Zavoral Villa!

This Tuesday is the first day of school. It is really exciting, but there's a lot of stress and anxiety too. The first week is crucial to the success of the year, so no pressure or anything, right? Luckily, I know nearly all of the students I will have. It is going to be so neat to see the same groups of students that I've taught before. What a treat that music specialists have! I've got my new room all ready, which is a soundproof studio that already existed on campus. Finally we will be able to make music as loud as we want!! No cares about anyone hearing us. Our brand new African drums line the walls, my stuffed animals and songbooks color up the space, and my bulletin boards are ready for new melodies and rhythms to be added by the children. And I've also got 4 grade levels of lessons planned- just a few more grades to go. Ah! There is one thing that I am not looking forward to, though. That's being misunderstood. Already, in my short career of teaching (this is...

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary by going to Puerto Rico for two weeks! WOW. It was amazing! No, we didn't stay cooped up in a resort the whole time (we actually never stayed in a real hotel!). Instead, we saw the country like real travelers, roughing it with 4 days of clothes, riding the publicos, and even spending a few nights in a cabin with no electricity or running water!! During the trip, I kept two journals. One is of our daily activities and how fun they were. The other journal was a tiny, yellow notepad that we kept in our backpack everyday. We kept lists of the food we ate and the wildlife that we saw. I think it will be more fun to read that, as the lists tell the story of how we hopped from guesthouse to guesthouse, town to town and island to island doing a number of awesome activities. Many of the food and animals described below can be found in our slideshow! Puerto Rico 2009 Slideshow Wildlife Sightings Roosters- Heard in San Juan, Fajardo, El Yunque and Cul...

Today, I am writing this post in a cute guest house on a Carribean island called Vieques, Puerto Rico. You'll hear more about that later because I need to tell you about our trip to the Carolinas. Two weeks ago, on our way to Puerto Rico, we had an extended lay-over trip in Charlotte, North Carolina- for 3 days!! We couldn't resist the opportunity to stay with our best married friends, The Beachamps . (reminder- Jeremy and Ryan became good friends while being RA's at BYU. After Ryan and Chelsea got married, they moved into our apt complex where the 4 of us developed a life-long friendship). Being with the Beachamps in North and South Carolina was SO much fun. Chelsea and Ryan are such great examples to us. They are so strong in the gospel. They pray together, talk kindly to each other and just bouie us up all the time! As soon as we got there, I was so uplifted by being with them and in their home. I was really sad when the time came so quickly for us to go! We got to meet ...

Jeremy here- So my little brother Matt came down to Huntington Beach from Sacramento to visit us last week. I guess he was getting bored of sitting at home with his parents, a bed-ridden grandma, and several aunts coming and going. So he's 13 and my mom was about to let the boy ride a greyhound bus overnight to downtown LA. I suppose since he's 6'2" he looks a bit older than he really is and he can defend himself. But fortunately she was able to figure out an affordable round trip flight (again his height saved him because apparently you've got to be 15 to fly in a plane, but his Greg Oden-like looks conviced the security he was older). We had a seriously good time. Every day was something you could write home --er, write a blog--about. SarahLynn and I took him to the Newport Beach Golf course, which sounds super high class, but it's pretty rinky-dink (one hole featured a green that was covered in sand...why did they put the hole in a sand trap??) Matt did r...