Family time in Tyler

Okay, after many hours and a lot of patience, I have managed to upload some of my favorite pictures from the weekend. I took over 300 pictures because I had to do some "field testing" to learn about some equipment I'll be using to teach next semester, so these are just a few of the shots I got. Luckily there were lots of photo ops with all the cute little kids around.

Elle playing with her cousinsThree of the four cousins (not sure where Ava was in this picture, but good pose idea Joey)
My favorite picture of Joey & Emily from the weekend Sweet JoseySilly RileyI think Uncle Shawn was talking to Riley through the mail slotI love this picture of Josey playing with the leaves and Emily watching her in the background.I don't know what Elle did, but Shawn didn't like it.The tallest & the shortest in the family. Shawn didn't have to duck at all. Joey's got ups. (Shawn wasn't quite as successful jumping over Joey's head)Awwwww! Photo taken by Joey. Chad dropped me shortly after. Sweet little AvaI think Ava was walking too slow for Paul.Cute picture of the moms and their daughtersHmmm, maybe Josey takes more after her Uncle Chad than we had hoped for
Santa showed up at Paul's, and everyone was interested...Riley was a good sport. She even told Santa she wanted a ballerina or something like that. Elle was convinced to sit on Santa's lap so she could open her presents, but Ava wasn't having any of it.Neither was Josey for that matter ("Maybe if I cover my face that guy will go away")
I think Emily's a little too happy in these pictures that Josey is in complete misery. Nice.We had a fun weekend and can't wait to see our family again soon.

Just so you know...

I have been trying to upload a bunch of pictures from our weekend in Tyler for the past couple of days now, and Blogger/my internet haven't been cooperating. So far the only picture that has uploaded is this one of our new "green room." Chad painted this room last week and I love the way it turned out. I purposely didn't put a view of the whole room on here because it also contains Chad's drumset and our computer, neither of which I think add much aesthetic value to my attempts at decorating. Also...Chad made an A on his second nursing test today. Way to go Chad!

In other news, I have a little over one week of school left and it seems to be dragging quite slowly. No surprise there. I have quite a bit of planning to do for next semester, and I want to finish that before we leave for the holidays so I will have a work-free break. Also, Chad and I have made plans to take an anniversary trip to Ruidoso and stay at a lodge there. Can you believe we have been married for 4 years? It's gone by so fast. Maybe while we're there I can convince him to try skiing!

I'll keep working on the pictures.

We had a really good weekend. Thursday night we drove to Denton (probably saw 30 deer on the side of the road on the way there) to spend a couple days with my old roommate & friend from A&M, Emily, her husband Matt, and their son Tobin. Tobin and Josey both turned two on Thursday, so while we were there on Friday I helped Emily out with Tobin's birthday cake. This is the same roommate that microwaved a hamburger in its foil wrapper and didn't know how to cook pasta in college. Emily's going to kill me for saying that but I just wanted to show how far she's come! She has taken up baking and really loves it. Look at this adorable crayon cake she made! It was my first experience with fondant and I helped with mixing the black part. We had a good time hanging out and on Friday evening the four of us went to the Mavs game in Dallas and spent a little time with our friend Brent. Then we got up Saturday morning to make it back to Lubbock for my school's football playoff game, which they lost. And now we're back home and Chad's out working in the yard so I better go help him. Thanks Emily and Matt for a fun weekend!

Post-Thanksgiving blues

I love holidays and the time off that comes with them, but I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling depressed anytime it's back to work. Today was especially busy for me because we are finishing up our first yearbook deadline (90 pages, the biggest one and therefore the most work), and I completely procrastinated all my work over the break and decided I would just get to work early this morning and plan my lesson and get some stuff done. It was only after I woke up this morning and got to work when I realized that I have morning hall duty...every day, all week. Slight kink in the plans. Anyway, I still got my lessons done while my kids were reading the newspaper this morning (a bonus to teaching Journalism is that reading the newspaper every day is a great way to begin each lesson, and it actually has something to do with your subject.) Here are some pictures from the break, which was great.

Josh and Kellen are discussing the snow. Kellen had just woken up from his nap, looked outside, and said, "What's it doing?" So cute.Uncle Chad is showing Kellen how it's done. It took us a while to get him off the porch and into the snow. Kellen got the hang of it.
And here is what we woke up to on Saturday morning. Not much, but still fun!
Later that day, we decided to put lights on our house. I think we had to make three runs to the store for more lights by the time it was all said and done. Oh well, it's pretty.

Here is another view. I love how you can see our Christmas tree through the front window. Chad did most of the work on the lights even though I helped him some, and I have to say I think he did a great job. He knows that I've always wanted to put up lights once we bought our own home, so he was very gracious and accommodated my wish. He didn't even complain in the 25 degree weather.

Once we got home on Friday we went to my school's playoff game. The other team was good, but we were better and we advance to the next round of the playoffs on Saturday. And HOW ABOUT THOSE AGGIES?! What a good game on Friday. Gig 'em!

This coming weekend we will be visiting our friends Matt and Emily in Dallas and going to a Mavs game. I think I mentioned this in an earlier blog entry. We are excited to see them and I know Chad is looking forward to watching the Mavs play.

My parents: fashion clairvoyants?

Erin's most recent post reminded me of a post I started a few weeks ago, but of course Blogger wasn't letting me post pictures so I had forgotten about it. Anyway, here it is...

In the past few weeks I have noticed that all the trendsetters (cute little senior girls) are reusing footwear that my parents sported years ago. Now, I know most of you are aware that fashion tends to repeat itself every 30 years or so, but the trends that are becoming popular now are not necessarily ones I would pinpoint as being very popular 30 years ago or...well, ever really. You can read more about my parents' admitted lack of fashion sense (or maybe apathy) here. But alas, my parents apparently knew what they were doing when my dad began wearing "deck shoes" (Sperry Topsiders) and mom bought her first pair of Minnetonka moccasins (soft-soled, of course).

I'm not sure what to call this footwear phenomenon, but as I already told my mom, I will be truly worried when the teenage girls begin shopping at SAS. Ultimately, I think this is just more proof that comfort really is what matters most when it comes to choices of footwear. That, or the two folks that raised me have some type of sixth sense about what 18-year-old girls will think is cool 15 years from now.

Okay, so here is the evidence:

I took this shot at a signing last week of two of our students to college volleyball teams. These are the shoes that one of the girls was wearing. It's a bit blurry, but that's because I didn't want this girl thinking I was weird because I was taking a picture of her shoes. Yes, those are the exact pair of Minnetonka moccasins that my mom bought multiple pairs of over the past 15 years or so. And boy are they comfortable.

This picture was actually taken for the sole purpose of going on the fashion page of our yearbook. These are my editor's (another 18-year-old female) shoes.

So, there you have it. Even more proof that my parents (and my 2-year-old niece, apparently) have a unique sense of what is going to be the next hip thing.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, even though it isn't even Thanksgiving yet

Just thought I would post since I haven't in a few days. We got our Christmas tree a couple days ago and set it up last night. Now once we get back from Thanksgiving it will already be set up. It is in our front living room and I really like the way it looks in there, although we had to move some furniture to the den to accommodate it. I really like the way it turned out, given I didn't spend very much money on it at all and it's fake of course. The "real or not real" dilemma was never really a dilemma since someone in our house is allergic to everything. It's great to know I have five whole days off of work. I have spent my evening so far making desserts for Thanksgiving at mom and grandmother's house. I'm really looking forward to going to mom's for Thanksgiving this year. I'm pretty sure we haven't spent any holidays with my side of the family since before we moved to Arizona. We'll leave tomorrow morning and get back on Friday in time to watch the A&M football game and also to go to my school's playoff game on Friday night. Should be fun and cold.

Speaking of cold...it is supposed to get down to 25 two nights while we are gone. Chilly! I'm ready for it, and I think a certain sister-in-law is ready as well.

Well, I think that's about it. Everyone have a great Thanksgiving.

Not much news. Most of you already know that my journalism team won first place at our UIL meet this past weekend. They rocked. Our school's team also placed first overall which means we got to take the big trophy home. One of the things I appreciate about UIL is it still teaches the value of working hard to win, rather than perpetuating the "You're all winners" mentality. I'm sorry, but that mentality (the latter) is bunk and it breeds mediocrity. Maybe for the 4-year-old soccer team it's fine, but not for kids who will inevitably fail at some point in their lives. It's a good lesson to learn.

This week has been busy at school. We are coming up on our first deadline for the yearbook, and we sent our second issue of our paper to press on Monday. Chad's been ordering materials for his second nursing course and waiting it out until he doesn't have to go to work anymore. He still has two more shifts after today. For those of you who don't know, Chad quit his job and will be concentrating on getting through RN school and contemplating what he would like to do next in his life. I'm pretty sure most of you who read this blog already knew that though.

I'm excited about next week. We get to spend our first holiday season in three years actually getting to drive a few hours to see family instead of doing our own thing because we are too far away or shelling out the dough for plane tickets. It will be nice. We'll spend Thanksgiving at my mom's house, then we'll go to Tyler for a weekend and do Christmas, and then over my break we'll have Christmas here and then go to mom's again. It will also be nice because Chad will not be working 24-48s anymore, so we can actually enjoy our time with family instead of having to rush around everywhere.

Oh yeah, and the weekend after Thanksgiving we are going to see our friends Matt & Emily in the metroplex area and we'll be catching a Mavs game, which I know Chad and Matt are both very excited about (Emily and I are too, but we're probably just more excited to get to hang out with each other after so long).

November should be a fun month. It's already halfway over! By the way, thank you to those of you who called me, sent cards/gifts, and sent other messages to me for my birthday.

For those of you who like to keep up...

...with the minutiae of our lives, you may be interested to know that Chad passed his first Nursing Concepts exam. Only six more to go! As always, I am very proud of him.

In other news, I will be accompanying many teenagers to a UIL meet this weekend in the metroplex area and will be back Saturday. This is my first UIL competition as a coach (well...period, because my high school was in TAPPS), so it should be fun, and I will even get to judge some journalism events. I just wish I had an iPod for the 12 hours I will be in a bus with 40 high schoolers.

Also, Paul and Carolyn will be visiting this weekend, so we will have officially been visited by all the parental units since moving back to Texas.

And as for the search for the perfect pagan symbol goes, I found a great one that is 7.5' feet tall that I think we will purchase for our blue room. I have been itching to decorate for Christmas because I think it is such a waste to only get to look at the pretty lights for a few weeks. But alas, I have been overruled by my husband who says we cannot put the Christmas tree up earlier than Thanksgiving Day. So much for establishing my own family tradition of having up the Christmas tree for the good part of the fourth quarter.

No more to report. On to cleaning the house and packing for tomorrow. Let's hear it for missing another day of school to go on a trip. I love my job!

It's a small world after all

I went to the mall tonight. I was there for maybe an hour and a half. I was wearing my Blue Haven sweatshirt (pretty much the only thing I wear when it starts to get cool outside). Here are the comments I heard from three different people.

1. Random lady walking in the mall: "I went to Blue Haven!!!!!"
2. Girl at Bath Junkie: "When did you go to Blue Haven? My youth intern was a counselor there this summer." (I knew her, and we had actually camped at the same session back in the day)
3. Girl at Wicks 'n' Sticks: "When did you go to Blue Haven? Do you know ______?" (I did.) "I sang in a group with him at LCU." Me: "Oh, do you know [different person than the one she asked me about]?" (She did.)

So I guess anytime I want to play Two Degrees of Separation I should wear my Blue Haven gear. Luckily I have a lot of it.

'Tis the season

Wow. It's November already.

I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping. I just started today but I'm almost finished. One more day and I'll be done. I really enjoy getting things for people, especially when I know that they'll like it, and especially when I can get a lot of gifts in one fell swoop. One thing I don't enjoy is going from place to place to buy stuff, especially when pretty much anything you'd want you can buy online. That is why I pretty much insist that everyone around me have some sort of internet wishlist. Of course, that takes some of the element of surprise out of it, but I'd rather my loved ones be a little less than surprised with a gift they love rather than completely surprised by a hideous gift. "SURPRISE! This gift stinks!"

This brings me to the discussion I hear sometimes about purchasing things on the internet. I've heard it argued that purchasing things on the internet is no good, because it takes away from local businesses. I'm sure some of that's true, but let's face it, if we do buy things in our town it's not from the Sawyer Family General Store, owned by 6 generations of Sawyers ("I'll have 3 yards of that lovely calico fabric and 4 sticks of peppermint candy, please"); we usually head on over to the nearest Target or (gasp!) Wal-Mart. People out there running internet businesses are part of our local global community, so there. I know most of you reading this blog are not going to argue with me about this...but it's my blog and it's my ranting outlet, so I get to argue with imaginary people.

Anyway, next on my agenda (and I say "my" because Chad couldn't care less) is to buy a Christmas tree. I must do this because, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, all the gifts I am buying will be on their way soon and I need a pagan symbol to light up and put the gifts under. Maybe I'll go get one tonight. So the question is, fake or real? Hmmm, if I don't want to have to do this every year, I'll get a fake one. Cheaper in the long run, and not as messy. Yep. It's decided.

I also need to mention that it has begun. One of my students found my blog. Anje, if you are reading this, go away. No, I'm kidding. Kind of. I think "Go away" is the kind of thing that you're not supposed to say when you are a teacher and a student is reading your blog.

Changing the subject...one of our city councilmen is proposing a baggy pants ban in our city. What? Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous? Ooh, let's get more tight clothes on people. How attractive. At least baggy pants are modest. And how do you define baggy? Would I get fined if I wore some baggy sweatpants in public? Just because some fashion style is against your taste doesn't mean you should fine people for looking bad. In that case, let's start handing out tickets for people wearing tapered "mom jeans" and those half-jackets that only go to just below the armpits, or how about those coaches who wear those shorts with the two snaps on them? It's really interesting to me that the target of this proposal is baggy pants and not too much cleavage or really short skirts/shorts that show waaaay too much hiney. What about females who wear pants that are so tight it squeezes their back fat until it plumps out all around their belt? What about really low cut pants on females where you can see their...well all kinds of stuff you don't want to see? And really, before you say that you think it's a good idea to fine people for wearing baggy pants, think about the precedent that would set for all of us being told what we can and cannot wear. Let's be realistic here anyway...the guys wearing the baggy pants usually have baggy shirts that go all the way down to their knees anyway. I appreciate their willingness to keep it all covered up. By the way, I just checked the poll of people who think this is a good or bad idea, and 72% like the idea. I guess I am in the minority. If I was a cop I'd be a little ticked at the idea of having to patrol the streets looking for the "Pants Ordinance" violators instead of stopping real crime.

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?

New pictures

It has taken me quite a while to post these pictures for a couple reasons...one, we just finished making most of these changes at our house (see previous posts), and two, Blogger has been not-so-good about letting me post pictures. So, it is 9:45 on Thursday night, I just finished getting our guest room together, and thought I'd try posting again. It worked!

You've seen the above picture before, but it didn't have the couch in it. We moved the khaki couch to the front living room and you can see the furniture in the back living room that dad brought us. I've posted a closer up picture of that further down the post. Here is the "before" picture of the guest bedroom. It took me two weekends to strip that wallpaper border. What a pain. I will be perfectly happy if I never see another piece of wallpaper again. And here is the after. I just finished painting this room yesterday, and just took the tape off today. Obviously there is nothing up on the walls yet and no window coverings, because I took down the miniblinds so we can put something else there.

Here's the living room with the leather furniture in it. We now have a couch, a chair and an ottoman, a papasan chair, two rocking chairs, plus the furniture in the blue room. I love getting hand-me-down furniture. Maybe someday I'll feel the urge to buy furniture, but I haven't done that yet. Here is the "before" of the hideous guest bathroom. I just noticed that ivy birdhouse thing.

This is what we did on Labor Day. I think this was the most time-consuming room that we did.

Here is the finished product. I took off all the cabinets and painted them pure white. Obviously, we painted the walls the same color as our living room. We put in a new light fixture above the mirror (the one there was gold), and we will be putting in molding along the ceiling because we got paint on the ceiling. Here's our bathroom before. This one took Chad a long time. Post-wallpaper stripping. He also took off all of that blue tile that lined the wall and the shower. About this time we're thinking, uh, what have we gotten ourselves into?
Here is a picture of Chad in action. I was playing with the levels on my camera so this one looks kind of funny to me. As you can see Chad textured the walls and we painted them. I love how the color turned out. For some reason I guess I associate blue with bathrooms.

We put white trim around where the blue tile was, to match the trim that was already in the vanity area. And here's the vanity area. The top part was the same yellow and blue wallpaper and the bottom was a yellow. That's the part we painted brown. I don't like the way these pictures turned out but I really like the way the bathroom turned out. We replaced this light fixture as well. Here is the before of our room. It had a yellowish tinge to it.
And the after. I haven't done much to this room either, but I wanted to show it painted and with our new bedding. The color I picked out is just a much lighter shade of the dark brown from the bathroom, and it's called Indian Painting or something like that. It's the same color that is in the first bedroom.

And here's an upclose of our new bedding, which I matched the colors from for our bathroom.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with our house, but I just thought y'all would like to know what Chad is learning about in school. I need to go buy the bigger box of Crayons for all the many organisms he will be coloring.

I think that's about it for the home improvements. We have one last bedroom to paint and I'm thinking I may wait a few days. We are both really tired of painting, but at the same time I like it when everything is done. Enjoy the pictures.

Tired and busy

Those are the two words that would best describe Chad and me over the last couple weeks. Chad's new job is in full swing, and who can blame the guy for coming home and settling in for a nice nap after a 24-hour shift. This week I only had one training for work in the evening (whereas last week I had two, and open house...and this training was to get my district-issued laptop so it was kind of fun), but it still seems like we are pretty busy when we're not at work. We were really gung-ho about all the home improvements when we first moved in, but if you have ever bought a house before you know that that can get really old when there is something you need to do in pretty much every room. I soon discovered that the actual time it takes to complete a task is much longer than the time I think it's going to take me to complete the task. In other words, "Oh, all we need to do in this room is strip the wallpaper, take down and paint the cabinets, texture the walls and repaint, and replace the hardware on the cabinets" sounds pretty simple, but it has taken us the good part of 3 weeks off and on to do all that stuff. We've been trying to do all the little odds and ends to get our house put back together, and we are down to 2 1/2 rooms left to paint. I say 1/2 because I painted our bedroom last night but it needs another coat, which will probably get done tomorrow. It's amazing that our bedroom even got painted because the other day Chad had the audacity to tell me that I am not good at painting. Duh, because I secretly act like I'm no good at it so he'll say, "Here, I'll just do it myself." Anyway, our bedroom looks good so far if I do say so myself. Chad has been retiling/grouting our shower and bathroom so I'll be sure to get pictures of all that soon. This weekend dad is coming up to bring us some more furniture...a couch, chair and ottoman, so I think our furniture collection will finally be complete. Because of the generosity of our family (or eagerness to get rid of all their extra stuff?) we haven't had to buy a single new piece of furniture to fill the rooms of our house. What a blessing! Anyway, speaking of dad coming, I had this idea that I wanted to get his room painted before he came to stay. Well, that didn't happen, and now I'm enacting a new rule at the Montandon household: if you'd like to stay in a room at our house, you have to paint it first. Not really, but seriously dad, bring your paint clothes this weekend. It'll be a blast!

I'm sure those of you who read the blog were not really interested in the minutiae of our home redecorating, except for maybe my mom and sister. But, that's what we've been up to, so that's the update you're getting.

Happy birthday to Kellen who turns three in a couple days...

And Ava who turned one a week ago.

Weekend update

Well, let me first start off by saying we wish we were in Georgetown right now to see Shawn & Emma's house and celebrate Ava's first birthday, but that just ain't happening this weekend. Chad has his first official 24-hour shift today (good news: he's done with the training classes), so our schedule of being able to go out of town now officially revolves around the 24-48 schedule.

I had a good week at school. I am feeling more settled in and got to order my first batch of cameras...yippee! They are much nicer than the camera I own and I think the kids will be excited to get to be the first to use these brand new cameras. I also have a yearbook adviser's workshop on Monday at LCU so that should be a fun break from my routine.

Today will be busy. Since Chad started back to work (and I have been slacking for about a month now), our house is pretty much chaos. We are still in the "moving-in" mode which means we don't really put anything up, so I am devoting today to cleaning the house, putting stuff up in its proper place, finishing stripping the wallpaper in the front guest bedroom (it's just a border, so you'd think it would be easy, but it's not which is why I only did half of it last week), buying new hardware for all the bathroom and kitchen cabinets (I'm tired of looking at all that "bling"), and maybe starting on painting our bedroom. Now that I look at all this it sounds like a lot, so I probably won't do it all. After all, it is the weekend.

Yesterday Chad and I switched cars so he could go get my car inspected and registered. I love paying the state of Texas $400 for the privilege of driving two cars here. But seriously, I am excited to get Texas license plates back on my car, except for the fact that when you buy a car in Arizona there is no easy way to get a front license plate on when you move to another state because you don't have a front license plate in Arizona. So another thing I need to add to my list today is trying to figure out how to attach a license plate without having to completely drill holes through my front bumper. I think that's a job for the guys at Autozone or whatever they have here. I still remember when we put Arizona license plates on our car over two years ago. It felt so permanent. We had to go in two separate shifts because it took so long to get one car registered (seriously, like 4 hours) so I went back a different day and registered the Civic, and I kid you not, when I took off my old Texas license plates, I seriously cried. I felt like I was leaving Texas and never coming back. I guess that's what two years feels like at the head end of it. But in my defense, at the time we thought it was going to take Chad three years to finish school, and we also thought we'd be staying out west. That was before we looked at the price of a normal house. Anyway, all this to say it all worked out for the best and I'm glad to have Texas plates again.

Well, I better go. At 10 I have to go take an Excel Intermediate computer-based test for a competency I have to pass in order to write the grant for the rest of my cameras. There are all these classes I have to take and tests I have to pass, and the Excel test is the only one I haven't passed. I've taken it already, I just failed it the first time. You have to get an 80 and I got a 60, which by the way is passing in Arizona. Ugh! Stupid high standards!

This blog post has no main idea

This is a sneak preview of our bathroom and why you will be so impressed when Chad finishes with it, which will be this weekend. It already looks really good!






This is proof that I actually have a job. I always thought it would be cool to have a sign on my door with my name on it...like I would finally be a legit teacher, and that's what they did for me. I guess they figure they'll keep me around for a while.




One thing I like about teaching in Texas is that I have lots of students that say "Yes ma'am" and they're not being sarcastic. I've also discovered that I like teaching journalism because I don't really have to teach students how to be creative, which I'm not sure can be taught. I was always a little scared that I would be assigned to teach a creative writing class. I've also discovered in the two weeks I've been teaching Journalism full-time that I have been out of college long enough that I've forgotten a lot of things about the subject that I majored in, and I am having to study pretty much every day. That's okay though, because that keeps it from getting boring. Well, that's enough ramblings about my new teaching job. I'll be getting my brand-new laptop in a little over a week! Yippee!

Another thing I think about a lot lately is Sonic. I drive by two Sonics twice a day, so that's four Sonic drive-bys. The reason I have thought about Sonice lately is because they claim to be the ultimate drink stop. Here is something that is going to blow your mind: why is Sonic the ultimate drink stop? It's because they have good little ice chunks, styrofoam cups and flavored syrup. It seems no other fast food places have shown a desire to infiltrate Sonic's cornered market up to this point. I think I have an idea here. Buy some syrup and change your ice machine, and people will soon be driving through to get their drink from you instead of having to wait at a drive-in.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for pictures of the newly remodeled bathrooms.

Labor Day weekend

It has been a very eventful weekend. Friday when I got home from work, Barbara and Louise had already been in town for about an hour. Friday evening we went to eat at a yummy burger place here in town. Saturday Louise wanted to show me how to make her caramel pie recipe, only we didn't have all the ingredients needed, so I went to the grocery store. I guess Louise wanted to get started to make sure the pies had cooled in time for dinner so she had already started making the pies by the time I got back from the store. She was well into making the first pie, but I was there when she made the second one so now I'm a caramel pie expert, and Barbara I'll make one for you any time. :) Then, Saturday afternoon I got on this "I want my house to start looking like my house" kick, and I went shopping at all those places that you can only truly enjoy when you are by yourself and don't have a husband or kids with you. You know...Stein Mart, TJ Maxx, the fabric store, etc. I was on the lookout for bedding and bathroom linens because that way I could figure out a color scheme for each of the bedrooms...I've been holding off on painting and doing curtains because of that. Well, TJ Maxx was having a clearance and boy did I clear them out. Not really, but I bought bedding for two of the beds in our house and new towels for the guest bathroom, which will have the same blue on the walls as our piano room does and everything else will be white. I got so excited because I'm not a fan of most bedding I find, or it is way too expensive. So now all that's left to do in the bedrooms is paint, and completely change the floors but that's for another day and another paycheck. Anyway, I got off on a tangent...back to Saturday. I went to the fabric store to look at fabric for curtains for the kitchen and bathroom but realized it was time for me to come home and start working on dinner, because we were having Lynn, Celia and Margie over. Thanks for the dining table mom, we had room to spare! Anyway, I had this bright idea to try a new lasagna recipe while I had all this company at my house. I should know better than to do that, because Murphy's law dictates that if you don't do a trial run of a new recipe before serving it to guests, it's bound to be bad. But in this case, it worked out fine and the lasagna was good. In fact, I made two of them, so we've been eating lasagna leftovers for the past two days. Sunday we went to church and rested in the afternoon. This morning Barbara and Louise left pretty early, taking the dresser Chad has used for the past couple years with them. Chad's family plays musical dressers like my family plays musical beds. Today I have been in the guest bathroom stripping the totally sweet mauve wallpaper off the walls, which I still have not finished. It will take me all day. I'll spare you the "during" pictures and post when we are finished with our updates. Don't hold your breath though.

Whew! That was a lengthy update. Secretly I'm just avoiding stepping into that bathroom again, getting nasty wallpaper glue all over myself. Yuck. That's all for now I guess.