A Dream in the Making!

There it is....a dream in the making! Zac and I headed up to McCall last weekend to help Jonathan with the fence at his cabin, but before anything could be done I had to see Cam and Mom's new place. It is absolutely amazing! Who would have ever thought! This house was one of the first houses Cam and Mom looked at....it also happens to be Mom's favorite out of the five or six houses they were serious enough about to make an offer on, and it also was the house used to compare every other house too....only one other house (the Brook Dr house) compares with it.

Amazingly, Jonathan found out that this house came on the market again while Cam and Mom were in Wyoming for a dog training seminar. It was all or nothing. They had to get an offer in before they would return home so with their banker on vacation, they went with Jonathan's banker and for a nominal fee they used the campground's fax machine to fax the needed documents for the offer. Luckily everything worked out and before they even got home they heard the news. It must be meant to be!!!!!

Well, actually, it went something like this....Jonathan and I were standing around in the St. Luke's parking lot, just talking after I dropped the dogs off to Zac before he headed out of town for a night of camping....we were just talking about anything and everything...and if I remember correctly the house did come up in conversation. Jonathan was being pretty pessimistic about it...the Brook Dr house pretty much ruined every one's optimism.

Anyway....Jonathan got a text and while he was reading it he got a huge grin of disbelief! "You did it! Your offer was the accepted offer on the house!" Jonathan got carbon copied on the text my parents received from their realtor up in McCall. We both jumped around with excitement and eventually Jonathan called the realtor to get the details. Unfortunately, at this point in their trip, Mom and Cam didn't get service so they didn't even get the news until later on!

Now, pending inspection, assessment value and sewer hookups....Cam and Mom will hopefully close on the house July 16th. We'll be there with a bottle of red wine for the celebration!

Below are pictures of inside...since Cam and Mom are in a contract with the bank, we were able to let ourselves in through the front door with a key.....those of you who know the story about the house on the 5 acres should get a chuckle out of this!

Anna and Zac in the kitchen.

Another picture of the kitchen.

Master bathroom

Stairway with a huge beautiful mirror.

Game room/kids room.

By the time we were leaving it was getting dark and the sunset was absolutely beautiful. I didn't get as many pictures of the house as I had hoped. Apparently, I was too excited!

Now I spend a lot of time looking on craig's list for bedroom furniture. Cam said we are responsible for furnishing our own rooms...so I'm on top of it!

Congratulations Cam and Mom....we can't wait to spend time with you guys up there!

McCall--June

On the road again...Zac and I headed up to McCall for the weekend to help Jonathan and Anna at their cabin. They've been working on putting in a fence for the dogs...and well since our dogs will be using it in the future....it was our weekend to help out.

Zac and Jonathan finished up the remaining posts, which happened to be the hardest post-holes to dig and needed to be the most precise, since they were for the double gate and side gate....after they finished pouring the concrete and doing some hard thinking, they were on to putting up the wire. Despite not getting to work until about 11:00ish Saturday morning, it was a productive day as the boys worked until dark, which is about 10:00 these long summer days. They put in a solid 10 hours of work.

Anna and I were good for moral support, taking care of the dogs and making sure the boys had food, water, sunscreen and eventually beer. Jonathan couldn't stand knowing how much work needed to be done and Anna and I were just being good wives....so by late afternoon he rallied up a project for us. After unloading the trailer of rock, we got the weed fabric and laid it in the back around the fire pit and then shoveled gravel all over it! He told us we had done such a great job, we could keep going. After doing the firepit area, our forearms were done for...but we pushed on and did a couple more strips. (Three days later, my left forearm is still sore!)

After coming to a good stopping point, Anna and I took all the dogs on a walk to the stream. Remmy dove in head first and was splashing around...surprise, surprise! Chief was chasing squirrels and chipmunks. Barney and Rio waded in the stream and Tucker stood clear of the water.

When we got back to the house, Anna started cleaning up outside and I started cooking dinner...elk burger tacos. By 11:00pm we had all gotten cleaned up, eaten some dinner, had a couple of drinks (I carefully enjoyed my red wine at the table, so I wouldn't have a repeat of the last time I spilled wine) and we were done for....we thought about having a camp fire and roasting marshmellows, but instead we hit the sack and called it a day! A long day!

Sunday we were back to work, only a little earlier. Jonathan and Zac finished the wiring and started hanging the gates. With nearly the entire fence up and the area secure, the dogs just roamed their new "yard." Although we wanted to stay an extra day, Zac needed to get back to work, so by 3:00 we cleaned up and packed the truck and headed out. We look forward to the next time we head up. The dogs will love the freedom. It was a fun weekend!

Remmy and Rio hanging out on the freshly shoveled/laid gravel!

Jonathan and Zac working on the gates.

Anna poking the concrete to get out all of the air bubbles!

Zayden turns 1!!!!!

There's the birthday boy! Zayden turned 1 yesterday...June 21. Monica and Rob had a nice BBQ with a fun caterpillar cake. As soon as we got to the house, Zac and I had to find Brylee...which wasn't very hard. She was so excited to see us she left her hiding spot premuturely and instead greeted us with a big hug and smile. She's a doll.

Before dinner, Brylee had us all playing on her new swing set and Jonathan, Monica and I talked details about McCall. We're very excited! After dinner we sang happy birthday to Z in great fashion with our birthday hats. Bry was so excited about the birthday hats, before long we all had one on. It's really hard to say no to Brlyee. After cake, Brylee helped Zayden open his presents.

Not too long after, Jonathan and I started playing catch with a football. Then Monica joined in....then came Zac and eventually even Rob. So what about Anna and the kids? Anna was pretty occupied by Bry and Z. For a long time Zayden just hung out in the grass and watched all of us play catch. Then Monica and I broke off from the boys and football and started our own game of peppering with a makeshift volleyball. It brought back a lot of memories. Oh, how I miss volleyball. We ended the night with the volleyball in a circle with all of us playing. We played catch, keep away and volleyball for a solid 2 hours. All of us except Anna and Bry.

Anna played the entire night with Brylee and they had a "house" under Bry's swing set. It wasn't long before Brylee used her new jump rope from Uncle Zac and Auntie Em as a leash for her pet dog "Anna." Aunt Anna definitely wins the "good sport" award. It was pretty entertaining watching Anna pretend to be a dog. The best time was when she "ran away from her owner" and Brylee was chasing her doggie around the yard. It defintely made for some good laughs.
Before we knew it, it was dark out and we said goodbye to all and we were on our way. We look forward to Anna's BBQ/birthday dinner....except I'm thinking she might not be Bry's pet dog again.


Brother and sister with the birthday cake.


How picture perfect is this one....Uncle Zac pushing Bry on her new swing set.


I almost forgot.....Brylee had both Anna and I playing tag. We quickly learned "being tagged" was sort of nice.


Mommy Monica and birthday boy Zayden!

Jonathan and Anna with their birthday hats!

Bry helping open presents!

Auntie Em and Uncle Zac being good sports with the birthday hats. Brylee wouldn't let anyone take off their hat and if any of us snuck it off, she would quickly catch us and remind us to put it back on. We even played catch and volleyball with our birthday hats.

It was a good time for all! Thanks Monica and Rob!

It's done...

This is it! I'm done with my graduate school. Can you believe it...because I can't! It is surreal and hasn't really even sunk in yet. But having this piece of work, or better yet, this work of art in my hands is helping to solidify the feeling of gratification!



The Art Palette Math Box: Teaching Math Through the Arts. Together our group developed this idea of taking a core curricula area, in this case, math and creating a curriculum based on the National Math Standards and integrating the various art modalities while meeting the National Art Standards. The result is our 214 page thesis of a reasearch based rationale of why integrating math and the arts enhance creative and critical thinkers and encourages problem solving. In addition to our research findings, we created a plan of action for initiation, funding sources, communication plans, evaluations and a total of 50 primary and intermediate lesson plans. Our next step, if we choose, is implementation into local elementaries. Regardless if we follow through with implementation, the kids who step foot in my classroom will be taught math in a fresh new way! It is very exciting!



Here is the table of contents, which only brushes the surface of how much time and effort went into this thesis. If you take a close look, the annotated bibliography starts on page 210.

Finally...a dream come true...Officially, Emily Broadie, M. Ed.

Lesley University Graduation

Get comfy because this is a book taking you on the roller coaster ride I have been on for the past 22 months.



June 6, 2010

Amazingly after beginning this journey 22 months ago; September 12, 2008 (one week after Jonathan and Anna's wedding day), it is coming to an end! Purusing graduate school quickly became my dream and goal after obtaining my undergraduate degree in education. However, I must admit I never thought this dream or goal would come to fruition (or frutation~according to Trish) so soon. But I couldn't be happier, prouder or more excited to cross this off my own personal "bucket list."

Throughout this journey I have grown both personally and professionally. I have made friends, met a handful of new people, reconnected with old friends (Hailey Kirkland, now McMurtrey) gotten to know teaching colleagues better (Cori Long), become friends with people I was just aquaintences with during my education program at BSU (Alicia "Ace" Clark) and I have traveled this entire journey side by side my favorite aunt, godmother, teaching role model and friend. Professionally, I have been given the tools, resources and guidance to become a teacher I never would have been just three years into my teaching career.

This journey has been exciting, rewarding, challenging, stressful and more times than not, very exhausting (both mentally and physically)....but it has been worth the journey. We have all stretched ourselves to be better people and educators. We have tapped into our own inner-creativity that most of us didn't even know existed. We have brushed up on our writing skills through reproducing multiple rationales (with an e). We have written more lesson plans in a 22 month time frame than one thought imaginable. And we have bought more text books and art supplies than most of our budgets could afford.

Most importantly, together, Lesley Cohort 13 has laughed, learned, loved, confided in and cried together....but one thing is for sure, we will all look back and smile on our memories....and there are many.

As for my love....Thank you for putting up with me during this long journey where most of my free nights and weekends were consumed with writing papers, putting together projects, writing lesson plans, rehearsing presentations, researching, writing more papers, reading text books, stressing, meeting deadlines....and just when I would finish one class and have a breath of fresh air, this viscious cycle would start all over again...11 times over.

Thank you for helping me make some of my various projects....projects that were grand inside my head, but could have never been completed alone.

Thank you for helping me with ideas for lesson plans, projects and presentations when I had exhausted all of my own creative ideas.

Thank you for being so understanding when I was a grouch the week before my Lesley weekend and the week after....there is something to be said for weekends. We all need a break!

Thank you for doing the laundry, cooking dinner every night and making breakfast more often than not when I probably would have starved otherwise, and gone to work wearing dirty underwear. (By the way you have become a great cook and I don't know if my cooking skills will match up!)

Thank you for cleaning the house during my Lesley weekends....it was always refreshing walking into a clean smelling house after a long eight hour day of class.

Thank you for always texting me during my Saturday classes in the fall when I would miss a BSU game.

Thank you for always reminding me to "have fun" in my Friday night class after a long day, and week for that matter of teaching.

Thank you for listening to me bitch (more than my usual amount) about anything and everything!

Thank you for having pizza and wine and Colstone dessert for me after my last night of class. It meant a lot!

Most definitely, thank you for being my support, my crutch to lean on and my constant reminder that I could attain this goal, I could accomplish my dream and I would survive. Now it's my turn to do the same for you. I love you!




My metaphor of me as a result of my Lesley journey..."I am the sun rising over the path less taken." Someday I will get this art piece framed, when I have repaid my school loans and hopefully get a raise for this master's degree. Who would have ever thought the economy would be in such turmoil that our salaries would be frozen upon graduation!

Our instructor for our last class, Susan, created a very special and memorable ceremony for us, encompassing "drinking vessels" for a toast, cake and a special graduation cap.

Hailey's cake making skills showcased...how cute is that? It was neopolatian and it was delicious!

The Hidden Springs crew...from left to right...Mrs. Broadie, Mrs. Olsen, Mrs. Long & Mrs. Goble

Long time friends from McCall and then we even spent a semester together as DG's at UofI. What a small world it is to reconnect through graduate school!

I still remember my beginning years of college, volunteering (in Mrs. Olsen's 5th grade class at Hidden Springs) so clumsily and awkwardly, yet with such innocence and a heart set on teaching...now here we are together seven years later graduating together with a Master's in Education and teaching together at Hidden Springs Elementary. What are the odds of that?

The top of my graduation cap....modge podged...of course!

Now that my eyes are swelled up with tears of reminiscing about this journey...I'm off to cook dinner! And while this bolg entry is bittersweet....after all we are so close....we have one and possibly the most important deadline to meet...our thesis due date...June 28th. It will come soon enough, I'm sure!

Lesley friends....I'll miss our memories, but not the weekends!
Best of luck in your future endeavors....just remember Trust the Process!!!!!!

Here's to all of our successes yet to come!

Memorial Day Weekend

With our crazy-busy schedule lately....if it's not one thing it's another....Zac and I decided to put it all on hold for a three day weekend of some rest and relaxation. We headed up to Challis.

Being in the final month of my graduate school and knowing student loans are on the horizon, Zac and I working on cutting back on our spending budget so we decided to take the Escape on this road trip, rather than the truck. Despite saving gas money, taking the Escape meant the dogs rode in the car with us, rather than in the back of the truck in their kennels. So we endured dog farts and dog breath the entire way, as well as dealing with Rio trying to balance while standing up until just outside of Stanley. Taking the Escape also meant we had to scale back on our luggage...which we tend not to be light packers. However, with all of this said, we did save on gas money, the dogs thoroughly enjoyed our company riding in the car, we had enough room for all of our luggage, including my school work and both of our laptops, as well as both dog beds. We were cozy.

The drive in itself was worth the trip. It was a crazy one, to the say the least. First, as we were heading out of town, we witnessed the car in front of us square on hit a deer trying to cross Eagle Road. Lucky for us and the motorcyclist next to us we managed to escape the accident altogether. From Horshoe Bend on it rained "cats and dogs." Thank goodness the windshield wipers work well. On Banner Summit there was two inches of snow and slush with fresh falling snow on the trees and ground. It's the end of May....are you kidding....only in Idaho, I suppose, would one expect such crazy weather. Just on the other side of Stanley, the falling snow turned back into sleet and rain. However, with all of the wet weather meant for some wet hillsides. Rock falls were eminent and rocks were in the middle of the road around every corner. We're not talking pebbles or golf ball sized rocks, but rather boulders, some half of the size of the car in the middle of the road. It was scary, not knowing what would be around the next corner, or if a car would be coming head on while avoiding rocks in their lane. Fortunately, we made it safe and sound to the cabin, all the while singing to our favorite country tunes. We listend to most of our country songs from the Ipod on our way up!

Friday night it poured and it was so relaxing to fall asleep to the falling rain on the roof. Saturday was simply an inside day as the rain continued to fall and it was very wet and soggy outside. Sunday was a work day, as the weather broke and the sun burned off some of the clouds. With everyone outside working, I was able to finish my report cards, fill out the students' hall of fame sheets, write a personalized note in the books I gave them and work on some lesson plans and formatting for our thesis project. It was a very productive day inside and out of the cabin. Monday rolled around and just as quickly as the weekend flew by, we were already on our way home....and back to reality.

Remmy loving life...look at that smile!

Rio loving life just as much as Remmy!

Remmy and I just hanging out...we just got back from a walk.

We enjoyed a Saturday night full of Mexican Train.






Remmy LOVES riding on the back of the four-wheeler. Rio not so much, he would rather run along side. As for Rem he would just lean up against Zac and stay put. He would jump up on the four-wheeler on his own....as his way of saying, "I'm ready, let's go!"



Zac working away!



The dogs running around and playing!




Em and Zac....enjoying life!