Catch Up #3, #96,62,25,77

If you were paying attention before you will remember that I mentioned a trip that we would be taking. So #96 is "every kid should have an adventure" and " 62 is "Every kid should take a trip to Washington D.C." So as a graduation present we decided to take a trip to Washington D.C. and New York. I had never been to either places and have always wanted to go and Kelli is always up for a trip. So we used this trip as our adventure as well as fulfilling #25 "every kid should go for a ride in a small airplane". Technically the plane that we flew to New York in was not small, but small planes freak me out and are way expensive so...There is a lot to tell about our trip, but I will just give you the basics and let the picture tell you the rest. My aunt lives in upstate New York but she has a friend who owns an apartment in the Bronx, so she met us in New York and acted as our official tour guide as well as hooking us up with a free place to stay. Needless to say she is AMAZING!!! While in New York we went to the empire state building (where I got hit on by some black guys), the empire state building, times square, china town, 2 Broadway plays (including Wicked), ground zero, and wall street. We also went to a New York Yankee's game thus fulfilling # 77 "every kid should go to a baseball game with grandpa", oh except grandpa wasn't there but I had my aunt which is the next best thing. After New York City we went to my aunts house in Rochester and spent some quality time with her family. The LDS church also has a lot of historical sights there in Palmyra so went and saw those as well as Niagara Falls, all with about an hour of my aunt's house!! After New York we caught a train to D.C. That is enough words, you can enjoy the pictures. But I do want to say that I LOVED this trip especially Wahsington D.C. it was my favorite part of the whole trip. Enjoy:)

 My Awesome Aunt Sharleen!! 

 

 

Philadelphia (We stopped there on our way to D.C.)

 

Catch Up #2, #67

Catch Up number 2 is "every kid should clown around". For some reason I only have picture of Kelli doing this, but I know we took some pictures of me as well, but Kelli is way more photogenic so I am totally okay with it. For this one we bought one of those flowers that sprays water that clowns wear, and the we took turn spraying each other with it. I also found a picture of those inflatable animals that come in like a tube that expand in water and I am pretty sure that was part of our clowning around as well. This whole memory thing is kind of hard!

Our expanding animals!

If I remember right the flower squirted you more than it did the other person.

Catch Up Day #1, #100

Alright I am bored in class tonight so I thought I should continue on with the catch up of our blog. #100 is "Every kid should have the opportunity to act like a kid". To be honest I found these pictures on my computer with all of the other pictures from our blog and I can't remember when thing they were suppose to be, but based upon what is left I figure this has to be the right thing to go with the pictures. For this one we went to the mall, which is a pathetic excuse of a mall, and played with some of the kid toys they have there. I remember it was a lot of fun and I won our giant chess game:)

Our Giant Chess Game That I Won!

Me Cruising On My Motorcycle!!

Kelli Taking a Safari Ride;)

Day: I have no idea, # all of the above

Well HELLLO!! So it has been a long time since we last wrote (like two years), so I thought it was about time to catch you all up on how the semester finished out. Let me begin by saying that we never did finish our 101 things and to be honest I am kind of glad we didn't because I think that would mean that it really is all over. Don't get me wrong I am glad to be done with school (well sort of...we will get to that later) but finish the 101 things would me that we are no longer kids. To be honest I think that we never truly grow up, there is always a part of us that will always be a kid (plus I have been called a big kid on more than one occasion).  So I am going to start to fill you in on the last days of our last semester (two years later).

Today we will start with #91 "Every Kid should experience the mystery of magic". I am going to warn you now that these posts may not be as exciting as previous ones, because I don't remember all of the small details of these ones. So for this one we to the dollar store and bought those cheap magic trick sets. I am pretty sure I used them one time (when Kelli and I first got them) and then gave mine to my nephew.

Our awesome magic sets. I remember that I liked Kelli's much better than mine because she had the coin trick with hers.

Day 67 #4

Today's thing is "every kid should camp in the backyard". Kelli is not necessarily a camp in the yard kind of person and we live in Logan so weather has not been very nice lately so we modified this one just a little. But I need to preface this a little. I play volleyball at Utah State which means in the fall I spend half of my time in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum. We practice in there three hours a day during season and we play all of our matches there. I consider it my second home based on how much time I have spent in there. Having said that I have always wanted to sleep in the Spectrum. So Kelli knows the USU police through her job so we got them to let us in the spectrum at about one in the morning. We did not end up staying there the whole night, but we did spent about two hours in there half awake. It is an experience that I will never forget!!!

Day 66 #66

Today's thing is "every kid should mark birthday's with a celebration". Well neither I nor Kelli has a birthday during this semester, so we decided to celebrate someone famous' birthday. So we chose to celebrate the author of the Declaration of Independence's birthday. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 he not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but he was also our third president, so we figured he was a pretty good choice for our birthday celebration. So in honor of his birthday we went and got ice cream at Charlie's, which is this cute little ice cream shop in Logan. the best part was that I got to combine my two favorite things ice cream and cookie dough. Kelli got a sundae which I am sure was almost as good as my cookie dough shake:) We wanted to play some songs on the Juke Box that they have there but unfortunately we did not have any quarters. However, someone else played "Your so Vain" so I guess we at least got something out of the juke box. Either way it was really great ice cream!!!

Fun Facts about the birthday boy!

* Thomas Jefferson was tall (6 feet 2 1/2 inches) and had reddish hair.
* Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
* One of Jefferson's greatest achievements as President was the Louisiana Purchase, which cost the U.S. approximately 15 million dollars.
* President Jefferson also sent Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition across America in 1803. See a replica of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Compass here.
* The Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. is modeled after the Pantheon of Rome. Jefferson introduced the circular style of structure with columns to America.
* Thomas Jefferson was not well skilled in public speaking. His strength was in his written words.
* While President, Thomas Jefferson cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey and still reduced the national debt by a third
* One of the newer facts on Thomas Jefferson that I recently discovered was about his involvement in archaeology. Thomas Jefferson is sometimes referred to as the "father of American archaeology", because he was the first to use the method of stratification in an archaeology dig on his property. He organized the dig to explore a mound on his property that turned out to be an old burial ground for Piedmont Indians. As a boy, he had noticed Native American Indians passing by the spot in what appeared to be sadness, and was always curious about it.
* While at William and Mary College, he stayed in the building that is known today as the Sir Christopher Wren Building
* After college, Thomas Jefferson studied law under George Wythe, who would one day join his friend Jefferson in signing the Declaration of Independence
* Thomas Jefferson grew many tomatoes at Monticello, even though many people at that time thought that they were poisonous. Once, in Lynchburg, he publicly ate a tomato, apparently causing quite a stir.
* While in the White House, President Thomas Jefferson kept a pet mockingbird named Dick. Dick was sometimes allowed to fly around Jefferson's office.
* Also while President, Thomas Jefferson kept two grizzly bears on the White House lawn, briefly. A gift from Zebulon Pike's expedition, they were eventually give to the museum in Philadelphia.
* Some of Thomas Jefferson's favorite foods were macaroons, macaroni and peas. He ate little meat..."I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that . . . as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet."
* Jefferson experimented with planting many varieties of vegetables and fruits at Monticello. Heirloom seeds from Monticello were planted in the Obama White House garden in 2010. You can purchase seeds for your own garden when you visit Monticello!

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."
~Thomas Jefferson

Day 70 #78

Today's thing is "every kid should play with his food". Seeing as how this Sunday is Easter we decided that coloring Easter eggs would fit this perfectly. Unfortunately Kelli had to work tonight so I boiled the eggs and took it to her work so we could do it together. I never though that I would be coloring eggs at a police department, but it turned out really good!!

Kelli's eggs she tried to make the top pink one zebra, but I don't see it;)

My awesome eggs, the green one was suppose to be a volleyball, but the egg shape kind of messed it up but I totally see a volleyball all the same:)

Day 69 #49

Today thing was "every kid should ride a horse". Kelli and I have both ridden horses before, and lets just say Kelli has not had the greatest experience with them resulting in her fear of horses. So she was not to upset when we failed to find a real horse to ride. Living in Logan you would think we would be able to find someone with some horses we could ride, but after asking almost everyone we know we were unable to find someone to take us for a ride. So we got creative and went to the local K-Mart and rode the toy horse in front of the store. Oh and don't worry a little four year old girl rode the merry-go-round right before us. It was pretty funny especially since we did not fit on the ride. It was fun though and made us feel like little kids again!!

Day 68 #68, 3,12, 44

Today was actually a nice day in Logan and by nice I mean we actually saw the sun even though it was a little chilly. Because it was so nice we added on a few things that had to be done in good weather along with the thing we already had planned for today .

Our first things is "every kid should go to a family reunion". This is a bit odd but it is our blog so. . .Neither of us had a family reunion to go to during this smester so we had to be a little creative. As we have mentioned we are LDS so today's family reunion was going to the Logan Temple and doing baptisms for the dead. We decided that at some point we are all related and so why not spend some time with our deceased family as well as our living family performing the work with us:)

Our second thing for today is "every kid should go outside at dusk and stay there until its dark, watching the stars come out". We obvioulsy had to do this one on a day when you could actually see the sun going down and the stars coming out, so we decided we needed to do this today in case we did not get another chance. It was really pretty!!!

Our third thing for today is "every kid should eat homemade ice cream on a hot summer evening". We figured we could settle for a chilly sunny evening due to the rain storms we have been having. Also because this was a bit imprompto we didn't actually make the ice cream ourselves. We went and got Aggie Icecream which is made by USU so techniqually it is homemade, just not by us:) The ice cream was great (way better than the BYU creamery or any other kind of ice cream) and it gave us something to do as we were watching the sun go down!!!

Our fourth and final thing was "every kid should should decorate the driveway". We don't exactly have a driveway so we figured our back porch would have to do. So we pulled out the chalk and began decorating after we ate our ice cream and as we watched the sun go down. I think our creation turned out pretty awesome!!!!

Day 65 # 22,13,23

We trippled out today out of necessity to finish in time. So one of today's things was "every kid should make a special homemade present for mom or dad, grandma, or grandpa". So we decided we would make our parents homemade frames with our senior picture in it. We both went and took senior pictures to send out with our graduation announcements, so all we needed to do was make the frame. Kelli scrapbooked her's because well she is just more creative than me. I just bought a frame and added some bright green ribbon not very creative but it fits me so. . .

Our second thing today was "every kid should help create a scrapbook of her childhood memories". If you will remember one of our things was to take pictures of whatever we wanted with a disposable camera, so Kelli and I decided to make a scrapbook of these pictures. They turned out pretty cute more so on Kelli's end then mine but I am okay with that.

Our third and last thing for today was "every kid should express creativity". Both of the projects that we did allowed us to express our creativity. In fact this whole 'Last Semester' thing has allowed us to express our creativity. We are getting close to the end (only three weeks till graduation) and we have loved every minute of this experience because it allowed us to express who we are and what we are all about. It is a priceless experience:)

Day 64 # 56

Today's thing is "every kid should create a board game". So Kelli is now teaching first graders about the sun, moon, stars, etc. So we decided that our game should be something she could use with her students. So we created this game called I have, Who has? Basically you say what you have and then on the same card you have a definition so you read who has and then your definition the person with the answer to your definition then says what they have and then their definition and it goes through all the words and their definition. For example, I would say who has a large star that heats the earth and whoever had sun would say 'I have sun who has a vehicle for transporting people to space' and whoever had rocket ship would go next. Our game is not a board game and techniqually it is not a game because well there is no winner or loser:(, but it helped Kelli's class learn the concepts so it works:)

Day 63 #61

Today's thing is "every kid should decorate her room according to the theme of her choice". Kelli and I are very different in personal style and tastes so as you can imagine our rooms are decorated very differently. Kelli hates blank walls so she loves to put things on her walls. In her room right now she hung up blank picture frames that she painted either black, purple, or green (the colors of her room). It looks really cute and I know she loves it. I on the other hand don't like to clutter my walls and in truth I like blank walls, at least in my bedroom. Which is why my room does not have a lot of decorations in it except my cork board of family pictures and my bookshelf. We are at two opposite ends of the spectrum but that is the great thing about it being your room; you get to do with it what you want and we are both really happy with our rooms:)

Just in case there was any confusion this is Kelli's room:)

Kelli's bedroom with blank picture frames.

My awesome cork board. Look how cute my nieces and nephews are!!!

My bookshelf. I especially like the Utah State volleyball!!!

Day 62 #57

Today's thing is "every kid should have one outstanding teacher". I am sure that most of us have at least one teacher that made a big difference in our life and Kelli and I are going to tell you about our outstanding teacher.

My fifth grade teacher was named Ms. Bastow and she was awesome! She would spend her summers traveling the world so she had all of these great stories that she would use to teach us different concepts. For example she used her trip to Washington D.C. to teach us about the presidents, the white house, and U.S history. I think what made her outstanding is that I actually remember a lot of the things that she taught me. I don't really remember a lot of the concepts I learned in elementary but I remember hers because of the way she taught them to us. She is a great teacher!!

Kel checking in here:
One of my many outstanding teachers would have to be my high school history teacher Mrs. Woodhouse. In Jr. High, I remember very vividly getting in long drawn out arguments with my history teacher wanting to know why it was so important to learn about things that had already happened. Why couldn't we focus on more important things that would help save our future. He tried to tell me that they were important, I just didn't listen. Ninth grade geography was the first time that I started to change my mind about all of this. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to have Mrs. Woodhouse as a teacher, and it was the first time that I ever had a teacher show me, not just explain to me why history was important. Although we had to suffer through many sleepless nights due to projects, culture points, and current events, there were so many lessons learned beyond the classroom walls that will never be forgotten. I had the pleasure of having her for four years as a teacher, and I was able to go on an American History tour of the East coast with her. She had such a deep understanding and love of all of it that it was basically contagious. Due to her, I am now a huge lover of history and one of my most favorite channels on TV is the History Channel!

Day 61 #64

Today's thing is "every kid should play classic games". Kelli had to work today so I stopped by around ten to play classic games, we even roped some of her co-workers into playing. We played go fish, old maid, jaxs, phase ten, and Chinese Checkers. We have not played these games in a long time, so we had to look up a few of the rules online. Pretty sad but we wanted to be authentic with our classic games. What was even more pathetic is that Kelli beat me in every game except jaxs (my hand eye coordination was too much for her). This as you can imagine was really frustrating for me because I am super competitive and I really hate loosing. Despite my losing streak we had a lot of fun!!!

Day 60 #43

Today's thing is "every kid should go on a factory tour". There are a lot of places in Logan that you can go for a factory tour but we chose Gossner's. They make dairy products my favorite of which is their cheese curds. It was really fun and interesting to see how they make and package their products and to sample some of their cheeses.

Huge blocks of cheese on their way to be packaged.

Day 59 #47

Today's thing is "every kid should play dress up". Well we decided that instead of dressing up in the traditional kid fashion (in costumes) we would go to our favorite store Ross Dress For Less and try on some of their dresses. We picked some ugly ones and some that we would actually consider wearing but in the end we came away with nothing but some fun pictures:)

Me trying to pose like Kelli, but I think I just look stupid because it is so not me.

Me in some heinous dress that I would never wear, however I think it looks way hot with the socks!!!

Day 58 #36

Today' thing is "every kid should participate in a '-thon'". So today we decided to hold a John Wayne movie marathon. We really like John Wayne we even happen to be his friend on Facebook. We started the marathon off with a documentary on John Wayne's early years. It was really interesting and we learned a lot. We already knew that John Wayne's real name is Marion Morrison and that he was born in Iowa, but we did not know that he played Football at the University of Southern California (USC). After the documentary we watched all of the movies of John Wayne that I own. We started with Stagecoach which was his first big hit movie. After which we watched Chisum, Rio Bravo, and finished it off with my favorite John Wayne McLintock. If I am being honest I am glad I don't own anymore John Wayne movies because the filming is obviously not the greatest because of the time period they came from, and I can only take so many cowboy movies. In the end the movie marathon was a success and we loved it!!!!

Day 57 #2

Today' thing is "every kid should believe in things that can't be seen". As we have mentioned before we are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS for short) and this weekend is our General Conference in which we get to hear from our prophet President Thomas S. Monson as well as other leaders in our church. It is a great opportunity and we look forward to it. This fits into our thing perfectly because as Latter Day Saints we believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. We have never seen God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost, but we definately believe in them and this is shown through our participation in General Conference. We loved it and we also learned a lot!!!!!

Day 56 #1

Today’s thing was “every kids should do something to make the world a better place”. This was one that we realized would definitely take some creative thinking. As I sit in the living room at 3:30 in the morning surround by lesson plans, portfolio junk, art projects, and bulletin boards. And my best friend Shan sits near by staying up WAY past her bedtime just to simply offer me support as I try to trudge forward and try to finish up my portfolio that is due in less than 24 hours, I realize that we have definitely achieved this one.
Teachers are continually striving to teach students not only the content knowledge and state standards that are required of them, but they are also trying to instill in their students manners and life skills that will help them to become decent human beings and achieve something amazing with their lives. Everyday that I get up and go to school I am trying to make the world a better place one frustrating student at a time. I someday hope to achieve that.
On the same token, Shan is wanting to be a high school counselor and a coach and I feel as if there is nothing more extraordinary than that. Counselors are the ones who give students their first vote of confidence that they will be able to reach their goals and they are there to help them figure out how to achieve them. However, Shan doesn’t quit there! She also wants to be a coach, and I believe that all you have to do is stop for just half a second realize the effect that they have on students. Coaches are often the one adult that some kids have to look up to and respect, and it is from them that they learn true values that will help them succeed and become better then what they themselves believe they can be.
Here we thought that it would be difficult to try and make the world a better place, but all I had to do to figure this one out was to stop for half a second and realize that the answer was in our life goals. The career paths we have chosen are definitely going to help make this world a better place. . . . .someday.

Day 55 #69

Today's thing is "every kid should make a pizza". So we both have made a pizza before so we decided to put a little twist on it. We made fruit pizza. We got a variety of fruits including strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, mango, and kiwi. We made this great frosting from real butter which sounds gross but it seriously tastes so good!!!!!!