Chase & Austin

Good Times

Because Six Wasn't Enough

You all know that I have two dogs and three cats. We also have a Beta fish. When we went to the Rodeo Carnival in February Chase won two goldfish. Actually, he won one, but the carnival guy was generous enough to give him two. Gee, thanks, buddy! That put us up to eight pets.



Then after I let the boys bring home a puppy, which I returned the next day, I bought them hamsters to appease them and ease my guilt. Here they are. And yes, that is a hamster litter box. Believe it or not they use it. They are pretty easy to take care of considering the fact that we are all scared to touch them because they bite so viciously.

So that put us up to ten pets. TEN! I thought it would be overwhelming, but it seemed fairly easy. And it was a nice even number. Recently one of those goldfish died so I am thinking about a yorkshire terrier puppy. That's not crazy of me, is it?

Talent Show (Pogo Stick Dude)

Big Day :)

Just a Normal Day

So today I am graduating. And I spent the last two or three days getting ready for a small get-together at my house. I did it on such a perfect schedule that I went to bed at a decent hour last night and anticipated a good night's sleep before my big day. Apparently I forgot to let my dogs, cats, and hamsters in on that plan. Because they kept me up all night with licking, scratching, squeaky wheel turning, etc. That was not fun. And now instead of margaritas, all I can think about drinking is pepsi after pepsi after pepsi ...

Day One

Today was day one of my summer vacation. Well, it might be day one of my life as a stay at home mom again if I don't get a job, but let's not dwell on that just now. Today I took my own kids to school, mailed three packages to Brian, went to the gym for a step aerobics class, had lunch with Kenny, chatted on Skype with Brian, took a nap, cleaned the livingroom to near perfection, finished a book, picked up my own kids from school, went to Chase's band concert, and watched a little television. I did all of that in one day! Can you believe it? That is more than I have done in the past four months. I wonder what I can get done tomorrow? The possibilities are endless...

Done!

I am done student teaching. I feel a mixture of relief, excitement, and sadness (because I miss my students!) Mostly I feel glad to be going on to the next chapter of my life. After I graduate on Saturday I will be eligible for my teacher certification and I will be able to officially call myself a "real teacher" ... Hooray!

Life Changing Information

I am not very good with swallowing pills. They get stuck in my throat and I do all kinds of weird gagging before I finally choke them down. When I started student teaching I began a regimen of four vitamins a day in an attempt to stay healthy. One of my vitamins is actually some kind of herb that was impossible to swallow without all kinds of swishing and gulping and gagging and praying. At least that's how it was until my sister in law told me a trick that has changed my mornings forever! I am going to share it with you so that it can change your life as well. Ready? Here goes ... if you have a pill that floats all you have to do is take a swig of water, tilt your head forward so that it floats to the back of your throat, and swallow. Easy! No swishing, gulping, gagging, or praying involved.

You're welcome.

Decisions, Decisions ...

Feed the kids or take a nap? I know that should not be a difficult decision to make, but right now all I can think is that I haven't taken a nap in weeks (maybe months) and I feed the kids dinner every single night. Doesn't that count for something?

Lunch Lady Land

TAKS testing is this week at most of the schools in the state. Student teachers aren't allowed to be in the room with the tests because they haven't been through all of the state mandated training that is associated with the security and validation of the tests. Yesterday I got to cover a 2nd grade class and I just loved it! They were a wonderful group of kids and I think I have finally found my favorite age group. Today my school has differerent plans for me. It should be interesting!

Must be Summertime

The boys found this in the back yard today. It must be summertime in Texas!

Catching Up

As usual, we've been pretty busy around here. So busy, in fact, that I put a calendar on my refrigerator and told the boys that they were responsible for writing their own activities on the correct days because I just can't keep track of all of it by myself. In an effort to get Sammy's pooping picture off from the top of my blog I am going to write a boring 'catch up' blog posting. Don't feel like you have to continue reading at this point ... it's not really very interesting!

I have three weeks of student teaching left. It has gone very well so far. I started out in kindergarten for the first seven weeks and have already spent four weeks in my second placement, which is in a 4th grade class. Both of my cooperating teachers are wonderful teachers and I have learned more from being in their classrooms than I think I learned in all of the time I spent sitting in classes at the college!

Chase started swimming lessons. They are not your typical cutesy swimming lessons like we used to take the kids to when they were smaller. These lessons are four days a week at the high school pool, with the high school swimming coach. He works the kids hard, but he is really good. Chase is enjoying it and hopes to get to the point where he can make it onto the 7th grade swim team for next year. He tried out a couple of weeks ago and didn't make it (by 5 seconds).

Kenny is preparing for his school's Spring Talent Show. He is going to do pogo stick tricks with the Cha Cha Slide playing in the background. He's having lots of fun with it. His practices end at 5:00, which is the exact time Chase's swim class starts. They happen to be 4.9 miles away (through 5:00 traffic it takes me about 12 minutes) so that is a bit of a challenge.

A couple of weekends ago we went to a Chalk Walk/Fesival downtown. It was a lot of fun. The weather was sunny & warm and I enjoyed the fact that it forced me to slow down and take a break from cleaning and doing schoolwork for a couple of hours.

Last weekend we went to our friends' house for dinner. The kids colored easter eggs while the grown-ups had drinks and socialized. It was a lot of fun and really good for me to get out to actually talk to adults about something other than teaching.

Chase has started volunteering at our local Nature Center. Last weekend he got choked out by a python and stayed calm the entire time. His face was somewhere between bright red & purple by the time he decided he needed to ask for help from another volunteer. Yesterday, after he got some additional snake handling tips from his supervisor, he worked their booth for the Community Days event at our mall. Although he enjoyed talking to people all day about the pythons I think his favorite part was the four middle school girls that continuously came back to flirt with him all afternoon.



I decided to start reading the Twilight series again. I read them all over Christmas break. Then several of my teacher friends at the school where I am student teaching started reading them and I got interested in it all over again. If you haven't read them yet, you should. (ahem, Mandy)

We are starting to try to plan our summer vacation. We are thinking of taking a mini-trip to NYC. If you have any ideas or tips for me about visiting the Big Apple, please send them my way.

I think wrote enough to get Sammy's picture to go way down on my page. That was my main goal, you know. Hope you all are well. We are busy, but doing great. Thanks for asking ;)

Bad Timing

First off, sorry about the picture. It's my most recent of Sammy. I thought Brian would be amused (and he was). That's not what my posting is about though. Well, it's about Sam, but not about Sam going potty. It's about my bad timing with Sam. I decided to put him on a diet. As you can see, he's getting a little hefty. In his prime he weighed 105 - 110. If we went to the vet and he was above 110 I would get a stern look and severe words of "advice" from the vet about how to help him lose a few pounds. Now he weighs 133. He's getting older and sleeps about 23 1/2 hours a day. So I thought some diet food might be good for him. I waited until all of the good food was gone and started him on the diet food on Sunday. For the first couple of days he thought it was great because it tasted different. By Wednesday he was following me around begging for more food. On Thursday PJ went into heat. Now Sam can't hardly stand being in the same room as her. And she follows him around nonstop. So not only is he hungry, but he's crazed with emotions he can't understand. It's going to be a long weekend!

San Antonio

Last weekend Chase, Kenny, Mom, and I went to San Antonio so that Chase could participate in the state science fair competition. We had a great time even though he didn't win. He was up against some pretty tough competition ... you know, like the kid that has a theory about how to cure Alzheimer's Disease. And all of those other kids with projects whose titles were not even understandable to me. Yeah, the competition was pretty tough. But we had fun. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the weekend (there are more but I took them with Mom's camera and forgot to transfer them to my computer before she left to go back to NY):

Mom's first margarita! Awwww...


Chase, Kenny, and Chase's friend Ben drinking virgin Strawberry Daiquiris.

Chase & Kenny on our way to the Alamo.

This is Jeopardy!

On Wednesday Chase participated in a school Jeopardy contest. The entire school was invited to participate, but there was one catch: you had to read ten specific books that the librarian chose to be able to play. Chase started in early October and finished his tenth book on Tuesday afternoon. Ten of the 755 students enrolled at his school read all of the books and played the game. They broke the kids into two groups to play. The first five played Single Jeopardy while the other five stayed in another room. Then they came back and played the same exact board with the same exact questions. The six students with the top scores went on to Double and Final Jeopardy. Chase was in the second group and almost didn't make it to Double Jeopardy! There was a kid in his group that was insanely fast with the buzzer. When the very last question came up on the screen that kid buzzed in. If he had answered correctly Chase would have been in 7th place of the ten kids. Luckily, he didn't answer correctly. Chase buzzed in, got the right answer and moved on to the next round. That other kid made it into the next round as well because his score was a few hundred points higher than Chase's. During Double Jeopardy the game stayed pretty fair. All six kids were answering questions ... although some with more right answers than others. When Final Jeopardy began Chase was in 2nd place. He made a good wager, answered correctly and won the entire game!

The prizes were crazy good. I have heard that the librarian uses all of the book fair money for prizes, but I am not sure if that is correct. The first place winner was able to choose whichever prize he/she wanted from the table. Then the second place winner chose, etc. There were ten kids and ten great prizes. They also won some books and posters.



Here's Chase with his librarian and the prize he selected: a 16 GB ipod touch!!!!:

An Email Forward

I thought this was a pretty funny one and since I am at a loss for blog material right now I am going to use it here:

Shrek, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez were all having lunch together. Shrek said, "I have always thought that I'm the strongest man in the world, but how can I be sure?" Brad Pitt said, "I'm pretty sure I'm the hottest man alive but I've never had it confirmed." Jennifer Lopez agreed. "I'm told I'm the sexiest of them all, but sometimes I wonder."

They all decided that the best way to find out if their beliefs were true was to approach the wicked queen's mirror to confirm for them whether Shrek was the strongest, Brad Pitt was the hottest and Jennifer Lopez was the sexiest. They agreed to meet again the next day for lunch to discuss their findings.

The next day Shrek walked up with a smile. "Well, it's true. The mirror told me that I am the strongest man in the world."

Brad Pitt followed and boasted, "It is true, it has been confirmed that I am the hottest man alive!!"

Jennifer Lopez walked in, head bent, tears in her eyes and asked, "Who in the hell is Amy Lemaster?"

W.W.M.D.

One day when we still lived in NC my friend Mandy commented on how clean my house/bathrooms always were. Of course I beamed with housewifely pride. Then one day about a week later we were going to have a surprise guest and I quickly wiped down the bathroom with a couple of baby wipes. I had a fleeting thought about Martha Stewart and wondered comically if she would consider my bathroom "clean" after I only wiped it down with a baby wipe. That began my own personal joke about "What Would Martha Do?" I was reminded of W.W.M.D. tonight when I ran into the house after student teaching all day, yelled instructions to the kids to get ready to leave the house because we had to get to Chase's National Junior Honor Society meeting, which was followed by his informational meeting regarding his State Science Fair Competition, grabbed a piece of cold pizza, and ate it while I was peeing!! Would she consider this a real dinner? A piece of cold leftover pizza wolfed down while going pee for the first time after a hectic day spent with 21 kindergartners? I am guessing she would not.

All About Chase ...

While I have been busy with student teaching and Kenny has been sick/recovering, Chase has been just going on with his normal life. Here are some things he did over the past several weeks while Kenny and I have been trying to make it through each day:

Chase and his TRIYS group (Texas Research Institute for Young Scholars) met with the mayor last month to discuss better ways for our city to go green.

Basketball season just ended. His coach was one of the best coaches we have ever had. If you know me and sports you know we are not a good match. But I loved every minute of Chase's basketball games over the past two months. And so did he.

Chase competed in and won his class and school science fair competition. Then he went on the the regional competition and placed 2nd. He goes to the state competition at the end of the month. It should be a fun weekend in San Antonio.

On Thursday he got a letter in the mail inviting him to join National Junior Honor Society.

And through all of this he managed to pull off a report card that looks like this:

Math Pre-AP/GT: 96%
PE: 100%
History: 95%
Beginning Band: 99%
Science: 98%
Writing Pre-AP/GT: 100%
Reading Pre-AP/GT: 98%

Not that I am bragging or anything ;)

Shameless Plug

Yesterday at 5:32 PM I placed an order at Zappos.com for two pairs of Heelys for the boys. Less than 21 hours later, at 2:29 PM today, they were on my doorstep. If any of you have ever been here to the middle of nowhere, Texas or have ever tried to send me a package you know that is an amazing accomplishment. To top it all off I got free shipping, I could use free return shipping if they didn't fit (but they do), and they were only 80% of the price listed at amazon.com. So ... Zappos earns a free shameless plug on my blog and my eternal business!