ib english

oh why oh why can things not go right? so my petition got approved and then the signature got voided because the office that was supposed to substitute it said that i didn't have any ib records at byu-i so i got the registrars office to find my records and then i got the academic advising office to reverse the void and then i went back to the registrar with my petition to get them to do the substitution and what happens? they say that they can't accept the ib credit... uh yeah i know the english department doesn't like ib, wasn't that the point of the petition? so basically the dean who signed my petition approved the decision to substitute ib english for english 250 which is an intro to lit course and give me credit but because the english dept chair has said that their policy is not to accept it all they can do is waive the course for me but i don't get the credit.... dumb. so after discussing it with the manager of the registrar (and everyone else under the sun) i helped him understand the current situation since he has tried to get the english dept to change their decision several times. but this is a course that hasn't really been appealed or presented to them before so he was going to go before the dean and the chair and present the case to them. so we'll see if i can get credit for it or just stick with it being waived and then having to take fluff courses just to get to my credit requirement.... soooo silly.

week in review

Well it's the end of another busy stressful and interesting week. Monday i took a test on law for my sped class and passed the first time! hooray for me! that was a major load off for the rest of the week since it was a proficiency test so i would have had to keep taking it until i got a score the instructor was happy with. tuesday i did some more battle with the english department trying to get my ib english to count for something- any of you who knew me when i went through ib english in high school understand how much work and how hard it was for me, and i'm a good student! needless to say i should get some credit for it but it's been a two year battle with the school so we'll see if this new way of presenting it i came up with will work- we somehow figured out a way to bipass the english department head and go to the dean- we'll see. tuesday was also devo by Elder Oaks, it's always fun for me to hear him speak since i have spoken in the same meeting as him i am also intrigued to see what he is going to talk about. he talked about religous freedom and our constitution and the need to protect it. it was very powerful. wednesday... honestly i can't remember wednesday.... that's probably not a good thing.... ummmm...... nope. still not coming to me. oh wait wednesday joe went down to IF to the social security office and officially made me a bidwell, i sent him with every document they could need since they made such a tizzy last time. i also tried to get my flu shot wednesday since the health center wouldn't give me one when i went before since they were saving them for the health fair. i went right when i got done with class and they were out! i was so mad because they were the ones that had made me wait and they were out! they only ordered 400- for a campus of like 15,000.... i don't see the logic.... but anyways they're not going to order anymore in and apparently pretty much the entire state is out.... slight problem for someone that inevitably catches everything.... we'll see if i survive the semester without missing too much school (which in a 12 week semester missing any time will hurt you big time). thursday... i had just started to warm up to science thanks to my physical science class a while ago and now my science methods class.. thursday changed that.... she had us disect an owl pellet.... goodbye any hope of me liking science again... i got one glove on and determined that i couldn't do it so i took it back off and just tried to look at the ones at my table doing it as little as possible. i managed to not throw up or even have to leave the room- major improvement on 6th grade and the worm... class could not end soon enough, consequently i was quezy the rest of the day. friday was a very interesting day, i became orthopedically impaired for four hours and was wheelchair bound- ok not really but i had to pretend to be for a class. let me just tell you, i have very little upper body strength. it was funny to see how people reacted to me being in a wheel chair and how some people would see me struggling and try not to look at me like that solved the problem. i now have a much greater appreciation for people in wheelchairs... especially on the hill of the byu-idaho campus... i literally could not push myself up the hill joe had to do it, i kept trying and it would take me like 10 minutes to get 5 feet. also the bathrooms... so dumb! so do you know how public restrooms often have a little lip at the door in case of flooding? well in the hinckley building they have that lip and there is no little ramp part to it, just an inch tall obsticle for me to get the wheelchair completely stuck on- bless that girl who got over being scared of helping a complete stranger get into the bathroom because i was stuck and by the end of the four hours had very little upper body strength left, my left arm still feels kinda weird. and then there's saturday.... grocery shopping... you wouldn't think that it would be a painful thing now would you, well it was for me this week. so i know i have gained alot of weight in the last year and i have been working on changing that, joe and i were grocery shopping and had the cart full of veggies i was feeling good about trying to stick to my healthy list of grocery items when we run into someone joe knows and what do they ask looking straight at me and my table muscle? "are you expecting?" i think it was a mixture of not being sure if i had heard her and wondering if someone would actually ask that that made joe and i ask at the same time "what?" and it must have been my shocked face that made her say nevermind and walk away..... ouch.... big time ouch.... no i am not expecting but apparently i look that way, thanks. i know she didn't mean to be rude but, ouch. needless to say i will not be wearing that shirt unless i am expecting and i have a stronger desire to lose weight, yet part of me just wants to crawl into bed and stay there. I now remember something that was said many times in our household growing up... if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all... saturday night joe and i went to the temple which helped make saturday not a complete disaster. today was the primary program in church which was absolutely wonderful, the shy kids as always stole the show. joe and i have also been asked to help out with the ward Christmas party so although it's not a calling we are kinda part of the activity committee for this one- they found out that we are theatre people. so that was my week, joe has had school and work and nothing terribly exciting that i can think of other than having to push me around campus on friday when i just couldn't do it anymore. we love our ward and everyone is so wonderful and inviting- major contrast to last year! we love our apartment and having the extra space, a washer and dryer and not a hallway kitchen! and school is going pretty well as crazy as it is. we went into the academic advising office last week to check that we really are on schedule and figure out where we were out. we explored the option of going to school next summer and student teaching next fall but soon discovered that joe has classes that wouldn't be offered and even when they are they conflict so long story short it would be pointless for joe to go to school next summer. i could still go and then student teach next fall but a local placement is between ashton and pocatello so that would be no fun. so we'll see what we do. i think right now we are thinking to take the summer off and work- we know where we would like to work and have expressed our desire but it isn't up to us so we'll see what happens! sorry no pictures to entertain you all of me struggling in the wheelchair- i wish i had taken some.. oh well!!!

some more summer pics

we are alive... so i've been told =)

well folks it has been a very insane ride these last couple months. our last show of the summer season at the pinecone playhouse was sept. 5th but oh no that was not the end of our adventures there, joe and i played the leads in their september extension show of barefoot in the park. so for the next three weekends of thrusday, friday and saturdays we traveled back and forth from rexburg to perfrom up in west yellowstone at night while going to school during the day. what made us think that we would be just fine opening a show in west yellowstone with limited rehearsals on our first day of school in rexburg i don't know but none the less we did it. opening night was... well we'll just call it a final dress but then we bounced back figured out technical difficulties and spent tons more time on lines and then the show got to be kinda fun. it really is a funny script and it was funny because the roles that joe and i played were so opposite to us in real life. it was a very very crazy and stressful time but we survived! once the shows were over we of course had to buckle down on school which is good that the show ended when it did because it was about time that school got some more attention. school is pretty wild and crazy for me this semester, i am in four methods classes, new testament and a sped class where currently i am studying law... not so much fun and very confusing, oh and next friday i get to spend the day in a wheelchair.... it should be interesting. joe is pretty busy with school too but he doesn't have as much in class time as i do because he is taking one less class and one of his classes is an online class but it still keeps him busy, oh and did i mention that since the beginning of the semester he has been the master electrician on campus for the theatre department? yeah we are just full of free time ;) -full of sarcasm. Joe's birthday was on sept. 8th and so i threw him a birthday party with our friends in rexburg and thanks to the dollar store it was lots of fun... i love the dollar store, it's my friend. i also made him a snickers cake this year instead of just buying one from albertsons because well, i like to bake =) so pretty much that is what we have been up to lately, here's some pictures for your viewing pleasure! ( i can never get pictures to cooperate so here they are in random order)

Primary Teachers

So this summer Joe and I have been called as primary teachers and we teach the 9-11 yr olds. it is quite an adventure and we do our best to keep them entertained and interested in what we are teaching. We only have about 5 local kids but because west yellowstone is such a tourist town our numbers fluctuate alot and we also have some kids that are here for the summer, On july 5th we had 31 kids! Sometimes it's hard to know if the kids are enjoying class or if we are getting through to them at all but one thing i know i learned from my mother is to be an animated teacher and i never even realized it until one week we got a less active girl and her sister to come back for the second week in a row- the sister wasn't even supposed to be in our class but her sister had told her that we were the cool and funny teachers =) that was fun to hear. Last week we also had a mother of one of our students tell us that our lessons were really spiritual which is just so fun to hear. i love to know that these children are able to recognize the spirit and truth that are present when we discuss this gospel and it's been fun to see them grow more and more interested and have more of a desire to know for themselves as the summer has gone on. when we started the summer one of our students asked us if we were christian and now i have seen there testimonies and interest grow and they have such different questions now. It was so fun on SUnday during sharing time when our students raised their hands and knew the answers because they were things that we had taken the time to discuss and answer questions about. i could remember teaching the lesson that had to do with what we were discussing in sharing time and that it was stuff that the kids didn't really know but then to see them on sunday offering such perfect answers was so much fun Joe and I were totally doing the proud and happy primary teacher dance in the back of the room =)
I'm so thankful that we have been given this calling and entrusted with such a great responsibility, it has been wonderful =)

Anniversary :)

Well Saturday the 8th was Joe and my one year anniversary it is pretty crazy to think that we have been married for a year! Saturday we had the melodrama so i spent the day in curls and we had planned to atleast go out to an early dinner before call at one of the nicer restaurants in town but when we got there they weren't even open so we ended up going to the outpost where joe's friend works so most of our meal we spent joking with him, not quite what we had pictured for our anniversary dinner but hey he comped our meal for us =) besides we were together and happy =)
most days it doesn't feel nearly as long as a year that we have been married until i think about everything that we have done in that year:
- a month at playmill
- two semesters of school where we both worked very hard and got ourselves some scholarships
- Joe working as a techy for the theatre department
- Joe being Jimmy in The Rainmaker
- Lesley bringing many meals to Joe in tupperware as a result of the previous two bullets
- Going to Singapore and Thailand (warm happy place :) )
- Auditions for Playmill
- Helping build the PineCone Playhouse
- Rehearsals for the melodrama and chaps
- A summer with us playing the hero and heroine in a melodrama Dirty Work at the Crossroads, and Joe playing Miles Shadwell (who we have decided would be a much funnier character if Joe played him as IRish) and me being the techy for CHAPS!

anyways that is a very abreviated list of some of the things we have done in this past year. I love being married to Joe and i love him very very very very very.... much! He's a really great guy and a wonderful husband and very patient with me and my insanity, thank goodness! It's been an interesting adventure that we've been on this past year but I'm glad that we're going through it together. we still have 19 more shows before our summer is over but it is feeling close to the end then we will go back to rexburg and back to school again. We have already started moving into our apartment in rexburg, we are on the third floor- which i like just not during the moving in process. WE still have our real furniture pieces to move in since we haven't had access to a truck but we will get them done on monday and hopefully we will be able to get sears to move the washer and dryer then too.
I'm working at the box office of the theatre right now so sorry no pics in this update but just know that we are doing pretty good, several pounds heavier than last year and i feel the desperate need for a haircut (which i can't have until after the season is over).
Love you forever and for always Joe =)

pics

well i have recieved some requests for pictures (from robyn) and i know that chris and joyelle will appreciate any update on the blog so this is what y'all are getting for now. our life pretty much consists of work and sleep (not in equal amounts... yeah for sleep!) and this weekend we are going down to utah for gabe's baby blessing and then lagoon with the bidwells on monday. as well as hopefully reclaiming more of my stuff from allison's basement. anyways if you guys want to see pictures of us in costume or of the theatre click on the link below. love y'all lots!
http://www.pineconeplayhouse.com/photos.html
actually i just realized joe and i are only in one of those pictures even though he took the most pictures of me since i'm the heroin but he is partial to his family big surprise! oh well. i will post more pics some day