My new Job

Wow its been a long time since I have posted, but I do have a good excuse this time. I decided to work full time this year and got a job as a special education teacher. I want to start off by saying, no we are not in financial trouble, and no I didn't "have" to go back to work. I chose to. I wanted to. Many people find that odd, but I guess I'm not your typical stay at home mom that loves to stay in my PJs all day playing with my two year old. I pretty much go stir crazy. I love my child and I love being a mom and playing with and teaching her, but I also love to work. I have to admit substitute teaching was the best. It was flexible I could work when I wanted to and not work when I didn't feel like it. However I get paid 4 times better working full time, and I still get every holiday off, 3 months in the summer...and I only work from 8-3. Arch said if you think about it, teaching is like the best job ever, you only work 7 hours a day, get huge holiday breaks and the entire summer off, plus monthly no school days, if you calculate it its like getting paid 25 bucks an hour...not bad. Obviously teaching isn't the best most highest paying job there is, but I get to use my education and it works out great for us.

Anyway, I felt like right now is the perfect time, if there was ever a time, to go back to work. Zaylie is 2 1/2 so she is old enough to handle being with out me for a few hours, we don't have a baby coming in the near future, so why not make some extra money to finish our basement. Zaylie goes to a friend in my wards house who watches a few kids at home, and Zaylie really likes it. She even takes naps there just fine, so by the time I pick her up at 3:00 she has already taken her nap and I get the rest of the day to hang out with her.

The school I work at houses a district wide autism program, so those children who have autism severe enough that it adversely affects their learning so much that they need extra resources, come to me. So I'm not the regular special education teacher for the school, I'm the special education teacher for the autism program. Its been really fun, really stressful, and a lot of work, and I am actually enjoying it for the most part. So thats what we have been up to for the past couple of months, so don't judge me for not posting :)

So cute

Poor little Zaylie got sick throwing up for a few nights in a row. Woke up one morning to this...so cute.

Zay's emotional roller coaster

Here are some pictures of Zaylie and her many facial expressions and emotions...and some are neither but just cute :)

She loves to help daddy with his expression

This is her cheese face

When Zaylie gets her feelings hurt or things don't go her way, she doesn't throw a fit but she stands still puts her chin down and starts pouting and sadly sniffing like the worst thing in the world has just happened to her. Its pretty funny, so here I am just trying to cheer her up by giving her a kiss.

I think this is getting ready to jump...maybe

Happy!

I don't even know what this emotion is...mad? annoyed? or just a plain dirty look?

Zaylie wearing my hat

Bonked her elbow and a bit pist about it

Pouting again...it is sometimes so hard not to laugh when she does stuff like this.

Just being crazy

And again with the dirty looks, i have like a bajillion pictures of this face...if you haven't figured it out yet, she is a bit dramatic.

This is the only picture of her where I think she sort of looks like me and not a mini Arch.

Potty Trained!

I am happy to announce my child is finally and officially potty trained. I have been putting it off for a long time, mainly because it seemed like my life would be easier if she was in diapers and the thought of potty training was just so...not appealing. We tried when she was about 20 months and she was AWESOME, but then we went to colorado for Arch's sisters wedding and all that work and training went down the pooper when we got home. So I decided to wait till we were done with the house, and done with all of our trips before I started again. So a few weeks ago we started and in about two days she got it down and it really wasn't even that bad. The only thing she still has a hard time with is going number 2. It seems to scare her a bit, so she will hold it for days until she just can't handle it anymore and then seems to have a bit of a panic attack. So I have been giving her prune juice lately to make her go more often- mwah ha ha ha- and that has been helping. I know it sounds kind of mean... but whatever works right? We don't want her getting my digestion problems so you bet I'll be making her poop. :)

And can I just vent for a little bit...I am SO bloody annoyed with everyone and their friggin dog telling me how I am potty training my child the wrong way, i need to do it like this, or like that! I feel like saying- is she freaking peeing in the toilet by herself? Yes. Am I still changing diapers? No. Okay so obviously what I am doing is working just fine for us so leave me the FREAK ALONE! Older women will just come right out and say "oh your not doing that right," or oh no, I have potty trained 7 kids and i never did that with any of my kids so you need to do it like this." Okay seriously that was 30 YEARS AGO! Is it possible that in the last 30 years there has been new and recent evidence that other methods are better than the older ways? Is it possible that in my four years of getting my Early childhood/Special Education degree where I am trained and certified to work with infants, toddlers, and preschool aged children that I would have been tought potty training methods and have done my research on the topic? I MEAN SERIOUSLY!!!! And if I am doing it wrong, is it ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS??? If I asked you for advice that would be totally different. I swear I can speak the words "potty training" and any 45+ woman in a 350 ft radius will hear those words and will come running so eager to verbally vomit their professional potty training advice all over me. Its just so aggrivating.

Ok. I feel better now.

Girl Time in Nashville and hubby time in Vegas!

A few weeks ago Arch's parents came into town and wanted to take Zaylie back home with them for two whole weeks...so of course I decided to take full advantage of that and booked a trip to go see my BFF in Nashville for a week, and then go on a trip for our 5th wedding anniversary to Las Vegas.


We lived in Nashville for a summer four years ago so it was fun to go back and visit, see a friend and go to all the fun places I loved going before.
We went to downtown Nashville one night, we ate at the Hard Rock, saw a lot of crazy peeps, and just walked around to see the night life.

Of course we did a bit of shopping.

Went ot the Opry Mills Mall, Opry House and the Hotel

Ate more really yummy food...I think I may have gained 5 pounds that week...not the best idea when that next week I'm supposed to look boomin in a swim suit for Vegas.

One of my favorite things about Nashville is how everywhere you look it looks like a bunch of broccoli.

We went to this cupcake place in downtown franklin...

and ate some delicious looking, but not so delicious tasting cupcakes. I know hard to believe, they look in-freaking-credible, but they had like zero taste, I didn't even finish it. Of course we laid by the pool, got pedicures, watched the bachelor, gossiped a bit, you know girl stuff, and it was dang fun. Thanks Cass for such a fun trip!

Off to Vegas...

I'm selling furniture at WHOLESALE PRICES!

For years my mom has been selling wholesale priced furniture, and I have loved being able to get really nice furniture for a fraction of what it would be at a furniture store. So I have decided to start selling it as well to give others the super awesome prices I can get. I mean really, whats the point in paying hundreds of dollars more for furniture when you don't need to!

As of right now its all out of a catalog, and can only be shipped to me, so only local customers, Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Rigby Pocatello and surrounding areas (unless you want to pay extra shipping to get it to you, or if you want to come visit us and come pick it up).

Here is an example of what I just recently got for myself...One queen bed, one dresser, and two night stands for around 1000 dollars. Including taxes and shipping. pretty sweet huh.

This catalog has tables, couches, bedroom sets, coffee and end tables, childrens beds, lamps, pictures, mirrors, benches...you name it we've got it! And guaranteed its hundreds less than what you will find at a furniture store.

Anyway if your needing to fill your house with furniture but your on a budget e-mail me or leave me a comment and I'll get the catalog to you ASAP!

Lava Lamps

"Boy's are like lava lamps, fun to look at but not very bright"

Just a phrase my 12 year old sister and her friends like to use. Thought I would share. Good Stuff.

It has kind of become a little joke around our house and the other day I made a comment that everyone seemed to understand but arch and I looked at him and said, "boys are like lava lamps." it was funny.

Salt Lake City Supercross

Arch and I went to another Supercross this year, this time in Salt Lake. Its been five years since SLC has had the Supercross in the city, so it was nice to only have to drive 3 hours this year. During the day the weather was pretty miserable, rainy, windy, cold, basically the works. We spent the entire day walking through the pits in the crappy weather, looking at all the muddy bikes from the practice races, getting free stuff like tie down straps and chair cushions, and watching them practice on the track. Its still was a total blast even with the weather. Here are some picture of the practice races, you can basically sit anywhere to watch them practice so we got pretty close to take some sweet pics. This is Chad Reed, who is the bomb.com.

Just a sweet move

Kevin Windham jumping a triple...he ended up getting fourth in the series

Arch and I in our sweet rain gear.

It was such an awesome race, even for the 250's. There are two different main races, one for the lites aka 250's and one for the 450's. The 450's is kind of the big main race that most people go to see, but this race a rider from Idaho (which is the main reason why we cheered for him) got caught up in a mess if you will at the holeshot and was like in 12th place or something, and made his way up to 2nd place and almost took 1st right by the finish line. It was dang sweet.

In the 450 race the two main riders are Chad Reed and James "Bubba" Stewart. These guys are freakin awesome riders. The entire race they were neck and neck, passing eachother for first place like every 10 seconds, it was nuts. Just to let you know how fast these guys are, third place was 30 seconds behind them the entire race. Anyway with about 7 laps to go, one of Stewarts team mates totally tried to get into Chads way, this team mate was a laped by Reed and Stewart and lapers are supposed to get out of the way for the leaders, but this guy Chisolm you could tell purposely got in his way so stewart could win (Stewart was promised a million dollar bonus if he won the race) Everyone could tell that it was done purposely, they even black flagged Chisolm which means he couldn't finish the race, and when Stewart won the entire crowd booed him. It was hilarious. Anyway now whenever someone cuts in front of us while we are driving, we call him a Chisolm. kind of fun. So the race was so much fun, but next year you can bet we will be in Vegas for the finals...no more of this crappy weather stuff.

Journaling Update for Moi

I'm posting this mainly for my own journaling purposes, since this is my one and only form of journaling, NOT to brag about my kid or anything of that nature...seriously. :)

We decided since we were making a lot of big changes with building the house and living in my grandparents house, and then moving into the new house, that we would wait till we moved into the new house to put Zaylie in her big girl bed. So she was a little over two, I felt sort of sad as I would read all my friends blogs saying they got toddler beds for their kids birthdays, but I knew it was just out of the question with how busy we were. So anyway, I was super nervous about putting her in a big girl bed, I mean the bed we got isn't one of those little toddler beds where they are 2 inches off the ground. This is a full blown twin bed, its like as tall as her. She was all over the place in her crib I would find her in the craziest positions in the morning so "how in the hell-o" (name that movie) was she going to not fall out of a bed, not to mention her being a two year old who thinks she is in charge of the universe, i just knew she would constantly be getting out of bed.

Well night one she got out of bed 4 times, she would come out of the door (she had mastered door knobs for a few months by now) and say "good morning!" nice. Night two, she stayed in her room but got out of bed a few times. Night three she stayed in her bed but banged her feet on the wall and talked to herself for a couple of hours. Night four-fell asleep right away with no noise and no getting out, and its been like that for the past two months! She never gets out of bed, not even for naps, she just lays down and goes right to sleep. I owe it all to supernanny, I used all of her tactics and apparantly it worked. Sa-weet.

This is how Zaylie likes to get into her bed, and then likes to slide down the matress at the bottom of the bed. She's obsessed with sliding down anything that could somehow be a slide.

Next item of business: Easter

It was a pretty quiet weekend, we went to my parents house for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. We always do two hunts, one for Zaylie, and one for the rest of us. Yes I am an avid easter egg hunter, I resort to 8 years old shoving my brother out of the way to get an egg we both spotted. However this time my brother hid them and I was shoving Arch out of the way to get an egg. Good times. Anyway I didn't win this year, Malarie did. boo. But I did beat Arch, of course. hee hee don't worry, I can talk smack like this because Arch doesn't read our blog, I don't even think he knows the address for it.

Zaylie loved finding the eggs, my mom put candy in the eggs, and everytime she found one she would shake it and put it in her basket. One egg didn't happen to have anything in it and when she found it she shook it, and got a crusty look on her face and said, "oh, no good" and threw it behind her. Here is the crusty look.

Zaylie has been loving our Easter baskets for hats, she always asks me to wear one to, so often we are just hanging around the house in our Easter hats.

Here are just a couple of cute pics of the Zaydster.