Home

I'm back from San Antonio and glad to be home. The convention was fun, but not very relaxing when you are responsible for teenagers traipsing around downtown San Antonio. I'm kidding, they were very respectful and did a great job. Each of them won at least one award in the contests they entered, so I was excited for them.

I also got to see dad a couple times. He was nice enough to go to Fiesta, TX with me and the kids (I got him a free ticket so that helped). We rode a roller coaster and dad said that was enough for him. We also got to go to a really good restaurant called Boudro's on the Riverwalk on Saturday while my kids were in competitions. Overall it was a very good trip, no complaints, except that I wish Chad could have gone too. Maybe next year.

Funny

Chad's Nanny showed us this that she had found the other day when she was going through some stuff. I thought it was funny so I wanted to share. It says "Dear Nanny & Grandad, I'm glad y'all remember me and my birthday and thank you. And every year y'all give me money. So I'm going to give y'all money. Love, Chad. P.S. Please use money wisely." This picture was with the letter as well.

I thought that was so cute and that it was neat that Chad's Nanny had kept it for all these years.

This one's for Josh

Just had to share these pictures of Chad in his Halloween costume. I'm so proud of him for going to our Bible class group's Halloween party when I was out of town, and also going to the trouble of doing a real costume. So Josh, this one's for you since Chad used your idea. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be around to play Dog the Bounty Hunter's bosomy wife. Shucks, maybe next year.

Microbiology...see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya

Of all the blog titles in the world that I could have picked, I chose that one.

So...Chad took his Microbiology test today and passed it! Oh wait, he didn't just pass it, he got an A! I am so proud of him. So now he is finished with prereqs and is starting his nursing courses and will officially be a(n) R.N. before we know it.

We are going out to dinner to celebrate, and then we have a volleyball double-header. Our team is now 2-1...not bad for a bunch of old people!

BRRRRR!

Tonight and tomorrow night it is supposed to get down into the 30s. Winter is just right around the corner...and it was almost 80 today! Guess it's time to pull out the sweaters and blankets. I can't wait to use our very own fire place.

Last week was good, not too much to report (unlike the week before). We won one of our volleyball games and lost one, and mom and Erin and the kids came into town on Friday. We had a good time with them, and they drove back today. Chad and I went to my school's football game on Friday night against our big rivals, and we won 20-0! I can't say I had a whole lot to do with it, but I can say that it is fun when the team you are rooting for wins (which seems to happen rarely these days).

Friday I will be taking my NP kiddos to San Antonio for a weekend of contests, Sea World/Fiesta TX, and staying in a hotel on the River Walk. Should be a lot of fun. Keep us in your prayers as we travel. Oh, also, Chad will be taking his microbiology test soon so keep him in your prayers about that...because as soon as he passes the test he will get to start his nursing courses!

That's it for now. Have a good week, everyone!

My house smells like pumpkin pie

I had a very long and tiring week at school. I won't bore you with all the details, but it culminated with an anonymous person sticking a copy of our recent first issue of the newspaper in my box with some mistakes circled. My favorite one was the "adviser" in our masthead which was circled and "or" was written next to it. Anyone in the journalism world can tell you that the "er" spelling is the preferred spelling when referring to a publications adviser, but even in the non-journalism world, it is recognized as an alternate spelling for the more common "or" ending. I mean, if you're going to point out my mistakes and not have the courage to tell me who you are, at least get it right. My favorite part of the whole thing was them circling an article on one of the pages and writing "B-" next to it. What? You're doing my grading for me now? Thanks! This person obviously knew what they were doing was a bit out of line, or they would have left a note that said, "Hey, I found a couple mistakes, just thought that you would like to know about them," and signed their name to it. I can understand a person disliking seeing mistakes, as I am one of those people (which adds insult to injury that there were any mistakes in the paper at all, and then for multiple others to point them out), but come on people, these are a bunch of kids doing a newspaper. No one calls up the choir or orchestra directer (oops, I mean director) after the concert and says "Boy, they really missed that one note. B minus." No, people always say what a good job those kids did, mistakes and all. But if it's kids putting out a publication, there better not be one single mistake, because that's all anybody will hear about after it. And another thing I would never do is feel like it was my duty to grade another teacher's students, as if to say they were not capable of doing it themselves, or "how could you have let this B- article go into the paper?" I just still cannot believe that the person who did that was doing it in a spirit of trying to help the brand new journalism teacher. To me, they were just being mean.

Enough ranting. So I decided this weekend would be a work-free weekend, because last weekend I did nothing but work it felt like. Grades were due, I had to do a bunch of stuff for the yearbook, and so I didn't quite feel rested up going into this week, which may have something to do with me being so tired and ready for this weekend to come. So we've invited a few people to come over for the A&M game today, and we're also having some college kids over for lunch tomorrow. You know what that means...time to clean! This is good though because Erin, Mom and the kids are coming in next weekend and hopefully we won't mess up the house too much in the next week and it will already be clean for them. So I decided I was going to get into the fall spirit, since it is cooling off here. I went and bought a couple fall decorations (wreath, scarecrow, some little pumpkins for the mantle) and got a bunch of B&BW wallflowers that smell like pumpkin. Yummy! I also got some cinnamon & clove oil from B&BW (it's $3 on sale right now...but Barbara you probably already knew that) and a couple of candles from Big Lots. Big Lots had a lot of good stuff for not much money. I was glad I went there. Anyway, I have always wanted to decorate my house for the seasons, and I always said I was going to when I had a house of my own. I'm not going to go crazy with it, but maybe I can add a little bit of decor to my collection every year. I decided not to get a real pumpkin yet, but we might later. Anyway, so this morning I'm going to do some cleaning and go to the grocery store, and then watch the A&M game. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Chad just got off work this morning, so I'm waiting for him to wake up so I can vacuum, hence the time to blog about every detail of what I am going to do today. He was on a roaming truck yesterday, because they finally have enough medics on his shift so he was just assigned to an ambulance that drove around a certain part of the city that they were assigned to all day long. Sounds boring and tedious to me, but Chad said it was his best day of work yet, so that is great! He has scheduled his microbiology test for less than two weeks from now, so he's been studying every day to get ready for that. After he passes the test, he will actually be able to start his 7 nursing courses. I'm proud of him for being so motivated.

That's it for now. Gig 'em Aggies!

Halloween

Okay, one more post and then I gotta leave for church. I need your help thinking of creative, inexpensive Halloween costume ideas for a Halloween party. I'd like to do something where Chad and I coordinate (and nothing paramedic, that's boring). I thought Chad would make a good Pee Wee Herman, but I can't think of a costume for me to coordinate with that. Any ideas would be helpful. And I already got rid of the '80s dress I wore last Halloween (was that already a year ago?).

This is a boring post pretty much all about Lesley's job

This has been a fun week in the world of high school journalism advising. At first I was a little anxious because our first newspaper is about to go to print, and anything that goes to print is completely scrutnized by every teacher, administrator, superintendent and school board member that is employed by a school district...and that's all on me (Can I get a holla from the other Journalism advisers out there? anybody...anybody...Bueller...Bueller?) Anyway, before I get too off topic, we have something called "prior review" at our school, which is basically a court case precedent that says the administrator of a school-sponsored paper has the legal right to review everything we print before it goes to press. That would be Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier if anyone wants to Google it. While my students sometimes see this as a bit repressive and somewhat censoring, I see it as a wonderful way to cover my butt if anything comes up later as questionable. So my point is that my principal looked over our stories, we had to change wording on a couple of things, but other than that, we're good to go! I can't wait to see the first issue of the first newspaper I advised. If I was a scrapbooker, that would be something that would definitely go in there. But since I just stick all my keepsakes in my yearbooks from teaching, that's where it will go. Cool.


THEN today we got those cameras that I ordered. Since we're in the middle of final edits and layout for the paper, I didn't have a ton of time to look at the cameras, but I did have enough time to realize that they are totally sweet. It will be fun to give my students that much more ownership of the newspaper and yearbook, and to finally assign staff photographers, especially as the program builds more. Double cool.


ALSO today some electricians came in and installed some power poles in my lab. This is a boring story, but I've had 8 brand new Dells just sitting in the yearbook lab because we didn't have a way to plug them in and hook them up to the network. Well now that the power poles are installed, we can put in ethernet drops (did I say "we"? I meant the IT people) and hook up the computers. This is perfect timing because the yearbook kids are just about to need those computers to start working on pages.


Finally, my newspaper trip to San Antonio has been finalized for the end of October. I'm taking 4 kids and 2 other parents. I think I am more excited than the kids. A weekend in San Antonio, a day off school, a trip to Sea World, and a Journalism convention...what could possibly be more fun than that?

I forgot to update after this past weekend. Nothing really happened, but mom visited, and we went and bought fabric for the curtains in the front guest bedroom. I found a nice red fabric that matches the quilt perfectly, and we busted out my sewing machine that I've had for a year and never used, and we sewed the curtains. I really like the way they turned out...they aren't anything fancy, just panels, and I bought some cream colored ribbon to gather them to let some light in the room. I'm not going to post a picture right now because I'm lazy, but you guys probably don't really care anyway. Chad had to work on Sunday and mom and I went to Jason's Deli for lunch. Right next to Jason's is a Cheddar's and when we got there there was an ambulance and fire truck parked in front of Cheddar's. Out of curiosity I ran over to see if Chad was working the call, and sure enough, he was! He was performing CPR and I ran over to him, put my arm around him, and took a picture with my camera phone. Okay, none of that stuff in the last sentence was true, but wouldn't that be funny? Anyway, I waved, he waved (he was moving the ambulance), and I went back over to Jason's. Some guy asked me what happened and I said, "I don't know, I just wanted to see if it was my husband in the ambulance." Good story, huh?

Other stuff: I joined a volleyball team with some people at church. Chad will be subbing in, since his schedule won't allow for him to be there every week. We went up to church and played for a couple hours last night, and I am sore today. Sad, huh? Well, I figured this weekly volleyball playing would give me a reason that I had to go exercise every week. Should be fun.

That's it for now. Is anybody still awake after reading this post?