Some pictures from the weekend

We had a great time this weekend in Georgetown visiting Chad's side of the family. Emma and Shawn did a great job hosting lots of family. Here are a few pictures that I thought were pretty cute of the kids. Ava's getting ready to slide.
Riley and Elle...we celebrated their 4th birthdays this weekend. They are 2 1/2 weeks apart.

This one is hard to photograph. If Josey knows you want to take her picture, she completely ignores you. So I spent quite a bit of time with the camera on her and got a couple of cute shots.

And here's the newest addition, Lucy. Isn't she adorable? You can tell she is just loving sleeping on her dad's chest.

And thanks to Joey for getting this picture of Chad and me.

This weekend we are off to Georgetown to have a "Chad's side of the family" visit! We are so excited to have everyone together; it'll be the second time in the past 5 or so months that all the siblings and their kids have been in the same place, and we always have a blast. Only this time there will be one more! I'm taking my camera and I'm sure I'll have some fun pictures to post when I get back. We get to meet our niece Lucy for the first time. Time flies...seems like we were just meeting the other tiny little babies for the first time, and now they're all kids! You know, not babies anymore, kids. Speaking of that, we will also celebrate Elle's 4th birthday that happened a couple weeks ago. Riley gets a present too since her birthday was in March.

Also, I guess all our family knows now that Chad got a new job. What a blessing. He'll be working for a hospital here as a nurse tech until he does his clinicals and takes his NCLEX. He'll be able to turn in his availability and work when he wants to, pick the length of his shifts, and get practice for his clinicals. Also, he'll get a good feel for which unit he wants to work in when he becomes an RN. We are excited about the opportunities this blessing will open up for us in our lives.

I guess that is about it for now. Have a good weekend everyone! Yes, I know it's only Wednesday, but my weekend is starting earlier than that. Now, only 5 more weeks until school is out!

Fun (tiring) weekend

I don't remember when the last time was that I was the (lone) sponsor of 4 teenage girls for 4 days, but that was how it was this past weekend. I took my 4 2009 yearbook editors to a convention in Austin at UT, and we went a day early so we could get some planning done and of course go shopping and have enough time to eat at all my favorite Austin restaurants. Times like this are why I became a yearbook adviser. We had such a fun weekend. Our first stop on the way down was the side of the road. I kept pulling over to see if the patches of bluebonnets were enough to take pictures in. I hadn't really put a lot of thought into this, but I've realized lately that wildflowers don't really exist in west Texas. Growing up in Austin all my life, I just figured everywhere in Texas had the things. Anyway, most of these girls had never had their picture taken in bluebonnets before. Imagine how scandalized I was that you can call yourself a Texan and your parents never forced you to take cheesy bluebonnet pictures before! So, we did it. They were a little skeptical at first, but I think you can see that they turned out well. I even turned on the self-timer and put myself in one. Even with stopping to take pictures in the bluebonnets, it only took us 6 hours to get to Austin. Friday we spent the day just hanging out, Saturday was the convention at UT, and Sunday was the drive home. By the end of the weekend all four girls were just as excited about "everything yearbook" as I am all the time. I love my job!

Yes, they really were laughing this hard.

Good ol' Texas.

Bringin' in the big guns

APHIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!
or at least thats what i think they are. They look kind of like whiteflies and kinda like aphids and not exactly like anything i know, but I do know that they have obliterated all of my cucumber plants. One of them was beautiful and strong yesterday evening and this morning it was like the plant had never been there. Dry, crispy, and with a thousand tiny little holes in its little cotelydon leaves where they had sucked all of its juices out. My broccoli has been under attack but has held strong so far. I have found little nests of these things in the ground of my garden and rose bed. But now i am bringing in the organic big guns.....thats right: LADYBUGS. the aphids natural enemy. I went to a nursery to day and bought several butterfly flowers. they attract ladybugs. In fact, there was a ladybug all ready on one of the plants i bought and another landed on me while i was carrying it around in the nursery. I also bought two scented geraniums (aka citronella) and planted them in my garden as well. When I start earning some money I can buy more plants, and maybe some ladybugs if need be, but this should get me started. Anyway, this is a great test of patience for me. enjoy the pics.


butterfly





geranium

another 6 miler

I just ran my personal best: 6.02 miles in 55minutes. Thats 22.14 miles so far this month for me. I encourage everybody to get out and run or walk. you can go to MapMyRun and keep a great little training log, map out potential routes in your area, and see what routes other people recommend. Check it out! --Chad

New floors!

here are berfores and afters of our new floors. Enjoy.

Procrastinating

I am totally procrastinating right now. My job today is to get the 5th issue of our paper ready to go to press (and yes, the students did do their job, but my eyes are always the last ones to look at everything so nothing goes into print that I did not approve). Well, this takes a few hours to go through and I've been meaning to get to it all day, but duh, I've been teaching. So I've saved everything on my flash drive and will make a date with my laptop, issue 5, and "American Idol" tonight. I'd invite Chad, but I bet he's not interested given the other guests.

Well, we are going to state UIL. One of my students qualified as an alternate so Chad and I will be accompanying him in a few weeks to Austin for the meet. He may or may not compete, but if anyone doesn't show up, he's in, so we're going just in case that happens.

So I guess Chad told you about the big run. I was exhausted last night, but when I woke up this morning I felt good, and only my knee joints were sore--no muscles. Pretty cool.

Last thing...prepare to see some pictures pretty soon of our new floors. We replaced the floors in the front living room and all three bedrooms. The carpet was stained and gross from the previous owners, and we made it worse because we knew we'd eventually rip it out, so when we painted the rooms we weren't exactly what you would call careful with not getting paint on the carpet. All those rooms are wood now, so the house now has no carpet in it. Yay! Perfect for folks like us who don't take kindly to all the junk that gets caught in the carpet from dust, dirt, pets, etc...and our poor children who will probably have their father's respiratory issues. Anyway, it looks awesome and I have been itching to start taking pictures of it, but I've decided I'll wait until they're completely finished and the floors are actually clean. We have all the furniture from those rooms out in the garage and we're sleeping on our mattress in the living room, which has been pretty comfortable. Anyway...stay tuned.

the run

Everyone needs to give Lesley a hand. Last night we ran 6 miles together. This was Lesleys first time to run 6 consecutive miles, and only my second. I am more proud of her though because she ended up taking a wrong turn towards the end and I'm pretty sure that put her over the 6 mile mark, but she just kept on running. I'm proud of you honey!!

New niece & what's going on around here

The most exciting thing that is happening in our lives right now isn't actually happening to us, except indirectly. Chad's sister Emily gave birth to Lucy Adele Myers yesterday, and we are so excited to meet her! I know I've said this before, but nieces and nephews are so fun to have. Erin will have another baby girl in August, and that will make 8 for us. That's a lot of kids born in less than 4 years to our siblings! It's fun being the youngest.



Some other less important things are going on lately, such as me remembering why it's a bad idea to run at night. Chad and I went running together after playing volleyball up at church last night, and on the very last stretch my foot caught on an uneven part of the sidewalk. The irony is that this part of the sidewalk is painted YELLOW with reflective paint, and I've noticed it many times when I run during the day. But, it doesn't show up at night. Anyway, I caught myself with my left shoulder and elbow, followed by my right knee. All day my kids were asking, "Why are you limping?" And they got a kick out of the story. Glad it was amusing to someone.



Another thing going on in my life is journalism stuff. Our regional competition is this weekend, and two of my three kids advanced from the district competition, where our school took first place for the first time since the '80s. I'll let you know if either of them advance to state, which buys me a free trip to Austin and a day off school! Sweet!



Also, a few weeks back I chronicled the beginnings of our garden. Well, planting herbs from seed is not for the faint of heart, and I've already caved and bought herb plants, which were still cheap and are doing GREAT! I've already used some of the dill, and I've harvested some basil and Italian parsley. I've been reading about how you can turn fresh herbs into a paste and freeze in ice cube trays to use as fresh, so I think I'll do that to preserve what I've already harvested so I don't feel like I have to use it right away. I have two tomato plants that have sprouted and seem to be doing very well, although I've read a lot about how finicky tomato plants can be, so we're taking care not to disturb them too much while they're gaining their strength. Chad's garden is taking shape. He's already got two rows of spinach coming up, and he's planted tomatillos and a couple other things from seed, and the tomatillos come to mind because some of those have sprouted.



And finally, Chad applied today for his clinicals. This is what the long wait is for. We'll let you know when that happens. Now, it's sit and wait time.