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!

A Dumpster Couch and Two TVs

Moving into our first apartment was quite an adventure. When looking for an apartment, my only criteria was that it was cheap. We found an apartment that was close to the school with a great view of the freeway.

This was the first apartment I had ever moved into that came unfurnished. I knew that we wouldn't be living her for a very long time so I didn't want to have to buy any furniture that was nice and expensive because I didn't want to have to move it around with me for the next couple years. The first week that we moved here we went to DI at least once a day and would check craigslist at least five times a day. The first thing we needed was a couch. We kept seeing cheap ones come up on craigslist but they were pretty terrible even for a cheap price. I just knew we could find a better deal. After about a week of searching, we were driving past our apartment complex and I saw a full couch in the dumpster! I wish I would have taken a picture of this couch but it looked something like this.

Needless to say, I made Curtis pull over to check out the couch. Not only was it in the dumpster but someone had also recently dumped their grass trimmings all over it. Did that deter me? Not a chance. It was a FREE couch! I couldn't believe our luck! We quickly pulled it out and started carrying it to our apartment. I'm not exactly a weakling but my upper body strength gave out pretty quickly carrying that huge couch up and down stairs. I kept wanting to take breaks but Curtis realized that if the couch was in our dumpster then that probably meant that someone from our complex threw it away. He was really nervous that they would see how ghetto we were taking their couch from the dumpster so he made me keep going even though my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Eventually we got the couch into our second floor apartment and I vacuumed off all of the grass. After the excitement of the free couch wore off, Curtis was a little skeptical about why it was in the dumpster in the first place. I was totally fine relaxing on the couch but he borrowed a couch cover from a friend before he would really sit on it. We really only had the couch for about a week before a friend of ours lent us some free couches. So the dumpster couch went back to it's home and we ended up with these beauties.

The rest of the apartment ended up coming together pretty nicely. We borrowed a table for dining from some friends and borrowed some folding chairs to make up our dining area.

We found a king size mattress and a bed frame at DI for super cheap! It didn't have any box springs so we spent a couple days looking around for some. One day curtis was driving and saw a ton of box springs in the dumpster of the apartment complex next to us. Manna from heaven!! They got all new beds for their apartments so we scored free box springs. Curtis had to load them one at a time in the open trunk of his car and drive slowly and haul them up to our apartment.

We were all lined up with a TV that we were going to borrow from a friend. We went over to his place one day to check it out and I knew after looking at it for one second that we would be buying a new TV. Yes, I am willing to dumpster dive for a couch but am unwilling to watch TV on a terrible screen. You now know exactly where my priorities are. It was the morning of Curtis' birthday and he had been watching different TVs on Ebay. He told me he was about to win one and he was super excited. He pressed that button and was so excited that we won our first TV. His buyer's remorse then immediately kicked in while he was looking at the price he paid vs the regular buying price. He was convinced that another TV he was watching was a way better deal and that he needed to have that one. He quickly sent an email to the seller explaining that he bought the first TV but that he really wanted the other TV that he was bidding on. He wanted to bid on the second TV and return the first TV only if he won. Amazingly enough, the seller was willing to do that so Curtis went and bid on the second TV of the day and won that one too. So we bought two TVs that day but luckily only ended up getting one very nice TV that is the pride and joy of our home.

We will be moving out of this apartment at the end of the month and we are so sad to let it go. It has been the perfect apartment for us. Here is a quick list of the pros and cons so I don't forget what it was like living here.

Pros:                                                                    
- Even when it looks like a huge mess it really only takes 20 minutes to clean the whole house        

-We had two closets which was a great blessing      
                                                                              
- We didn't have to use the air conditioning ever because you could cool the whole apartment down  
by opening the windows

Cons:
- If our trash can ever smells bad then the smell fills upour whole apartment very quickly

- You couldn't get ready in the morning without turning on the lights and waking the other person up

- If the windows were open then you couldn't hear theTV or sleep very well because of the freeway noise

Some of you may be appalled by how cheap and ghetto I am. I like to think of myself as being frugal and easy to please. We will miss you Terrace Apartments.

Honeymoon Cruise to Alaska

 Alaska is beautiful and yes. that is an iceberg.


This post has been a long time coming so here are the things that I can still remember about our trip. We started it off by hitting traffic on our way to Seattle. We were seriously late and I was seriously freaking out. Then Trevor drove us to the dock and let me tell you this, he does not drive fast enough. I know he was honestly trying but the years of having to drive with Kristy have  not done his driving any favors. (Love you Kristy and Trevor :)

I am normally a very on time kind of person. I'm the awkward person who shows up to parties at the exact time it starts because I believe it's rude to be late. With that in mind, I have decided to show up late to every cruise I ever go on. There were absolutely no lines to show them our passports and get checked in. There were tons of workers everywhere with nothing to do but smile at us and take our bags. Nobody was rushing us or giving us dirty looks for arriving late. We got on the boat after they had already started that life vest wearing drill so we probably only had to sit through that for about five minutes. Needless to say, it was awesome.

Alaskan cruises are very different from the cruises I have been on in the past. Most cruises, you are constantly surrounded by drunk middle aged couples trying to forget that they have children. People are fighting over sun chairs and deck space. Well Alaska isn't the warmest place around and apparently only old people find it interesting enough to want to go there. Our cruise was very quiet. If we wanted to watch a movie out on the Lido deck in the hot tub we could always have one completely to ourselves. It was pretty great.

 

The best part about cruises is the food. At this point, Curtis had been trying to gain weight before basketball season and had been on a strict diet of 6000 calories per day. He was in heaven! Our room was right on the Lido deck and literally 20 ft away from the 24/7 hamburger, fries, and pizza stand. We would wake up and eat breakfast and then get pizza for a snack. Then we would have lunch and Curtis would pick up a burger and fries before dinner. After dinner we would have to order some extra room service for a midnight snack. Curtis gained 10 pounds in one week! I'm pretty sure I gained some weight too but I decided to just not look at a scale.

We were great friends with our servers. Our main servers were from Mexico and Peru so Curtis chatted with them in Spanish and they loved him! Granted, Curtis is very hard not to love. We took some pictures on the last day and everyone around us thought it was so funny because they were so short. She stood on a chair and was still not as tall as Curtis. Excuse the creepy eyes.

Our cruise stopped in Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and Victoria BC. One thing we learned very quickly was that everything in Alaska is expensive. Sure, you could walk around on the glacier for free as long as you took a 20$ bus ride to get there. I am very averse to spending money so we did everything we possibly could that was free. Most of the time it was raining anyways so most people's excursions were ruined. We would walk around the main street of every city and look at all the crazy expensive stuff that people buy down there. In every city there was a popcorn store that had free samples so you better believe that I made sure we stopped at every one. Did I ever buy any popcorn? Not a chance. Who buys popcorn in Alaska?

My awesome sisters got us a zip lining excursion in Ketchikan for my bridal shower. It was one of the only days that it didn't rain so we were super lucky. We got to zip line all through the trees and one even went over the water.

Everything in Juneau was super expensive so we just walked around for a while and eventually found some signs for a hiking trail. We asked some locals which would be the easiest because we were not in very good hiking gear. We ended up on this super beautiful trail up in the mountains that had a wooden walkway the whole way there. It ended up being such a good time.

Our last stop was in Victoria and it was a beautiful day. We were only there for a few hours so we just walked around and enjoyed the sites. I wish we could have stayed there longer because it was a very happy place.

At one point I was also picked to go on stage and do a magic trick with the magician. He made something float in my hand and I remember being able to see a clear string in the lights but to his credit, I couldn't figure out where the string was coming from. I also remember him awkwardly holding my hand for a long time.

Overall, it was a great trip and we had a really good time.