Too long!

Sorry I haven't posted in a loooong time. My Grandpa is doing better.  He gets to leave the hospital tomorrow!  He has some short term memory issues, and we're still not sure how much damage has been done to his heart, but he hasn't had another stroke and that's a good sign! 

A couple weeks ago, Robert Fitzgerald and I threw a couple's shower for our good friend Ashley and her fiance, Justin.  It was a luau theme, and lucky for us, Robert had a ton of luau decorations (he's a choir teacher, and apparently they use a lot of props!).  Here are some pics from our lovely shindig.

We have also celebrated several birthdays since my last post! May is a very busy birthday month for us.  My Dad's birthday, Bayleigh's birthday, and Kari Beth and Aaron's birthday!  Don't forget Mother's Day!   BUSY BUSY BUSY! Here's a few pics of the festivities throughout the birthdays!

At Jose's for Kari and Aaron's Bdays.

Aaron's tattoo themed cookies.

The Birthday couple!

Here are my sweet parents trying to cut Bayleigh's Maggie Moo's ice cream cake! YUMMM!

Me and the birthday girl!

My parents left on Friday to go on a cruise! I'm so jealous, and I miss them already.  They won't be back until next Sunday.  I don't know if I can make it that long without seeing them!! :( I only have 10 more days of work left! Thank the Lord! I'm soooo ready for summer vacay!!!

Grandpa

We've had a rollercoaster of a week. On Wednesday, I had just gotten out of a faculty meeting and had five missed calls from my mom, dad, and cousin. Not a good sign. I quickly called my Dad back and he informed me that my Grandpa had a stroke and they were in the emergency room. SCARY! I rushed to the ER to find my cute little Grandpa so scared, confused, and not making any sense. He couldn't move his left arm and his speech was slurred. It. Was. Terrible. None of us knew why he had a stroke, and the next few days were a big waiting game. It turns out, he had gotten a bacterial infection in his heart valve and a piece of the valve broke off and caused him to have the stroke. Thankfully, he has gotten his speech back and can move his arm now. GOD IS GOOD! He's almost back to normal except he still can't move his left hand very well. Next week, we should find out how much damage has been done to his heart valve. I'm very thankful that he has recovered as much as he has, and I hope that there hasn't been too much damage done to his heart. Please keep us in your prayers.

Fab Find, Rainbows, & Bathroom Makeover!

Well most of these things have happened before my last post, but I'm just now discussing them. First of all, we painted our guest bathroom turquoise a couple weeks ago. I really like it. It's much better than the drab green I had. Here's the new bathroom!


A couple weeks ago, I stopped at a store called Monday's Child that was going out of business.It has children's clothes and decorations. I was actually looking for a gift for a friend who is expecting and I ended up buying something for myself. Selfish much? I think so! Anywho, I found this really cute frame. I have seen frames like this for $150, but I got this one for $10!!! I was so proud of myself for finding such a good deal! I know it may be a little bit juvenile, but I love it! Any thoughts??

Last, but not least, there was a gorgeous rainbow out on Friday night. B-E-A-Utiful!

Tomorrow we are taking all of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders to an Arkansas Naturals Game. It's going to be so fun, but I'll probably be exhuasted at the end of the day. Pray for me!!!!

Easter Weekend

What a busy weekend! It flew by and I think I was more exhausted at the end of this weekend than I was at the end of the work week!!! Even though I was extremely busy, we still had a great time.
Right when I got off work on Friday, I met Gary's sisters, nieces, and Mom at Different Strokes. I painted a doggie bowl for Tina....not sure how it will turn out, but we'll see. For some reason, I had the hardest time deciding what I wanted to paint and how I would paint it. Talk about STRESS!!!
I get to pick it up on Wednesday!!! After painting pottery, we went to eat at Mama Dean's. It's a tiny soul food restaurant deep in Fayetteville. It was DELICIOUS! I think I gained about 10 pounds that night.

On Saturday, we went to our niece's (Mackenzie) soccer game. It was so cute. I think it's hilarious when those coaches get so worked up over an eight year old's soccer game. There was the cutest little goalie named Debbie. She was eight years old and was working so hard. It was precious. She loved when we cheered for her. Gary also had the idea to bring Tina to the game. I was completely against the idea (if you know Tina, then you know why), but I finally gave in. She was actually really good. She just sat on my lap and sun bathed for most of the game.




After the soccer game, we had a crawfish boil. I'm not a big crawfish fan, but Gary and his family love them, so I went along with it. Our neice, Avery, loved playing with the crawfish before we cooked them. They are still alive right up until you boil them. At one point, Avery took one out of the ice chest and told it, "You've been a bad boy! I'm going to eat you!" It was hysterical. Here's a few pics of her taunting these poor creatures.


While the crawfish were having their date with death, I brought the girls in for a fun little cooking project. I saw this commercial on t.v., and it looked like a good idea. It was very fun, but extremely messy. We made rice crispy treats and formed them into egg shapes and then dipped them in melted chocolate. When the chocolate dried, the girls decorated them with icing. Avery preferred to suck the icing out of her dispenser and then decorate them. It was too funny.





Here's a few more pics of some of our delicous sugary treats from Easter.


Finally, on Easter Sunday, we went to church with my parents and Gary's parents at a new church we've been attending. We are so happy we've found this church. It just feels right. Overall, it was a great Easter weekend. We are truly blessed. Thank you Jesus for dying on the cross for our sins! I hope everyone had a very Hoppy Easter!

Free at Last!

Finally, I have finished my ESL project! FINALLY!!!!!!! You may be asking yourself, "What in the world is ESL?" Well, it stands for English as a Second Language, and I took a 2 week long course over the summer that ended up counting as 12 graduate school hours! I went Monday through Sunday from 8 in the morning until 8 at night for two weeks! It was hellacious (not sure if that's a real word), but I learned a lot. After that, we had to complete a humongous project in order to get the college credit. Can I just tell you what a pain that thing was? It ended up being about 60 pages long and I have been working on it about every weekend for the past few months. YUCK! But, I'm finally done! Praise the Lord!
Okay, so right now I'm watching Slumdog Millionaire for the first time. It's sooooo good, but it's really sad. It makes me want to fly to India and adopt a cute little kiddo from there. Every kid in this movie is adorable!!!
One last thing: I have to say congratulations to my friend Kari Beth for running her first 5K! You rock! I hope to be able to run for more than a mile someday! :)
Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Jamaican me Thankful!

Well, we made it back safely from our trip to Jamaica! It was soooooooo much fun! It made me realize how blessed I am to have such wonderful friends, a wonderful husband, and the opportunity to go somewhere like that. Who knows when we'll be able to do something like that again....hopefully next year!!! Here's some pics from our super fun trip!

This was our view from where we did the zip line. Can you say B-E-A-UTIFUL?!?
Here's me and my bestest friend Kari all geared up for zip lining!

Our husbands in the ocean on the first day.

Kari and Aaron relaxing at the beach bar!

PARADISE!!!!!!!!!!!

Soap Box

WOO! It's been a long week, and it's only Tuesday. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I don't really have a good excuse, other than just being lazy. Actually, being lazy is part of the reason I'm making this post. I'd rather sit here and type than go make dinner and do other chores.
I'm so ready for SPRING BREAK! Gary and I are going to Jamaica with some VERY great friends. I cannot wait. I don't think I have ever been in more need of a vacay than now! We have benchmark tests coming up, and if you're a teacher in Springdale then you know how stressful that can be, which leads me to my soapbox.
So, I hear Obama wants to give teachers merit pay. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's bonuses for teachers who have large groups of students with high scores on the state wide tests. Hmmmmmmm....let's think about this for a minute. Do you really think it's fair to give teachers bonuses based on test scores in Springdale versus, for example, a city like Bentonville? Do you REALLY think that's fair considering the demographics in those two places? For those of you who haven't been to Springdale lately, we have an EXTREMELY large population of hispanics, who don't speak English all that well. So do you really think it's a reflection of my ability as a teacher if those students don't pass the benchmark? Or maybe it's a reflection of the fact that these poor children haven't had a chance to become fluent in English and then they are expected to pass a test, a very difficult test, in ENGLISH??!?!! Really? Really??? REALLY? I don't think so! I would like to see how Obama did on a test in Spanish after he lived in Mexico for a year.
Sorry for all the negativity. Can you tell I need a vacation? Jamaica, here I come!!!!!!!!!

King Cake + trying to get in shape= BAD NEWS!

Okay, so every year around this time, Gary's Aunt Nancy sends us a king cake in the mail for Mardi Gras!!! I had never heard of one of these until last year when we received one in the mail. Sidenote: Gary is from New Orleans and a lot of his family still lives there. If you don't know what a King Cake is, you're missing out. It's like a giant pastry with the most amazing frosting on it. It also has a tiny plastic baby baked into it (CHOKING HAZARD). Anywho, this cake is a tradition for people in New Orleans to eat around this time of year and whoever gets the slice with the baby in it is responsible for buying the cake the next year. Well, tonight on my very first slice, I GOT THE BABY! I don't think they want me to send them one though because our King Cakes fail in comparison to the ones in Louisiana. They are fabulous!!! I called our Aunt Nancy today to thank her and she told me she stood in line for an hour and a half to get that cake! Let me just tell you, it was worth it. That thing is AMAZING! I've already had two slices.....which is not doing too much for my figure. :( I'm hoping I'll get to experience the real Mardi Gras one day in New Orleans. Kari, if you're reading this, that should be our next excursion with our hubbies!!! Here's a pic of this wonderful treat!!!

Also, check out this website: fmylife.com. It sounds horrible, but it's actually hillarious! If you're ever having a bad day, check it out. It has tons and tons of stories that people have posted about unfortunate, but comical events that they have dealt with. It will definitely make you laugh, which is something I really needed to do on this Monday!!! Have a great rest of the week!

Surprises, Fireproofing, and a New Couch

This has been a nice and relaxing weekend. Yesterday, I spent the morning cleaning house, doing laundry, and grading some papers. Nothing too exciting. Meanwhile, Gary and his two friends helped with the trail cleanup at Lake Fayetteville. He was pretty sore today, but I think they enjoyed themselves.
On Friday afternoon after work, I was taking nap. I love naps. I would take one everyday if I could. I've always thought the world would be a better place if jobs let people have nap time, just like in kindergarten. Think about what a better world this would be! Okay, back to the story. My lovely husband walked in and woke me up (I was not thrilled; I don't enjoy having my naps interrupted). However, this was worth it. He had a surprise for me: A NEW BLACKBERRY! I have been begging and pleading for one of these because the phone I had was much like a jitterbug (this is a phone for elderly people if you haven't seen the commercials). It wasn't time for me to upgrade at Alltel so I thought all hope was lost, but my sneaky little husband found a slightly used one on Craig's List. By the way, this website is where we found our chihuahua, Tina, for FREE. Can anyone imagine why someone would want to give this sweet little creature away for free?!?!! They even gave us her kennel, food, and collar. They practically paid us to take her. I have no idea why! :)
A couple weeks ago, Gary's sister moved into a new apartment. She's been needing a couch and we told her she could buy ours. It took her about a week to decide, but she called today and said she wanted to buy it. So I hopped in the shower and Gary and I were off to the furniture stores. I was sooooo indecisive, but we finally decided on another sectional (even though we said we didn't want another one)! Here's a picture of it!

After our couch purchase, we decided to go rent a couple movies since Desperate isn't on tonight. Gary mentioned renting Fireproof and I had been wanting to rent Changeling with Angenlina Jolie and Hastings had both!!! We watched Fireproof this afternoon, and I was really skeptical at first. It seemed really cheesy, but by the end I was boo hooing. It was a really great movie with a great message. I highly recommend it! :)

Valentine's Day

Gary and I had a great Valentine's Day weekend. His birthday was on Thursday, but we really celebrated it on Friday night at Tim's with a group of friends. It was a lot of fun! Gary's parents were in town so they got to join us. After dinner, we had a few people over to play dominoes, along with our neighbors.

I've been Tagged!!!

My bestest friend, Kari Beth, tagged me to put my 6th picture in my 6th file on my next post. How fitting then that when I looked in my 6th file at my 6th picture, it was me and Kari. This picture was taken on this past New Years Eve at dinner. What a fun night!

Thanks for the tag!
This has been a long and overwhelming week back at work. I've been getting ready for parent-teacher conferences, which are next week and working on a project for a class I took this summer. I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday!

Ice Storm '09

Wow! What a wild week of weather! Northwest Arkansas was hit with a devastating ice storm on Monday afternoon. To be honest, I was actually excited about it on Monday because I wanted a couple days off of work, but I had no idea how bad it would be. We lost power on Tuesday morning and got it back on Wednesday night. Luckily, our friends Aaron and Kari Beth kept us company. They live right around the corner from us and lost power too. We played Yahtzee, drove around, and ate dinner at Applebees (I know it's nasty, but it was the only place open). They even let us borrow about 10 candles because we didn't hardly have any to light our dark house. I thought I was going to go nuts without power for those couple days!!! I shouldn't even be complaining because there are a lot of other people who went all week without it and some are still without power!







These are some trees in our back yard after/during the ice storm. We are so lucky nothing hit the house. The rest of the town is a huge mess. My sweet husband was out all day today with his friend cutting up fallen trees (for a small price). HAHA! His work ethic is one of the many things I admire about him. I definitely wouldn't want to work all weekend after working all week, but he doesn't mind. It must be a man thing.