Merry Christmas!

Santa was all to nice to us this year!  We had a wonderful Christmas with Matt's family and received many awesome gifts.  We were definitely spoiled!  I got a lot of cake supplies.   I got a couple different pan sets for multi-tier cake baking.  I got a cake decorating set/tool box, and a couple other small items.  But the biggest thing that Santa brought me was a kitchen island!  Yes that is what I said, a kitchen island!  It does not fit in our little kitchen so it will take the place of our kitchen table.  It will be a great work space for me to work on all of my cake projects without breaking my back!  So thank you to my sweetie for getting me something that I had never even thought of! Now I just need to sell some of my cakes to pay for it :)

My kitchen island!  It has a nice high counter top so I don't break my back and shelves so I can keep all of my cake stuff together!

The highlight of Matt's Christmas would be two different things.  He got an early present from me.  He got his own golf clubs witha sweet bag!  He got to go golfing with his two brothers so that was fun for him!  Then his parents got him a lap top!   He had to go on a little scavenger hunt to find it so that was fun.  He was getting all impatient watching everyone else open their gifts so when he found out that he had another gift somewhere he got really excited!

So overall the day was good.  We were able to be in our own home and start our own Christmas traditions but also share a lot of time with The Bentz's.  It was a lot of fun! 

Happy One Year Anniversary to Us!!!

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary!  It was a great day!  We stayed in and made a special meal, ate our wedding cake, and watched our wedding videos!  The wedding cake was actually still pretty good!  Maybe we should freeze it again and save it for next years anniversary :)  We really enjoyed watching our wedding video again.  Matt would pause it every so often to share his memories....but don't worry they weren't on the pictures of us, he would pause on the pictures of his as a little boy and talk about how sweet he looked at that time.  Silly, but what would I do with out him :) 

Sometimes I don't pay attention!

I forgot my phone today when I went to work, which is never a good thing because then all day I am worried about missing all of these important calls or texts and rush home to find that no one has sent me any form of message, but today I actually had a few different messages!  One was from a girl in the ward inviting Matt and I to what I thought was an ornament exchange tonight.  So I responding saying we would not be able to make it tonight on such short notice.  She responded back saying that it is actually tomorrow night....so I said we could go.  I wanted to make sure that we just needed to bring an ornament so I asked just that. She called me a little later to explain to me that a white elephant gift can be anything not just an ornament!  Guess I missed that part of the text.  I assured her that I knew what a white elephant gift was and that I just has not read the text properly!  silly me...I guess that is one of the downfalls of texting...it is easy to misunderstand or in my case just skim over the details!  I swear I can read!

Christmas Decorations!!

So I am really proud of my Christmas Decorations this year...mostly because this is the first year that we have a actual Christmas tree and not a decorated cactus!  I just wanted to share these pictures for those who will not make it over to see them!  Since we were married around Christmas time we used ornaments to decorate for our receptions.  We have a ton now!! We were able to fill our tree, fill like 6 vases or bowls with them, decorate a garland and a wreath...and we still have some left over!  Matt's mom has also been making several things for us over the last few months, so that has helped to decorated our home as well! 

Our Beautiful Tree!  the tree skirt was quilted by Matt's mom. 

Our wonderfully ghetto stockings that I stitched our names into with yarn :)  Notice also the kissing penguins, those are the two things that stand out to me :)

Advent calendar made by Matt's Mom.  We filled it with little treats and a scripture for each day. 

Wall hanging by Matt's mom, ornaments and mini tress from our wedding.

This is looking into our kitchen, if you couldn't tell...

Doesn't this just say, "Welcome to our beautiful home!" ? That is what we were going for!

One crazy week!

Usually after a weekend I feel rested and some what ready to begin another work week....not this weekend.  I did totally enjoy my weekend, don't get me wrong, but I am still tired from a long work week and a long weekend!  Oh well!  Last week was parent teacher conference so I was at school every day starting a 7am and stayed until the latest 5pm....I know not to bad, I think the stress is what really tired me out!  I also made a large and in charge cake for Matt's Grandmas birthday.  It was so much fun to make and turned out absolutely beautiful!!!   We were together with the Bentz family starting Friday at 6pm and were together all the way until about 30 minutes ago....I am being serious, we were only apart to sleep about 7 hours each night.  It was really fun and I know Matt enjoyed being together with all of his brothers for the first time in 3 years!  They did a lot of "brother bonding time".....their choice of how to spend their time was was what really interesting; they went shopping!  Only the Bentz boys....  Grandma Boy's party was a hit.  The food was great and the company greater.  Michael "Mooker" Bentz gave his missionary homecoming talk today.  He did a wonderful job, and from what I can tell so far, he is going to be a very wonderful brother-in-law! 

Oh yes!  I also booked my first paid cake making job from the party!  Someone really liked the cake and wanted one like it for this next week!! Maybe this hobby thing will actually make me some money!  If you know anyone who would like a custom decorated fondant cake, send them my way!!

Well that is it for now.  I hope you love the cake pictures!!

Grandma Boy's beautiful fall cake!

Front View

Side View

The pumpkin patch and birthday sign :)

The Top View

Inside the cake...it was an Almond Raspberry Buttercream cake

Oh yes and Matt gave me these beautiful flowers just because he loves me :)

On Thursday I finally had to sit my one student down and explain to her that she doesn't need to comment on everyone's clothes.  After she told me I looked like Santa Claus (because of the belt that I was wearing) and after she made another child feel bad about wearing a skirt on PE day, I had had enough.  So hopefully this child will not comment on anyone's clothes anytime soon :)  The highlight of this week was watching part of the EARTH movie with my students. If you have ever seen it, it has a lot of predator/prey scenes.  It was interesting to see kids that would cry when the antelope got caught, and which ones would cheer the leopard on telling it to kill the poor little antelope.  Needless to say that they really got into it.  I am happy to say though that I have a week off of school!  It is October break next week so I will not have any new school stories for a little while!  

Crazy things that kids do

So since Matt and I both work with kids we often have interesting or funny experiences that don't happen everyday.  Usually when a child has a problem their first reaction is to get back at the other person.  Whether it be tattling on them, hitting them, telling everyone else not to like them, or making a mean face at them, kids usually find a way to get back. 

Well the other day Matt was at work and there was a problem between two boys in the bathroom.  While they were in their separate stalls, one boy was taunting the other, basically just calling him names.  So the other boy thought he would get back in a big way.  He took some of his poop and put a big piece of it on the T.P. and threw it over to the other!  I don't think he will be bothered again anytime soon....that is intense!

Children are also very honest.  As you may have heard before in stores children often make comments about those around them without caring if they hear, or what they might think.  My students are particularly honest.  I have one girl who frequently looks at the cloths that I am wearing, like girl what is that??? One day she said why do you look like a zebra?  Well I guess that's what I was going for so I can't worry too much.  But yesterday I got called out on two things.  One that my arm pits where sweating (and it showed on my shirt) and the other also had to do with that area.  During a small reading group, one student asked, "why are your arms pits hairy?"  I just said really quickly, "yep I need to shave them that's why."  I moved on to something else quickly so that the others wouldn't really notice...and I really think that the others had no idea what she said.  I would just love to hear though if that girl went home and said something to her mom like "mom my teacher has hairy armpits"...  that would be the best!  Needless to say that I went home after school and shaved my armpits! 

Making a change at 3 am

It is 3 am and I am starting a blog.  Why you might ask am I awake at 3 am (on a school night I might add)?  Because last night I took this so called Vitamin Energy Drink, first thinking that I felt no effect at all, only to realize 3 hours into my sleep that I really was wide awake and ready to do something!  So let me back up and explain myself a little bit if you think I sound a little crazy!

So I decided that I need to make a change in my life to be more healthy and active....problem is that after starting a new school year, I constantly find myself low on energy and unmotivated to actually make a change :)  I have thought about trying different diets or training again for a triathlon, but in the end I really feel like I need to try something new.  My new friend Shaylen asked me to come to this Advocare "mixer" where I could learn about this line of vitamin supplements that helps to improve overall health.  I wanted to support her, but honestly I was very skeptical of what I might hear.  I know that the best way to change myself is to eat healthy and exercise, and anything that says you can loose weight without changing your lifestyle, is not going to have a lasting effect,  So listening at this meeting I was very attentive to what they were trying to sell to me and how it would fit with my beliefs.  I heard a lot of success stories and interesting things there and thought that I needed to try this thing out for myself to see if it really works. 

Basically long story short I am going to start a 24 day challenge with Advocare and I want to share my experience with everyone I know.  So now you can either see how this doesn't really work, or you can share in my success and learn more about Adocare yourself!    In a few hours I will be starting my day with the Spark Vitamin Energy drink to see how it makes me feel while I actually should be working!  I will let you know how that goes!