Todd's Birthday

So not only did the federal government decide to take my birthday off, but I also had Sarena and Adam and kids all come down to celebrate my big day. People just seem to go crazy over my birthday; I don't know what it is! All I can say is that I love you, too, guys.
Seriously, I had a great birthday, so thanks to everyone for their calls, gifts, thoughts, and everything else. You guys are awesome. Thanks especially to Zack and Ashley for singing so beautifully for me, to Hallie and Jack for their amazing drawings, and to Makenzie, Trevor, Jared, and Karinn for breakfast.
The day started out perfect; Adam and I went to the Stake Center for a couple of hours of bball. Then I arrived home to some delicious breakfast. But it didn't end there; Sarena and Heather went out for a few hours to get some decorations for our house. (It looks awesome, by the way. We'll put up pictures when we can). Adam, the boys, Karinn, and I spent the same time at the Space and Flight museum out here in Dulles. We saw the first space shuttle ever built (aptly named the Enterprise, of course) and the old CIA spy plane, the Blackbird, which is the world's fastest plane. Very cool. And then for dinner, Heather and I ordered some Chinese food. So all in all, great day! Can't wait for next year.

A Cricket in Time Square...or our Home?

The other night we had an unusual experience in our little home. It all started around 3 or 4 in the morning. As with all smoke detectors, ours picked the whee hours of the morning to run out of batteries and start making a "chirp, chirp" sound. I slept through it, but it woke Heather up. She couldn't sleep with all that chirping. Around 6am, she'd had enough and decided to go investigate. This is where I woke up. My first sight was of Heather cautiously tip-toeing into our bathroom.
"What are you doing, honey?" I asked.
"I'm looking for the cricket!" she whispered back.
I couldn't help but chuckle as I responded that it was not a cricket making that noise but the smoke detector. Well, she didn't believe me and so continued searching the apartment looking for that darn cricket, which included spending a few minutes in the frigid air on the deck listening for its chirping. I went back to sleep. After about 45 minutes later, she did too.
In the end, it was a learning experience for her. In her defense, she was still shrugging off her sleepiness. But for all you others out there, the moral is that unless you live in Texas, if a persistant chirping noise wakes you up in the middle of the night, it's more likely than not just from low batteries in your smoke detector.

Christmas Time

What they say is true: Christmas is much more fun and exciting when there are kids present to celebrate with. And although they weren't our kids, we had such a great time spending Christmas with Sarena, Adam, Makenzie, Trevor, Jared, and Karinny. And one other important note about spending Christmas with kids, they have much more fun gifts to play with on Christmas day! (Jared got the new Nerf Longshot, and I couldn't help but play a little with it.) We only spent Saturday through Tuesday with the Sharps this year, but we sure packed in a lot of fun. Adam and Sarena decided to take advantage of the enormous mountains in the area and teach their kids skiing this year. So they bought season passes for all of them at Butternut, a local ski resort a little over an hour away. Heather and I were excited to try out the East Coast slopes, so we brought up our skis. We ended up going skiing for two days over our little holiday, and it was fun.


Makenzie was cautious, yet steady. Trevor liked speed, but at least he turned (except when he decided to follow me going full speed down a slope, and then he was just an out of control blur!). Jared... what to say about our little Jared. I was the most proud of him. Only 5 years old and he had already mastered my old skiing technique: point your skis down hill, don't turn, and see how fast you can go. Luckily he never killed himself. And he did try turning once or twice after hours of pleading. Karinn started skiing, too. On the second day, Adam bought a little harness for her so he could control her without getting a major thigh workout from the constant bending over. It was really cute, and looked a lot like a scene out of Dr. Suess's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." All it needed was Karinny wearing reindeer antlers and it would be complete.


Heather was amazing (as usual) and got me the best gifts: even a stocking full of little fun surprises. Above is Heather modeling off her new coat and her new Christmas PJs. So hot!

Holiday parties: Pajama Day at Christmas and Halloween

So- here are my little munchkins at all our holiday festivities this year. I went from most recent backwards.

Christmas Pajama Party

Dancing and making gifts for their parents-- Dylan, my little Cambodian boy, is doing an electric air guitar-- can't you tell?

Here are some of my kids reading-- although Sarayu (from India) thought it was too funny that I was taking a picture.

Thanksgiving where the Natives meet the pilgrims, or in this case El Salvador meets Pakistan-- Funny story here- after talking all about Thanksgiving with the kids for the past little while, I asked Sultan (here on the right), if he could tell us why we had Thanksgiving. He confidently looked at me and said- cause the indians came to give food to the penguins. If you think about traditional pilgrim outfits, you know-- he is not too far off.

Halloween! Here are a few shots of Halloween. I was the mouse from the book "If you give a mouse a cookie". My friend Juan was Tigger although he didn't know who Tigger was. He thought it said Tiger. I was lucky for a long while (before he started working) to have Todd come in and hang out with my class alot. The kids loved it. He was in charge of the painting station.

October with My Kindergarten Classes

So up to this point-- Todd has been doing all the blogging. But-- I felt you all were missing out on my kids in my ESL class. The photos are mostly not recent, but I still wanted to share a little taste of my life with them so far this year. The first pictures are of the kids and I on our first field trip to Pumpkinville last October.

The first picture is of my little Egyptian student Emi in front of the white tiger cage. Yes, there was only that sturdy fence and chicken wire between her and the tiger. Awesome huh. Also--keep in mind that this is a farm (wierd huh). Anyway, the second picture is Zhiyao (from China) and Tony (El Salvador) feeding and petting the animals. All the kids loved that. I went down the slide with some of the kids too scared to go alone. Here I am with Kimberly, my completely non-English speaker. She speaks Spanish and has quite the little personality. It was a fun day.

Williamsburg Pictures

I forgot to mention that while we were in Williamsburg, we saw a marching band of boys and girls playing the flute, the piccolo, and various drums, all in colonial clothes. It was neat, and Treyton loved it. Also, Heather tried on some old fashion clothes. I think they are very befitting her. Alyson got arrested by the city gendarmes for causing a public disturbance (she was feeding Jayci in public). When they tried to arrest her, I defended her, but that only resulted in both our arrests. So they put us in the stocks for a while. Finally, Heather and I got a nice pic in front of the old Governor's house, where many famous people once lived, including Thomas Jefferson!