What an honor!! Liebster Award discovering new blogs!

Oh my goodness! I can't even express the emotions I felt when I read the e-mail from Amanda at Teacher at the Wheel who is nominating my blog for a Liebster Award. I just couldn't believe it, my blog is only a few months old & in the last week I've reached 100+ followers, hosted my first giveaways, & am now being nominated for a blog award. I'm so touched & honor. So the blog award I'm being nominated for is the Liebster Award, which is for new blogs. According to Amanda, Liebster means "dearest, beloved, cute, lovely, and welcome." 

Here are my "rules" for accepting this nomination:

1. Link back to the blog that nominated me
2. Nominate 5-11 blogs with fewer than 200 followers
3. Answer the questions posted for you by your nominator
4. Share 11 random facts about yourself
5. Create 11 questions for your nominees
6. Contact your nominees and let them know you nominated them

My nominations:

• Gwen @ Learning with Mrs. Brinn
• Amy @ 24/7 Teacher
• Carrie & Caitlin @ Table Talk with C & C
• Christy @ Crayons and Whimsy
• Jill @ ABC's and Polka Dots
• Amber @ Synonym Rolls and Antonym Moments
• Christine @ Preslar's Place

Amanda's Questions for me:

1.) What's your favorite subject to teach and why?

• This would have to be math, because it was my most difficult subject in school & I like finding creative and hands-on ways to teach it, in the hopes that my students don't have as much of a difficult time as I had.

2.) Tell me about your pets (or if you don't have any, what kind of pet would you get if you could have anything?).

• My husband & I had a blonde lab, Frankie, but we lost him to a freak accident, a month shy of his 3rd birthday (almost 2 years ago) when he ran head first into a tree while playing ball. It was dusk out & he wasn't paying attention, he was very ball driven. We were devastated, he was like our first born.
• Frank was the sweetest, most loving dog you'd ever meet. He was SUPER ball driven & LOVED to swim & play. He loved everyone he met & was excited to see people. He was our "happy thought."
  

  

  Frank walked down the aisle too. He was our pseudo ring-bearer, minus the ring.

  
  

  

  My sweet Frankie

• Even though we don't have Frank, we still have my dad's dogs (3 of them) that we get to see whenever we want & doggy sit for. They are all blonde, labs. 
• Claire, is the oldest at 9 & the mom (she was Frank's mom, he's from her 2nd litter). She's still a pup at heart & loves to play with her grand-daughter (see below). Frank got his ball drive from his dad & his mom, she'll still chase a ball if you're willing to throw it & she's part fish, LOVES the water. And she's super stubborn, if she doesn't want to do it, she won't or she'll give you lip about it.
  
  
  
  

  

  Claire

• Arcadia, she'll be 6 in September & she's from Claire's 1st litter. She's shy and a little skittish around people she doesn't know & a bit of a scaredy-cat, which has led her to be a barker. She barks at everything & everyone, even if she knows you. She too loves the water & can smell the lake before you even get to it. She's a big cuddle-bug & just wants to be loved & my dad's shadow.

  

  Arcadia

• Sheba, she'll be 1 on Wednesday & she's Arcadia's. She's a nut & very much a pup & the baby of the family. Her and my son are best friends, he calls her "Beesh" since he can't say her name. He's the only little kid she likes & isn't afraid of. I think some of my baby Frank came back in Sheba, I see so much of him in her. She's a huge attention hog & usually always in your face & even though it can get on your nerves, I'm so smitten with her, I love her to pieces. 

  

  Sheba

• My dad loves blonde labs, can you tell?  And I love all of them. We are actually one big blonde lab family, we have a birthday party for Claire's litters every fall & it serves as a type of reunion & we get to see the dogs & they get to see each other & play. I know we're freaks. We are those people that LOVE our dogs.

3.) What's something college did NOT teach you about teaching that you wish it had?

• Behavior Management. My class was the first class that didn't get a behavior management course. Now I know that every class is different, so you have to tweak your system to fit their needs, but we went into student teaching with no ideas on behavior management or how to potentially handle certain types of issues, problems, etc. 

4.) If you could make any unhealthy food super super healthy so it's no longer bad for you to eat, what food would it be?

• Ice cream, I love it, it's my kryponite. I can refuse a baked good, but not ice cream.

5.) If you were bitten by a radioactive spider, what super hero power do you hope it would give you?

• I would hope that I would be able to fly. I just think it would be cool to fly above everything & see the world from a different perspective.

6.) Tell me about a memorable student that you've taught.

• During student teaching I had a girl in my class with Asperger's & her favorite subjects were reading & writing. At Thanksgiving time the whole grade did a writing project where they had to decorate/disguise a turkey, then write a story about their turkey. Her story was so creative & so well written, that even our principal came in to hear it. Her story was about her turkey trying to avoid being eaten at Thanksgiving so she disguised herself, then she went into a hair salon to get her fake hair cut & the stylists tricked her into the oven, by telling her it was the hair dryer. It was such a cute & clever story. Definitely one I won't forget.

7.) What are your favorite movies? (notice this is plural...feel free to pick more than one!)

• Dirty Dancing
• Toy Story triology
• Fear (I love me some Mark Wahlberg)

8.) To where would you like an all-expense paid vacation?

• To Europe. I would love to go to Ireland (for myself) and Italy (for my hubby). 

9.) What's the last thing you said out loud?

• "Claire, to-ma." Yes, my dad's dog Claire is at my house right now & she was outside barking at the meter reader. "To-ma" (i don't know how you actually spell it, but for reading it & figuring out how to read & pronounce it, I spell it phonetically) is suppose to mean come here in German, or something like that. All the dogs are trained in German, so they know when we are talking specifically to them & not to someone like my son. Claire & Arcadia were the only ones officially trained in a course, my Frank & Sheba were "home" trained.

10.) What's something you would like to change about education in our country?

• That it's not all about the test scores. We need to remember that these are children we're working with, we can't expect them to sit for 7 hours a day & perform like trained monkey's. And that every child is different & is not going to conform to some perfect ideology that the test pushers want them to. I think it's sad that this is where we are & that teacher's are villianized.

11.) What are some of your favorite blogs to read? The Teacher Wife, Across the Hall in Second Grade, A Teeny Tiny Teacher, Table Talk with C & C, & there are so many more but I would have to write them as I see them come up in my feed. 

11 Random Facts About Myself 

1. I've seen 3 litters of puppies be born & have raised 2 of those litters for the first 8 weeks of their lives, before they went to their forever homes
2. My son is named after the character Wolverine from X-Men (my son's name is Wolverine's real name in the movie...hmmm do you know it?) - - - this was all my husband's idea, I just liked the name :)
3. My favorite Pandora station is 90's R&B
4. As a kid my family went to Moosehead Lake Maine every summer, right around this time actually, to go camping (in a tent). This was one of my greatest childhood memories & I miss going there & hope I can take my hubby & little guy one day.

   

   Casey's Spencer Bay Camps, this is the camp ground we went to for  14 years. 

5. If we ever have a daughter her name will be Holland, it's my grandmother's maiden name, Holly for short.
6. As a kid my dad would take me for ice cream every Sunday evening, usually it was a milkshake, because I <3 them!!!
7. I was named after a little girl in Friendly's (it's a restaurant). My parents were eating there, when my mom was pregnant with me, & this little girl was getting in trouble behind them & her name was Stephanie & they both liked it. My name was suppose to be Vanessa, which I like better, because I don't know any Vanessa's. My graduating year there were probably about 10 Stephanie's in my class.
8. My dream car is a Nissan Maxima. I know...it's nothing over the top, kind of ordinary, but I've loved them all my life & I'm especially in-love with the current body style. 
   
9. My grandparents live in the house in front of me, at the end of my driveway (my dad owns both properties) so I've grown up with my parents just down the driveway for most of my life & have a close relationship with them & get to see my son know them very well too, which warms my heart.
10. I grew up in a log cabin with wood walls and all. No painting here. :( 
11. So this is a pretty random fact about me & I don't know if common or not, like if other "girls" can do this, I know my friends can't. But I know cars makes, models, & general years. I can see a car and know it's make & model without looking at what is written on the car. My best friend has no clue, she's lucky she knows what she drives. We had a friend in high school that test drove an Acura Integra & she asked her how the test drive went & she mentioned Integra & my best friend was like "Wait, I thought you were test driving an Acura?" We were like "It's the same thing!" 

Here are my 11 questions for my nominees:

1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
2. Tell me about your least favorite teacher in school?
3. What is your dream teaching job?
4. Would you ever want to be an administrator? Why or why not? If you are an administrator, why did you want to become one?
5. What was your first car?
6. What was the last movie you saw in the theater?
7. If you have kids, how did you come up with their names? Something you liked, family significance, etc. If you don't have kids, what would you want to name them if you ever did?
8. Tell me about one of those lessons that just went wrong, it didn't work.
9. What do you do to relax?
10. What was your most memorable vacation?
11. Are you a Coke or Pepsi person? If you don't drink soda then what do you drink?

Sorry this was so long. I can't wait to read the responses from my nominees & I can't thank Amanda enough for this awesome nomination.