The latest

Things have been pretty quiet here lately. The past week was a good one for me. I went with the UIL team to our district meet in Canyon on Friday. We are still not sure what the final results are, but our school did well and we are hoping that we beat Lubbock High which has not happened in a million years or something like that. On the homefront, Chad finished up the tile job and it looks great. Also, while I was gone, he spent the entire day cleaning the house and it was spotless when I came home. I think I thanked him 10 times for cleaning...let's just say it had been more than a week or two since either of us made progress towards a cleaner house. In case you forgot what the entry way looked like before, here are some reminders:And the finished product (minus a few extra coats of sealant that Chad still wants to do): Looks good huh? Now here's a picture of a deer that doesn't have anything to do with this post; I took the picture while we were visiting dad and the deer came up in the backyard to feed. Poor scrawny little thing.
Only 9 more weeks of school.

The play by play

Okay, I promised a bit more detail about our Spring Break excursions, so here it is. Friday afternoon we left for Blue Haven via Clovis, where a random person lives who said she wanted to buy our saltillo tile that doesn't match the saltillo tile in our house. So we stopped there and dropped off the tile, then went to camp. We were there all day Saturday and Sunday working on stuff around camp, and then we left Monday morning. While we were there, we met with our builder to get some more ideas about our cabin. Now, he is working on plans and gave us a timeframe of 3-6 months from start to finish. We're just not sure when he'll be able to start given other projects he's working on and the weather up there. Let's just say this: when it's done, you're gonna want to go there. We can't wait to be able to enjoy our cabin!

Okay, on to the next leg of our trip. Monday we drove to Weatherford from camp, via Lubbock to drop off dirty laundry and water our plants (which, I'm happy to report, are doing rather well! That's for another update.). That night we got to mom's and the rains came tumbling down. The next day we drove over to Hurst so Chad could take his final nursing test and yep, you guessed it, he passed with an A. So now, he plays the waiting game to get his application approved, get a date for clinicals, take clinicals, take NCLEX, become RN. Our guess is that this will take somewhere around 9 months for everything to be finished.

After Weatherford, we made our way down to San Antonio via Georgetown. We got to see Shawn, Emma, and the girls for a couple hours and went to church with Shawn (Emma stayed home with the kids since they had been sick). It was fun to see them and get to see the church they attend and where Shawn preaches.

Last stop was San Antonio. I mentioned random Craig's List lady earlier in the post, and maybe that requires a little bit more explanation. You all have seen the tile busted-out pictures in a previous post and the tile that was completely different from the saltillo that is installed in our den and hallway. Well, we wanted to put the same saltillo in our entry way, so we went over to our local home depot and found 12x12 saltillo tile there. Or maybe I should say "saltillo" tile. When we got it home, we realized that it was bigger than the original tile by about a half inch, not the same color, thinner, and pretty much not authentic at all. Great. Luckily, the previous owners of our home left a partial box of the original tile in the shed. After some digging on the internet, Chad found out that the guy who distributes this tile used to ship to Home Depot, but the orders were so big that he couldn't keep up and now distributes out of San Antonio. So, we made arrangements to pick up the tile in San Antonio, and while we were there we spent a few days with Dad & Ginny. Erin, Josh & the kids also made their way over and we got to see them. It was a successfull trip; we got the tile, we got to see family, and we got home in one piece, with enough time to go to church and sleep a few hours before I had to go back to work.

And that brings us to today. We're back at home, Chad is working on installing the tile in the entryway (finally), and we had a great Spring Break. Now the official "end of school" countdown is on: 10 weeks!

Around Texas and New Mexico in 7 days

We are home from our trips to Blue Haven, Weatherford, and San Antonio and successfully accomplished everything we set out to do over Spring Break. I'll blog more later...after 7 hours in the car today, I don't really feel like being on the computer!

Okay, NOW we're done

I actually submitted the rest of the yearbook pages today. We had a party in class. Glad I got the big cookie cake because it was all gone.

Can we just call off school tomorrow and have spring break early?

It is finished

The yearbook, that is. We finished all the pages today and now I just have to check through them one more time before submission. I'm pretty excited that our deadline is not until Monday and we are already through. I'm planning a party in yearbook class on Thursday complete with pizza and a cookie cake to reward my kids for all their hard work. Now the year feels like it's almost over, and I can truly relax during Spring Break! I can't wait.

Trying my hand at gardening

Much of today, Chad and I have been working in the yard, clearing the front flower bed to get ready for planting shrubs (there is nothing there now) and going to the nursery. We have this local nursery that we went to for the first time today, and I think we were probably there for two hours. They were so helpful and knowledgeable! I will never go to Home Depot or Lowe's to buy plants while we live here. A couple posts ago Chad showed you a picture of where he busted out the concrete slab that was supposed to be for an RV, although it must have been an RV for elves because it wasn't a very big slab. Anyway, he will be planting a garden there soon, and I have decided that my part in this whole venture will be sowing and caring for the herbs. I really like to cook, and I love using fresh herbs in my cooking, but I almost never buy them because 1)they are very expensive, 2) the quality in the local stores leaves something to be desired, and 3) I usually only use a little bit of them so the rest goes bad. Anyway, when we went to the nursery today, I picked out the seed packets of the herbs I like to use most often in cooking: thyme, basil, cilantro, mint, Italian parsley. These packets with a ton of seeds in them were less than 2 bucks each! They didn't have any rosemary seeds so I bought a rosemary plant. Well, while we were there, they just happened to be having an herb seminar, so I sat in on that and learned a bit more about how to plant and what sort of conditions to plant the herbs in. So over the next few months I will be documenting my first try at growing my own herbs, and I will show pictures of the progress. Here is the beginning: (thanks, mom, for all the pots! I didn't have to buy a single one.) From the left is thyme, flatleaf parsley, rosemary which is already smelling up the whole front porch, basil, mint, cilantro, and the 5 little pots on the bottom right will be tomato plants. I will be transferring everything in and out until the weather at night gets warmer. Once (if) the tomatoes become plants, we will transfer those to the ground in the backyard. The beginnings of my project. We are also planting spinach and squash in the garden, and probably some other veggies as well.

If you have any tips about planting in west Texas, we would love the suggestions! Chad's grandparents who lived here for years had a very large garden in their backyard and have given us some advice. Wish us luck!

This is a post by Lesley

I just wanted to clear that up and let all the readers know that I will try my best to put as few spelling errors in here as possible, and also check it for spelling multiple times before I post. Anyway...

I'm so excited. The yearbook is almost done. We have 8 pages left to do, plus the index. It will be done in just a few days, which makes me super happy!

Also...we have just received our first sketch for our cabin. We are meeting with the builder next Saturday (hopefully--they just had a foot of snow in the canyon so we'll probably have to meet in town, which is fine), and plans are underway to build this summer! Yipee! I'm not going to show you the sketch we received today because it is just a first draft and won't be what the floor plan will actually look like. You'll see soon enough.

Another piece of exciting news...Chad got an A on his 6th nursing test! He only took his 5th one last Saturday so this was really fast. Only one more left, then the wait for his clinicals, then the NCLEX. Keep him in your prayers as he gets to the part that he sees as what is going to be the most difficult.

And...it's the weekend! We will do more work on the house this weekend and get all the laundry put up that had to be washed over the week since our house has been demolished. We'll post pictures as soon as all the flooring has been replaced (except for the existing tile), which should be over the next few weeks. Then the house will be safe to visit again.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

A Chad update

The title doesn't mean that I am updating you on Chad, It means that I, Chad, am creating this post. It will be filled with random pictures of our lives right now. First, as many of you now I have begun the process of installing saltillo tile in the entry way of our house. The demo is done and now we must drive to San Antonio on Spring break to get tile that matches. I used a 4.5 inch angle grinder to get the thin set up and in the process got dust on everything we own. Literally I think this dust is so aggressive that it has probably traveled to some Carribean island by now and created an asthma epidemic among their children. So much for my New Years resolution of bringing peace to the world. Maybe next year. Here are some pics of the demo and the aftermath.

The ugly tile before

My weapon

My destruction!!!!!!!!!

So here is the aftermath of grinding up thinset despite, I might add, my efforts to contain the dust.

Notice where the star once hung on our wall

We were up until 11:30 that night cleaning. On a lighter note here are some pics of my climbing wall.
My wife just the way i like her, barefoot and climbing Random picture of my garden area (formerly concrete slab)
My compost bin made of recyled material (old lattice and pallet) and filled with recycled material (notice the beatiful egg shell, banana peel, and purple onion...delicious!)