Thursday, August 28, 2008

Ready for Friday

I'm having a good week, am loving my job and all 55 kids, but I is pooped. So we're headed out to dinner tonight with good friends, where I'll indulge in fried catfish and fun conversation. More when I've had a good night's sleep...

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Friday, August 22, 2008

Room 204


Well, the time has come. "Meet the Teacher" night has passed, the room is ready, the pencils and crayons and glue and scissors are organized, and the door is decorated. Now all I need is a weekend of sleep and good thoughts, and I think I'll be ready.

Hash #8

Alright, I'm back I think. Life's challenges forced me to take a little sabbatical for a while. I'm just going to post some pictures from the last hash, which we hosted Saturday evening. I think it was the best hash yet, because of the trail, the weather, the company, and the good times. Click on each picture for a closer view.


Luke (and Holden), Brandi, Jason, Jackie, James, Naomi, Stephen, Alan, & Richard


Alan and Naomi


Jason and Jackie in the parking garage


We were kind of tired at this point. That's Luke, me, Jason, and Jackie.


Some of the trail symbols.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

I is educated

I've spent the past couple of days playing musical chairs in what I thought was a class for adults. You know, if you want teachers to feel like professionals, don't treat them like children. I don't need to pretend I'm a statue, build anything with paper plates and cups, or sit in a circle and talk about my feelings, but I've done more than my share of that over the summer. Just hand me the book and let me go teach. I got it, thanks.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Nevermind

Recently I've been thinking I should get my hair cut short again, and then I go back through pictures and see this:

YOWZA! I'm thinking, NO.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The girls

I suppose it's another mom thing, but there's just something about seeing your kids together, like this, that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When you have more than one child, you essentially are giving them the irreplacable gift of each other. Yeah, it's a little melodramatic, but true!

Monday, August 11, 2008

A much needed manicure

Most of our weekend consisted of yard work, and we'd let so many things go that there was a ton to do. Between the potato vine explosion and the passion vine that intrudes on anything in its path, it was like Little Shop of Horrors in the backyard. This is the potato vine "under control," but that's a relative term:



We also replaced the mulch in all the flower beds, both front and back, which ended up being two trips to Home Depot and 15 bags of mulch. I'm going to pass on telling about my Home Depot experience, for now. Anyway, I like the new dark brown:



But sometimes the best things in nature are those that happen naturally. We inherited this old chair when we bought the house, but I had nothing to do with the Morning Glory that popped up this year and made its claim:



Sweet!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

My Chandler

If you've seen every episode of Friends like I have (and several more than once), then surely you know the one where Chandler and Monica try to have engagement pictures taken, but Chandler can't for the life of him take a decent picture. His smile was always contorted, or he smiled at the completely wrong time, or he just couldn't smile period. Well it seems Alan has developed what we call "The Chandler Syndrome." Used to, Alan smiled so much in every picture that it looked more like he was laughing. So we were kind enough to make him feel really self-conscious about it, and now he's thinking way too hard about what to do!









You should see the ones I deleted on the spot.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Graced with his presence

Been kind of busy with work this week, so today's another picture day. I snapped this photo yesterday, because it's rare that Junior will lie this close to anyone for more than 30 seconds, and this lasted maybe 15 minutes.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Inventory

It might be time to reevaluate how much cereal we eat. OR, not let Alan go to the grocery store by himself. I'm leaning towards the latter. We have thirteen boxes for three people. And I've been so busy eating my senior-citizen-high-fiber cereal, that I've lost track of how old that box of Frosted Flakes is.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Check it off!

Haven't you made that list in your head of the things you must do before you die? You're lying if you say you haven't. Well for me, going to a Braves game in Atlanta was on my list, so I felt pretty fortunate this weekend to be spending two days at Turner Field. It was awesome!

They played the Brewers, which meant we got to see Prince Fielder hit three homeruns and C.C. Sabathia pitch nearly nine innings on Saturday. Which really means nothing if you're not a baseball fan.



My partner in crime...wouldn't have been the same going with anyone other than Alan:



We put some time into making these signs and never made it on the Game Vision board! Seriously, I could write a whole post on the making of the signs. We planned, argued, debated, analyzed, argued some more, and finally compromised. Our seats on this day were nowhere near a camera man, which made all the difference. We tried to get the FOX camera guy to see us, but oh well...Alan still had fun showing our sign to any and EVERYONE throughout the day.



Good ole Bobby Cox!


Jeff Francoeur's not having his best season right now, but he's still awesome to watch in the outfield:

And lastly, my hero, Chipper Jones (that's him facing the camera). Did I mention that I didn't want to wait this late in the season to go to a game, soley because I WAS AFRAID CHIPPER WOULD GET HURT? Going in August was Alan's idea. THANKS.



It was a great trip, and the scenery wasn't too bad either (I spied a tree or two.) Something else interesting about being there was that we were definitely minorities, ethnically speaking. And you know, that's kind of a cool thing to experience. However, that one brief period when we were lost in the hood and could only think of all those episodes of The First 48 that were filmed IN ATLANTA...yeah, that was a little uncomfortable.

Hopefully it wasn't our last trip to Atlanta for a game, but at least now I can die peacefully. :-)