Out of the Club

I attended a wedding tonight and for the first time ever

didn't have to be involved in the bouquet toss!

 

Didn't have to toss it!

 

Didn't have to have to try and catch it!

 

Didn't have to get knocked to the ground by the crazies!

 

Yes, I did a little happy dance. :)

 

Swear Words

To help my students practice their spelling words, I gave them a word search for their morning work. One of their favorite things to do is to look for words that are not on the word list.

About 5 minutes into the word search, one of my very sweet boys calls out, "Mrs. Dodge...there's a swear word on here."

PANIC MODE!

To try to put out the fire as quick as possible, I just told him to not circle the word, or show anyone, and look for his other words.

A minute later, he loudly annouces that, "it's like the worst swear word ever."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? 

I made this on a teacher website!

So I asked him to bring his paper to me and show me the swear word...and he this what he showed me...

Did I mention that I teach in Mormon Utah?



They do it because they love me...right?

For 5 years, my box in the office has said "Miss Bramhall."

One of the lunch ladies pointed out to the secretary that it needed to be changed.

She got right on it...

We take things very serious at my school. :)

Oh yeah...and that time I got married...

Been married almost 2 whole months...figured it was time to blog about it :)

Favorite bridal picture

 Coming out of the temple

Yes we are that adorable couple

It was very sunny that day...lots of squinting

All our people...yeah...we requested the big room

My family 

Awesome divas!!!

Cory's boys

My personal hottie 

My BIG gorgeous ring...Cory did good!

We can't remember what we were talking about, but we air-quote together

My brothers

 (who couldn't understand why I wanted a picture of all of us together)

PRINCESS PICTURE!!!

All my ladies

We don't cut cake like normal people...we destroy it!

CS Lewis Academy crew

All the single ladies

Cory really liked getting the garter...

...so he got a prize

These were (seriously) the only single guys at the reception

First dance

I had to include this one...

I've never seen my parents dance together :)



Thanks to everyone who helped, who came, who sent presents, who made it the most perfect wedding day ever!

Visting Jersey

I was looking at other peoples' blogs and whining to myself that they never update their blogs...only to realize that I haven't updated mine in two months...OOPS!

My family always goes down to the Jersey shore around the 4th of July to enjoy the sun, surf, and boardwalk goodness. This year was even better for multiple reasons:

1. Picked the world's best blueberries...Mmmm!

The family rule it that they weigh the blueberries in your bucket at the end...not you. :)






2. My sister-in-laws threw me a surprise bridal shower. My friend invited me to go out to dinner and part way through, she had an emergency and had to take me home. When we got there, 20 people were there to give me all kinds of good presents. And my mom, being her awesome self, hand decorated wedding cake shaped cookies.

And this is one of the "not perfect" ones. The best ones even had little icing piping on the edges of the top two tiers.

Everyone really enjoyed the yummy cake my mom bought...especially the icing.




3. We went over to the Reading Market in Philadelphia, where you can buy just about anything food related (the Amish sell the best hot apple dumplings with heavy cream).

Why yes that is a set of chocolate lungs!

Debated for about 5 minutes on whether or not to get these for Cory.





4. Cory finally arrived on Monday and everything was just better after that. :)

5. We ate all the delicious evil food we could get our hands on (cheese steaks, funnel cake, Manco & Manco pizza, Rita's water ice, frozen custard, salt water taffy, fudge, Wawa hoagies). And we ended the week on a high note with Friendly's ice cream.

                                                               Good trip!!!

The Engagement Story (Plans A and B)

Cory had told me that he had to work Saturday morning, going in at 6 AM, so we called it an early night on Friday. I was actually happy about this because I had a little cold and was really looking forward to sleeping in and then getting some things done while Cory was at work. WRONG!!!

6 AM: my doorbell is ringing. Cory knows that I'm not a morning person and that I would never hear the doorbell, so he had set it up for my roommate to come wake me up. Carlee came in to wake me up, saying something about being scared to answer the door in the dark by herself. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am not a happy person first thing in the morning and I hadn't sleep well the night before because of my stuffy nose. As I started to walk down the stairs to answer the door, I said that I was going to kill whoever was ringing the door. I even had the thought that if it was Cory with a ring, I would probably say no.

When I opened the door, Cory's roommate Mike was standing on my doorstep with flowers (the thought process to figure that fact out took several seconds). Mike said, "You wanna dump your boyfriend and go on a date with me?" I was not amused. Mike (who had been warned about my morning personality) decided to go for the direct route and handed me the flowers. There was a card attached: "Good morning Sweetheart! You have one hour to get ready for a day you won't soon forget! I love you, Cory."

I am sorry to say, but my first reaction was to yell "Are you kidding me?!?" at Mike. He backed away slowly and said to not kill the messenger. I turned on Carlee with about the same attitude. But of course she just smiled, told me to get ready, and went back to bed. I REALLY wanted to go back to bed. I even called and kind of yelled at Cory, just to make sure that this wasn't some kind of bad joke. He told me to get ready and that he'd see me in an hour.

So I got showered and ready. It's really weird trying to get dressed when you know you're going to get proposed to; what on earth do you where? I was ready by 7 and waiting for Cory. When he showed up, he was dressed in his nice new suit and looking very handsome. Then much to my surprise, he started apologizing. Turns out that Cory had this whole plan of taking me up in a hot-air balloon (planned for over a month) and at the last minute the balloon guy had to cancel due to wind. To say Cory was crushed is an understatement.

Since we were both up, we decided to make the best of it and get some breakfast. And Cory wanted to get away from his failure, so we drove up to Park City, mostly just to do something. By the time we were done with breakfast and driving back, we were both tired. Cory was so tired that I had to drive us back through the canyon. We both went home to take naps (and so Cory could try to figure out plan B).

As part of the day, Cory had set up a massage for me (I had had a REALLY stressful week). Right before I left for my massage, he told me to have a shirt to wear to dinner. My massage was perfect and they even set it up so I got my make-up done by one of the stylists. Not to brag...but I looked HOT!!! :)

When I got to Cory's, he was dressed up in his suit again. He would not tell me where we were going, except it was going to take us almost an hour to get there. He wouldn't even let me see the GPS on his phone. We ended going out to dinner at La Caille, which is an uber-fancy French restaurant in Sandy. The whole place looks like a French chateau and the waiters and waitresses are dressed up like 18th century French servants. There are even peacocks roaming the grounds.

The food was AMAZING, especially considering that neither Cory nor I are really big on French food. Finally over dessert, he got out the ring box and asked me to marry him. Since I knew for a while that he was ring shopping and planning, I wasn't surprised and didn't get that emotional. But then the waitress noticed what had just happened and got all excited and asked to see my ring. As other people in the restaurant got excited for me, I started to get really excited to. Especially when I got a better look at the ring. It is absolutely gorgeous! I love it!

And then my favorite part: I got fireworks (kind of). The waitresses decided that we needed to have some celebration. They brought over a cute pastry with what looked like a silver medal candle sticking out the top. When she lit it, sparks and fireworky things started shooting out the top, almost a foot straight up. It was so cool. So I guess you could call it a good day. :)

Pitfalls of Technology

I haven't had a land line phone in years, and let's face it, I'm not the only one. We all live and breath by our cell phone. And most of the time this is fine...it's always with you in emergencies, it makes it easy for people to keep in contact with you anywhere, etc.


Cell phones are great...until you leave yours at your boyfriends house.

It's a fun feeling when you suddenly realize that the little device you depend on more than your own mother is not in your pocket where it is supposed to be.

And to make matters even more fun, I was home alone and I couldn't borrow a roommate's phone. And I had to act quickly because Cory was supposed to leave for work in about 30 minutes.

So this is how I ended up on my neighbors front porch, asking if I could borrow her phone, much in the way people used to ask a cup of sugar. Luckily she was home and found the whole situation quite funny.

So in the end, phone was returned to my pocket and I feel like I'm connected with the world again...at least until my next ditzy moment.

Life's Simple Pleasures #2

Skinny Mirrors

Every woman in the world would be a lot happier if there were only skinny mirrors.

If you have never experienced a skinny mirror, you really should.

They may be technically lying to you and making you look better that you really do...

...but I'm okay with that kind of lying. :)

Life's Simple Pleasures: #1

Maybe I'm just "special" but I get a small sense of joy and accomplishment watching my wipers and defroster win the battle against the frost/ice on my windshield.

This is probably mostly due to the fact that I hate the cold so much/am too lazy to do a thorough job scarping in the first place. Most of the time, I only seem to get a good one foot square to see through.

When I'm about 5 minutes from my house, the battle begins. I love when I can see a spot that I know is going to get knocked away by the next swipe of the wiper.

The really sad part is that I get a little sad and disappointed when the battle is over and there's nothing left for my wipers to do.

Creepers in the Night

This story happened a few months ago but it's just too awesome not to tell...enjoy...

It's a well know fact in my house that I have what is called "the pharmacy" in my bathroom. One whole (big) drawer of my sink is full of stuff for when you're sick (cold medicine, cough drops, Tylenol, thermometer, etc). This comes from being a teacher of snotty-nosed children that sneeze on you all day: I get sick fairly regularly. Everyone makes fun of the pharmacy...until they need it.

Carlee, my cool, former-beauty-queen roommate was not feeling so good one night. In her own words, her "insides wanted to be on her outsides." After suffering through most of the night, she thought that maybe some drugs might help and figured that her hypochondriac roommate (ME) would probably have the right ones.

However, by this point it was about 3 AM.

Now I need to back up a bit to help set the scene just a little bit better. When I went up to bed around 11 PM, I could see Carlee's door open and her reading light, which gives off an eerie blue/white light, was on. I figured she was reading or had fallen asleep with the light still on. I thought nothing of it, closed my door and went to bed.

Back to 3 AM...

I wake up in my dark room and can't figure out what woke me up. While trying to sort things out in my half-asleep brain, I notice that my door is open.

Another needed point...I never, EVER sleep with my door open, for three reasons:
1. To keep out unwanted light and noise.
2. If you grow up with brothers, a locked door is your only shoot at keeping them from torturing you.
3. I was very of my bedroom in the dark as a child and keeping the door shut was one way to keep Mr. Boogedy (childhood terror from a frickin Disney movie) from getting me.

So noticing the open door, I also notice a light coming from down the hall. I got up to investigate and saw that it was Carlee's reading light still shining. I was just making up my mind if I should see if she was okay (or turn her light off for her) when it happened.

From the dark bathroom behind me, I hear in the creepiest, whispery, sickly little girl voice, "...Cindy?"

My ninja-jumping-spin-preparing-for-battle-but also-hanging-onto-the-doorframe-for-dear-life move was quite impressive.

Carlee had decided it would be better to not wake me and just "quietly" go through my medicine drawer.

EPIC FAILURE

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TEACHER?

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TEACHER?
by Jeff Foxworthy

1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line.
2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.
3. You walk into a store and hear the words "It's Ms/Mr. _____" and know you have been spotted.
4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mom/Dad at one time or another.
5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty minutes.
6. You've trained yourself to go to the bathroom at two distinct times of the day: lunch and planning period.
7. You start saving other people's trash, because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.
8. You believe the teachers' lounge should be equipped with a margarita machine.
9. You want to slap the next person who says "Must be nice to work 8 to 3 and have summers off."
10. You believe chocolate is a food group.
11. You can tell if it's a full moon without ever looking outside.
12. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."
13. You feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behavior when you are out in public.
14. You believe in aerial spraying of Ritalin.
15. You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.
16. You spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own needs.
17. You can't pass the school supply aisle without getting at least five items!
18. You ask your friends if the left hand turn he just made was a "good choice or a bad choice."
19. You find true beauty in a can full of perfectly sharpened pencils.
20. You are secretly addicted to hand sanitizer.
21. You understand instantaneously why a child behaves a certain way after meeting his or her parents.