Bryce Canyon National Park

Since there was no school today and we had to stay in town to go to work we decided to go on a hike at Bryce Canyon. Here are the pictures that pretty much sum up our roommate relationships. We have a ton of fun together. I don't think I'll ever find roommates as awesome as these guys again.
I am very sad I need to move but alas life has different plans.

There was a bus tour there and all the people were

very scared that I was going to fall and get hurt climbing 

into this hole. I really scared them when I jumped

out of the hole.

Michelle, Megan, and me

we have way too much fun together

"It's like I'm riding an elephant!"

This pretty much sums up our house.

I make funny faces, and Megan looks at me like

you are never going to grow up......

this picture totally happened by

 chance and is awesome

We tried to recreate it, not very successful

"Megan! Hug that tree with me!"-Michelle

Look I'm in a tree!

I can get in a picture in 10 seconds!

Go self timer pictures

We were so tired by this time. Our legs were burning

Yeah we took off our hoodies and then everyone

really looked at us like we were crazy.

Most of the people on the bus had on full winter coats

with hats and gloves, us we just had a hoodie,

well for a little while we did.

This is what happens when the camera 

falls right as it takes the picture.

 (It fell backwards)

And just because I can take panoramas with my camera:

Science!!

This week I tried to catch up on all my projects but there’s just not enough hours in the day to have a social life, work, work, and get homework finished. Usually grading or social life gets tucked away but this week grading and homework were set aside. Thursday after my practicum I met my roommate, Megan, at the education production lab to help me with a project for the block. We made a me!

Almost finished at the lab

I needed somewhere to store it so I hung 

it on the wall in our livingroom

I put a name tag on it that a friend at the resort made

the name tag says Professor B on it

 I had so much fun Friday. At work we had science day, the girls learned about states of change. I was in charge of the group that talked about fire. We had a lot of fun. We also had a group where the girls learned about dry ice, and they also played with oobleck. After dinner we made ice cream with dry ice, it tastes carbonated and if you poured it in fast your ice cream turned into like dip-n-dots but if you poured it in slowly you got like a soft serve ice cream that tasted very carbonated.  After the Friday experiential we still had like 20 pounds of dry ice left so we of course had a dry ice party, we made ice cream, played with dry ice bubles, and made root beer. 

dry ice with water and dish soap

We made one big bubble, it was really fun to pop

Root Beer!

Life is sometimes fun

Every Monday and Wednesday I go to a math study group but I leave it at 10 to go to institute. I always invite my friend who fell away from the church when she was younger and she always gives me the same look and says no I’m going to finish my math and turn it in on time. I also get my math in on time, I stay up until midnight but I get it in on time. So last Saturday we met for our study group and I get there sit down take out stuff and she goes “Is your church at 9?” me “yes……” her “can I go with you?” me trying to contain my ecstaticness “yeah, I’ll come get you at 8:50”. Then we started to do math. A little while later she goes “did you send the missionaries to my house?” I did but was a little afraid that the study group might end right then so I said “the missionaries came to your house?” she was like “yeah they asked me to come to church with them, but I don’t want to go to church with two random dudes.” She came to church with me but we haven’t mentioned it since, she still says no to institute.

My birthday was way fun! I woke up to a wall of balloons, only had one easy class to go to, studied for an abstract test, went to work and came home to a surprise party! The next day I got to play at the park with Mason and Keaton while Myia was taking a tour of SUU. We had a lot of fun.

I went home on Saturday for fall break and helped my dad build stairs at grandmas and build the wall for the bathroom.  I also ate a ton of cherry tomatoes.  I went shopping with my mom and got an awesome new coat and a pair of cute new pants, and another pair of slacks, it seems like I never have enough work clothes. I got to play with Mason, Keaton and Myia at the park. We had a lot of fun and saw a cool duck with weird hair stuff on its head.

It is really fun to walk through a ton 

of balloons at 7 am!

Michelle put these in the balloons. 

It made it really fun to pop them.

Sometimes we do crazy things in college.

Mason told Keaton he was the bad guy and that he 

needed to be in the back cause that's were bad guys sit

Welcome to fall break at the Lee house,

where we do construction in whatever you happen 

to have on when you stumble upon it

Panorama of the house during fall break 

The stairs that mostly dad made,

but I helped make them sturdier

You know how most kids spoil their dinner with junk food,

well I spoil my dinner with cherry tomatoes.

Love Sunday walks in Mapleton.

Where else can you get treats on a walk?

Birthday presents from Jordan.

The duck on the right next to the two green 

headed ones that has really funny hair

The week before Halloween at work was fun. The girls got to either carve or paint a pumpkin, and then we watched Nightmare Before Christmas. On Halloween the girls read scary stories they wrote and after dinner they watched Something Wicked this Way Comes. The institute didn’t have a Halloween party this year because the university asked the institute to stop competing with them on activities. The school puts on this dance/party thing but it has a pretty bad rep. People come from all over southern Utah to party at this party. But this year the school worked with the institute to help make the scream better, I still didn’t go because it’s $10 and the institute one was free and that is not an environment I like being in. We had steak conference the Sunday after the dance and our steak president, pres. Krankshaw, said that that was not an environment we should be in. He said he was very disappointed with what he saw at the dance. I don’t think that the institute will be participating in this event again. Since we didn’t want to go to the scream we just came back to our apartment and watched movies and played games and did our grading.

We needed to get pumpkins for the girls and 

my car was nominated to do the pickup

All the pumpkins in front of our school house

A student carved this pumpkin

It's a fairy and a werewolf 

One of the girls just poured a ton of paint all over her pumpkin, 

it kind of turned out cool

And it snowed today! I was so excited

I couldn't contain my excitement

I've bitten off more than I can chew

Life has been crazy this month!

The month started with my roommate, Michelle’s, birthday party. We had a ton of fun that day! I brought doughnuts to institute, and we had a surprise party for her when we got home from work. That’s a funny story, we unexpectedly were finished with work an hour earlier than planned and we had to stall Michelle at work for an hour so that everyone could get to our apartment before we got home. It almost worked. It was way fun though. We got her some of those blow up boxing glove things and we had wars with them, and we got some fun decorations from the dollar store and played put the face on the monster. We had a really good night. You can have hours of fun with one dollar and a scarf.

This month I realized that the amount of stuff I think I can do and the amount of stuff I really can do are very different. For instance if I am (finally) caught up it will only last 24 hours, if I’m lucky. I have pretty much been playing if I only sleep for­­ 4 hours every night this week, can I still function enough to get all of my work and social life in? So far it doesn’t seem to be working out so well. Today I am about 2 days behind and the near future doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.

I am currently trying to study for five tests. This year we were told that we now have to pass the math exit exam, and that it’s also going to be held on the same day as the praxis, which I also have to pass to graduate. I think that they should tell you that your last semester at college is not at all like your last semester of high school. This week I also found out that the passing score for the praxis last year was 150 and this year it is 160 and that the people who decided that was the passing score never even saw the test. This is our education system at its finest.

I have now taken and failed the Praxis II twice. I’m feeling pretty defeated and like my college classes haven’t prepared me at all for what I need to be teaching. How come I can do advanced calculus but I can’t pass a test meant to see if you are fit to teach high school? I’m very good at teaching the high school stuff at the ranch but I can’t seem to pass the test.

Monday and Tuesday is fall break for us, I was so looking forward to going home Friday and having a fun long weekend but that is looking less and less likely as the week goes on.

I’m told it will be worth it in the end, but I’m not sure a job that requires so much work with so little pay is going to be worth all the trouble. 

Michelle's birthday party. Pin the face on the monster

We were kinda mean to this guy,

we moved the couch and pushed him over

Not sure when this happened, sometime at the beginning of the year

when I wasn't so busy. Football 

This was homecoming Asian Dave, Michelle, Steve, and me

of course the math club had blue shirts this year for the homecoming parade

and the other team was blue. It was bad.

Conference weekend.

Kudos to the photobomber 

Conference with Michelle

I went up the canyon Saturday morning

Zander during conference

He sure is cute!