the montage is the best part (an exercise in self-indulgence)

The Sappy Romantic Movie of My Life (I love it!)  (Also, this turned into a compilation of like all my blog posts ever.  Cheating?  Maybe.

They meet young.  Just 18.  They montage into dating a bit, with a rather large dash of awkward love triangle-ish, but laugh through it just before you hide your face behind your pillow.

And then he has to go, called away on the most important of business.  They both know its right, and part over ice cream at that favorite place.

But they stay in touch, and his business changing the world

inspires her to see it.

She goes all those romantic places, and thinks of him the whole time.

And then, he's back! And they montage into dating again,

but this time, there's
Pocket sharing.
Cooking together.
Falling in love.










The best kind of love, where he helps her through hard things, and she starts to see deep into those eyes.

They are engaged, and then married on the prettiest day in April.

After the credits, there's another montage.  This one just shows their everyday life.  She fulfills her goal of teaching, he wins best husband award for always doing all the little things.  And they can't get enough of each other.


And I get that end montage for the rest of my life.  This may be the cheesiest thing I've ever written. :)

Wetlands Walking Field Trip

The Wetlands walking field trip came and went fairly quickly.  I talked about it only for a few minutes to my husband at the dinner table last night, after he asked.  (I must have been tired from all the walking.)  But thinking about it, it was rather momentous.  If the definition of momentous is: "v.  rather ridiculous and funny, now that I think about it."

PICTURE THIS:  125 ish children walking something like two or three miles (round trip) in a long, long, chain.  Me telling them not to walk on the grass, because, well, then all 125 would.  Crossing a busy intersection with 125 ten year olds.  125 tired ten year olds fighting for drinks from ONE drinking fountain at the park. And, "Is there a bathroom near here?" "Um, no."

When we got to the wetlands that are randomly in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, I started reading my little book about birds, and having the students peck like a sparrow, and look ridiculous.  This I enjoyed.

I did not enjoy some crazy hooligan (okay, landscaper dude) at the large estate/mansion/ranch of The R.V. KING that is right next to the wetlands mowing the lawn THREE TIMES OVER on his silly-looking stand-up riding mower while I was trying to talk.  Lawn mower. Talking. Lawn mower.  Talking. Tired voice.  Pausing our lively discussions about flamingos while he makes another pass.  "Do you think..." MOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW  "flamingos are pink" MMMMMMOOOOOOWWW  "when they'RE BORN???" MOOOOOWWWWWW  Followed by my least favorite phrase commonly uttered by students "Wait, what?"

Then a bee was on my pants leg (pant leg? leg of my pants?), and some students told me in the middle of my sentence, and I thought they were bluffing, and then the parent helper realized there really was a bee, and I freaked out about it in front of the children, and may or may not have said, "Get it off meeeeee!!!!".  Yeah.  That happened. 

A kid (not in my class, thankfully) dropped his glasses in the pond while feeding the ducks.  How?  I have no idea.  He couldn't find them.

My favorite part was finally having a chance to hear stories from my students.  Many of them have been through really hard things, and some are innocent.  They all are funny.  And when I focus on that stuff, I know this is where I'm meant to be.  I'm so glad I get to be a part of their lives this year, and so glad they are a part of mine.

Except the grading.

Mostly about the ups-door neighbors.

Do you ever blog when you have 25 million other things to do.  Yeah, me too.

Today I read a bunch of NattheFatRat's blog.  I love it.  She's so funny. And somehow I feel by reading that blog, I'm funnier.

SO.

A few things. (I'm not saying they're funny.  Lower your expectations.)

Why does your foot "go to sleep" after you move it from that sitting-on-it-funky position?  Why do they call it "go to sleep"? Or "pins and needles"?  I feel like it would be hard to tell the difference between a pin poking you, and a needle poking you.  Acupuncture must hurt.

Also, my mother in law is coming to stay with us in two days in our spare bedroom that's filled with crap and I have to write a big paper today.  (That's why I'm blogging, obviously.)  I hope she likes our green carpet!

Yesterday, we went to die Walmart. ("Die" means "the" in German. You actually say it more like "dee".  I use it sometimes just for fun, because its one of the few German words I learned living in Germany. Pathetic I know. And also, sometimes I want Walmart to die.)  Anyways, we drove into the parking lot, and who did we see?  Our ups-door neighbors.  They live above us, but their door is next to us.  Ups-door.  We don't know their names, we've just seen them a few times, and can sometimes hear their baby cry through the vent in our kitchen (?) or the ups-door woman doing her work-out video.  (What if its actually the ups-door man?!)  And then, when we walked in die Walmart, they were right in front of us.   We were both paralyzed by awkwardness. We were both too chicken to say hi.  I don't know their names?!?  One time I could hear one of them peeing?  Awkward.  If they would have seen us, would they have said hi?  Can they hear me pee?

Anyway, later when I was going to bed and turning off literally every light in the house, I thought our porch light was on.  So I went up our little stairs, flicked the switch, and realized it was the ups-door neighbors light.  I flicked ours back off.  Not two seconds later, they turned the porch light off.  Awkward?  Do they think we're passive-aggressive porch light crazies?  I don't know.  But much more of this awkwardness and I'll never be able to muster up the courage to ask their names.

P.S.  What if one day we all become the best of friends and ups-door lady goes back and stalks my blog like any best of friend would do and finds out that I can sometimes hear them pee?  Why did I talk about peeing so much in this blog post?  Okay now I'm really done.

Some letters from March that I found in my drafts...

Dear Blog,
I'm sorry I write nothing but stream of conscious on you.

Dear being Married,
Come sooner.  There's a lot of not being married stuff that I'm ready to be done with.

Dear wedding,
Plan yourself, please.  Exactly to my specifications.  Just... read my mind.  Thanks.

Dear lessons,
Plan yourself, please.  And get me awesome scores on my last student teaching evaluation.

Dear sleep,
I love you dearly, but could you just make yourself unnecessary for the next 3 weeks?

Dear Conference,
Thank you, that was just what I needed.

Dear Matt,
I love you so much, and I can't wait to be with you forever.

Love,
Mikell

Engagements (3 months later...)

Sometimes you want to share your love with the world.  Sometimes you realize how precious it is, and the only part you want to shout from the rooftops is that its real, and its yours, and that you feel really lucky to have it.

I'm really blessed.

And I have an attractive fiance.

And it snowed AND was sunny when we took engagement pictures.

And then a water droplet fell in my eye... 

12 minutes

Its been months since I wrote.  I still stalk like crazy (blogs, I mean), and I think I should spend the next 12 minutes avoiding VERY pressing other work to do to just write a couple things.

1.  Planning a wedding is pretty stressful. I'm not good at it.  I don't care enough! I mean, I care, but I  care a lot more about OWNING my student teaching and spending time with oh, you know, that one guy I'm supposed to be gettiing married to in EXACTLY TWO MONTHS!!! AHHH!!! So excited.  But freaking because there is so much to do.

LIST:
Doc appt
dress altered
pay for photobooth
Hair?!?!
Jewelry?!?
INVITATIONS (hello?!?!?!)
take care of dumb acne
linens/ chairs/ centerpieces finalized
his suit
honeymoon?
photographer

Um, yeah.  Have I even started? BUHHH.

But the thing is, I've been busy teaching. Teaching beautiful, hilarious, oh-so-full-of-personality 6th graders. And doing my senior project.  And dealing with BYU bureaucracy.

Oh, and going to Vegas with my roommates. When will I have another opportunity?!? It was awesome. Except for the skanky dancers at Treasure Island.  What the...?  Don't take your kids. Just watch more fountain shows at the Bellagio instead.

Basically, I am living in the "my life will be happy when..." mode, which is bad.  Because when this project is done, I won't be with these kids anymore.  Sad. And when I'm all the way done student teaching, I'll be looking for a job. Scary. And when I'm married, I won't be able to pin a million things to pinterest about weddings (fairly sure I have like 6 BOARDS related to wedding on there. Ridiculous, yes.) Haha.

Wow ramble.  Basically, I have a lot to be grateful for right now. And I am grateful.  And this little thought came into my head last night: "Show your gratitude for what you have by living up to your potential."  Maybe that means to do AWESOME on this capstone project.  Or making my wedding fabulous.  Or being the most fabulously supportive fiancee in the whole world.

I don't know, but I definitely think it means my 12 minutes are up, and I'm posting this without editing it.