What we've been up to

I decided to go full time teaching at Mohave Community College starting in January. The school is in Colorado City, Arizona, which is 38 miles or 45 minutes away from home. I drive to the school on Tuesdays (for prep work/office hours) and Thursdays. Class is from 8 AM to noon on Thursdays, plus Supplemental Instruction and grading and lab checkoffs, etc.. On Fridays I have clinical at the hospital in St. George. I have to be there at 5 AM and am done between 5 and 6 PM. I like my students and could be friends with them if there wasn't the akward student/teacher relationship. At least half of the 24 students are around my age, and the rest are quite a bit older. I don't really get much training, basically I have had to figure out most things on my own. It is very frustrating sometimes, but it all works out in the end. I team teach with 2 other teachers about 80 students. We take turns teaching all of the students through Interactive Television (ITV). So the person who is teaching is on a screen and each room is wired for sound. I suppose it is the new thing with technology, but basically it's just a way for the school to save tons of money by not having to hire more teachers. It's nice to not have to teach every week (even though I still have to be there) because it takes me forever to prepare. I swear I study more than the students. The first class I taught took me about 30 hours to prepare (for a 4 hour lecture). Plus it is very difficult because the TV turns off at the end with little warning. You have to be done by then. As you can imagine, there isn't much time for creativity or activities. I hate that all I can do is lecture basically because we have to cover sooo much stuff in this short period of time. Most nursing schools have several days of class, we only have 4 hours a week.

Do I like my job? Yes. Do I see myself doing this forever? No.
This is a hard job. Not that I thought it would be easy, but I never realized how much time it would take. It's different from other nursing jobs in that I never get to clock out. I get sometimes up to 50 e-mails a day (I have 4 e-mail accounts), plus texts and phone calls often. It is a 24 hour a day job. When I take the weekend off it takes me half the day to get caught up on Monday. I have been wondering why this is so hard for me, but the other teachers seem to handle it just fine. I realized they are a lot older than me, they have raised their kids, and have been married for a while. Not that they have an easy life and they have nothing else to do but school stuff, but they are not going through their first year of marriage or having babies. This is not the right time in my life for this job. I want to be with my husband as often as possible. I don't want to be stressed out all the time. I want to be able to have kids and not worry about grading papers and lectures all the time.
I will most likely not be going back to teach full time next fall. I think if I go back in 10-15 years, I will then be the average age of the other teachers and will not only have a lot more experience, but will be at a different place in my life where I can dedicate the time to it.
Hopefully, that all makes sense.


These are some pictures of the scenery on the way to Colorado City. It is gorgeous and these pictures really don't do it justice at all.

This is the college campus. Small huh? It is only 4 buildings. This campus is just one of the 4 campuses in Arizona. The other campuses are down South in Kingman, Lake Havasu, & Bullhead City, Arizona.

Beautiful red rocks.

Lots of nothing

The Hurricane Valley

My Dad received a very prestigious award on January 16th in Cedar City. It is called the William T. Hornaday Award. It is for distinguished service to natural resource conservation. "Think of it as an Olympic Gold Medal Bestowed by the Earth". It is by nomination only. Only 6 medals are awarded annually. It recognizes unusual and distinguished service in natural resource conservation and environmental improvement at the regional, national, or international level. Nominations must be approved by the Hornaday Awards Committee, the Conservation Committee of the National Council, & the Boy Scouts of America.

My Dad has been working with scouts since forever. I had all the scout stuff memorized too because they were always at our house. He has worked hard and truly deserved this award. I had never heard of it, but everyone that I met that day that had worked with my Dad said it was a real honor to receive this award and they all loved working with him. Way to go Dad! The local newspaper even came to take pictures and do a story on him, but I have not yet seen that.

Driving to Springdale for our 6-month anniversary over-nighter. It was supposed to be a surprise for John, but he guessed where we were going. I had a 50% off coupon for the Best Western just outside Zion.

We spent time at the hot tub then basically fell asleep. It had been a long week. We didn't even sleep in the same bed because we both fell asleep in different beds. How romantic :) The weird part was their was a doctors conference going on, so I saw doctors I knew from the hospital at the hot tub or in the elevator.

After a delicious breakfast, we were going to do a little hiking. Yes, I realize it's the end of January, but it's usually warmer than this. It was in the 30's when we left for breakfast and it really didn't warm up much. There was snow on the ground and there was a cold wind, so we nixed the hiking and went home.

Waterfall

Wild turkeys

We drove through Grafton on our way home. This is where the old movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed.

The creepy cemetary. Some are buried above ground. Most were babies or kids

The flowers John got me. We got back from our anniversary trip on Saturday, January 30th. Hadn't had a period for a while, so took a pregnancy test on Sunday, January 31st. All 4 were positive. It was incredibly exciting and we were soo happy. Unfortunately I started bleeding and cramping on Thursday and after a few blood tests, we found out for sure the next Sunday that I had miscarried. I was only 6 weeks along, but it was still very, very hard. Nothing anybody said made it any better, but after crying all day on Sunday, I felt better on Monday. It's still a little sad, but there is always hope for the future. :)

Our new dog Frankie. More info to come later.

Valentine's Day 2010 (Our First Valentine's Day Together:))

John's elaborate surprise scavenger hunt. These were John's exact words a few days before... "I spent all morning putting this together and you will probably cry". This would have taken me days to put together and yes, I did cry. These pictures are out of order, but our room with the bed decorated was the final surprise. Don't mind the tulips, they had a bad night in the garage :)

These were all the goodies I found on the scavenger hunt. John had me do some math problems to figure out which door (1, 2, or 3) to open first. Then he read a clue and I had to find the item. On each item, he had written another little thing that went along with the item, such as Reese's candies- "I love you because you are the "sweetest" thing in the world to me. There was also a yoga block (for the P90X exercise program we will do someday), yoga mat, stuffed dog in a mug, Wii fit plus, sweetheart candy, Valentine's cookie sheet, big red heart, and the 3rd book in the Twilight series. Plus a cute card that made me cry again.

Here is an example of one of the clues: "This next treat will make this day complete as it will give your husband something good to eat. You'll see this is not in rooms 1, 2, or 3, but you might find it between the three. So search and find but don't look too hard cause it might be within a shelf so hard". (It was the cookie sheet on the bookshelf in the hall).

As you can see, my husband is soo cute and spoils me way too much. I told him I didn't do anything near as elaborate as that and I only got him one thing, but he said it didn't matter and it was his job to spoil me.

I did get John the Ghost Adventures DVD and wrote him a card. It also took me 30 minutes to pick out the perfect card. And there was possibly a tear in John's eye too. :)

The finished basement! We love it and am so thankful for John's dad. We just barely added the love seat, which is also called the cuddler because it is a recliner for 2.

I love having the exercise equipment in the back so we can watch tv while working out.