Today I'm Thankful for...

I know most people post things each day of November for the things they are thankful for, but I decided to just do a big blog post for November!

So here is goes...

1st: I'm thankful for the great things happening in mine and Trevor's relationship and the only person I can give credit to is God.  

2nd: I'm thankful for my husband and best friend in the world! How did I get so lucky!

3rd: I'm thankful for my family and especially my parents and that they are so supportive and want nothing but the best for me. 

4th: I'm thankful for my brother and that we have a great relationship even though we live miles apart. 

5th: I'm thankful for my job and that most days everyday I enjoy going to work. I have a great team!!

6th: I'm thankful for homecooking - especially this amazing Creamy Tortellini Tomato Soup!

7th: I'm thankful for best friends!! I seriously have the best friends!!

8th: I'm thankful that we have a spare bedroom in our house so we can have company or help friends out with a place to stay!

9th: I'm thankful for my sweet puppy Winston- even when he is ornery

10th: I'm thankful for our crazy lab Whiskey

11th: I'm thankful for our Veterans and all that they do and sacrifice for our country and for us to live the way we do. 

12th: I'm thankful for my in-laws and how lucky I am to be a part of their family. They seriously are the best in-laws a girl could ask for!

13th: I'm thankful for a heater in my car! Brr...it was cold today!!

14th: I'm thankful for our elliptical!! I don't necessary like working out, but I'm happy we have an elliptical with a tv right in front of it! It's not so bad when you get a good show on tv!!

15th: I'm thankful for road trips with AMAZING friends!!!

16th: I'm thankful for OSU football because it brings us all together again!!

17th: "You never see the hard days in a photo album... but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next." I'm thankful for photos as they capture memories. 

18th: I'm thankful for good books!! I just love reading. Right now I'm reading The Third Victim by Lisa Gardner.  

19th: I'm thankful for my two sweet nephews! Happy Birthday Wyatt!!

20th: I'm thankful for cell phones so I can talk to my friends who live in different states. 

21st: I'm thankful for my cousins that I don't get to see often enough! 

22nd: I'm thankful we live close to family so we are able to celebrate birthdays!!

23rd: I'm thankful that we are able to have family over to watch OSU kick some butt!!! 

24th: I'm thankful for Christmas music and how it just gets me in the spirit!! I put up all our Christmas decor!

25th: I'm thankful for Cool Touch Tissues!! I have had a bad cold the past few days and my poor nose would be raw without those amazing tissues!!

26th: I'm thankful I live in Oklahoma!! It is absolutely beautiful here...I know we don't have mountains, oceans or a beach...but isn't this just beautiful?

27th: I'm thankful for a day off to sleep in!!

28th: I'm thankful that I get to spend this Holiday with family and I won't be going to bed hungry!

29th: I'm thankful that we live so close to so many of our great friends! 

30th: I'm thankful for everyone who has made a difference in my life! My family and friends have shaped the person I am today and for that, I am grateful!

I feel like we should do this all year long! There are honestly so many things to be thankful for and I didn't even list half that I wanted to!

Weekend in Austin

This past weekend we made a road trip to support our Cowboys! Trevor and I had never been to Austin, so we were excited to go! A friend of mine found tickets to the game for us for cheap, so we jumped on the opportunity. 

We left Friday after everyone got off work and road tripped with our great friends Rhett and Riley! We made it to Austin a little before 1 am and we were staying with a great friend...THANKS BRADY!! Riley and I passed out and all the guys stayed up WAYYYYY too late...which made for a long Saturday! 

On Saturday we woke up early and got ready and headed to lunch. I have no idea what that place was called, but it had some yummy tacos! Then we headed to the tailgate. Brady had a tailgate for his work that we hung out at and had a great time!!

I absolutely love all of these people!!! They are the best friends!!!

Typical!!

After hanging out at the tailgate for a few hours, we headed to the game! 

So cool!!! Here comes Bullet!!

He is seriously the man of my dreams!!

We have the best friends!!!

It was such a good game...thankfully a Cowboys Victory!!! On our walk back to meet up with everyone the sky was absolutely beautiful! This picture does not even do it justice! But it looked pretty cool with the Capitol in the back!

After the game we ate dinner with everyone and hit up 6th street! We had an awesome time in Austin with fantastic friends!! 

Sunday morning we got up and ate lunch at Hopdoddys!! If you have not eaten there...put it on your bucket list! They have amazing burgers and even better shakes!! I had a Red Velvet Cake shake and it was amazing!! Haha! 

Now we are headed home! 36 hours in Austin and 16 hours in a car with these lovely people

Halloween

Well I am just way behind on this post, but better late than never! 

This year we didn't do anything too special for Halloween. To be completely honest, it's probably my least favorite holiday, so I don't have that many decorations or really spend that much time even thinking about Halloween. We have a lot of little kids in our neighborhood, so I knew that we would be passing out candy. Plus, our little nephews are in town and so we wanted to make it special for them! 

Trevor had been craving blueberry muffins a few days prior to Halloween so I went and got a box mix (I know, wife of the year award right here with her box mixes!) and I made some fun spidey muffins!

A week or so before Halloween our nephew, Wyatt told us that he was going to be Iron Man. Trevor was so excited about this because in college one year, he was Iron Man and as far as we knew, we still had the costume! So Trevor made a few trips to the attic and surprising found all of the pieces. I would be kidding if I said I wasn't excited to see them in their matching costumes!! 

I wasn't planning on dressing up, but I didn't want to be completely lame just passing out candy, so I just made myself a cowgirl! 

Aren't they adorable!!!

And of course, I couldn't forget my sweet Winston!

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!!!

Interactive Notebook (Pt. 3)

The school year is moving right along and we have completed our next chapter. My students will be taking a test over it this next week. I recently made a To-Do List for the students so they could see what we have to cover before Christmas.

Their test is over chapter 1 and chapter 2 and I will be highlighting the Interactive Notebook entries we did for chapter 1. If you are interested in getting started on an Interactive Notebook, be sure to check out my Interactive Notebook (Pt. 1) post and my Interactive Notebook (Pt. 2) post. This post includes powers and exponents, order of operations and evaluate expressions. I honestly love this chapter. I think it's fun to teach and most students think it's kind of fun! 

First up: Powers and Exponents

I made these colored sheets for each student. I made them so there are 6 on a page so I didn't have to make that many copies. 

I will say, students seem to understand exponents in isolation, but when you add all the steps of order of operations, they completely forget how to evaluate an exponent. We referred back to this page in their spirals often. 

Next up: Order of Operations

The first thing I have the student do is fill out an anticipation guide. 

First they just read through the statements and decide if they think it's true. Then I had them work with a partner and use their textbook and they had to find support for each of the statements and document what page they found the information on. I really like this activity because it makes them think and they have to read the textbook, which is challenging for a lot of students. Especially since most of my students are below grade level. 

We also made this fun page:

Again, we referred to this page a lot when they forgot the next step in solving. 

Lastly, we covered Evaluate Expression 

We just took Cornell Notes over this section since it is so similar to Order of Operations. At the top of the notes we covered our new vocabulary and then did some practice problems with plugging in variables. 

Since it was so close to Halloween and Fall in general, another teacher created this cute pumpkin worksheet. They have to solve the problems and then use their answers to help color. 

I also have this worksheet with just the order of operations as well. 

That wraps up our Chapter 1! If you are interested in any of the printable items, just let me know! 

jilliancmorris@gmail.com