The Part Time Job Warrior

This last year was an interesting one for me because I was finally finished with school. I found myself a dance teaching position in St George but I was only teaching two to three days a week. After five years at BYU where I was in classes or practice every hour of the day, I knew I would get bored quickly if I didn't find other ways to fill up my schedule. I ended up with four different part time jobs. My schedule was different every day and I really loved it!

Part time job number 1: Dance Teacher

I taught at Desert Edge Dance Company. Their studio was definitely smaller than ones that I was used to teaching at but my boss treated me super well. I got to work with their competition team and teach some other side classes as well. Here are some memorable parts of my year.

- I had to teach an adult tap class at the first part of the year. It started out fine, with just a couple older ladies coming. Then a lot of scheduling things came up and I ended up with only one student every week. I would try to keep it light and fun but the lady I taught would act so bored if I gave her any steps she already knew how to do. Then when I tried to challenge her a little bit she would get super visibly frustrated and would not let me move on unless she had it down. Plus, she was a midwife and was always on call so we would have to stop every five minutes when her phone rang so she could make sure it wasn't important. I left every class thinking there was no way she was coming back because the class was really no fun at all. But there she was every week. We were told the class would have to be cancelled and she was devastated. She asked if she could bring her non dancing husband and daughter with her so that we could enroll them and still have the class. Luckily for me, that didn't work out.

- We had our Christmas recital in December and when I got to the theater it had started to snow. It never snows in St George so that was a nice little winter surprise for everyone. By the time the older kids show started it was snowing so hard that all the roads were blocked off and hardly anybody could make it. We had to do the recital with half of the students missing and it was a disaster. Apparently in a town like St George they don't own snow plows. There really wasn't that much snow but it still took me an extra 45 minutes to get home and church was cancelled the next day!

- Little girls are mean. At least once a day I have to remind one of my classes that "we are all friends and we need to be nice to each other!" One day, my adorable little 7 year old red head girl was upset by something her friend said so I asked her what was wrong. She told me "She said that when I get to 8th grade that people will laugh and make fun of me because of my red hair." While this is probably true because 8th graders are jerks, it still was not a very nice thing for a second grader to say to someone.

This was the group of girls that I taught the most at the studio. They were super cute and I was really sad to leave them.

Part Time Job Number 2:

I was a nanny for this little angel two days a week.

 Her name is Alayna and she really is just super adorable. With the curly blonde hair and her little vampire teeth, I had no problem pretending like she was mine when we were in public. Two year olds can definitely be difficult but since I was just watching one all day, it really wasn't too bad. The only hard part was taking her places in public because she was extremely shy. Trying to get her to play when other kids were around her and in her way was almost impossible. Most of the time she would end up just giving me this look the whole time-

I will be back to watching her in the fall after I have the baby so I will be able to practice being a part time mother of two. She really is just the cutest.

- Funny story. It had snowed a little bit and her mom was so excited for her to play in it. She bought her all new snow gear and told me to take lots of pictures because she was so sad that she was missing her first snow. I got her all decked out and took her outside and she HATED it! She would not even touch the snow with her mittens on. I tried building a little snowman and did everything I could to get her out into it. She was just not interested. I didn't want her mom to think I was a failure so I posed a couple pictures out in the snow. This picture took some serious bribing with some fruit snacks but eventually I got one where she was almost looking like she liked the snow.

Part Time Job #3: Team Dance Employee

I got to work for Kacey as a Team Dance employee in my free time. I sent out flyers, made documents, answered phone calls...basically everything Kacey didn't want to do :) I got to go to three of the events this year and I was a judge for two of them. It was such a fun time! I love getting to work with my family. I got to judge the Sacramento event this year with my mom and we had to pretend like she wasn't my mom so that we would look somewhat professional. That turned out to be impossible for me because calling my mom Peggy is just too hard for me. I might have had some people fooled though.

Part Time Job #4: Intramurals  Employee

This was one of my favorite jobs because I got to work with Curtis two nights a week. The boys would all ref the games and the girls would be scorekeepers. It really was the easiest job ever and I loved it. I got to hang out with my friends and got paid for it. The only hard sport was basketball because we had to keep individual stats the whole time. One person would be the announcer and you would have to say every time someone had taken a shot, missed or made a shot, got an assist, got a rebound...etc. It was pretty hard at first but I'm pretty sure by the end I could have made a pretty decent sports announcer,

One of the best parts about it was getting to see college girls hit on my husband firsthand. One girl in the middle of her flag football game said "You're the best ref...well at least the best looking!" My goodness, have you never heard of a ring check? It gave us some good laughs!