It's July already?! Quick updates

This is my garden. I have lettuce, beans, corn, and watermelon growing! However, I have that many plants planted that aren't growing... :(

I can't believe it's JULY! Time sure flies when you're having fun.. or something. I don't know what I've done with my month off. I've read quite a few books and rented quite a few movies. I was supposed to get my wisdom teeth pulled the Monday after school got out but he said they're right on a nerve; since they aren't bothering me yet he said it's not worth risking nerve damage to pull them. Perhaps I'll need them pulled and get nerve damage then, but no need to risk it yet.

The day after that was a sad day for me. One of the kittens, Opie, (2nd generation) got hit by a car in front of our house. That was sad enough but she left 6 kitties behind (3rd generation) who weren't even 2 weeks old yet! I brought their box in and tried to feed them the kitten milk I ran out and bought. But it didn't work so well. I was sad and overwhelmed so I called the Humane Society, they said bring them in with the milk. And I did. Then Liz called and said she'd take care of them. It had been about 2 hours since I took them to the shelter... I called back to get the kitties.. and they'd put them all to sleep! I felt like a murderer.. if I hadn't been so lazy or if I had asked Liz first, they could have been alive.

This is Opie nursing the kitties.. hard to tell but there are 6 babies in there with her.

I was better the next day when I found our other cat, Ham, (2nd generation) apparently had kittens in our neighbors hay stacks and brought them to our deck, there were 4 and there were older than Opie's.

It was like the week of the Cat.
Shadow (1st generation) jumped in the shed once while I was in there and hissed at the kittens. Apparently she's not a fan of her grandkids.

So that's how my first week off was. The second week I'm not sure what I did but I did hike 8 miles in about 4 hours. The young men are doing a 50 miler but in 20 hours (crazy!) They invited the Young Women to go to a practice hike. So one laurel, the president, and I went. We only did 8 miles before our hips were killing us. It wasn't even a hike since we walked on a paved road, but my hips killed me for the next few days. I took Jack with me and he did very well. He was thirsty the whole time so he stopped at every puddle to drink. He found a ditch and climbed in, thinking it was safe since he could touch. But he doesn't know what a current is. It was pretty funny watching him slowly get swept away, he got out alright but I think he was a little confused about what had happened.

The Elder's Quorum had a "golf" party down by Paul's grandparents. I took Jack to that too. This is a picture of how tired he was; he has a burger on his face and is still sleeping.

Let's see... what else.

My mom made two trips in June- one with Brittney and one with Summer. Really they just wanted to see the kittens.

Last week we bought 6 maple trees and planted them so we can say we have some trees on our property. Paul dug a "creek" from the northeast corner of our property, under the driveway and circle drive, around the corner by our bedroom, past the garden, all the way to the southern irrgation ditch. His plan is for it to look like this, kind of. Our goes through our grass so we won't the curbing like this one. We have PLENTY of rocks to line the stream with though, compliments of the rock quarry we live on. Also, he'll have the grass go right up to the edge of the stream. It needs some work because it looks like this at the moment:

We bought some bushes on Tuesday so it looks a little less like a dirt field. Only a little though. Do you see them in the picture?

Tuesday night at midnight was the premier of Eclipse. I was told the line would start at 7 by the lady who works at the movie theater. So Retha and her sister-in-law and I went to dinner at 6 then to the theater. There was only 1 other group there. We were very tempted to leave and come back but what time should we come back? Amanda said last time she got there a little after 9 and the line was already huge. This time the line didn't really start forming until 9... Next time I'm waiting until 9. But it was fun, we played card games most of the time. Amanda and Liz joined us later and since we were so close to the front we got good seats all next to each other. The movie was amazing.

Winding up to wind down

I have 6 1/2 days left of school :) 1 is a field trip to the park and another is a field day put on by PFA, so really it's less than that. I'm very excited to get to sleep in and be "unstressed" for a while. I don't really notice stress with my day to day activities but my attitude at school is different when I'm stressed. I have to remind myself to smile sometimes (my poor class).
Paul brought home the stone from Upper Valley Stone, or something like that, to create a legit. front porch and back deck. I'm very excited. It means we're 1/16 closer to grass!!

Brittney graduates college next weekend, so we're going to my parents house for Memorial Weekend. My grandparents will be there too, so it will be a full house. We're going to take Jack :) That'll make for an interesting 2 hour drive, especially since we don't have a kennel for him. Don't worry, we bought puppy training pads for the car floor mats but he usually barks when he needs to go. Hope he keeps that up!

Notes from my students

Like I mentioned, today was write your teacher a note day. I got Reeses from one girl, because they know they're my favorite! This was a poem written for me by Keelie:
Mrs. Stanger

She is my teacher

And a wonderful creature

It was her first year,

and she jumped into it just like a pool

And taught us many great tools

Mrs. Stanger, she's way cool

She's always enthusiastic

I think it's fantastic

Mrs. Stanger has a great attitude

And I would like to show my gratitude

How cute is that!? I got some cute cards and sweet notes about how I was the best teacher one girl had ever had (that's such a compliment!) I got lots of notes saying they wish I could be their teacher again next year :)
One of my students who struggles made a cute card using the foam letters. It says: Mrs. Stanger You are a cool teacher. I was surprised to get one from him!

Teacher Appreciation Week

This week is teacher appreciation week at my school. Monday was sign up to give teacher's treats at their faculty meeting day. I have to say I had the best peanut butter and chocolate bars EVER. Today was bring your teacher flowers day. I have quite the boquet. Some students picked them from their garden, some students picked them from a bush, one even cut a branch off a tree at her house (it was a pretty smelling flowered branch). I also got roses, tulips, carnations, and lilies. It's pretty. One student brought 6 roses and as I was letting them into the class she was giving one to another student :) So she gave me 5 and the other girl gave me the other 1, I thought that was kinda funny. Friday they're supposed to write notes and things. I'll be sure to add any good ones!

Weekend projects

For mutual last week we went around to places, taking pictures for time capsules we're making. The girls took pictures with their "dream cars" and favorite candy bars. We also hit up some scenic spots in Twin. It really has some pretty natural features, that make living here not so bad :) This is me trying to be a photographer with my tiny Nikon Coolpix.

While Paul slaves away in the yard getting ready for a sprinkler system, I had some projects of my own. We still had the original silver toilet paper holders and towel rods in our bathrooms. Needless to say, like anything original with the house, they were pretty nasty. So I bought some new ones at Home Depot and put them in over the weekend. The one that didn't go so well was a new rod where there hadn't been one, in Paul's bathroom. I swear I measured. But it's crooked. Oops.. Not sure how to fix it! But I became rather frustrated with anchors coming out of the wall before I could get the screw in. So now the screw is stuck with the bracket in between. I had to walk away a few times.

Other than that, Paul picked up a piece of furniture when he helped a family move a while ago. It's what I wanted in the laundry room... kind of. This one was older and smellier than I'd imagined. So I repainted and re-hooked it. I also ordered vinyl lettering that says "THE MUD stops here."

It has some charm.. from the 70s.

Ah! Those are pretty scary hooks!

From a students history work this week: The state was Minnesota. What are the twin cities? Her response: Buda and Pest HAHA

Conference

Paul got a call Thursday night and it was his dad asking if we wanted to go to conference, Saturday morning session. Paul had a mission reunion Friday night so we were going to Utah anyways. I was getting sick, little did I know. We went to his reunion and to conference. I was drugged and I think I had a fever- I hope the people next to me didn't get sick. But it was our 2nd conference together and both have been wonderful experiences. I took notes, which is good because I was out of it. This time, we had great seats! The kind they reserve for stake presidents (or so the guy behind us said.) I'm not sure if you can tell how close we are in our pictures, but we were right there!

We met up with a couple who Paul knew from his mission- he served with him (Michael) and baptized her (Amy). Now they're dating- cute.

We came back Saturday and I slept. And slept. And slept. I didn't go to school Monday because my throat was still killing me. It was nice though, to sleep in and have a shorter school week :)