Emergent Literacy, Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition!

Earlier on this semester I was looking through my planner and realized I was going to have one of those "I want to die" kind of weeks at school. It consisted of taking 5 test and doing a 45 minute presentation. Well that dreaded week showed up last Friday! So I've been pretty busy doing one thing after another. I wasn't home as much and when I would call Nate he would answer by saying "my long lost wife, how are you?!" But I made it, I survived... now I only have one test left do on Mon or Tues and it feels so good to be, for the most part, finished with Midterms!

It was in my pediatric audiology class that I had to do a 45 minute presentation. Me and my partner were given the topic of "Literacy in the Hearing-Impaired". It turned out to be pretty interesting learning about how the hearing impaired and/or deaf child learns to read and write. In our presentation we had to include the normal development of reading for a hearing child to help understand why it might be difficult for the hearing impaired child. So for the presentation I decided one night when we went to Nate's sister house that I would record their little boy Hans reading. Here is one of the clips we ended up using, I thought it was cute and funny!

Belly Laughs!

When you have those long, hard, stressful, tiring or however you want to explain it days... sometimes you just need a good laugh!

A game of twister, anyone?

During our trip down to Arizona over the break we got caught in a game of twister! Never thought I would be playing this game again (even though it was my idea to try it). I wasn't very good at it and was always the first one out! So during this game after I had gotten out I sat to the side taking pictures of the boys (Nate, Mike and Cord) playing while Whitney was the "spinner". And there was nothing they could do about it either! There hands and legs were all tied up!

Here they are while all three of them are still in...

but Cord was down and out quick!

Nate and Mike are still going...

and still going, until...

the winning shot!

And that was it for Mike!

Candle Light Breakfast!

Today is our three year anniversary!!!!

Because we decided to get married in December... every year we get to celebrate our anniversary, Nate's birthday, and Christmas all within a couple of weeks of each other! Which then pretty much leaves very little to celebrate for the rest of the year! But what can you do, what is done is done!

Another thing we've noticed is that every year finals always seem to mess up our anniversary! Today I spent the evening in the lovely testing center cursing my professor for giving us so much to study for one test! But I had anticipated that this is how the night would go... so this morning I made breakfast to celebrate the big three years!! It was still dark out so I turned on the Christmas tree lights and set out some candles! That was our romantic breakfast! But with the table set all nice and the candles lit we sure didn't fit the part having our PJs on, hair a mess and morning breath! But I guess after three years that works! And what a great three years its been!

Nate made dinner for me, which I had to heat up because I got home so late. And he bought me my favorite ice cream! We also have plans for the weekend to officially celebrate it but you've got to actually do something the day of right?! Well we tried to anyways!!

Here is a few pictures from the big day!

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON IS HERE!

Its that time of year! I love Christmas and I sure wish my house could look like this one! Nate sent me this video in an email and I thought it was pretty cool! So to kick off the Christmas season I thought I would post it! Enjoy!!

We had a nice trip to AZ for Thanksgiving, really enjoying the good weather and good company. But I didn't take any pictures! My camera was low on batteries and I hate having people hold that pose while I reopen it to get one good picture just in time for it to die again! So instead of pictures I'll just mention a few highlights of the trip:

A definite highlight was when Tammy almost set Grandma's kitchen on fire... twice in one night! Not to worry though, Grandma was quick with the baking soda to put it out!

Putting together a puzzle.... crazy I know that this would make a highlight moment but you should have seen how many of us were surrounding that table fighting to get the last piece in! Nothing else mattered but finishing that puzzle! They can get addicting!

Watching Bolt with all the kids!

Seeing Ashley Shanghai twice in one game! Way to go Ashley!

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone but more importantly the Christmas season is here!

Fans from Idaho!

So the other day when I got to school I parked by this car and just happen to notice the licence plate! What a strange combination, IDAHO... GO SUNS... and BYU COUGARS. Luckily I had my camera because I had to take a picture. I miss Idaho, I route for the Suns (even though the Jazz beat us the other night) and I'm a student at BYU! I wondered where I could get one of these, guess we'll have to move to Idaho!

HUNTING

For the past two weekends we been out hunting for deer! No luck though, it was a bad year for hunters... to hot I guess! We saw one two point opening morning but Nate wanted something bigger so he didn't take the shot. Other than that all we saw were doe...

Here is one looking at us now!

The first weekend we went camping and had some friends come along. Micah had a tag and Dan and Stacie brought their horses in case we needed to haul anything out! We had a good time around the fire and camping out even though it was a little cold. The other non-campers meet us early Saturday morning to hunt for the day.

While we were out hiking around we decided to split up into two groups. Me and Nate went higher up while Micah, Dan and Stacie stayed lower... that way we could push the deer to each other. While we were separated they called us on the Rino or "walkie talkie" to tell us they had just seen a young bear. Me and Nate thought they were just trying to scare us so we didn't believe them at first but turns out it was true. We meet back up with them and the those who had a gun had them out and ready to fire. Who knows if there was a "mommy" around so we were being careful! It felt like we suddenly became the hunted rather than the hunters! So needless to say we didn't see any deer on this hike! Here we all are...

The next weekend we decided not to camp and only went out Saturday morning and afternoon. Again all we saw were doe. This time Nate's dad brought the horses. Kent and Danielle (Nate's dad and sister) rode in on the horses then later me and Danielle traded and I rode back out with Kent. It was great, the horses do all the work!

Here is me and Nate in our cool orange!!

















This is random, but can you see whats wrong with this picture?!