We have been nominated for the Liebster Award from a fellow blogger!  The Liebster award is for “up and coming” blogs with less than 200 followers.  We were nominated by fellow blogger http://iteachspeech.wordpress.com.  Thank you iteachspeech!  We are so excited to be nominated and recognized by the blogging community.  We have a few rules to follow and we will also be nominating some fellow bloggers we have enjoyed.

These are the Rules nominees are supposed to follow:
1. The Liebster is given to new bloggers with great potential who have less that 200 followers by other bloggers.
2. Each blogger should post eleven facts about himself or herself.
3. Each blogger should answer the  questions that are asked by the person doing the nominating.
4. Choose eleven  bloggers to nominate for the Award and link to them in the post.
5. Create  new questions for your nominees.
6. Go back to their pages and tell them they’ve been nominated.
7. No tag backs.

These are our questions to answer from http://iteachspeech.wordpress.com.  I will have to explain a few things about our blog.  First and foremost, I am not the usual blogger.   I am a member of our cooperative learning group, but mostly, I have been a silent member.  You have seen lots of pictures of several of the little people in my class!  I know, they are super cute, and even more fun!  The wonderful lady who usually writes our blog is our school’s OT, and she is amazing!  I am going to brag about her for a minute because she never would brag about herself.  “Joy” is a person who has always inspired me, she continues to go above and beyond in her job and everyday life.  I have so enjoyed getting to know her over my last 3 1/2 years while teaching here.  As a new teacher, she taught me A LOT! and I know, she isn’t even a teacher, she’s an OT, which makes her that much more impressive!  Joy spends a lot of her own time writing our blog for us.  She also puts together most of the sensory activities, while “Cara” does most of the language activities, and “Jeanie” does most of our PR in our community.  My name is Danni, and Joy asked me to write this post, and I was honored to help out and glad she trusted me with it.  This blog is rightfully, her baby!  This is an honorable post for us!  Some of the answers to http://iteachspeech.wordpress.com will have more than one answer because we have 4 people in our blog!  Here goes nothing, be prepared to delve into our world!

http://iteachspeech.wordpress.com Questions:
What do you like best about blogging?

Sharing our ideas with other people.  The children we work with consist of .1 % of the population.  We want other people to get to know part of their world they may not even know exists.  As they look at our blog, and read through all the ideas we have come up with, we want everyone to be exposed to us and the kind of students we have!

What’s your happiest memory?

I’m going to share one the happiest memory I have while I have been teaching at this school during the past 3 1/2 years (there are too many to just pick one!).  If you can believe it, it happened just last week.  I recently got a new instructional assistant in my class, she is actually Joy’s daughter (who is also amazing!) she has been with my class for about 2 months now.  She discovered she could get one of our little students to say a word.  It may seem like a small insignificant word to most, but to us, it opens a whole new world for him!  It’s the word “hi,” and he had been saying it for about 3 weeks, but exclusively to my assistant.  I was SO jealous!  I could not get him to say it to me…you can imagine my jealousy!  I worked on it with him and with Thea for a few weeks, then out of no where, he said, in a rather sing-songy voice, “hiiii!”   I smiled at him, said “hi” back then lost it.  I had to pick him up and give him a hug and try it again!  It was wonderful!
Where do you want to be in five years?

This is a hard question for me to answer, I am 25 and to me, 5 years seems impossibly far away.

What is your opinion on exercise and health foods?

Exercise and health foods are a must!  I go home from work and take my dog for a walk almost everyday.  I try and walk 3 miles a day with my dog.  Sometimes, I am tired or she is tired (she’s my only “child” for now and my family knows her as my furbaby) and we don’t go that long, or we skip the walk.  I have found in eating healthy there are a few rules I try to follow. Now, I am not a health nut, and I am human, I am not always perfect, but health is an ongoing project.  I eat breakfast everyday.  Everyday.  I eat fruit everyday, my favorite is blue berries and strawberries with vanilla greek yogurt.  My last rule (I should say, guideline) is eat your vegetables.  Just eat them, no excuses.

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

The craziest thing I have done…would have to have been the summer I graduated from college.  I went home to Costa Rica, where my mom was born and raised.  It’s a kind of home away from home for my family.  My mom took us to this place where zip lining through the rain forest is a popular past time.  I did the superman, which is where they wrap you in a thick nylon type cloth with straps everywhere are you “fly” across a gorge.  The gorge is about 1000 ft in the air and a mile long.  I was nervous.  The wrapped me up, put a helmet on me, and pushed me over the gorge.  It was the closest to feeling like a bird I think you could get!  It was an incredible feeling.  I soared across the sky for about 2-3 minutes, then was brought into a type of landing strip where they “caught” you.  My stomach was in my throat, but I was awestruck!

What is the most annoying thing you can think of?

Lips smacking.  Can’t stand it.

What inspires you?

My students.  They have so many challenges in their lives and I still, somehow, complain about being sleepy, or how I forgot my lunch.  I get to teach some of the most inspiring and cool kids, ever.
Where is your favorite place in the whole world?

I truly enjoy the beach.  I love water!
What would you do if tomorrow were your last day on Earth?

Spend it with my family and friends.  I almost learned in January how someone’s life can be taken from them over night.  Don’t take your family or friends for granted.  Love them, talk to them, and most of all, truly enjoy them.
Name three people, living or dead, you’d like to meet.

I would like to meet Amelia Earheart.  I have always wanted to learn to fly a plane, and have always wondered what happened to her.  Plus she was a strong woman figure and I think that is important to have in a young woman’s life! I would also like the meet Gandhi, to me he represents contentment with all aspects of life. I think he would have a lot to teach anyone! I’d also like to meet my great grandparents. If I got the opportunity to meet them, I would ask them all kinds of questions about their lives, where they were at key points in history; and learn more about my family’s history.

What is one thing you’d like to improve about yourself?

I would like to be a more tidy person.  I am sometimes a little bit of a mess.

Our Nominees:
1. http://mylittlecraftblog.wordpress.com/
2. http://justgoodenoughmum.wordpress.com/
3. http://starfishtherapies.wordpress.com/
4. http://mybookaddictionreviews.com/
5. http://secretsofthesandpit.wordpress.com/
6. http://thehungrynurse.com/
7. http://mrskellypage.wordpress.com/
8. http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/43100555/
9. http://momentswithautism.wordpress.com/
10. http://thesterlingroad.com/
11. http://tystingelinspirationalwriting.wordpress.com/

New questions for our nominees:
1. Why do you blog?
2. What is therapeutic for you and why? (I like ironing, because of instant results!)
3. What is your favorite place on Earth?
4. What did you want to be when you grew up as a child?
5. What one single occurence has impacted your life the most?
5. What drives you crazy?