Wedding Announcement

His name is Spencer

So I've been dating an amazing guy for the past month and a half or so. He's got a heart of gold, and I think he kind of likes me. When he picked me up today he brought me these:

And here's a picture of us. A little out of focus, but you get the idea. 

Saturday

 Flowers ...

Chalk Art Festival

This week, every time I walked into my building to teach this week, I walked around amazing chalk drawings. Here are a few.

This week was a really good teaching week - I felt like my students were engaged and learning (we did an activity learning about histograms in one class and number systems in the other). Maybe it was walking by pretty pictures right before I taught that provided me with teaching inspiration :)

(favorite ^)

(2nd favorite. Don't remember what it's supposed to be, but I think the colors are pretty)

Why Learning Multiplication is Hard

I've been reading and writing a lot this week (as I do every week) and found and interesting analogy explaining why learning multiplication is hard.

Consider memorizing the following names and streets:

Carl Dennis lives on Allen Brian Ave.

Carl Gary lives on Brian Allen Ave

Gary Edward lives on Carl Edward Ave

Now, instead of using names and streets, replace "lives on" with equals, Carl with 3, Dennis with 4, Allen with 1, Brian with 2, Gary with 7, and Edward with 5. And if your pretend that I didn't color code the words and numbers, well, this would be similarly difficult to memorizing:

3 x 4 = 12

3 x 7 = 21

7 x 5 = 35

btw, this doesn't mean that learning multiplication is hopeless... just means that the child needs to (1) practice and (2) understand what it means - that 3x4 means you have three bags with 4 cookies, and an answer of 21 doesn't make sense (too big)

Family Reunion

Tuesday, August 16th, Tyler came home from his mission in Buenos Aires Argentina. We had a wonderful homecomeing and fun time as a family.

Kevin, Kristin & Tyler, right off the jet

Look!!! It has a light. It only cost me x pesos (less than $8 USD). And it only loses 20 seconds each time you turn on the light!

The King clan (Kevin, Kristin, David, Dad, Tyler, Mom), minus the newly wed Kings

Mom & Kevin

 We're off to see the Wizzard ... minutes away from the arrival of Tyler (actually, a whole hour, but we didn't know)

Are we there yet?

Still can't see the airport mountains ... his flight should be landing in about ... 30 seconds...

Still not there yet.

And here we are! Welcome home Tyler King!

Dad's so proud of his missionary

Look how happy Mom is to have her missionary back!

Day before Tyler came home. Rockies vs. Marlins. We won the game. We won free t-shirts. We won free lunch too!

Idaho Springs-Georgetown Half Marathon

Mom went to Idaho Springs with me and David for our race on Aug. 13th. It was a beautiful route. David ran so well. I met my goal (<15 minute miles)
me: 3:12:22.9
David: 1:41:36.3