They're taking a test

So, I'm blogging while my classes are taking a test today. Ha ha ha! Most of them are being pretty good, only the sounds of pencil marks and the Spanish classes singing carols in the hall (yeah, that part is kind of driving me nuts, since they are trying to take a test....). Oh well, hopefully they just hurry and finish the test so that we can get out there and the kids can sing with them - they really could use the help, I have never heard so many kids who are tone deaf (probably on purpose).

I've decided I really like 8th grade - the kids are a little bit nuts, but the content is a lot funner than my Earth Systems stuff. I feel like I'm boring myself in my 9th grade classes - so I can't really blame them when they look all glassy-eyed and day-dreamy. I need to come up with a fun lab that involves candy or something. I was thinking that when we start talking about weathering I could have them time how long it takes for the candy to dissolve if they just let it sit, if they rub their tongues on it, and if they chew it... Maybe that's reaching too far. All I know is that talking about the direction of the winds and the way toilets flush clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere is making us all clock out (no pun intended).

Christmas break is coming up, and I can tell you - teachers are waaaayyyy more excited about breaks than the students. I have a lot to plan for 3rd quarter during the break though, so that's not cool, but the more I can plan now, the more I can relax for the rest of the school year.

Contents of the nutshell of our life

I recently came across the blog of a high-school friend who I hadn't seen in quite a while.  Curious as to what he was doing with his life these days, I read.  There was some day-to-day information of their lives, which is fine, but not what I was looking for.  I searched through their postings until I arrived at the beginning of their blog, and I still had no idea where they were living and what he had decided to do with his life, or what he was going to school for.  I was however, keenly aware that he (1) was married, (2) had a child, and (3) had a camera. 


This post, apart from the simple journaling intention of it, is for whichever old friend stumbles across this blog in the future and wonders what ever happened to Brett and Katie and their enterprise of life.

Katie and I got married last July (2008).  A year and a half later, we just ran out of our first roll of of saran-wrap as a married couple.  That's a milestone in a marriage relationship.  We're that much closer to being old-ly-weds.  Our married life is pretty dang awesome.  I like it a lot.  We're still looking for our first major disagreement (beyond if underwear should be folded or if the silverware drawer should be organized and divided).


Katie's a science teacher at Fort Herriman Middle School.  Last summer (August) she finished up with her Master's degree at BYU, for which I'm very proud of her.  I'm jealous that I don't have a Master's degree.  This intense jealousy is driving me to get mine some year too.  In the meantime, she teaches science to 8th and 9th graders.  It's her first year teaching in this type of setting, and she's doing amazingly at it.  The problem with being a teacher though is that her entire life is consumed by teaching.  She leaves for school at 6 am every day and of course is busy all day.  At the end of the day on a regular job, you get to come home and relax.  This isn't the case with teaching.  She gets to come home and get to work.  Instead of kicking back and watching the soaps (which I know she's dying to do) she has to bust out an enormous plastic homework repository that she keeps in tow in case she has a spare moment.  She grades stuff.  And then more stuff.  Then she enters it into the computer.  When she gets done with that she makes lesson plans for the upcoming classes.  Her job never actually stops.  If we figured out how much she got paid per hour worked, it wouldn't be much. Nonetheless, it keeps her very brilliant mind active and busy in a good cause and not bored.  That goal is well accomplished.  As I type this, she is grading papers.  She's doing great at her teaching job.  I'm super proud of all she's done and is doing with her brain. 



Me:  Well, I'm a nurse.  A man-nurse.  Yep.  That's right.  I'm a man nurse.  I do have women patients too however.  But I'm a man-nurse.  Women like Hillary Clinton are taking over the traditionally male jobs, so I had to leave my aspirations to become President and fill the vacancies in the stereotypically female jobs.  My job is pretty awesome.  I work at a hospital on a medical/oncology floor.  Most of the patients there are there for reasons other than oncology though, so we actually get a rather broad range of experience with a broad spectrum of ailments.  Nursing is fascinating to me as there's always something new, and always an exhaustively large amount of things I don't know that I can try to learn better.  I work the night shift currently.  Eventually I'd like to work days, but I'm happy to work nights right now.  The people I work with are great, and there's plenty of good experience to be had.   I'm dropping UVU's RN to BSN program and starting BYU-Idaho's online RN to BSN program next year in the spring.  I should finish after the winter semester 2011 (May-ish).  After that, who knows!  I'll be trying to go to grad school somewhere.  I'm still exploring options of exactly what I want that to be, but I've got some good ideas in mind.



I work in Provo.  Katie works in Herriman.  We live about half-way between those two places -- in the basement apartment of my parent's house.  It's not exactly overly spacious, but it actually does really great for our needs right now.  We have our own completely separate living quarters, but we live close to both of our parents, which is nice.  And very thankfully to my parents, the price tag to live here is pretty awesome too.


Um, yeah, that's the update.  Later.

Should Be Sleepin'

I really should be sleeping right now - it's only 9:40pm (2140 for you Brett), but I want to get 8 hours, I should be getting some shuteye. But I needed some wind down time when I got home.

Brett's working, so I went to my sister, Anne's house for dinner with our parents and our other sister, Sarah who's in town with her hubby, Brent. We had a good dinner, went to a piano recital for 2 of the kids, and played some fun card games. It's always a good time at Anne's house and with Sarah home.

I'm hoping to do a photosynthesis lab with 8th grade and a carbon cycle lab with 9th grade tomorrow. Wish me luck... I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work...

Ok, that was a boring post - hope you aren't asleep. Or maybe you should be.

Ice Cream with 8th Graders

So... today my 8th graders made ice cream (they've been studying "phase changes" - it fits into the curriculum, right?). They had a blast of course, but the room also became a huge mess. There's salt crystals from the salt water all over the tables and I'm sure on the floor (which I can't really see since the floor is white tile - nice). The room also smells like warm milk. But, should you have a desire to make homemade ice cream here's how we did it:

Serves 3 hungry 8th graders:
1. In a quart sized double-zip ziplock bag add 2 C of half & half.
2. Add 1 tsp. vanilla
3. Add 1/4 C sugar
4. Zip the bag and put it into 2 more ziplocks (just in case it decides to explode, you'll be safe)
5. In a gallon sized double-zip ziplock bag add 4 C of ice.
6. Add 1/4 C rock salt to the ice.
7. Put in your triple bagged ice cream ingredients.
8. Add 4 more cups of ice on top
9. Add another 1/4 C. rock salt.
10. Put this bag into another gallon sized bag.
11. Mash and shake the bags with your hands (using winter gloves is recommended).
12. The longer you shake, the more solid it gets (so long as there's still ice in the salt/ice mixture).
13. Pull out of the bags, scoop into a cup, and enjoy.
***** After trying it today, I'd definitely say it would be worth it to get some oreos to top it off*****

The kids will love it! All 500 8th graders in my school did.

Hello World.

Katie and I started this blog a month or so ago, and have yet to tell anyone we did it -- of course, part of that is due to the fact that there is nothing on the blog to read.

Until now.

Not that there is still much to read. It will serve as a type of journaling tool for me, and later as our lives get more exciting, family members and such may find it worth reading. I echo my sister Christa who started her blog with the same philosophies:  It ain't cute.  It might not be interesting.  I'm not forcing you to read it either.

Now family of mine, I know what you're saying. It goes something like "You never post on the family blog. Do you really plan on posting on your own?" Answer: Nope. I sure don't.

The second reason to create a blog now is because of the fact that as far as we know, Katie is not pregnant -- despite the "Bert and Kate plus 8" title that the blog window is currently showing. We've talked about how so many of our friends start blogs as soon as there's an addition to the family coming. Don't get me wrong -- it makes sense to start a blog for those reasons -- suddenly life gets more interesting and you want to share the details about it with the world. Those days will come some time, and I'm sure we'll be a whole lot more excited to post about it than people are to read about it.

We're blogging mutineers among a generation of pregnancy-induced blogs. This is not a blog started because we have any great important news to share or offer. As such, this blog will likely be ... sparse. For those of you who use news feed "readers" and care to follow, I suggest just adding this to it so the updates will come to you, because as often as I post, you may forget this blog exists between posts.