Mob Style Weekend Adventure

Amie and I decided that this weekend it would be Mob themed - we are in Vegas!
We started our adventure at the Tropicana where we toured the newly opened Mob Experience, there were some pretty cool art pieces depicting some of the better known Mobsters of the time. Didn't realize that the interactive portion of the "Mob Experience" was not open yet so we decided that we needed to make our own experience.
We drove over to the Gold & Silver Pawn shop - it’s the one that is featured on A&E - pawn stars. Turns out that one of my old roommates- crazy Melissa - still works there! After looking around and unfortunately not seeing any of the guys from the show we headed over to a new Italian Restaurant - Mr. B's Ristornate and Piano Lounge Brings Back A little Bit Of Old Vegas with A New Twist. It has a red grand piano, a gelato bar, and tasty Italian dishes, all accompanied by lounge singers or a kindly gentleman tickling the ivories. My friend Alex S. works the bar over there and she had told me that she was working tonight. So we decided to go and visit her, sadly she was called off at the last minute and we are already there so we ate anyways. For an appetizer we shared the caprese salad. For all of you know me, then you know that tomatoes and I are not friends. But I was being brave and I cut off one of the slices and a chunk of the mozzarella and a bit of the basil leaf and took a bite... I loved it! Still not a huge fan of tomatoes, but that caprese salad was so delish! I had a stuffed shells dish and Amie had the fettuccini alla Bolognese. Both were delicious and very filling. For dessert we had small cups of the gelato - Amie had dark chocolate and I had the hazelnut.

52 Weeks of Adventure of 2012

While talking to a friend earlier this year she brought up the idea of not only living and existing in our lives, but actually enjoying and being amazed by our lives. We talked about it more and thus we decided that to have amazing and memorable lives, we needed to be amazing at LEAST once per week. :) Thats how we got the 52 weeks of adventure in 2012.

Sequels

Since there have been so many sequels coming out in theaters recently shanna and I decided that before we were allowed to go see them in the theaters we had to watch all the previous films in the series. It all started with the "Fast and the Furious" series. It was so much fun to see how all the characters intertwine. We also discovered that the "Tokyo Drift" one was completely off track- come on, kill Han and then you see him in the next 2 films, death doesn't work that way Hollywood. Sorry!
The next film series we did this with was the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. We took so long starting that series that we ended up seeing the 4th movie several weeks after it came out.
Tonight we started on the "Harry Potter" series, the last movie comes out on 7/15, so we are going to really squeeze them in to see them all before it comes out. We are also going to start the "Transformers" series as it comes out before the last "Harry Potter" film, but it has fewer movies so we start that next week.
We are lucky that two of the other films that we want or wanted to see are prequels so there are nothing to catch up on.
Those are "X-Men: First Class" and "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes." It's a good thing too since "Harry Potter" and "Transformers" are going to provide us with all the entertainment till the end if July.

My first post from my phone.yeah!!

Craft Shopping in St. George

Memorial day weekend has been fun so far. Yesterday I was feeling restless and I wanted to get out of town so I txted several of my crafty friends and invited them to join me on a drive to St. George for some craft shopping and some yummy Mongolian BBQ. My friend Diane Striegel joined me and we had so much fun talking, laughing, shopping, and enjoying delicious Mongolian BBQ. I had so much fun spending some one-on-one time with Diane as I never get that with her.

The cooks preparing our food on the traditional hot round skillet

Diane and her yummy food
Just before we ate

Update - since I havent written in a while

Update on everything -

Recently, I found out that I will be teaching World History for both morning and evening sessions. I am excited about that because it means that I will be able to just create one set of lesson plan each day. Meaning that I will have more time for scrapbooking! Yeah!

On that note; I am almost finished with my Chaparral scrapbook for the year, and forever. At the end of my first year I decided that I didn't want to spend my money on a actual yearbook. Especially since I don't know most of the kids in the school. So each year I make a few scrapbook pages with the kids in my classes and maybe a few pages from events that I attended throughout the year. Next year I was going to have to start a new book so I guess me moving schools next year is a good thing.

I interviewed at a a few schools and I was actually offered the job on the spot for several of them, but some of them just didnt feel right. When I was offered the job at Valley HS to teach in the IB program it just felt like the place I would want to be. I found out the next week that I will have 3 sections of US History IB and 2 of World History. I am excited because I have the WH down and ready, but I will be working on the US IB for most of the summer.

Summer is almost upon us here in Las Vegas and it is getting quite hot already. We have had several days of 90 or above. I am not happy about that. Its a good thing that I will be spending most of my days in one classroom or another.

Mom came for a short visit during Sping break this year. It was really fun to spend some time with her. We did so many things. We attended a wedding of a friend of mine, drove the strip at night to see all the lights. We drove out to see the Hoover Dam and the new bridge that spans the canyon. We drove down to Lake Mead and fed popcorn to the huge carp. We ate a yummy lunch at a cute little cafe in Boulder City and then we headed to the LV temple. We spent some time on Fremont Street where we saw the largest golden nugget on display in the world, a shark tank in the middle of a pool, a million dollars, we played some slots, and we saw the Fremont zip line. It was really fun. The next day we went to a few quilt stores, we visited Red Rock State Park and we met Aunt Judy, Uncle Craig, Eric and Easton at the Elephant Bar next to Green Valley Ranch for "linner". We saw "Water for Elephants", I loved it! We celebrated Easter together the next day and on the last day of her visit she came to school with me. It was fun to show her my school and to introduce her to my classes and my coworkers. After school she had to catch her flight home so I took her to the airport. There was one thing that she mentioned several times while we were driving around the whole few days. She kept saying that she was so "impressed with me and the fact that I just knew where I was going the whole time". I think its funny she thought it is impressive that I know my way around since I have lived here for 4 years. :)

Mom came for a short visit during Sping break this year. It was really fun to spend some time with her. We did so many things. We attended a wedding of a friend of mine, drove the strip at night to see all the lights. We drove out to see the Hoover Dam and the new bridge that spans the canyon. We drove down to Lake Mead and fed popcorn to the huge carp. We ate a yummy lunch at a cute little cafe in Boulder City and then we headed to the LV temple. We spent some time on Fremont Street where we saw the largest golden nugget on display in the world, a shark tank in the middle of a pool, a million dollars, we played some slots, and we saw the Fremont zip line. It was really fun. The next day we went to a few quilt stores, we visited Red Rock State Park and we met Aunt Judy, Uncle Craig, Eric and Easton at the Elephant Bar next to Green Valley Ranch for "linner". We saw "Water for Elephants", I loved it! We celebrated Easter together the next day and on the last day of her visit she came to school with me. It was fun to show her my school and to introduce her to my classes and my coworkers. After school she had to catch her flight home so I took her to the airport. There was one thing that she mentioned several times while we were driving around the whole few days. She kept saying that she was so "impressed with me and the fact that I just knew where I was going the whole time". I think its funny she thought it is impressive that I know my way around since I have lived here for 4 years. :)

Since Spring Break I have been wearing myself out with the hub bub of packing my classroom, grading, creating the final, participating in end of the year get-to-gethers and just life.

Once again, sorry for not updating more since March, but it has truely been a trying few months and it has been a lot just to live my life, without many of the extras.

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries- NYTimes.com

Found this article about teacher salaries and the high cost of chasing away great teachers. I completely agree!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1#