La Vita e Bella

Hello Friends! The title of this post means "Life is Beautiful" which, besides being my favorite movie of all time, is also a good summary of the Deshazer household right now!


Steven and I are doing great! Steven just recently got back from being in China for 3 weeks. It was rough, but I had Special K to keep me busy!! Sounds to me like he had a great time. It was great hearing all his stories and adventures. I LOVE learning about new cultures and so it was cool to hear Steven talk about it.  They don't really have toilets there. Literally just holes in the ground and you squat. Sounds like quite the workout!  Of course the food sounded like an adventure all of it's own. An adventure I would be happy to skip.  He sent pictures of kabobs at the night market. Centipede, scorpion, grasshopper.... stuff like that. Don't even get me started on the monkey brains story.  I think it would be a cool place to visit (they do have McDonalds, so I would at least survive!) Maybe someday we can go together.

In other news Steven just got called to be the ward scoutmaster! :) He may feign surprise or stress, but he really is stoked. He has been the assistant (to the regional) scoutmaster basically since we moved into this ward and he loves spending time with the boys.  In fact, when they called to release him as assistant scoutmaster (in order to bump him up) all the boys broke their necks flipping around to look at him. They were not happy to hear that he was released- but they almost jumped out of their seats hearing that he was now the scoutmaster! It was cute.

I realized that I haven't posted since my "oh no! School starts tomorrow!" post.  As I'm sure you've been dying to know how my internship has been going, let me catch you up!! It is PERFECT! The kids are great, my paraeducators are extremely helpful, and the curriculum is even fun! I may still think its perfect because I haven't had to hold IEP meetings just yet, that's in December.  But I literally cannot think of a more perfect place for me to fit in.  It sounds so cliche but I think this really is where I belong, and the Lord held this position for me to fill. I only hope I am doing him proud in working with His children! 

We have so much fun. A few weeks ago we learned about humpty dumpty so each student got to try balancing a raw egg on a small wall we built, only to see that it didn't really work. They giggled and giggled watching the eggs shatter. (I'm sure the cleaning crew didn't giggle though...)

Yesterday we had our Halloween Party! It was so cute seeing all my kids come dressed up and excited to show off their costumes.  We did dirt cups with the pudding and oreos, then we did a mummy wrap which they loved because it essentially consisted of toilet papering my classroom and not getting in trouble for it! Our last group was a spiderweb obstacle course. I just strung a bunch of yarn back and forth at different angles and they had to crawl through without getting caught in the web.  I am blessed with a perfect specimen of a husband that came to hang out for a bit. He actually ended up being a spider hiding in the web. I think it's safe to say it was the highlight of my students day to try sneaking through the web without the spider knowing! They were laughing and talking about it the rest of the afternoon.  Steven was such a trooper! :) 

Sure I have days that are overwhelming, and sometimes I feel like I'm not good enough at what I do, but I have already learned so much from this internship and I'm not even halfway! For the most part though, I come home tired but it doesn't seem to slow me down at ALL because I know the next day I get to go do it again! :) 

That's about it around here, hope Y'all are doing equally as well as we are.

Ready Or Not.....Here it Comes

GUYS!!! Tomorrow is the first day of my internship. Please don't ask me if I'm ready.... I'm afraid that vocalizing my answer could be traumatic. lol

The past few days have been surreal. I have been setting up my classroom and attempting to lesson plan for the first few days.  I have been meeting my students and getting to know them just in time for the school to rearrange my caseload. 

Let me take you for a quick tour around the classroom. I'm sure you've seen that I have created a superhero themed class. I share a classroom with another teacher, and I don't think she was thrilled about the superhero theme until students came in for kindergarten testing.  They were not excited about her Dr. Seuss theme knowing that Mrs. Bre's class would be having the superhero theme.  After that she asked me to make superhero nametags and cubby labels for her students too. haha. 

This is the door decor, and based on my students, it will only last for about 20 minutes before it's violently torn down. So we are going to enjoy it while it lasts! :)
































Here are the schedule and our classroom jobs.  I'm really excited about how they turned out!


                                                             

 The colored sheets are for our centers. We will have a batman/spiderman/superman center. Much more exciting than saying "go to that table" "Or go work with so and so". Also, these are the name tags that the other teacher asked me to make for her class. As a sidenote, can we just discuss how IMPOSSIBLE it is to find girl superheroes that are dressed appropriately?? Geeze.

Last but not least (And certainly my favorite piece of my superhero classroom)
I owe a GIANT thanks to my talented dad for drawing these for me. Especially with such a miniscule time frame to accomplish them. -Just goes to show that you CAN actually rush perfection! ;)
I also owe another GIANT thanks to my wonderful husband for staying up late to help me color them regardless of the hand cramps to make sure they were ready to go for school tomorrow.

 They turned out AWESOME!!! As proof of that, I had kids from other classes screaming about how cool they were as they passed my class. Of course they then got in trouble for yelling in the halls, but it certainly made me smile.


So far I have had a wonderful experience at sunrise preschool/Provo Peaks Elementary and I am overwhelmed each day thinking about how lucky I am to get this opportunity. I am sure that starting tomorrow I will be overwhelmed for different reasons, and that's ok. I love a good challenge. :)

Practicum Plus Puppy!!

Hello Friends!!

Everything in the Deshazer household has been quite swell.  Steven has just been working full time at Food For Health, and I have been getting my butt kicked by summer practicum!
Here's a little background information about practicum.... all throughout the Special Ed program they build this up like it is going to be the most horrendous few weeks of your life! They make sure we have nightmares about it a year before we even start it.  BUT I've made it!! Well not quite, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and boy is it glorious!

Summer practicum is really our first opportunity as student teachers to utilize and implement all the things we've been learning in classes.  Giving assessments, writing TONS of lesson plans, Creating a unit framework.  It's all the big and scary stuff until you do it and find out "Hey, I'm kind of good at this!" :)

A few weeks ago (before practicum consumed my summer) I never would have assumed it would be such a powerful learning experience. I thought I was just going to dig my claws in and hope someone pulled me to the other side. But guess what? I'm learning, I'm growing, and I'm loving (more than ever) what it is that I'm doing!!  I have grown to absolutely adore these students in a mere 3 weeks.  I have gotten to know them personally and to see how I can best push them toward success.  It is beautiful and I can't help but thank my Heavenly Father every day for not giving up on stubborn Breanna and making sure I end up exactly where I belong!

I wanted to share a few stories with you from my practicum experience... Some of those "kids say the darnedest things" moments I've had so far!
The first one happened yesterday while I was working on a place value lesson. The two students I was working with were supposed to write down a three digit number on their white boards and then show the boards and see whose number was bigger.  The first time they wrote the exact same number! So I kinda chuckled and said "Well? Which number is bigger?" One student quickly saw that they were the same, but the other student was thinking about it for a second and responded with "OH! MINE!"  ( You should also know that this specific lesson was being observed by my supervisor and I get closely graded on how I handle incorrect responses SO of course my heart starts pounding and I had a mini panic attack meanwhile silently wondering "oh no! Do you really not see that they're the same? My lesson must be too hard!") And so I took a deep breath and said "Ok let's look a little closer." So I put the two white boards right next to each other and one digit at a time showed him that they were the exact same. Impatiently at this point he said "Yeah....but mine is much bigger". I'm not sure how it clicked but at some point I said "ohhhhh You mean you wrote your number bigger, don't you?" And he looked at me a little annoyed, "yeah. He wrote his little. Mine is bigger"

The second one is fantastic. And when I think about it now, a few days later, I still chuckle about it!
We were on the playground and I lifted one little boy up onto the monkey bars, but his arms were too short to reach the next bar so he just kinda hung there limp. I asked him "What are you gonna do now?" He thinks for a second, gets a huge grin on his face, and then lets go falling to the ground. Mid fall he yells "BACKFLIP!!" and after landing stands up to look at me with so much excitement and confidence in his eyes there was no way I could tell him that yelling backflip while you fall isn't quite the same as actually doing a backflip! After that he wanted to try again, as would you after doing such a flawless backflip, and this time he yells "FRONT FLIP!!" and again just looked like he had defeated Voldemort himself!  :)

On top of being pretty busy writing lesson plans and spotting backflips, Steven and I actually got another dog.  You can make as many "just have kids already" jokes as you want! We are happy about that decision.  It was mostly for Oakley. The poor dog has SO much energy that Steven and I can't even begin to drain it.  We could take her on 5 walks a day and she would still want to PLAY!! So we needed someone as fast as her and energetic as her to play with.  Needless to say we found a sufficient amount of energy in a 6 month old pup named Thorin. (His name was Buddy when we got him, but we were not even about to try having Oakley and Buddy!)

Meet THORIN!

He Loves playing chase with Oakley, eating my rasperries, peeing on EVERYTHING (outdoors, of course), and chompin' on Ponytails! :)

He also likes cuddling, but only after 10 p.m and only on TOP of Oakley.

He Hates being splashed with water, being alone, and sitting still long enough to get petted! 

I think this picture perfectly sums up the amount of crazy that is present in the Deshazer home right now and it's a great note to end on! :)

 I would LOVE to stay and chat your ear off, but I still have a bunch of lesson plans to write, so it will have to wait.

Thanks for stopping by!

I didn't forget about you......

So it has been a while since I've updated this bad boy. Sorry about that. I think that is because one of us has had a semester from hell, and the other one doesn't know we even have a blog! :)

While I have been slacking off on the blog, A TON of stuff has happened!! Now the hard part is deciding where to start!

First and foremost.... the the big bad PRAXIS!! I never thought I would say this, but it's over, and I am truly grateful for the challenge it has created! I have learned SO much in the process of preparing for it.  I know all the presidents (in order!), I know who Lewis & Clark are, and that the "Bay of Pigs" doesn't really have to do with pigs! I have never been more stressed in my entire life, but I learned so much about myself in the process too! I am much stronger than I think I am, and I am never alone! I have so much support from my husband, family, friends, and the Lord (Not in that order!)  And now I can heave a big sigh of relief because it's over!

We also have a new living situation. It's a little complicated, but here is the short story.... Steven's parents have bought a house in Springville, UT. but they are leaving in a few weeks to go on a "mission" in Missouri. We generously offered to house-sit for two years! It's a 4 bedroom 3 bath with a giant back yard for our new dog to roam around (We're getting there!!)  And room for me to try my hand at gardening-Should be interesting!

Meet Oakley:

*3 years old

*Purebred Lab

*Likes: belly rubs, giving kisses, going on W-A-L-K-S, and fetch.

*Dislikes: pooping with an audience, being locked up, sharing Steven.

She is THE most jealous dog I have ever met! She would be the epitome of a "homewrecker" if only she weren't so cute!   We have absolutely LOVED having her! I tell Steven every day ways that she is preparing us for parenthood! 

1) We take turns feeding her.

2) She insists on sleeping between us.

3) Heaven forbid we try to watch a movie these days.

4) I sacrifice reading time to go on family walks each night (Not that kids need walks, but you get the idea...)

Anyway, I am so glad that she is part of our family! :)

Onto Graduation day ( I told you a lot has happened!)

Steven graduated yesterday with a Bachelors degree of science in Electrical Engineering! I'm so proud of him! Not that we ever doubted that he wouldn't or couldn't do it.... but it is still very impressive saying he is a "college grad"! 

He didn't really want to walk at first, but his mom talked him into it and I think he's glad she did! It will be a good moment for him to look back on! And it was a great moment for us to scream and clap for his accomplishments! :)

I'm sure I have other things to share and plenty more pictures for you to look at but I'm worried it's already becoming a little long! Until next time....