I'm so getting fired.

So, you may ask, "Why is there a stapler on your blog?" That is a very good question... one I wish I didn't have to address. But I just have to get this off my chest and into cyberspace. We had a Thanksgiving feast in my first grade classroom - complete with paper hats, apple turkeys, and a little smorgasbord of parent-donated, store-bought treats. Sounds lovely, right?

It would have been, but my team teacher was out with a sick child and I was stuck with either explaining the party to a clueless sub, or putting all FIFTY kids in my room. I opted for the latter, which proves my insanity. The kids were working on their hats and I was rushing around, helping parents and kids and organizing chaos. As I was reaching over kids and stapling their hats, a parent asked for the stapler. In my clumsiness, I dropped my five-pound stapler on a child's head. Not just on her head, but on her FOREHEAD because she was looking up at me as she always does. She immediately wailed and I escorted her out in front of 49 other kids and 10 mortified parents.

I am a terrible person.

She went to the office and lay down with an ice pack, only to return 5 minutes later with a goose egg on her forehead and a huge grin on her face. First graders are so forgiving.
And when she was asked what she was thankful for, what did she say?

Teachers.

I nearly bawled. Gosh, I love my job.
(a picture of the victim will be included in a later post... after permission is granted :) )

Happy Halloween?

This Halloween we decided to be movers - it was a pretty easy costume! All we needed was a U-Haul full of our belongings, an 8 hour drive to Denver, and comfy clothes! Thanks to our families, friends, ward members, and the grace of God, we made it to Denver and put our things in a storage unit in Aurora, CO. We are very unsure of what is going to happen next, but we're excited to find out.
Here are some things we found out in Colorado -
1. The mountains look very small there compared to Utah - because you're up in the mountains when you're there!
2. Much of Denver is a sweeping prairie - it makes the sky look so humongous!
3. You have to have coins on hand at any moment - or else you have to take an envelope and mail a check for 75 CENTS to an office in Denver if you don't want a $200 fine. :)
4. Don't trust any ads that look too good to be true - they probably are.
5. Fast food italian is never a good idea.
6. We can make it through any tough changes because we have each other!

Fall is Here!

The other day Jon surprised me with a WAY fun trip to the canyons. We both love going up there, but we haven't taken advantage of that blessing in our lives as much as we would have liked - busy with school, work, selling our house, packing, finding things out in Denver.

OH - I GUESS I SHOULD OFFICIALLY SAY - we're moving to Denver sometime in the next couple of months. :) Sorry, that should have been its own post.

But that's not the point. I'm trying to ignore that fact and appreciate Utah while I can. So we got home from work, changed into hiking clothes, grabbed some things and were off in a matter of minutes. I loved it! The air was crisp, the colors were beautiful, and it wasn't snowing yet, so everything was bright and beautiful. We cooked tin-foil dinners, hiked around, and enjoyed nature. This is the life!

Balloons!

One of the drawbacks of teaching is that every once in a while (more that I'd like to admit) I have to bring projects home. Unfortunately for Jon, he "gets" to help me. One such project involved blowing up 50+ huge blue balloons so that I could make globes with my first graders. Here are some pics from that adventure.

To get them to my car and into the school (two aspects I didn't consider before blowing the balloons up at home) Jon thought to string them on fishing line. It was awesome. Not only did they all make it to my classroom, but they also looked like a cheesy prom balloon arch. The kids and my co-workers loved it.

Unfortunately, the project went terribly. Six year olds are not spacially capable of watching me tape a continent on and doing it themselves. I now have 25 globes with the continents mixed up, upside down and sideways, and oceans all over the place. Pretty funny. That's first grade for ya.

Fast food kills...

Jon here. :)

Bonnie has been encouraging me for quite some time to post on this blog. So here goes...

On Labor day, we were mourning the loss of our community pool, so we decided to take a trip to Silver Lake up Big Cottonwood Canyon. As usual, the canyon was beautiful and we enjoyed our time up there. We were greeted by this sign,

which set the tone for our trip. We had to ditch our treats and goodies we brought for the critters in the woods (AKA, Bon, Jon & Staci). We enjoyed our time up there, snapped a few pictures for ya'll... Enjoy.

Sometimes I wonder who I married. :)

Bonnie's sister, Staci. She's training to become a ninja - don't mess!

What can I say? "I love sticks" (Really, I was just playing around with the camera)

I'm a bad blogger/Back to School!

So the last time I posted was on August 5. I feel terrible that I haven't kept my awesomely blogging friends updated on our life. But, there's a valid excuse this time. August 6 I went back to school. There was a week of heinous meetings that made me wonder why I was a teacher. Ugh. Then the kids came on the 16th. I had psyched myself up enough to be excited to see them and my classroom was perfect, but once those little baby 6 year olds invaded my world I again wondered why I became a teacher. They're so little and needy and especially sad this year.

But after a week of summer detox, we're all used to each other and we've got some routines down. They still need help with bandaids and tying shoes and wiping noses and going to the bathroom (one little girl is scared of the automatically flushing toilets). But they're so sweet. I love having them in my life every day. They say things like "What color are pilly fads (lilly pads)" or "Gosh, my crayons don't have very good balance today" when his crayons kept "jumping" off his desk. They tell me they love me and give me lots of hugs. And most of all, I can tell they're already learning things. That makes my job worth doing. First grade is the best!

Random Housekeeping...

I just had to write about a few funny things at the Hagen Home. We have three main pastimes together... caring for our children (the hanging flower basket on our balcony) playing on the elevator, and lasering people with Jon's green laser. Let me start with the latter, Mr. Green Laser. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I married Jon. :) He is a tech geek (meant with all the love in the world) and he loves little gadgets. He used to have one green laser that we could shine up to a few blocks away on the tall buildings and into cars to freak people out. It's pretty funny... until people get mad and call the cops. I was becoming okay with him owning one laser, but then he went in on one with his buddy Jim and it came in the mail from some crazy website www.wickedlasers.com . Check it out if you too want to be a nerd. Hee hee.
Now Jon can use his laser to shine people on the freeway, point at stars, and really freak people out on the road below our condo. But... and this is a big but... it should only be used while wearing protective eyewear. This sucker is powerful. Should I be worried? What's next?
On to the elevator. Jon is the HOA representative for our condo complex. This basically means that he has keys to EVERYTHING and gets called all the time for complaints. Pretty posh job. The only thing we really enjoy about this "job" is that one of those keys is to the elevator shaft. From time to time we will stop the elevator the floor below ours, get on top of it, and ride on top while people are riding inside. It's awesome. Especially when Jon is feeling particularly mean or if someone offends us... because there is an on off switch on top. Ask the jerky movers, the annoying kid downstairs or our needy neighbor... the elevator just SEEMS to be stopping a lot lately. :) Hmmm... wonder why.
Finally - our flower garden babies. This is practice for us. Someday we'll move on to a living animal (some call them pets) and later we'll take on the adventure of having kids. But for now, the flowers are all I can handle. They were my idea, but sadly, Jon is much better at remembering to water them. It's especially hot this time of year and he's so sweet to them. He even remembers to get babysitters for when we're gone. I think it's a good sign... for him anyway! I need to step it up...