I have been tagged.

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply to Chris's tag. Thanks Chris, I feel loved.

4 jobs I've had in my life:
1. Elementary music teacher
2. Elementary band teacher
3. Children's Choir director at a Presbyterian church (don't worry, I went forward)
4. JCPenney associate in the children's department

Notice a theme?

4 movies I could watch over and over
1. Return to Me
2. While You Were Sleeping
3. The Italian Job
4. Stepmom

4 TV shows I love to watch
1. CSI
2. Gray's Anatomy
3. House
4. Nanny 911

4 Places where I have lived:
1. Temple
2. Edmond, OK
3. Austin
4. ?

4 Places I've been on vacation:
1. Destin, FL
2. Connecticut
3. Disney World
4. Galveston

4 Places I'd rather be:
1. On a cruise
2. On any vacation

4 of my favorite foods:
1. Pizza (surprising huh?)
2. Peanut butter and banana shakes
3. Pancakes/waffles
4. grilled chicken

Great Weekend

My mom and Debi came up for the weekend to visit Bryan and we had a good visit! Friday night, I got in late from a convention in San Antonio and we got to visit a little. Then on Saturday we all slept late and had a lazy day. We had waffles for breakfast, sat around and talked, rented a couple movies and did some grocery shopping. Then Saturday night Jonathan and I got to go on a date. Taking care of a child makes us really appreciate our time together.

We went to see Firewall. It had Harrison Ford in it and I don't know the names of the other actors and actresses. It was pretty good, with lots of action. We were a little dissapointed by its abrupt ending. Jonathan said that they probably ran out of money and decided to end the story. I think that they hit the 2 hour mark and had to stop.

Sunday it was icy and church was canceled, so we slept late again and spent the morning talking. Then Debi took Bryan to McDonalds for some Mommy/son time and they really enjoyed themselves. When it was time for Debi and Mom to leave, Bryan got a little upset and said that he didn't want her to go. I hugged on him and we talked about why he was living here and how much his mom loved him. Then he was cheered up when we decided to "dogpile" some pillows in the living room.

Then we ate dinner and did some homework. I have been teaching him how to clean his own bathroom and he really takes pride in the fact that he does it. Thank goodness for bleach wipes! Then I told him that I had to go and clean my bathroom and he said, "Can I help?!" I said that I would love for him to help. That was a surprise. He helped me clean the whole house. We scrubbed the stains in the carpet, vacuumed, cleaned my bedroom, and he loved his job of emptying all of the little trash cans into the big one. He was excited every time we found another one that needed to be emptied. What a great weekend.

Thoughts From a Little Man

Well Bryan has been with us for about 4 days now. He has survived going to a brand new school, settling into a new room and living with two people who have never lived with kids. Tonight I was in the other room and I heard Bryan exclaim, "Oh Emmy, you're having a bad hair day." Followed by some exclamations about cute kitties. I assumed he was looking at my screne saver on my computer. I came back in the room and he said, "Hey Becca, why don't you have more pictures of me?" I said well I do have a picture of you as my background on my computer. He said, "Yeah, but you have lots of pictures of Nat J and Emmy and not lots of pictures of me." I said, "Okay let's take some." His favorite was this one. He got out all of his favorite stuffed animals and put them on his bed one at a time so that they would be in just the right place. Then we loaded it on my computer and he said that he wanted it to be my background, "Can you do that?" I said, "Sure" and put it as the background. He then said that Nat J and Emmy will probably want their picture back on there, but that he liked it this way.


Here is one of him and his mom. In case you couldn't tell he loves his new bed, thanks Pam!

Just For a Little While

We have been blessed with a guest in our home. Our seven year old nephew is going to stay with us for a little while. We are excited about him coming. We have started our preparations: new room decor that does not have pink flowers, new bathroom toiletries that won't burn the eyes, an evening schedule that might be more for us than him, but most of all prayer that this will be the best place for him even if it is just for a little while.

A Hamburger

As most of you know, I have not had a hamburger in about 10 years. I usually never crave them, but one time a couple of months ago I did have 2 bites of Jonathan's whataburger. I don't know what came over me, I just wanted some really badly. Then I recently discovered ground turkey meat. I have made things like lasagna and tater tot casserole and tonight I made myself a hamburger, or should I say a turkey burger. While I know that it is not exactly the original, it was good. Don't worry, I did make Jonathan a regular burger, I don't make him eat turkey all the time. And it is definitely healthy, it hardly shrank, which resulted in a big burger. Oops.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Happy birthday to Karen
Happy birthday to Karen
Happy birthday dear Karen
Happy birthday to you!

Karen turned 28 yesterday!!!!

2006

So it is another year. The biggest change for me when a new year starts is writing the checks with the correct year or noticing dates printed with 06. This was an unusual New Years for us. For the 1st time in our 5 years of marriage, Jonathan was off work, but he was still hard at work. We took one our friends from church with us and we headed down to Austin. First stop was my mom's house where a music teacher and an airplane mechanic became electricians and plumbers. My mom got a garbage disposal for Christmas about 3 years ago and she always talks about how it would be nice to have it in. Jonathan said that he wouldn't mind putting it in, but he was unsure about the electrical side of things since it would involve wiring with the dishwasher. But somehow, armed with his friend Tim (the music teacher), he had a new confidence in his abilities.

Mom decided to go ahead and get a new sink because hers was really old and she might as well get it all done. So they set off on their project and there seemed to be many obstacles along the way, but after learning how to wire the dishwasher, install a switch, sauter a new pipe to the old one (which was leaking) and make a sink fit in a hole that was too big for it, the sink and garbage disposal are working!

Then the next day they headed over to Jonathan's dad's house to put a floor in their attic. That of course had its own obstacles, Tim made a nice skylight in Chris's closet and Chris didn't even know that he always wanted a skylight in his closet. They got about half of it done and will probably go back another weekend to finish the job.

Tomorrow is back to the grind at work, but I am going to enjoy my day off today! I might lay around and think of some resolutions that I should make, or I might just resolve to take naps all day, we'll see what my inspiration is. But I wish a happy and blessed year to all of my friends and family!

The Ancient Fertility Monkeys

About 3 years ago at our cousin's wedding (Kori and Steve), a gift was given by our other cousin (Jama). The gift was the most beautiful ancient fertility monkeys. As Kori opened this beautiful gift, she read the note that went along with them. It said that these fertility monkeys were being sold by a missionary at ACU to help him raise funds for his mission work in Africa. They were pagan idols that would aide in fertility process. As Kori opened these monkeys, she was speechless because they were so "beautiful."

Well Kori wanted to share the wealth of these fertility monkeys so she gave them to her sister for her birthday. Well Becki (Kori's sister) didn't want to keep them for herself either so she brought them to our family white elephant exchange. And Shara (who helped Jama pick them out) ended up with this beautiful gift. Again, the monkeys traveled afar to share their fertility power as they ended up on the other side of the Tome family at the white elephant exchange, and guess who opened them? Jama!

Update: The monkeys were actually bought at Big Lots for around $10 and so far no missionary has used Pagan idols to raise funds. There have been no babies created and the moral of the story is, if you give someone a very ugly gift, be careful because they might give it back to you!

5 YEARS

Sunday was our 5 year anniversary. It is hard to believe that it has already been five years. We went down to Austin and got a room at the same hotel that we stayed in when we got married. The room looked very similar to the original, but we couldn't remember the original room number. We got to the hotel about 4 from being with the fam and then got ready and went out to dinner. We went to Pappasidos and it was very, very good. It was a special occasion so we even ordered dessert. We forgot to take our wedding video with us (we usually watch it every year), plus it is on an ancient VCR tape and I didn't see a player there. We will have to get Scott to transfer it over to DVD for us. We are very thankful for our 5 years together and we are looking forward to many more to come.

The Man Room

Jonathan has not felt settled in our new house. I know that part of it still just hasn't set in that we get to live here, but he is also a little frustrated because he has not been able to use his "man room." For those of you who don't know, a man has two primary places in the house-the living room and the garage. Our garage has kind of served as our junk room these past two months and we finally got to clean it up a little this weekend. We of course still have a lot to do, but it is looking better.

Jonathan finally got to set up his tool cabinet. And it is very organized. I asked him if he was planning on keeping it this way and he said "Of course!" So I told him that I probably shouldn't use it that much. I did get a key from him and he thought that was a little unfair, but what if I need a hammer or something?

Christmas Tree dilemma

Since we stayed home this year, we actually got our Christmas decorations up over the Thanksgiving break. It was fun, I think that this is the first time that Jonathan has been home to help me (I usually do it while he is at work). We discovered that we have lots of little Christmas knick nacks (I don't know how to spell that word) that we put on our mantle and in our living room.

We bought a Christmas tree two years ago. It is about 6 feet tall and it looked perfect in our little apartment that we had. Well now it looks very small in our living room here. I guess that is a good problem to have and I think that it will just have to be small for a while. I let Jonathan put the lights on the tree because he is a perfectionist about that kind of stuff and I knew that if I put them on there, he would just redo them anyway. We do need a tree skirt now, so that is on my list for next year!

I have started singing Christmas songs with my kids at school and that really gets me in the spirit! One of my favorite little songs that I sing is called Jacky Jack Frost. The lyrics are

Little Jacky Jack Frost bites my nose,
Little Jacky Jack Frost stings my toes,
Little Jacky Jack Frost climbs the trees,
Little Jacky Jack Frost paints the leaves.

I try to always explain the lyrics to my kids when we sing songs, but that one is a doozy. Try explaining to Pk and 1st graders who have only every lived in Texas what frost and icicles are.

Oh on a good note. You know there is always a debate about Christmas celebration at school? Well I can sing Christmas songs because they are printed in our textbooks and the books were approved by the state. Isn't that awesome?

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. Ruth Ann and Chris and their fam came and spent the night on Wednesday. We had fun as Ruth Ann gave a pedicure to my mom, we watched a movie, and we all went to Wal-Mart in our slippers. Its always fun to have people come and stay with you. It was really fun to have a house too, there were places for everyone to sleep!

Then on Thursday we all got up, ate breakfast and started the cooking process. We had cooked a couple of things the night before, but we hadn't started until about 9:00, so we didn't get a whole lot done. Mom had come up to help cook. Since Thanksgiving was at my house, I felt like I needed to cook the turkey and stuff, but I needed my Mom's help. So she was in charge and Ruth Ann and I were her assistants.

We had a 22 pound turkey! Here is a picture.


In total we had 17 people at our house and we had a lot of fun. Quentin got to come up and I haven't seen him in a couple of months, so we enjoyed seeing him. My Aunt and Uncle came up too! Here is a picture of them.


I got to play my flute with my nieces, Kimmie plays the violin, Brittney and Marjorie play the flute too. We had fun making music together. The little ones got a little board watching footballl and watching us cook, so we put a movie on for them. Here is an adorable picture of them.


Overall, we had a great time and I am so thankful for my family. Karen and Scott, we missed you, but we know that you had a lot of fun!

Scott

Scott let us ride in his car, it was cool. Now I understand why Jonathan always wants a sports car. When we took off from a stop, my head was actually knocked back. Scott gave us the feel of a real sports car experience. We had a blast with Karen and Scott, here is a good picture of them (I even made Scott smile).

Smores

Then we made smores and Karen was druling over them!

The Worlds largest air mattress

After visiting our friends, we went shopping all day with Karen and Scott. We went to boy stores and we got to go to the world's largets Bed, Bath and Beyond. Then we stayed at Scott's apartment because it was a little bigger than Karen's. We were exhausted from shopping and ready for some rest. Scott went out and bought the world's largest air mattress, here is a picture of it and my reaction.

Fun Weekend

We got to go to Dallas this weekend to visit Karen and Scott. It is my birthday this Saturday so Jonathan and I had an early celebration and went to Medeival Times for dinner on Thursday night. It was really cool they had sword fighting, jousting, horse dancing and really good food. There was no silverware, so we had to eat with our hands-that was messy.

We had some time to kill before the show because Karen was still at work and we got almost all of our Christmas present bought, go Target!

Friday we got to sleep late, see a dollar movie and visit some computer stores that we don't have in Temple. Then when Karen and Scott got off work, we went out to dinner and rented a movie.

Saturday we got up early and went to IHOP to eat with some friends from college. Here is a picture of Julie and Casey and their little daughter, Bailey. As you can see, Bailey loves to have her picture taken.

Perks of Being a Music Teacher

We just had a new textbook adoption for music books. The stakes were very high for Texas and both companies really wanted our business. While I did not get to partake in the voting (there were three music teachers at my school and only 2 votes), the company that I was rooting for got the vote. Their textbook actually has some stuff that I might use. You see the books are in some ways written for people who don't know anything about music, and therefore do not cover the curriculum that I teach. But this book actually has Kodaly stuff in it. I have already used like three lessons from it.

Anyway, back to the perks. On Thursday, my ipod came in! MacMillan/McGraw-HIll bought every teacher an ipod that was in a district that got their books. I'm sure that the cost was included in the price of the textbook in some way, but its still cool. The reason they gave us the ipods is so that we can load all of the CD's onto it and not have to use the CD's anymore. We just search through our ipod when we need a song. It is way cool! I have started loading CD's on their and that is a process. It took me about 2 hours to do one grade level, but I know it will be worth it! Go MacMillan!!!

Fried Chicken

We have lived in our house for about a month now and my parents had not seen it yet. So yesterday they drove up from Austin and we had lunch. My Mom brought her electric skillet and we made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and salad. It was wonderful! And I think that I might actually be able to make my Mom's fried chicken now. I did discover that I really do need to get an electric skillet though. That way you can regulate the temperature that the chicken cooks at.

We had a very good visit. We sat around and talked after lunch and we gave them the grand tour. My dad checked out the air conditioner, hot water heater and approved of all of the ceiling fans. He and Jonathan watched some football and did the male bonding and he took a nap on our love seat-the most comfortable couch in the world! Thanks Mom and Dad, it was great to see you again!

Speaking of eating, we got to eat on our new table. It has a leaf in it that tucks away inside when you are not using it. It is called the butterfly design, and it is very handy. Here is a picture of it.


On the table are some roses that Jonathan got me the other day. I got home from work Friday night and they were on the table along with a card. The card was beautiful and said how much he appreciates me. I thought he was so thoughtful, it was very sweet. He started a new schedule at work, he works Monday-Wednesday, open-close. Then he is off for the rest of the week. So I got to spend Thursday and Friday nights with him at home. I was telling Mom, I don't know if he has ever been off on a Friday night since we got married. I feel very blessed to be able to see him on a more regular basis now.

Retreat

Jonathan and I got to go on a retreat this weekend with our young marrieds class at church. It was in a little town about an hour and a half away, but don't ask me what it was called. It was a beautiful facility; they had paintball, volleyball, baseball, paddle boats, and a hay ride. One of the best things about this weekend was that they had cafeteria where we ate all of our meals. We didn't have to clean up, and the food was really good! It was nothing like the places I have always "camped at." But I must warn you so that you are not shocked, that it was not a Church of Christ establishment.

We got there Friday night and played games and talked, most of us went to bed by 11, we are so old. Then Saturday we got up and had about 4 hours of a mini marriage seminar given by the parents of one of our couples in our class. It was very good. We talked about spiritual leadership, roles as husbands and wives, and money. Jonathan and I have declared a war on our debt! They had some good pointers about paying off your debt, and Jonathan and I are going to try to implement them over the next year.

We also got to ride out to the retreat with some of our first friends that we met when we moved here. In fact for a while, they were our only friends. They recently placed membership at our church and it was good to see them again. Here are some pictures from this weekend.

How do you loose a child in your own house?

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. Lots has happened. Last weekend, I kept Christ and Ruth Ann's little ones, 2 and 3. Jonathan was supposed to be here to help me, but he had to go to his grandfather's farm to help clean up after the hurricane. The kids were very well behaved, I was just exhausted. Wow I gained new perspective because this is the first time that I kept both of them. Go Moms!

Emmy gave me quite a scare on their fist night here. I woke up about 11 and I looked over to check on the kids. They had both fallen asleep in the bed with me. Nathaniel was snoring away, but I didn't see Emmy. I made palates on the floor for them before we went to sleep, so I thought maybe she had gotten up and gone to sleep on her pallet. But I looked there with no luck. I began to look around my room, under the bed, in the closet, no luck. I went into the living room, still no luck. I looked in Jeff's room, I looked in the kitchen. Then I started to panic, "I lost their baby!" then I realized that I had not checked in the office. I opened the door and there she was curled up on the one corner of the fouton that was not covered with boxes. She had to have crawled over a fan that was taken apart and lots of boxes to get there. I grabbed her and hugged her. When I put her back to bed, I made sure to lock the bedroom door so that she could not escape again.