Bérets and Penpals

Over the past several months, I have been pretty quiet online. I love reading about all of your lives, however, and seeing pictures of what you are all up to. Sometimes I miss connecting with people, though, and this blog was started as an attempt to connect up with old and current friends and acquaintances. Today, I felt like sharing just a bit of what I have been up to, especially with those of you whom I haven't seen for a while. This picture here is of a bubble machine. My little 1 year old just loves bubbles. Many of our lazy summer afternoons were spent on our porch, just simply enjoying the bursts of bubbles all around.

I have enjoyed being a mom to this little girl more than I knew I would. I always knew I would love teaching and taught school for a while before having a kid of my own. Now, I get to do both and that is the beauty of working part-time. I actually looked forward to going back to school this year as I believe I have really found my balance, though I do miss this little girl when I am gone. When I am with her, I try to make her life fun and happy. Here is a picture of her sitting on my mom's lap on the Chick-Fil-a train. She has a great time with my mom and I think we went on this train at least two or three times at the Highland Fling last month.

I think little babies are so cute in hats. My little girl has never wanted to wear a hat--she pulls them off right away. However, one day she got into my French stuff in the closet and she just loved a red béret that I had bought at a tourist shop in Paris. She didn't want to take it off. Her other favorite thing were some perfumes from a perfume factory. You can't see her hand very well, but she has one of those perfumes in her hand and doesn't want to let it go.

She is just fascinated by anything in the kitchen. Her favorites include the dishwasher, the popcorn machine and the mixer. Here, she helped make my mom's German chocolate birthday cake. I think she is going to really enjoy baking.

She is 14 months old, yet she doesn't want to walk. She much prefers crawling. I did finally get a picture of her standing up all by herself, though. Awe, it's so much fun to be with her as she makes so much progress and catch all these little smiles.

When it comes to teaching, I feel I have really hit the jackpot in French classes this year. I was a bit worried to have two classes of 40 kids on the first day of class. I felt like that was just asking for discipline issues. However, my first class of the day, French 2, which is often at a time when they are all still asleep, has been so fun and energetic. I have been teaching them for nearly a month and they are always on task, asking questions and truly wanting to learn. This past week, I set them up with penpals from La Réunion. La Réunion is a small island to the east of Madagascar. From what I understand, there is an active volcano there and it is just green and filled with waterfalls. This has been awesome because nobody seemed to have heard of La Réunion before this penpal project. Now they all want to travel there. I have added it to my "Must See" places and the English teacher on this French island has been awesome to correspond with!

I really feel that teaching is such a great job. Even if it isn't always easy, there are always kids who need teachers that love them and are passionate about their subject area. I feel so blessed to have a great mom and neighbors to take good care of my baby so that I can teach other peoples' kids and learn lots of new things myself. I also can't believe how much I truly love part-time. I have time to cook, go to the library and do all sorts of stay-at-home mom things on my off-days but I can really put 100% into teaching when I am at school!

Ladybug Birthday Party

Yesterday, my baby turned 1! Where has the time gone? It seems that not too long ago, she was so tiny and fragile and now when I see newborns, she looks huge! Sometimes it feels like she is growing up too fast and it makes me really sad, but other times, I see that this growing up thing can be fun! I love her constant giggle, her excitement when she can say a few words like "uh oh" and "kitty" and looks to me for affirmation. Nothing is more rewarding to a parent than having your newly-crawling baby (yes, she was almost a year before she started crawling) crawl past her brand new toys and straight over to you for a hug. I'm just having so much fun with her. Every day, I try to think of at least one new adventure that I can take her on for that day. Some fun things we have done the past few weeks are Storytime at all the libraries in Utah county, Summer Science experiments at the Orem library, visits to all the pools and splash pads around, a visit to the pet store--she loves kittens and calls every animal a kitty, trips to ShopKo, which is never crowded just to walk through the fun toy aisle. Being a teacher has worked so well because I can still do what I love--teaching bright high schoolers--and still have time to have lots of mommy and me time.

I spent the last several weeks, wracking my brain for a fun theme for her first birthday. I wanted to do something fun and creative. Last year at this time, I was going through some rough stuff and this year, things were great. As I thought, I considered every princess and pink theme, spent hours of her naptime on Amazon, Pinterest and blogs, scouting out all the cute ideas. In the end, I decided to go with a Ladybug Party Theme. I might have gone a bit overboard, but I definitely had fun. She had everything from a decorated Ladybug High Chair to a beautiful strawberry shortcake with ladybug stickers. Okay, the cake looked more like the melting cake that the three fairies made in Sleeping Beauty, but it was homemade and I was proud of it. I knew as I scanned Pinterest that I found the right cake when I saw it had 3 tablespoons of vanilla and a whole box of fresh strawberries! It was a lot of work and she didn't feel like taking a nap her whole birthday so I did some crazy tricks to get it made in time, but here it is! I told the guests to wear black and red, had tomatoes and olives as snacks as well as those little Costco cheeses turned into ladybugs. As I started to get frustrated at her lack of a nap so I could get the ladybug decals on the wall, I realized that much of the time, these "kid parties" are for the parents, or in my case, the mom. The best part about a 1 year old birthday, you ask? A baby smash cake! She started out with a taste of frosting and in no time, she was smearing it everywhere. She was ecstatic over the cream cheese frosting with strawberries. Awe, it was worth it.


The summer fun continues: next week I plan to take her on a ride of the Heber Creeper (do they call it that anymore?)! I am always looking for ideas of things to do with a 1 year old. I have tried taking her to the movies, but after 15 minutes, she just wants to get down on the sticky floor and crawl towards all the lights. My mom and I went to Puss n Boots last week and the baby did love the Mexican music but after a couple of minutes, she thought that searching for old popcorn off of the floor would be more fun. We left that movie after 20 minutes. At least it was only a dollar.