Celebration!!

So I saved my best post for last today. . . .Clogging has finally started up again and I LOVE it! Because Greg now teaches a Folk Dance team our studio class has moved to Thurs nights which is better for most of us. It is one of the highlights of my week for sure. We basically have 16 women (I think I am the youngest) and Greg all in a tiny studio that is about one car width wide and a little longer than the typical garage. On top of that we are all clogging, doing crazy arm movements, sweating (like crazy), and most of all laughing. It is the greatest thing. I love learning when I am not graded, and I love to perform and mostly just dance. Anyway I will be sure to let you all know when we have any performances or competitions so you can come cheer us on. I think we are learning 3 new dances this year and keeping Celebration from last year. Go Unlimited!

Scheduling, Scheduling, Scheduling

Like I said in my last post school is keeping me busy, but amazingly I am sticking pretty well to my new scheduling/organization. From my disaster zone house you wouldn't know it, but the rest of my life is quite organized. I am rarely home which is why my house is a mess and Lin and I are still trying to figure out when we can see each other, but it is all good. Lately Lin has had to work out of town which is rough I don't really enjoy being home alone at night, although I am getting better at it.

School

So school this semester is crazy, busy, and awesome all at the same time. I am taking 15.5 credits 13 of which are public health related the other two are dance classes :) I don't remember what I have posted about school already so there may be some repeats. I am taking stress management, mind/body health, and consumer health which I feel are all very related. So far in my stress management class we have been talking about the physiological effects stress has on your body and how it changes your mind or attitude. The next unit is on stress management techniques and how to promote good stress and eliminate bad. My mind body health class is one of my favorites. It is basically about how the mind, body, and spirit are all one and if one has problems it leads to problems in all areas. We have talked a lot about what negative thoughts and comments due to your being and the results are pretty amazing. Basically everything we are told in the LDS religion and scriptures plays a role in this overall health. We are told to be happy, have joy, rejoice, have gratitude, serve others, be slow to anger, seek uplifting things, don't drink or use drugs, eat healthy, get enough sleep; all of these have a physical, spiritual, and mental affect on you. It is simply an amazing class. We also talk about alternative and complimentary medicines and it is really interesting. I would say I am on the middle road between  modern medicine and complimentary. I really feel there is good and bad to both. My consumer health class is really interesting but the author of the book is very bias towards science and basically considers all alternative medicines as quackery. My teacher tells us to keep an open mind but we are learning about all of the "miracle" drugs and devices that are fake or actually do harm and how to be smart consumers when it comes to our health. It is an interesting class and very opposite mind/body health.
My other class is a technology and health promotion class. It is ok, but I know how to do a lot of the stuff already; it is still pretty interesting and I am excited to work on my blog for the class.
Other than that I have my folk dance team class which I love. We are performing our Ukrainian Hopak that we have been learning at Rec Night tonight. We also just found out that we will most likely be doing a Hungarian bottle dance for the Christmas show. The men will be doing a Hungarian stick dance. I am excited and a little nervous hopefully I can keep the bottle balanced on my head. (For those who don't know what I am talking about look up Hungarian Womens bottle dance on utube) I also have beginning country western square dance which is required for the Folk Dance minor. It is an easy class and just super relaxed and fun.
I am also the TA for advanced clogging. That is crazy exciting because the dances we are learning this semester and ones I have never learned so I am learning/demonstrating as Greg teaches. Pretty sure I have made a fool of myself a few times already, but I don't really care and I just love to clog.

Long time no post

So it has been awhile since my last post and I am going to keep it short because I need/and want to go to bed. School is great! I love all of my classes (I will go into more detail later). I am also loving my job at the canon center. It is so chill and I actually really enjoy plating food, who'da thought. I am also starting another blog for my Technology and Health Promotion class. When I it up and running I will add a link so you can all check it out. It is a blog about how to be healthy even with a busy life. Well thats all for tonight. I will try to get a better post sometime soon.

Workshop

This past Thurs & Fri I got the opportunity to share a few dances I learned at Stockton with the people at BYU's Folk Dance Workshop. I was able to teach 3 dances and they went really well. I taught the Taiwanese Watermelon Picking dance. It was a challenge to finish it in 15 minutes, but we managed. It was definitely a small challenge for them not because the steps are hard, but because it is easy to forget the sequence.
Friday I taught my very favorite dance from camp. It is a Turkish dance called Canim Lerik (the first word is pronounced Je-nim the second one is pretty much how it is spelled). It went very well and Delynne (the teacher in charge of workshop loved it). The second one I taught was also from Turkey. It was called Rapatma. It was a change from what I had originally planned on teaching due to time restraints. Friday morning I was practicing it (there are only two figures) and I couldn't get the transition to work right. Sometimes the music doesn't line up the steps right when you change from figure 1 to 2. When that happens you add 4 running steps. I was ending up with running steps every transition. I knew this wasn't right and I was getting really confused so I emailed Ahmet and asked him for help. Amazingly he got back to me right away and said that he thought it was great that I needed the running steps every time and told me he wished he could end up with that. He told me how he usually does it, but then said that that is the way HE does it and I am welcome to do it how I want when I teach. So I ended up teaching MY version of AHMET'S dance. I was glad he was ok with my varying it and I felt pretty empowered to be able to just lead the dance my way.
All in all workshop was great. Everyone really loved the Turkish dances, I think their bodies/minds were so full that the Taiwanese dance was a little too hard for them to truly love by the end of workshop, but i had fun teaching and I hope they had fun learning and dancing.
This opportunity only made me more excited and anxious to start teaching!!!

Update

So I thought I would give one last update before school starts next week. First off I did get a job at the Canon Center. I love it! It is a basic, repetitive job, but that is part of the reason I like it. Work doesn't come home with me I get to leave it when I clock out. Basically my job just entails getting all the donuts, muffins and bagels out for breakfast then monitoring them throughout breakfast service, and prepping for lunch. Prepping includes filling the refrigerated display cases with at least 8 different desserts from the leftover fridge, and cutting and plating the next needed desserts. In my first two days I have learned that I am somewhat obsessive-compulsive because I reorganize the fridge if the same kind of desserts aren't next to each other. I think that is kind of good for this job though because then you can see what desserts are left and maximize the space for the new desserts.

I also thought I would do one more update on my summer to-do list just to see how I faired.

Plant a garden: I am still harvesting the rewards of this one, while it didn't turn out quite as I wanted it to, I still have tons of tomatoes and peppers, onions, leeks, and a few carrots.

Bottle and dry fruits, sauces, etc: I have now made wonderful Raspberry Jam, slightly runny, but delicious Apricot Jam, dried apricots, and apricot fruit leather. There is still more I want to do such as bottle peaches and some other jams, but I would say for my first time I did pretty well.

Deep clean my house (cause it needs it): Okay so this one started out great and that is where it stopped, who needs a clean house?

See if I can get a teaching job at one of the charter schools: I am still waiting to hear official details as to if the class at Meridian is actually going to happen, but I have a lot of material now so I feel prepared for whenever I finally get to start teaching.

Start teaching clogging: This is a bummer, I still haven't found a place to start teaching, I think this one may have to wait until I graduate.

READ for FUN: This didn't happen quite as much as I wanted, but I did read a few books.

Go camping: Including girls camp I went camping 3 times, and one more will be on Labor Day weekend.

learn how to sew some type of clothes (I can only really sew curtains, blankets, anything with a straight edge): nada I may start doing this on Sunday mornings between choir and church or before choir if I decide to just get a sleep schedule going and not sleep in on Sunday mornings.

Finish putting the home videos onto DVD: DONE! Well I still have a few of just my own videos, but the whole family collection is done.

Relax: I would say this was accomplished (maybe too much so); I am realizing how little time I will have left for this this semester, but I am going to make time and possibly remaster the power nap, I am going to need it on my long days of work & school.

Looking over this list I am happy to see what I have accomplished this summer. It has been relaxing, productive and most of all FUN!
I am excited to start off a new year of school ( possibly my last :) ) and work at my new job.

Musical Families

So I forgot to share a very funny story from my trip to Stockton. At the Hungarian Party on Saturday night they played a game during the dance review. The Hungarian teachers brought 8 chairs into the middle of the room then asked for volunteers to play the game. I went in to the middle along with 31 other people. Each of us was handed a card. On the card there was a Hungarian Sur name and either Father, Mother, Sister, or Brother. They matched us up in our "families" and each family had to sit on a chair in the order of father, mother, brother, sister. Each person sat on the lap of the person before them. I was a father at the beginning so I was on the bottom. Then they had us all stand back up and said we would start the game. The basic idea is like musical chairs, there is one less chair and you want to get on a chair when the music stops. The difference was that as the music played you walked around the chairs in any direction trading cards with the people you passed. When the music stopped you looked at your card and had to find your family. No one in a family could sit down until the whole family was together and you had to sit in that same order F,M,B,S. It was super chaotic because everyone is shouting out the name of the family they are looking for. I managed to make it to the final round. When the music ended I had a father card. It is amazing how hard it is to gather 4 out of 8 people, in the same area the other 4 are trying to gather. Also adding to the fun was the fact that the Hungarian teachers kept moving the chair every time one family got close to sitting down this meant everyone from both families rushed over to the chair and everyone was all mixed up again. Cricket (my square dance partner) was the father of the other family. My family finally got separated and right then the chair got moved. Cricket and her family rushed after it and as she was sitting down I sat down too. So we both are on the chair screaming at our families to sit down. It ended with all 8 of us on this one chair. It was pretty hilarious and I am glad I didn't push Cricket all the way off the chair, and I am glad they picked strong chairs.

Menu List

So I thought I would show off my organization skills. This is what I came up with for what we like to eat and what we usually eat so that planning a menu doesn't mean racking your brain for stuff to make. I have enough dinners for one month (if we eat out occasionally), plus I want to try a new recipe once a month as well. The good ones will then be added to the list.

So here is the list you are welcome to use it as well and if you have any quick recipes I would love to add more. (Heidi I want your cowboy? spaghetti recipe.)

MENU ITEMS

Breakfast Cold Cereal Waffles/Pancakes Oatmeal English Muffins Peanut Butter Toast Egg Sandwich Scrambled Eggs Cinnamon Rolls Sausage/Bacon Hashbrowns Toast	Lunch Main PB&J Cold Cut Sandwich Leftovers Kraft Mac & Cheese Ramen Salad Burritos Grilled Cheese Extras cheese sticks carrots cucumber apple orange peach banana pineapple fruit leather/snacks dried fruit pudding yogurt chips crackers cookies granola bar
Dinner Chicken Hawaiian Haystacks Enchiladas Curry Tacos Baked Chicken Fried Chicken Beef Sloppy Joes Roast Steak Meatloaf Hamburgers Tomato Soup Taco Soup Tacos Navajo Tacos Taco Salad Spaghetti & Meatballs Lasagna Pork Roast Pork Chops Tacos Other Mac & Cheese Pizza Rice Loaf Stir fry Quesadillas Kabobs	Sides Veggies corn green beans butternut squash broccoli baked potatoes mashed potatoes roast potatoes carrots zucchini Other rolls bread-sticks rice macaroni salad potato salad green salad baked beans chips coleslaw tortillas

Organization

So since I am going to have a crazy, busy schedule once school starts I am determined to be organized and stick with my organization throughout the semester. I went to get a planner today; it seems like I usually  get one and use it for a month or two and then stop. I have decided it is because I am more of a fan of a month calendar and to do lists. I can't do the daily planner, but I can't seem to find a calender big enough I can actually use it for a whole month, but portable and usable. After searching Walmart, Kmart and online, I found an awesome site where I can design my own monthly calendar and print it off. So my plan is to print off at least the months through this semester, put them in some sort of binder that is convenient to use and then somehow attach a note pad or sticky note pad to the binder for my to do lists. I think this could possibly work.
Another thing I am trying to organize and plan are meals so that I don't have to come home and figure out what we have, what I want, then make sure we have all the ingredients, etc, etc. I was just going to put it on my monthly calendar, but while searching the internet I found this awesome website with free templates for about any sort of planner/calendar you could want from meals, to classes, to work shifts, immunizations, you name it. I like the way their meal planner is set up. They have a few different versions some even have grocery lists attached. I think I will be trying out a few styles to find which one works best for me. Right now I am thinking their two week planner with using my own "attached" note pad for my grocery list that way I don't have to take a full sheet of paper to the store. For those of you who like to use computers for everything they also have some meal planners connected with Excel that have drop down menus so you can just put the menu together really quickly.
Here is their website if you want to take a look
http://www.vertex42.com/

I am really excited to get going on this and hope that I can stick with it first off, and that it will actually make my life a little less hectic, less stressful, and more organized.

Happy Birthday Lin!

Lin's birthday was on the 13th (Friday the 13th). Work got done early so he got home around 1 PM I had a bunch of presents for him which he loved. Most of them were things he needed or had asked me for such as a leatherman (that was the main gift), socks (very needed), swimming shorts, basketball shorts, key chain consecrated oil vile, and the two that really surprised him a Best of Journey CD and a Survivor Greatest Hits CD. Since it is the end of summer and back to school all the clothes were on sale. So I even kept a good budget :)

That night we went miniature golfing at Cascade. Lin was winning by a lot on the front 9 but I did really well on the back nine. I even got a hole-in-one on the 17th hole. After 17 we added up to see where we were. I was down by 1 (53-54) They don't score it the same as normal golf or even like Trafalga. We played the last hole and I was lucky enough to make it in the 2nd ring, while Lin made it in the 3rd. This meant he got 1 point while I got 2. So we after all that we tied at 55.
After that we ate at Gandolfos and went home and watched a movie.

On Saturday Lin went tubing down the Provo River with some of his siblings. While he was gone I made his cake, or attempted to. I have the worst time trying to get cakes out of pans, despite greasing, flouring the pan, allowing the exact cool down time, allowing extra cool down time, nothing works (but yet I try). This is Lin's cake after I got both cakes out of the pans.

It was really terrible looking and most of the middle is just crumbles. Nothing a little icing won't fix right?

It didn't turn out too bad (on the outside) but it was still a little lumpy.

 I made Lin a special birthday dinner and tried to make it especially good, because I made him fend for himself for a week while I was in California. I decided to bbq steaks, potatoes, corn on the cob, squash, and then I decided to throw a little shrimp in there because Lin rarely eats sea food because I don't like it at all.
He was very excited and we ended up with way too much food, so we didn't break into the cake.

After dinner we went and watched the Salem fireworks. We were right under them close enough that we were getting hit with ashes or shrapnel as my brother in law calls it. It was a great end to the night.