Moving to Main Street Station

Packing up

Faking a smile while I clean

Yeah, yeah, I know this post is a month and a half overdue but its still exciting! Of course we knew that we wanted to get out of our old place but we didn't realize how fast we would be moving. We went to the Main Street Station office to submit an application. We weren't expecting anything soon because they usually have a six month waiting list, but they had an availability!! So we only had a few weeks to pack, move, unpack and "white glove" our old
apartment.

But it was worth all the crazy-rushed work; we love our new apartment!

As small as it is...We have a backyard!

Left side of our kitchen

Right side

First thing you see when you walk through our front door :)

Living room

Our cute yellow complex(We're on the bottom)

The Busy Life

Okay okay, I know I've been on an extended blog absence, but with good reason, right? Having two jobs and going to school full-time is killer. And I mean killer. Between my schedule and Michael's schedule, we didn't really get to see each other much. And if we did see each other, most of it was spent doing homework side by side on the couch. I know, so romantic, right? ;)

However, now that school is over at Burton, I only have one job and full-time school. I was so unprepared for how hard it would hit me when the last day came. This whole time I kept telling Michael it would be so much easier once my elementary job was done, I would have so much more time on my hands. So with this I-want-it-to-be-over-with mentality, I never even stopped to realize how much I was going to miss it until the last day when I had to constantly keep myself from becoming a basket-case. I miss my kids.

For next year, I won't be returning to Burton Elementary School as an aide for the First Grade. The School District cut the funding so that position is no longer available. I was offered two different job positions at Burton, but I turned them both down. Long story short, I knew the school didn't want to let me go, but I felt like I wasn't the most qualified for either of these jobs, and I didn't want to cheat the students.

We went to the Tautphaus Zoo in Idaho Falls. I can't post pictures of the students, but here's some animals:

 Flamingo

 My favorite :)

Beautiful!

Unfortunately, my camera died so I didn't get a lot of pictures. Oh well :)

Out of all my goodbye  presents, this was my favorite:

 

 Inside it's filled with Rolos. Isn't it stinkin cute? The student saw it on pinterest and had his mom help him ;)

And I was waiting until after school was over to dye my hair because I didn't want to change right at the end. So now, after 3 years, my hair is back to it's natural color!

In other news, we are moving! Let me just repeat that for emphasis:
WE ARE MOVING!!!!!!! :D
We found this awesome place on the same street as Broulims. More to come in my next post :)

The 'Emma Dilemma'

So it's been a little while since I've made a post. Still, I seem to have a lot more accountability with my 'journal writing' when I do it in the form of blogs, especially with those people who so graciously remind me that I haven't made a post in a while. ;)

Where to begin? First, I subbed for a first grade class. No, not that I taught like usual when there's another teacher there or had to take over the class when the other subs would get lost, but it was actually me.

 Like I was it, man. 

So, what happened was the day started out as normal when the teacher I work with found out her daughter broke her arm and had to go to the hospital. So she asked me to sub for the class. Of course I accepted because I was getting paid and I wouldn't want to say no in her time of need. She cleared it with the principal which seems crazy because I am not a certified teacher; in fact, I have less college experience than the BYU-I students that I train when they come in for their Early Field Experience, yet here I was in charge of a whole class of 27 students for the day. To top it off, at the beginning when one of the BYU-I students was there, I had to evaluate her with the rubric from the Teacher Evaluation Form. The day went by pretty smoothly, despite the surprise fire drill that was sprung upon the school (to make sure we were on our toes?). And it feels good knowing that I can do it.

I love my job at Burton Elementary School. It is such an incredible blessing. To make things even better, the principal has been trying to get the Education Department at BYU-I to give me class credit for my job. So I went in and had a meeting with one of the Directors and introduced myself as Emma Johnson. Later as he was conversing with the principal there was some confusion as to if the person he talked to was the same "Emily Johnson" who was on the payroll at the Elementary School. It was quickly cleared up, but still.

For. the. record.

I was born as Emily Kylie Schmidt. As I grew up, I went by a few nicknames that people would call me (Mily, Em, etc..) About seven years ago my little sister started calling me Emma. I quickly loved the nickname and was happy when a few others in Washington followed suit. When I was applying for college it asked for my preferred name and my little sister, of course, insisted that I put Emma. Little did I know that by doing so, my name would automatically change to 'Emma' Schmidt on every list/roll my name would be on at BYU-I. So, I went by that name and it was fine by me. 

Until I came back to Washington on my off-track. 

Holy cow, you'd have thought I'd changed my name to Sheni'quah and dyed my hair neon purple. Some people honestly flipped. I was getting all kinds of interrogations about "trying to change my identity" and "denying my true self'". Seriously, people? It's just a nickname. 

Rant over ;)

In other news, Michael and I are both going to be starting up classes again in two weeks. We even managed to get a class together which will be fantastic because between our two schedules we will hardly ever see each other. But maybe we can sit next to each other in the library as we write our reports or something. Oh didn't I mention? Someone in our apartment complex was illegally downloading something or other so everyone's internet in Lexington is indefinitely cut off. Blessing in disguise? Who knows. We're still debating on whether or not to renew our contract in August. Maybe losing our internet will be the thing that convinces us to leave. We shall see :)

Living in Lexington

You know how things can start out seeming so great and then, somehow slowly, they're not? Such is the case for Lexington Apartments. When we first moved in six months ago, I was ecstatic (Michael, Jeremy and Sarah can vouch). It seemed so wonderful to me. Okay, given that it's only the second place that Michael and I have lived since we got married. The first was in Walla Walla, a small little sublet from Whitman College housing. I wish I had taken more pictures of the place because I don't think I'll be able to paint an accurate picture of how small our first home for two months was. You'd walk in and directly to your left was the bedroom with a slanted roof and entry way. I thought it was really kind of neat but Michael had to stoop every time he went in. The bathroom was right next to the kitchen and the door opened out so whenever someone came out they would bump someone else in the kitchen and the kitchen was so small that when the door was open, it blocked the entire entry way. Did I mention that doorknob on the bathroom was lower than normal so Michael would have to bend to open it? Again, totally accessible for me, not so great for him. He would joke and say the apartment was "Emma-sized" That's what happens when you married someone a foot apart in height from you ;)

And then there was our small living room and pantry/closet/place where the refrigerator was? Yeah, it was basically a room where the builders thought, "Oh dang, we forgot to put these things in, lets just stuff everything into one small room."

 Of course, at the time I never thought anything of it because I was just so excited to have my own place with my husband that was just ours. When we first moved here, I was so thrilled because even though to most everybody it would seem small, it seemed so BIG compared to our first place. I mean for goodness sake, Michael didn't have to bend down to open doors, we had a closet in our bedroom and we had a shower AND bathtub! (Not a big deal to most, but a luxury when you've gone without) And I would never trade Lexington to go back to our first place, but its just that...well, let me illustrate:

First of all, we have a very overly-sensitive smoke detector. Basically anytime you cook something in the oven, it goes off. Michael and I have become old-pros at getting it to turn off, its actually rather amusing, but I'm like, "Come on! The neighbors are going to think we burn everything we make!" I'm not that bad of a cook, (except for one time, but that's a story for another day ;])

Second, the only bathroom in our apartment is in our bedroom. Not a big deal, right? Convenient, right? Okay, maybe convenient for us but we are kind of like the 'Rexburg Rest Stop.' We have had so many people stay at our place which I LOVE because it's so much fun, but I feel like our apartment setup is such an inconvenience to them. Like if they need to use the bathroom they feel weird going in through our room especially if we are already going to sleep. So either we're getting woken up in the middle of the night or they are holding their pee for eight hours. (I hope no one actually did that...)

Oh, and then there's our neighbors.To be fair, I guess I can't actually blame that on Lexington because crazy people can live anywhere, right? Luckily we are on the end of the floor so we have the least amount of neighbors possible, but we still have them on one side and under us. First there's the ones on our side. They are (for lack of a better word) weird. Should I be generous and say 'good weird'? Maybe. Is there such a thing as being overly friendly? Like before we even know each other trying to be part of every aspect of our lives. You might think that I'm talking about the wife, but I'm talking about the husband. He will randomly pop by with some excuse and then invite himself to stay and do whatever we are doing. He says it always sounds like the party is at our apartment. To this day we still don't know his name.

But we'll take whats's-his-name over our downstairs neighbors. We have friends over quite a bit and one day out of the blue our on-site apartment manager popped by saying that she'd received a complaint call from our downstairs neighbors about us. Luckily, the manager was very nice about the whole situation(it is Rexburg, after all). However, I was so irritated! I mean, given, sometimes we can get loud when we're playing games, but to not even say a word to us before calling up the manager? So, against Michael's protests I marched on down to their apartment and confronted them about it. I said if they had a problem they should've come to us first. And instead of discussing the issue, they completely pansied out saying that they had no problem with us and we were totally fine. Which should make me happy, I guess, but I hate it when people are nice to your face but mean behind your back. They haven't complained about us since.

So, could I have a worse living situation? Very much so, yes. And I am extremely blessed to have the home that I have with my wonderful husband. I love having all these experiences that come with being a newlywed. Will I look back on this in 5 years and laugh? Definitely. In fact, I'm laughing right now :)

Conformity :)

For the record, I don't know how many times people have told me that I should start a blog, and how many times I've told them: no.way.on.earth.

And yet, here I am :)

I guess the main reason I protested for so long was because I never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to publish to the world. (Theoretically speaking, of course. This will probably only reach a handful of people. Walla Walla and Rexburg can hardly be called 'world'.)

But still, I have a story to tell and since I've been...slightly slacking on my daily journal writing-and by 'slightly' I mean I haven't made an entry in eight months-I thought this would be a good place to record the ups and downs and inbetweens of being in my first year of marriage.

So here, I go. Call it plain, call it conformity, but I just call it life.