A Tribute to Nancy

When I started teaching 3 years ago, Nancy was my mentor. She was a great mentor always one step ahead of me and giving me little nudges when I needed them. When Nancy decided to move to the new school, I was a little sad that we would no longer be teaching together. But then I was blessed with the opportunity to go with her.

When Nancy got back from her Christmas vacation, she announced that she knew what she needed to do with her life (as if she hadn't already done enough)! She said that her mom is still able to be up and about and travel right now so she wanted to go and get to spend some time with her mom while she still could. She is retiring from 29 years of teaching and I am going to greatly miss her!

Here is a picture from her retirement party.

Lots of Updates

I'm sorry that it has been so long since I have updated my blog. Tomorrow is my last day of school so maybe I will have a little more time! Last weekend we went camping at Stillhouse Hollow Lake in Belton. It was only a short drive, so Bryan and I went and met a group from Hyde Park (my Mom's church). We had lots of fun and really good food. Ruth Ann made eggs and bacon for breakfast and we had Barbecue chicken for dinner. No hamburgers and hot dogs for us.

Here are some pictures from our adventure.


Here is Mom riding the jet ski, can you believe it?


The kids acting out the game of baseball stuffed animal style.


Mom getting some much needed sleep!

Can You Believe It

I have written two updates in one weekend, its like a record for me.

Jonathan and I had a date night last night and it was so much fun to get to hang out together like we used to pre-munchkin. We got some Chinese food and I really wanted to go to the movies, but Jonathan wasn't in a movies mood because it is so expensive these days. Then I admitted that I really only wanted to go for the popcorn. So we drove to the movie theater and ordered some popcorn (the concessions are outside of the ticketed area. But they moved the guy that takes the tickets and now he is right in front of the butter. You can't have movie popcorn without the butter! So I had to tell him that all I wanted was some butter and that we weren't watching a movie, he probably thought I was a dork, but let me through anyway. Our friends Tim and Emily have offered to take Bryan once a week so that we can have a date night. They are such a blessing!

Then we watched "The Weather Man." It had Nicolas Cage and I have always liked him as an actor, he seems real and not so glitzy like some of the stars. Anyway it was about a weather man who didn't actually have a degree in meteorology, he was basically a deliverer of lines. I won't tell you about the whole movie, in case you want to see it. It was rated R and it had very explicit language and some scenes that I could have done without. But you don't have to watch the movie to get this quote. Background: The main character was always trying to please his father and no matter what he did it didn't seem to matter. He was complaining to his father about how tough his life had gotten and his father said this, "The right answer is usually the difficult answer, there is no easy part about being an adult." I probably didn't get it just right, but it was something like that.

It really made me think, he's right. We complain about how hard our lives are, but we really only have one purpose, to serve God and that means serving others. If we could just get over ourselves and concentrate on that, maybe all of our decisions would be easier. I'm really preaching to myself!

For Scott

This blog entry is for Scott, who informed me this morning that I needed to update my blog. Well nothing exciting has been happening around here lately. I am counting down to the end of the school year, the kids are driving me crazy. They are irritable, the most common tattle this week was, "He's looking at me." And my response is usually "So?" I have been saying "Get over it," a lot in the past couple of weeks.

I also got a new bedspread for our bed. Our old one was just fine except that it is a down comforter and the temperatures have not been calling for extra warmth at night. Jonathan and I were using a thin blue blanket and a sheet and it just wasn't pretty so good old Wal-Mart came through. I found this sage green bedspread for only $25! It is thin and adds a little color to our very neutral room. As you noticed, I had to leave the purple throw pillows because I couldn't have a room without a little bit of purple in it.


I also put our wooden verse back up over our bed. This verse has been with us since we got married, it actually matched our bed which can be a hard thing to do. It has followed us from apartment to apartment over the last five years. But a couple of months ago I woke up in the middle of the night and started thinking about how we could both die if that wooden verse fell on us just right and I couldn't go back to sleep. We had to take it down right then. But I came back to my senses last weekend, it hasn't fallen down at any other place so why should it fall down here right?

I had a our choir concert this week and my kids did really well. We sang a couple of songs from the "Sound of Music." We sang a sappy song to make the parents cry, we also sang Syahamba and a piece called "The Journey." It is my favorite classical piece from Dvorak's New World Symphony put to words. Absolutely lovely. The flowers next to my bed are from one of my choir students. I also got some pink roses from another student. He is in fifth grade and I can tell that he they were from his mom, "I said thank you and tried to give him a hug, but he was a super cool fifth grader." It made me laugh.

We also had our carnival at school last night. Bryan was so pumped, he called it a party. The lines were very long and so after about an hour, I had the bright idea that we could go and play at McDonald's instead of wait out the lines. He fell for it!