Recap on the Christmas Week

Wow, what a week! This past week has been full of spending time with family and relaxing on my break. It all started last week with Christmas with my mom's side of the family. Then we went down to Moundridge Wednesday afternoon and got to go to Eden for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning services. It was fun to see all of the kids perform on Christmas Eve. We visited Alan's grandpa on Christmas day and had fun playing dominoes with him. Then we went to Keith and Mary's for Christmas with Alan's side of the family. We got to enjoy verinika and sausage, as well as the all time favorite marshmallows dipped in caramel and rolled in rice krispies (Thank you Dorinda and Mark!). After stuffing ourselves as full as we could, we exchanged gifts. And by the way, I think it is still wrong to come home with the gift you brought ;).

After the gift exchange, we played the Name Game. I have no idea what the official name for this game is, but I think it is one of the best games I've ever played. First, you write down everyone's name and put the names in a bucket. Then each person picks a name and that is their "identity" for that game. All in all, you are trying to move people around by figuring out their names and the goal is to get either 4 men or 4 women on a couch. For those of you keeping score...the women rocked at this game! We also had two of Marty and Dorinda's boys on our team, and I think they were the best players. This is a great game for everyone to play, young or old; and it really gives you a challenge, especially after you play several rounds and have to figure out everyone's new identities. We also played Catchphrase where you have to give clues to figure out the word given.

Friday morning we had brunch with Alan's parents and Ross and Christy. Then we headed home and went to my uncle and aunt's house in Burlingame for Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Once again, I ate way too much, there are just too many delicious choices. Today I went with my parents and grandparents to Kansas City to see my grandma's cousins. Then we got caught in the snow on the way home. How can we have 70 degree weather yesterday, and have 2 inches of snow the next?????

Wow, this is a long post. To wrap things up, my vacation is going great and I am trying to get a lot done around the house. Next weekend we are planning on going back to Dodge City for another hunting trip, if the weather is going to be nice.

Have a great New Year's! (Alan is now looking through my Where's Waldo books I got for my class from the library. Will he ever grow up?)

I can't wait until Christmas break!

Well, it's that time of year again, and who would have thought I'd be saying "When can I just teach?" We started our benchmark testing for reading and math last week, and I am still not finished. I feel like all the kids have done lately is work quietly by themselves, and all I've done is testing, testing, and more testing. Hopefully with one more day of the kids working on packets of worksheets I can get finished, provided everyone is there tomorrow. I tried letting them do centers while I tested...not such a good idea, they were loud. Okay, enough with talk about school.

I am really looking forward to Christmas break...only nine days to go! I am already starting to make my list of things to get accomplished, and I'm finding myself putting off other things and saying "I'll just do that over Christmas." I know I'm not going to have enough time to make my jeeping scrapbook for our latest trip to Cassville, Missouri, clean the house (including weeding out my closet), and maybe even finding out where the wasp are coming from in the house. Yeah, you read that right. I have killed 6 wasp in the house in the last month. They are barely moving, but I have no idea where they are coming from, it's like they are hatching one by one.

Alan still has not gotten his deer this year. He's had a couple of opportunities, but it just wasn't right. Maybe his dreams are too big. :) He has been slowly working on a new project... another jeep. He's decided it's time to start fixing up his Willy's and has been bringing back pieces and parts from his parents' house (where it is being stored).

Well, that's about it with our lives right now. I'll try to make it more interesting next time.

I'm thankful to have been blessed by their presence

Tonight I had to say goodbye to two wonderful people. I have went to church with Jim and Kathy Billings for close to 10 years. They have meant the world to me. It has been a dream of theirs to move back to North Carolina, and they thought they had better do it now, rather than wait until it was too late.

They have been there for the important days in my life... my high school graduation, our wedding, and my college graduation. I can always count on Jim for a hug or a word of encouragement. I have seen them go through life's ups and downs. Kathy had a lung transplant many years ago, and has had various health difficulties as a result. She has also been in and out of the hospital several times with broken bones. Jim is like the energizer bunny, he keeps going and going and going. He cleaned the church with my grandma. He whistles as he vacuums, and puts more effort into the cleaning jobs than he should, all the while, one of the happiest people I know.

It's amazing that Pastor Mark's message today was on being thankful because that is exactly what I am. I feel so blessed to have been part of Jim and Kathy's lives. They will truely be missed in Topeka, but they are already planning their trip back in May. We may have to plan a trip to North Carolina someday in the future.

Fall Vacation in Cassville, MO

On Wednesday evening we left for our annual trip to Cassville, Missouri. Usually there are 30+ people along for the trip, this year the number was down to 15 due to various reasons. Even though the numbers were down, we had a great time. The weather was beautiful and the trees really started changing colors while we were down there. We also were able to get a lot of jeeping done because there were only 7 jeeps to get over the tough stuff rather than 11.

There were lots of trees blocking trails, showing that not very many people had been fourwheeling over the last several months. The guys used a variety of resources and plans to take care of the trees. These included using a small battery-powered chain saw, a machete(spelling?), tow straps, a bow saw, and the most clever, a handyman jack. When one plan failed, they used another. Once they saw that we couldn't get around a tree any other way, the downed tree was not going to stop them. THEY WOULD FIGURE IT OUT! I'll post some pictures of a couple of these instances.

After the first day, I decided it was best for Alan not to lead the way. I was only kidding of course, but within 10 minutes he had gotten stuck between two trees and stuck in a washout. The jeep got a few ouchies in these situations. The one with the washout was pretty funny in my opinion. We got out to assess the situation before attempting to cross the washout, but my brother said, "Oh yeah, I think you can make it." Well, I decided that if he was going to try it, I needed to be taking pictures of it. He put one wheel on the trail and one in the washout. The pictures really don't show how tipsy the jeep was. One by one, the guys climbed on the back to help put weight on the back of the jeep so he wouldn't slide into the washout completely, and so the jeep wouldn't tip. I thought they looked like a bunch of monkeys. He ended up having to be pulled out backward and tore up the front finder as a result. We backed up and went through the creek to continue on the trail.

It was weird having only one kid around. My neice was the only one. Usually there are 11 kids that scramble the minute the jeep stops. It was pretty quiet with Emily being the only one. She had fun and even went to our motel rooms to trick-or-treat, however she wouldn't share her candy stash with me!

Well, here are some pics from the trip. Enjoy!

Tagged!

Okay, Becky tagged me and now I have to say 6 things about myself that you may or may not know. Here it goes...

1. I teach 1st grade at McCarter Elementary...one of the top schools in the state of Kansas! I hope I don't ruin their reputation. :)

2. I have worked 25 hours in the last 2 days, but I get tomorrow off! 13/17 parents showed up for conferences..okay, not great turnout.

3. My house really needs cleaned...that's the plan for the weekend.

4. My favorite place to be is in Colorado on top of the mountains.

5. I am not a fan of the elections this year (sorry Becky, I can't get into the political stuff this year, the politicians are driving me NUTS!)

6. My favorite TV show right now is The Biggest Loser.


I tag Dorinda or Marty, Amanda, and DeAnn.

Fireproof

So, I finally got to see the movie Fireproof today. I recommend it to everyone. I thought some of the acting was a bit fake (what should a person think for volunteer actors), but the overall result was great. We went with our Sunday school class, so it was fun to hear their reactions to the movie as well. I won't give any of it away because I know some of you readers haven't seen it yet, but you need to. I love the fact that they are putting Christian beliefs out in the movie theaters, we need more movies like this.

A quick update on life... We worked on the shed and cellar today. My grandparents and parents came to help us straighten the shed's foundation and to fix the cracks and holes in the cellar. These are two projects that we never did when we were working on the house and finally got around to. I was afraid to go in the cellar because I didn't know what was living down there. On the sticky pads that were on the floor were 4 baby snakes and lots and lots of other bugs. We found one baby snake on a sticky pad by the furnace on the main level. I'm hoping there are NO snakes slithering in the house. Anyway, we put quickcrete in the holes, so hopefully it will keep some of the creatures out. My grandma and I also started the endless task of raking the acorns from the yard. They were EVERYWHERE. I think the total number of wheelbarrow loads was 9 or 10. We didn't get them all, but you have to stop eventually. Plus, we'll have leaves to rake soon, so it really doesn't matter.

The dogs had fun playing outside a lot today. I finally had to put them away when Gunner decided he wanted to play football with the neighbor boys. Other than that, they did pretty good about sticking around the yard. I think they knew that if they wandered, they'd be put away. It was good for them to not be pinned up so much today, I think their kennel would get pretty boring.

Update on Life

Well, it's been awhile since I've blogged. I think Gunner has another ear infection. He is constantly shaking his head. I've even cleaned his ears out more often than normal. I guess he's going to get ear infections whether or not I clean out his ears. It's so frustrating because I don't like going to the vet, it just means a lot of money and more care than I want to give, especially when the weather doesn't cooperate. I can't decide if I should just go ahead and make the appointment, or treat it for awhile and see if it gets better.

I have decided that I spend way too much time at school, but I feel like I can't get anything done. I guess it may be due to the fact that during plan time, I just like to breathe and don't work as hard as I should. Okay, so maybe I start talking to other teachers and I don't use my time wisely. Hopefully I can get better at this. Parent-Teacher conferences are coming up, and I'm hoping for a good turnout. So far this year I have not had a lot of parent participation, hopefully conferences will be the turn around point.

Alan and I took the jeep to Wichita this weekend for a MVPA show. It was good to see his aunt and uncle, but I was bored most of the day. It was really windy so I couldn't work on lesson plans. We did, however, go to Cheddars for dinner. It was really good, and I hope to go there again soon. We also got to see a lot of friends at Alan's old church, which is always fun. I was hoping to go see Fireproof at the movie theater, but things didn't turn out. I can't wait for it to come out in the Topeka theater so that we can go.

That's enough rambling, hopefully something more eventful will come up to post about. :)