Golden Apple?

Mark came home from school in mid-March with this:

A basket of apples and gold pencils? I was confused until he told me that he had received his school's Golden Apple Award. Then it all made perfect sense... right? :) This basket of golden delicious apples was his PTA's way of saying congratulations on getting the award, which he received earlier this month at a special dinner.

Every spring at each school in Utah, students and parents nominate teachers for the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Education. The nominations are received by the PTA, who then select the Golden Apple recipient from their school. Each recipient is also then in the running for the award at a state level (and a teacher from Mark's district received the award).

Mark thanked his class for nominating him, and many of his students admitted that they had nominated him several times! As they were reading the nominations at the awards dinner, many of the teachers had very nice poetic tributes to their teaching, very clearly written by parents. While those were very nice, we loved hearing what Mark's students said about him! These were some of Mark's nomination entries:

Mr. Nance is the best teacher ever!

Mr. Nance is fun.

Mr. Nance has the most beautiful family!  

(I love these kids!)

Mr. Nance sings really good.

Mr. Nance is a good dancer.

Mr. Nance makes us set high goals and then pushes us to reach them because he knows we can do it.

Me, Mark, and Alex Judd, the awesome principal at Mark's school (and an old friend) at the awards dinner. (See more proof that Mr. Judd is awesome here. Scroll down to the April 19 story and the photo of him covered in pie. :) )

We were 20 minutes late to the dinner (thank, Alex, for saving us seats!) and probably didn't use proper table manners, but they still let Mark receive his official Golden Apple award:

Mark and the school board

We were all surprised when one of the recipients was shaking hands with the school board and the apple from her award hit the ground with a big *clang*. It was then that someone pointed out that the apple is meant to come off the plaque because it's actually a bell. :)

I am so proud of Mark for working so hard and receiving this award. What a way to start out a career, eh? He loves his students and is always telling me how great they are (the best class in the school!), so it's great to know that they and their parents feel the same way about Mark.

We are also so grateful to everyone who contributed to getting us here and to making it a wonderful experience for us all. Alex has been the best principal and he spent literally *hours* working with USU to get this internship for Mark approved. Mark has had great mentors and made friends and we feel so blessed. We're not sure yet where we'll be this fall when school starts again, but wherever we are, it will be because that's where we need to be. :)

Wanderings...

Since the weather was nice here in late February and has been up until now (brr!), Pudge and I have been getting out on walks pretty regularly. We walked more before I started seriously training for the Wasatch Back, but we still get out at least once a week. Mostly we go to the library, which is a convenient .8 mile walk from our house. In our wanderings, we've found some pretty cool things. Some of these things are actually cool and some of them just seemed cool at the time. :)

Springville is The Art City in Utah, so there are statues all over town. Even though I grew up here, I've never really seen most of them. This one is a new(ish) statue on the corner of Center and Main, a tribute to the pioneers who settled the valley. It's actually a gift from another town (can't remember which one), which makes me feel like it's our own little Statue of Liberty. :)

I had walked past this fountain/statue combination probably ten times before I stopped to read it. I actually recall sitting on the base of the fountain a few years ago at Art City Days and never paying any attention. Self-absorbed, much? I'm so glad I actually stopped to read it! "In memory of our soldier boys who made the supreme sacrifice in the world war." Such great local history. :)

And here's our famous art museum. It's such a beautiful building, but this picture doesn't really do it justice.

This is the creepy baby in the bushes in front of the art museum. I'm sure there's more to it, some symbolism or something, but I'm not cultured enough to get it. Apparently culture doesn't flow in Art City's water. :)

I think this bench is pretty cool. It's too bad that the bench will have to go when we get our new library soon.

I love this house! It's not a great picture of the house, but, trust me, it's amazing. It's a beautiful old house with a fantastic yard and seeing it this spring with these beautiful flowers just made me want a house. Even though I'd very clearly never put the work into the flower garden. Minor detail.  

Yeah, this is a random one. Actually, I really thought that my mother-in-law would like the front porch, with all the western old-timey stuff on the front porch, and then I was digging on the fence. It's not every town where you can find a house like this next door to your grocery store.

For this sign, I love this store. And will also be very careful about ever taking my children to the Corn Wagon Quilt Co...

I felt pretty cool figuring this out: the number is just stuck on the sign. How frugal is that? Great Clips doesn't have to get a new sign every time they have a sale -- they just change the number before between the $ and the .99.

This, yes, this is random but I'm posting it because I think I'm so funny. This is at our neighbors. They had two couches out front with signs saying "Free couches. Take them if you want them!" so Mark and I were going to carry them the 20 feet to our front yard, flip the signs over, and write "$20 for the pair." I crack myself up.

We live fairly close to what I believe are called the foothills, so there is a fair amount of wildlife around, too. This little guy (and his/her unpictured companion) was walking by the side of our house one day at lunch time.

We saw these two grazing in the backyard of a house that's for sale just around the corner from us. I also saw two deer in another backyard along Center Street walking to the library. They're everywhere!

And, to finish off our wandering report, the purple house.

More books!

In the middle of March, Mark got "the best package ever" thanks to Scholastic:

50 non-fiction books for $50!

Mark also got to spend $500 (school money) buying books, plus some of his own teacher money so he can have books in his next classroom, wherever that may be. Literally, books everywhere at our house.Stacks and stacks, including 36 of the Magic Treehouse books. When my 7-year-old niece Bethany came to sleep over, she put them all in order for us and stayed up late (and then woke up early) to read! (She and I so share some genes somewhere... putting books in order and staying up late to read sounds like me now when I was a kid) We do what we have to do to make her think that we're cool. :)

Now we are just working on covering the paperback ones with contact paper so they'll last longer. I was going to get them all done over Mark's spring break, but we were too busy reading. Speaking of which...

WE WON!

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the last couple paragraphs of this post.)

So, our reward is that we get to take ourselves out to dinner. We're thinking we'll try either Smokehouse Pizza and BBQ or Terra Mia Ristorante...since we have gift certificates for both of them, thanks to 80% off sales at Restaurant.com

I told Mark that since we won, each of his students should have to do something extra, like bring him a candy bar or something, but he decided that wasn't very nice and really didn't reinforce any learning objectives. This is why he's the teacher and I'm not. :)

Our February

So, it's been awhile.... How are you all? I hope you've survived okay in the absence of fresh news from the Nances.

Here's what happened in our February:

We smiled because... who wouldn't smile at this?

We read some books (during tummy time).

We finished looong overdue Christmas presents.

We found out all of us love love love Paul's new activity center and bouncer.

We read some more books.

We rolled over. While reading some more. (Yes, all of us rolled over. Someone has to be an example for the child.)

We read some more books before bedtime because we LOVE books.

We spent some quality time in our Snuggie. It does fit two, in case you were wondering.

We wished everyone a happy Valentines Day!

We made some pizza. At home. From scratch.

We enjoyed aforementioned pizza. Really enjoyed it.

And, to end the month right, we read some more books.

 In case you didn't notice, we love reading. We love books. As we speak (Is that okay to use in written language? Should it instead be 'As you read what I have written'? Please advise....), there are piles and piles of books (over $500 worth!) sitting in our living room waiting to be covered with contact paper (to ensure long and happy lives) and, possibly, to be read before they are delivered back to the school. Because we love books.

And because we love books so much, we've done even more reading since then. Partly because we are voracious readers, but more so because we are addicted to winning! You see, we are having a competition with Mark's 4th grade class to see who can earn the most Accelerated Reader points.

Mr. Nance's class doesn't lose (if at all possible). This year, they wonthe Box Tops for Education competition and brought in the most items for the food drive. They are the class to beat at their school. And Mr. Nance and I intend to beat them because if Mr. Nance's class never loses then you can bet that Mr. Nance's family for sure never ever loses. The competition ends on Friday, and so far the Nances are in the lead! We read like crazy over Spring Break and earned 155 points in one week. I know, we amaze even ourselves.

Anyway... time's a-wastin'. We're outnumbered 30 to 2, so we have not a moment to spare! I'll let you know how the competition ends. For now, I'm off to read Peter and the Starcatchers. I'll tell you about our March soon. :)