better than nothing!

My first married birthday was fantastic. The Pinder family spoiled me on Sunday with one of my very favorite meals: hamburgers! and gave me wonderful presents.

On Monday I spent the majority of the day at school teaching little children, then after school in hours and hours of meetings about how to better teach little children. I got home about 6:00 and went to one of my very favorite restaurants: Red Robin! Why? Because they have hamburgers!! Soooo delicious.

That evening, Becky was gracious enough to let us come over to celebrate. So the Pinders, the Packers and some of my great college friends: Jerika, Maren, Marina, Kim, Jenny and Heidi (and Heidi’s fiance) came and celebrated with me. It was a very enjoyable 26th birthday. My husband spoiled me too :)

    

                              

Funny in the Classroom

Teaching keeps me very busy and sometimes worn out. But it is moments like these that keep me going.

On Friday I was doing a character development lesson. I was teaching the students that it is okay to feel emotions, but it is the choices we make when we feel those emotions that are important.

I taught them the sign for “smart” and “foolish” in sign language. I would describe an emotion, then say a choice someone could make when they feel that emotion. The students had to show me if they thought that was smart or foolish in sign language. I then gave them an opportunity to think of some choices. I said “What is a foolish choice you could make if you were feeling happy” One boy raised his hand and said “If you build your house on sand”.

Sometimes people ask me how I teach Kindergarten. I really can’t imagine teaching any other grade. 5 and 6 year olds are the best!

Our First Married Christmas December 2011

We had a fantastic Christmas break. One of the benefits of marrying a young man still in school is that we get two whole weeks, plus some, to enjoy a wondering Christmas vacation.

Our vacation started out with a drive to Oregon with the Packers. We were fortunate enough to borrow our parents’ (Pinder’s) car so that we could all fit in one vehicle. The Packer boys did pretty well…including Nate, so all in all the drive wasn’t bad.

Bennett with some sweet shades, enjoying a bit of a break from sitting while playing ball with Bryce

We got to spend a week in Ashland with the entire Morris clan. It was crazy fun with 10-12 adults and 7 little kids. Mom did a great job of planning some fun things for us to do, as well as give us down time to enjoy just being together.

Highlights include but are not limited to:  the temple, downtown Ashland, dodgeball, kickball, the Ashland cabaret, bowling, eating at a delicious Mexican restaurant, Jessica’s birthday including a dollar party, Nativity with the little ones as the star roles, opening presents all day long on Christmas, playing tennis with the whole family and of course just being together.

After Oregon we got to spend another relaxing week in Utah which included dinner and a movie (mission impossible iv…sooo good) with the Pinder Parents and Scott and Pauline (Bryce’s aunt and uncle), Dinner on New Year’s Eve and good times at the Pinder home, lunch with Bryce’s friends in Salt Lake (I got lost in Fashion place mall because Bryce was trying to avoid someone and I forgot I didn’t have my phone so we got separated. Being lost, even at age 25, is not fun).

For more pictures and details of the good times in Oregon see the following posts:

http://wearethepackers.blogspot.com/2012/01/christmas-in-ashland-part-i.html

http://jacobandstacey.blogspot.com/?zx=1147c264090e96e2

http://daveandlizmorris.blogspot.com/2012/01/christmas-2011.html

http://sjmalan.blogspot.com/2012/01/preschool-bowling-and-more-treasure.html

Here are some pictures of the good times.

 

        

            

Enjoying some nephew time with baby Ryan and little James

Playing a little dodgeball at the church.

    

Jumping on the trampoline. Poor little Ethan just hung on for dear life and kept saying “wo…wo…woooo!”

Waiting our turns for bowling and later finding “santa”…we found him on every page, even all the items in the book. We are that good.

Christmas Day Craziness

In true Morris fashion, some good ol’ tennis.

 

The whole Morris clan.

Home Sweet Home

Bryce and I are so blessed to be able to rent this place from his Dad and Uncle. We love our cozy little house and feel quite spoiled. A lot of you have seen our place but I thought I would post some pictures for those of you who have not had the chance to come visit us.

Here is the outside of our house. The flower beds are much prettier during the spring. Our neighbors are Mexican and I guess they felt it was important to distinguish us from them so as you can see they put up a Mexican flag on their side and an American flag on our side. Once you go through the front door there is are two doors and ours is the one on the right. (See that building that is in the far left of the photo? That is where Bryce works…pretty convenient eh?!)

Our Living Room

(In the photo on the right you can see our front door)

                    

Our Living Room is very big and long so we divided it into our T.V area, then our sort of dining room area. The door in the photo on the right leads to our kitchen.

                  

 

The following is a picture of where Bryce spends many many hours studying. The one on the right is obviously our fireplace…sorry about the massive glare on the picture. Hanging above our fireplace is a picture of the Medford Oregon Temple where we got sealed. Stacey took the picture and my mom had it developed and framed and gave it to me for one of my bridal showers.

   

And last but not least our kitchen. I spared the pictures of our bedroom because it still doesn’t have anything up on the walls. Just a boring bed and dresser (although it is extremely nice furniture and I am glad to have such a nice bed!).

Happy Haunting!

We celebrated our Halloween by carving pumpkins, eating dinner, then giving away all our candy and turning the lights off so they would think we were gone.  It was a night to remember.

I was Fancy Nancy for school. I should show a picture of all my cute students but I need permission from the parents to do so.

I attempted to spray paint a picture onto mine because I was too lazy to carve it. It didn’t go so well…

Here is a very boring video of a glimpse into our Halloween night.

Oceanside=Funside

(Try not to be too jealous of my extremely clever and witty title.)

During Fall Break (another benefit of being a teacher…bet you wish you were a teacher right about now…) Bryce and I got to go to Oceanside, California and spend a few days in a beautiful beach house with his family. If our beach house was any closer to the water, it would have been in the water! It was a perfect getaway. Bryce’s Family was there along with his Aunt Allyson and Uncle Ryan and their two kids. As well as his Uncle Scott and Aunt Pauline and their son Jude.

Thursday: We drove to Cali after Bryce’s class. We got there pretty late in the evening and just enjoyed seeing the place where we would spend our days of bliss.

 

Friday: We got up and watched the ocean from our gigantic windows then we headed into San Diego. We went to Sea Port Village to see some shops and walk along the bay. Once we got home lots of people went out on the boogie boards and surf boards. I wasn’t quite ready to venture in. Bryce did a great job at trying to stand up on the surf board. When we came in from all the fun outside we saw dolphins swimming in the ocean! In fact, we saw the dolphins pretty much every day we were there. They weren’t very far from the shore. It was awesome! We also saw a seal that scared a surfer, it was pretty funny.

    

 

Saturday: We went out to the pier in Oceanside and saw lots of fishing, and crab catching. It was a very foggy day. There was also a surf competition going on which was fun to watch. Saturday afternoon I hit the waves with Bryce and did some boogie boarding. It was tons of fun! That evening we ate at a great fish house. I had some most delectable salmon.  It was a great day in California.

Camille, Pauline and Malory                      On the Boogie Boards!

 

This is a great video of us boogie boarding and Bryce falling off. The entire time I boogie boarded, I never fell off. Bryce however, managed to do it quite a bit. But he also managed to stand up on the surf board, which I never even attempted :)

Sunday: Everyone else had left either Saturday night or Sunday morning so Bryce and I had the  place to ourselves. It was a fun relaxing day. We went and walked the San Diego Temple grounds then went to this great park in San Diego. It is Balboa park and so big and beautiful. While there we went to rose garden, a botanical garden, viewed various artist’s artwork and ate lunch. Then we ventured across a very big, awesome bridge over to Coronoda.

The trip was so fun! We are so lucky to have a family who loves us enough to let us tag along :)