April has been an exciting and busy month! My spring break was a little slow, but afterwards things sped up! We took some time out to go to Disneyland. We always go with our friends Robert and Heather Redding, we got season passes together. Sadly the last time we went Space Mountian wasn't working (my favorite ride!). We'll just have to try again next time! Here are some fun pics we took!

After Ethan's finals he and some of his school buddies went up to Utah to fly fish the Provo River with Zach. It must have been a popular time, if you look really closely at one of the pictures below, there was a fisherman on every river bend!!! After three days of camping and fishing, he came home pretty stinky. Not everyone caught fish, but everyone had fun.

This weekend we got to see one of our favorite comedians, Brian Regan, in Long Beach with our friends Erika and Tyler. Our cheeks were hurting by the end of the night because we were laughing so hard! One of our favorite jokes goes a little something like this... If you have second thoughts about setting time aside to visit an Indian habitation you are having Reservation reservation reservation! HA HA HA!!!

We also got to go whale watching (thank you Karen and Mike). Sadly we didn't see any whales, but they gave us coupons to go back again for another try. We did see some seals, birds, and really nice houses and boats. The crazy thing we did do though was inorder to get to to the boat, we had to ride a ferry to get there. It was the smallest ferry ever, it could only fit three cars!Even though there weren't any whales, it was still a beautiful day out at sea, the sea loins even waved hello to us!

We the coolest thing that happened this week, didn't actually happen to us. On Tuesday, our friends Robert and Heather invited us over to watch American Idol. So we went over and they said they had a surprise in their kitchen, so we walk in and Heather was holding a baby!!! They've been trying to adopt for about a year and a half!!!! Little Rex Ashton Redding was born one week ago April 15th. His mother was hiding the pregnancy and was going to leave the baby in the hospital for social services. But a nurse there knew of the Reddings and talked with the birth mom about their situation. So they called them and they rushed over to the hospital. They were able to witness the birth and take care of him since the moment he was born. He is a sweet little miracle that everyone is just so excited about.

We love you all and hope you are well.

Hello Everyone! We wanted to wish you all a Happy Easter. Well, it's spring break for me, but not for Ethan. He's got a few tests and a paper due this week and finals are next week, so spring break is not going to be very exciting, but I guess that's ok.

My last blog was pretty lame, so I hope you enjoy this one a little more. I realized that I forget a lot of the stuff that happens that I want to include in the blog, so I've started writing them down. So here's what's been happening...

Family Happenings:

We recently found out that Kathy and Julius will be stationed in San Diego. Yea!!! So they will be close enough to go visit. San Diego is really nice, so it will be fun to be able to get out of LA and go down there. Also on the Zmoos side, Eth's brother Zach got called on his mission to Denver Colorado South. FUN!!! He's excited and releaved that he doesn't have to learn a new language.

Whittier High School:

I'm happy it's Spring Break, I get to sleep in and relax before the last push of the end of the school year. State testing and AP exams are a little over a month away! The kids aren't feeling the pressure yet, but it's coming! So recently at school my students were working on a review packet, and the room was so quiet that I told the kids that if they kept working so well, I'd put on music. So I put on safe music like the Beatles (which the kids recognized) but I also put on ABBA, Simon and Garfunkle, and James Taylor, which the kids did not recognize. The kept saying, what song is this, what is this music. Geez, that made me feel old!

Last day of school before spring break we have what is called club carnival. All the clubs at school sell food, drinks, etc during an extended lunch to raise money for their clubs. So my co-worker Erika and I decided that we would sell soda and nachos at club carnival to help raise funds for students to pay for their upcoming AP test. We made quite a bit of money. We sold out of nachos and sold almost 1,000 sodas!!! Crazy. Prepping for club carnival was pretty crazy, probably the funniest thing was seeing Erika and I at Sam's club with a flat bed cart buying 1,000 cans of soda! I was in my school clothes (a skirt) and Erika is pregnant. So everyone kept looking at us funny. Ah... what teachers do for their kids!!!

Last school story... so last week we had a "winter storm" aka for 15 min it rain hard outside. My students freaked out!!! And we could hear students outside screaming. I had to actually shut the blinds in my room because the kids kept looking out the window and saying, I can't go out there, what am I going to do!? I just called them wusses and moved on! Ah, California winter!!!

Dream Dinners:

OK, so I love this place called Dream Dinners, you can go to their website dreamdinners.com to check them out and see if there are any in your area. Basically this place ROCKS!!! Since I come home from school tired and hungry, we usually end up eating poorly or fast food for dinner. One of my co-workers told me about Dream Dinners, I tried it, and loved it. What it is is on the internet, this company has a menu you can choose various dinners from then you schedule a time to go in and make all your dinners. You walk in and it's like a cooking show, there are little stations with all the ingredients for your dinners and you following the directions and combine them into ziplock bags. Then you take them home and freeze them. So in about an hour, I can prepare all the meals that we will be eating for the entire month. AWESOME. This month we get dinners like, chicken marsala, pulled pork, orange chicken, and more good food. So now all I do for dinner is defrost the meal and cook it. I don't have to mix, buy, or find recipies any more! SWEET.

Fun Stuff:

So one of Ethan's friends at school had a sweet hook-up with some Clippers tickets. The boys had lots of fun watching the Clippers play the Rockets. Eth saw Yao Ming, Billy Crystal, and that guy from Mission Impossible, Green Mile, ect. Here are the pictures.

Hi family and friends! So here's waz happin'

So last weekend Ethan took his first set of test National Board Exams. 6 tests over a 2 day period, CRAZY!!! Overall, he feels like he did well. I would hope so, he started studying for the test three weeks ago. This last week I basically said good morning to him and when he came home from studying he woke me up to say good night. I missed him, but hey, that's part of being a student. Eth brought me home flowers after the test cause he said that I was so nice about being gone all the time. What a sweetie!!!

On the animal front, we buzzed Lola, she doesn't look so cute anymore but no fleas!!! A little girl in our apt complex said she wasn't very cute and should have long hair. SAD.

School has been interesting lately. For the past two days I had to administer the California high school exit exam to some students. Four hours each day. For a total of 8 hours I've had to sit and watch kids take a test!!! I started going crazy in the last hour. And i had probably the stupidest kid ever. With 20 min left until freedom I hear a click from the back of the room. Dude, this kid took out his camera and took a picture of the cover of the test! Idiot. I had to take his phone, call security, take away his test. GOSH, 20 min till freedom!!!!

Alright I don't know what else to say, and it's getting close to bedtime... so I hope you enjoyed the update. I'll write again soon.

Hello Family and Friends, well a few people have asked me to update my blog, so here we go... Ethan has been studying all day to get ready for boards, he takes his first set of boards (tests) in a couple of weeks!!!! So I've been fiddling around the apt all day and instead of cleaning I thought, I could update the blog.

So it seems like the last time I updated the blog it was July of last year, uh I guess it's been a while. So here's the short version...

Summer school was pretty much torture, I never want to teach math again! Hopefully this summer I'll be able to teach biology.

August
Went to Yosemite with our friends Heather & Robert Redding and Walter & Rachel Olsen. It was awesome. We climbed Yosemite Falls, rock climbed, did some bike riding, and took a dav to drive to see the Giant Sequoias.





After Yosemite we went to go see the Zmoos' in Iowa. It was pretty cool because not only did we get to go home, but Taylor was there as well. The reason why that is cool is because Taylor is currently on his mission in Vancouver Canada speaking Manderine Chinese. He hurt his knee and came home for a couple weeks to do some P.T. While we were out there we also had the opportunity to go to Nauvoo. I love that temple and the fudge!!!

September
Back to school!!! I am currently teaching 1 Honors Biology class, 2 Biology classes, and 2 AP Biology classes. My classes are pretty good. My 6th period class is torture though, unfortunately I have a few kids that think they are totaly thugs, sigh, what can you do! But I do have some kids that just crack me up! They save the day.

We did take one weekend in September to go rock climbing in Joshua Tree. It was fun. We are so lucky to have friends that do cool stuff and let us tag along. Oops, I didn't rotate Eth's picture.




October
Uh, besides Halloween, nothing about October sticks out! For Halloween Ethan dressed up like Radioactive Man (from the Simpsons) and I dressed up like a witch. My favorite costume was my friend Robert, he dressed up like Nacho Libre! Awesome!

November
This Thanksgiving was our first Thanksgiving alone at home. I made a pretty killer dinner except the stuffing, it was so bad Lola (our doggie) wouldn't even eat it.

December
Christmas was great, we went home to New Jersey!!! It was so good to see family again, it had been such a long time. Lola came too! It is actually cheaper to fly with your dog than to keep it in a kennel, crazy. We were able to spend some time in NYC, the city is so cool Christmas time with all of the decorations.

2007 So Far
So far this year nothing too big happening. We got to go see Wicked at the Pantages theater, AWESOME!!!! Very different from the book. The politics at school have gotten a little obnoxious. A few people in my department have some shady teaching techniques, basically they show the kids the test in advance and then boast that their students get the highest test scores! UH, it makes me sick. Oh yea, and basically everyone I know that is married is pregnant or just had a kid, seriously! Everyone is asking when I'm going to catch up, give me sometime guys, Ethan is still in school! Speaking of school, Ethan is learning different adjustments. He's doing pretty well. It looks like the Zmoos Chiropractic will be in good hands, wink wink!

Alrighty guys, I think that's everything so far! I'll try to be better at keeping up the blog, hopefully more often than once every 9 months.

What's happenin'

So here's the latest on the Zmoos'

SCUHS
Ethan is almost done with midterms in his third trimester. Pretty soon he'll be setting up for adjustments. Next trimester he will actually get to start adjusting. Yippie. So that means he'll be able to fix any aches and pains or... make things worse. We've decided it would be a good investment to get an adjusting table to he can practice for real.

Whittier High
So my first year is almost over, hooray. It's been pretty good. If you didn't know, I will be teaching summer school pre-algebra to incoming freshman. Now that, I'm not looking forward to, nope not so much. Right now I am currently in a Health unit, so that's stuff like relationships, STDs, and HIV. At first I was dreading it, but it's actually been pretty fun. The kids reactions are hillarious! WARNING the follow story contains words related to human reproductive anatomy. So, funny story... we were doing an activity where each student was either a body part or a fluid and they had to match up together and figure out whether or not it was possible to transmit HIV. Part of the assignment was that they needed to match each possible body part with each possible fluid to they had to find different matches. So I was just laughing as a heard a boy say... "I've got vagina, what do you have?" Or "Hey, I need urine." and my favorite, "I've been looking for anus, who's got anus! HA HA, good times.

Portia, Milo, and Lola
So we love our little pets, but unfortunately we've discovered that Milo and Lola have flea. Uhhhh, gross. We've been having to give them flea baths and Milo doesn't like it! We actually had to clip him into his leash and tie him down! Since Portia is so anti-social, she didn't have any fleas.

Other news, Milo and Portia are FAT, yes extreme obesity. We've had to put them diet kitty food. Lola, has been enjoying her toys, her favorite past time is ripping them open and de-stuffing them. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and the living room looks like a winter wonderland. But isn't she soooo cute!

Activities
So on Memorial Day our friends Robert and Heather Redding had a huge BBQ. It was lots of fun. By the way, don't worry about Ethan's beverage, he was drinking a caffenated beverage so we joked that he should put it in a brown paper bag!


Church
OK, so one of my professors at BYU once said, the church is perfect, it's the members that are imperfect. So I'd like to apply that to our "interesting" Stake. So the Cypress stake was established 30 years ago, so they had a big 30 year celebration. I just need to vent so here we go... So for the 30 year celebration our stake jad a picnic that was catered and we had to pay to get into because now the young single adults are going to Palmyra so now more people are doing fundraising, then on Sunday we had a 2 hour stake meeting or what was supposed to be 2 hours, we went 20 min over because the meeting started late, we didn't finish the sacrament until 40 min into the meeting, the closing hymn was God be with you till me meet again and when the congration finished the stake choir had to sing the chorus again and finish with an aaaaaaaamen, the closing prayer was FIVE minutes, the air conditioner was broken, our stake commissioned their own hymn (hummm), and to top it off, Ethan was in charge of picking up chairs which took an hour! Whew, ok that's it. The church is still true, out stake just goes a little overboard.

Well, that's about everything. We love you guys and will talk with you soon.

Lola Pictures

For some reason, my pictures didn't load onto the blog, so here they are...

Before bad hair cut awww...

After...

Love Liz.

What's happenin'

Ok, so I finally downloaded our pictures, sooo... here's what's been happening. Ethan's brother Taylor came for a visit. It was really fun to have him. He is hillarious! We were able to spend some time together before he goes on his mission. At the end of the month he reports to the MTC to prepare to go to the Vancouver Canada Mandarine Chinese speaking. Crazy! While he visited we went to the beach, and took Lola. It was a little chilly, but still worth it. We also went to the Pirates show. It's like Medeivel Times but with pirates and singing. It was pretty cheesy, but we had fun. I also got to participate in a game, I raised the flag! Ooooh Ahhhh.

Other news, Ethan's into his 3rd term at LACC. Everyone says this is the hardest/tedious semester, so he's trying to have a good attitude about it. School for me is pretty good. We have about 5 weeks left. I have to teach "health" AKA show my students pictures of STDs and say be careful or this will be you! My year has gone by pretty well, they are going to hire me back for next year and I'll be adding Biology AP to my class list. It should be pretty fun, but a lot of work. In August the school is sending me to an AP conference is Palos Verdes CA, it should be a great help.

I know what everyone really wants to see, pictures of Lola. So Lola had her first hair cut, let's just say it didn't go too well. She was scared of the clippers and the groomer wasn't too good. So we brought her in for a trim, and she left with a military buzz cut! So... while her hair is growing back I got her a little shirt and Melissa sent a little sweater. It's been about a week and it's starting to look a little better, but she needs more time. Love you guys! Talk with you soon.