Holiday Catch-Up (AKA more excuses for lack of posting)

So, as usual, the holidays around here were incredibly hectic. For me it kind of started with our school Christmas party on the 20th with the massive amount of obsessive parents my homeroom students have. Seriously, I think there were 50 people in my classroom with all the students, parents, and younger siblings. Other teachers were walking by gawking at the crowd. The worse part was that they wouldn't leave. School is over at 2:25 and at 3:05 my last parent finally left! They're all under the impression that their precious little darling is my only student and that I have all day (during a Christmas party!) to sit and chew the fat about them. To all of you future parents of students, yes, it's wonderful to be involved, but within reason. As I've mentioned before, they drive me crazy. Here is a picture of the ornament I had my homeroom make, along with our little Christmas tree covered in their ornaments. By the way, the ornament took us several weeks to make. It involved 3 layers of papier mache, lots of painting, and a good bit of hot glue. Also, the 2nd grade did a Christmas around the world presentation, and Drew's class covered Africa. Here's a picture of me and her, and her in her little African outfit. So, almost immediately after school was out, we started our regular Christmas. Of course, before all of that, Andy finally got home from Oklahoma late on the 19th, and we still had to finish shopping (insanity!), so we did all of that, and wrapped like crazy, and got it all finished Saturday night. We spent the night of the 23rd with my parents and woke up the 24th and opened presents there. Then that evening we went to Andy's dad's and had Christmas with the Clark's. Of course, the 25th we woke up after Santa came to our house and had real Christmas here. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids at my parents' house.Unfortunately, that's kinda where the Christmas cheer ended for us grown-ups. Andy's grandfather passed away on the 23rd. He'd been sick for a long time, but that sure didn't make it any easier. We decided to do our regular things with the other sides of the family for the kids, but also because Andy felt like his grandfather would've wanted us to try to enjoy Christmas. From the 25th to the 27th we were in and out of the funeral home. It was all pretty hard on Andy's mom's family, especially this time of year, but they seem to be doing as good as they could be. I didn't know his grandfather very well because by the time I came into the family, he'd gone downhill enough that he didn't talk very much, but aside from Andy's dad (and me and the kids of course), this was the person he was closest to, so most of my tears were for him. On top of everything, not that this really even compares to the loss of a grandparent, I went to the doctor today and found out I have the beginning of walking pneumonia and pleuracy, which is an infection in the lining of my right lung. I've been walking around for a week thinking I had a broken rib or something. I feel fine other than a horrible cough and killer pain on my right side when I cough or breathe deep. But, instead of sending me home on antibiotics, the doctor gave me a shot and I already feel much better. And, for those of you wondering, we've changed our moving date to Feb. 1 because the people in the house right now (Andy's cousin) had some set backs with the house they're moving into. With everything so busy, that's fine with me. My goal now is to relax a little before I have to go back to school. Most of my laundry is folded and all the Christmas stuff is put away, so wish me luck!

Not for the Squeamish

There are times when I find myself asking, "What is wrong with my children?" All 3 of them have cut their hair more than once. And, I know you're all thinking, why don't I just put up the scissors? Well, in a normal house where normal children live that might be sufficient. Not mine. I cannot explain to those of you who don't live near me exactly what level of nuts my kids are. They're precious, and I love them, and they're not those kids that are referred to as brats. In fact, I get compliments all the time about how well my kids behave in restaurants and at church. Random old ladies come up to me at the grocery store and tell me I'm doing a great job. But, we're always dealing with MAJOR wounds and disasters. Evan rode his bike (which he rides quite skillfully without training wheels I might add) down the front porch, and later down the slide. He always has cuts on his face. He has a huge burn where he tried to get on Andy's dad's treadmill and fell. Sounds like a good case for neglect, right? Not so. I know there are others in my family who have the same types of children, and Andy was one himself. You can see my latest disaster pictured. The first picture is Evan after his personally done haircut, crying, not because he was in trouble, but because I said I was gonna shave his head. He, for some reason, was more embarrassed at a shaved head than this retarded haircut. I called Andy (who's been sent to Oklahoma for an ice storm) to tell him, and he said to do a mohawk, which he knew would traumatize Evan, even though it's quite the trend these days. So, I did. I know, all the grandparents are probably flipping out, and I can imagine what we'll get at church. Oh well. I've been saying, "I don't care" about a lot of things for a long time, and I think that's Andy's motto.

A New Post...Finally!

I find myself regularly apologizing for my blogging neglect, so here I go again. For those of you who haven't given up on me, sorry it's been so long. I've been packing like crazy around here, and the house is sort of sad right now. I've taken all the pictures off the walls and what's left is the nail holes and a few scratches that were under the frames. Almost all of my knick-knacks are now in boxes, and the only Christmas decorations we have out are the tree and stockings. The good thing is there's not much to clean up after Christmas. We had an inspection done on the new house and the guy found a couple of pretty big things, so we got a little nervous that things may not work out. But, we talked to them today and I'm feeling pretty good about it, and we've all agreed to keep on packing. The main thing I have left is the kitchen pantry and the closets. Next to the kitchen, that will be my biggest ordeal. Of course, there's the garage, but that's Andy's world in there, and I would have no clue where to begin. We have a hot-pink 1970 Chevelle that's in about a million pieces, and a countless number of tools. It's amazing the amount of stuff that can accumulate in 7 years. We're pretty good about cleaning out and getting rid of things. Neither one of us are pack-rats. But still, there's just a lot of stuff. I'm so excited, though, and ready to move. It'll be a little sad leaving here, because it's the only house the kids have lived in, except for our little apartment that we moved out of when Drew was 2 months old, and we've done a lot of work here. The biggest things were the major plumbing project Andy took on in putting a bathroom downstairs where there was nothing plumbed, and then the hardwood floors he put down. I jokingly mentioned that the next people to move in here would probably put down carpet. Andy didn't find it very humorous. I usually try to include pictures of the kids, but I'm also slacking on taking pictures these days. It drove me crazy trying to get a decent picture for Christmas cards this year. Trying to get all 3 kids in a half decent pose at the same time is like spinning your wheels, but we finally got one I can live with. So, sadly, here's the only other picure I've taken lately: all the packing I've done thus far:
No, the boxes aren't really full of eggs. We just have access to an unlimited amount of free egg boxes thanks to Andy's dad. As usual, the picture doesn't do it justice. I sure do feel like I've packed more than that, anyways.

It's Ladybug Infestation Time Again!

I'm a little over-due from my usual weekly blogging. I had such a busy weekend that I didn't even check my e-mail, which these days is unheard of for me. With the impending move on the way I'm trying to do what I can so that when it gets here we're not killing ourselves to get out in a short time. The good thing is that we're not selling the house right away, so we don't have to have everything out in one day. We can move sort of gradually. However, I hate moving, so I'd like to keep it from dragging out as much as possible. This weekend I got the laundry room cleaned out. It's one of those rooms that has become a catch-all for the things we know we don't want to throw away yet but don't know what to do with. Well, most of it got thrown away this weekend. One thing I won't miss is the ladybug infestation we get every year around this time. It usually hits at the end of October, but this year it's hit a little late. Yesterday I swept hundreds of them out of the floor in front of the door and windows. I don't know if any of you know that ladybugs have a distinct smell, but in swarms they do. When I walk in the door every afternoon the smell hits me. One year I made the mistake of vaccuming them up, and I had to get rid of the bag because the vaccum cleaner smelled like ladybugs. Maybe soon it'll get cold enough to kill them all. It's just funny because if people were all crowded together and this huge creature came up and started killing them, most of the people would scatter and never come back. Not ladybugs. They don't seem to care if I smoosh all their little friends, or thump them across the room. They just carry on with their invasion fearlessly. Ugh! Since I haven't taken any pictures since Halloween I'm including some pictures of the kids from when we went to the park a couple of weeks ago.

Halloween '07

Halloween has come and gone again, and for some reason I follow the exact same picture format every year with my pictures. Same place in the yard, same poses...at least the costumes are different. This first picture is of the 5, yes, 5 pumpkins that I carved all by myself. Drew helped me dig the guts out of the huge one (for reference it weighed about 50 pounds). Then she drew a face on another pumpkin and lost interest. Evan wrote "boo" about 50 times on his pumpkin, and then drew a face the size of a half-dollar, so he was a little upset when I carved a big face in it and not the tiny one he drew. I couldn't get him to understand that I just didn't have the precision I needed with my kitchen knife. Alli drew the face with the tiny eyebrows and the huge round mouth, and then wrote her name across the top. She also did pretty well digging guts out. So, after I worked with Drew to clean out the big one, and then finished off cleaning Alli's, that was it for me and guts. In the last ones we just set the candles on top of the seeds and everything. It worked just as well, so I may just skip that step in the future. As far as costumes, Drew wanted to be Sacagawea, probably because Andy goes around saying her name all the time because it sounds funny. This was as close as we could get. I was just excited they had an Indian outfit at the costume store, seeing as I waited until the 27th to buy costumes. Alli is a spider princess (the name that came on the costume bag), and Evan is Optimus Prime from Transformers, which Andy was especially pumped about. The mask made it through one house before he didn't want to wear it anymore. Of course they had a great night and got tons of candy, which we all ate and felt like puking before the night was over, and still have tons left. What's sad is within the next couple of weeks we'll eat all the good stuff out, and then the cheap-o yucky stuff like Mary-Janes and Bit-O-Honeys (sorry Dad) will be left over, only to get thrown away while we're cleaning out to move. Oh yeah, we're moving! Our date is January 1, and it's only about 10 minutes north of here. The good news is that it's one mile from Wal-Mart and the bank and several eating places, and there are even places that will deliver. Nothing delivers here. We're moving mainly because this house is just too small. The kids' rooms are tiny and so is our bedroom, and the living room is so not conducive to entertaining (because we're such party animals). The new house is so nice and has lots more room. The kids will all have their own bedroom, plus a playroom. We should be able to live there with plenty of room for at least 10 years (we've been here 7!). Plus, it comes with one of those underground invisible fenses, so it's all ready for Daisy, and it also comes with a golf cart! That was the deciding factor. I'm kidding, but, seriously, we've already decided that next year we'll be trick-or-treating on the golf cart. So, that was the first of many holidays to come and our big news. I can already smell the Thanksgiving turkey, and, yes, that overwhelmed feeling of not having a clue where to start with packing has set in as well.

A Day in the City

Yesterday we decided to take the kids on a trip to Atlanta. Even though we live so close, we just don't go down there much. We drive through it to go on other trips, but we rarely actually stop and experience Atlanta, outside of horrible traffic. Honestly, the traffic is what completely ruins Atlanta. It's enough to make me not want to visit...ever. Not to mention once you get into the actual city, it's full of one-way streets and if you don't know it really well, you end up driving in circles trying to find your way to the right direction to get to the place you need to be. I remember back in the day visiting Atlanta before I lived in Georgia and driving around seeing the building I wanted to go to, but not being able to get there because it was surrounded with one-way streets and we were going the wrong way. Anyways, today, we drove to Doraville, right at Spaghetti Junction (which is on the perimeter of Atlanta), and rode the Marta into Atlanta. We then walked over to the new Coke museum. The kids had never been on the Marta or to the Coke museum, so it was lots of fun. I told the kids that the Marta was a train that's mostly above ground but sometimes goes underground and goes fast and all that stuff. Drew had herself so excited about it that she was shaking when we got there. We also had to make a train switch to get off the north/south train and head to the east/west train. That was a tiny adventure in itself. Once we got there, we walked through Olympic Centennial Park where they were having some huge thing for diabetes, and it was filled with people and balloons and loud music, so that was neat for the kids, too. They've recently built a new Coke museum, so, even though I'd been to the old one a bunch of times, I was pretty excited myself to see the new one. The first thing you do when you get there is watch this really cute movie about what supposedly happens when you put your quarter in a coke machine. Inside the machine is this imaginary world with all these strange creatures. It was one of those movies that's so cute and that the kids were so into that I almost cried watching them watch the movie. They really enjoyed it for the most part. The "milestones" section, which is a lot of the history of Coke was pretty boring for them, plus for some reason it was more crowded than the rest of the museum, so I could've lived without that myself. Crowded areas plus whiney kids makes me have anxiety attacks. But we left there and saw how Coke is bottled and then got to see another movie in 4D (the 4th dimension is feeling I guess - they squirted water and cold air and the seats moved), and that was really neat. Then, of course, there were the decades of old commercials we got to watch. And then at the end there was all the Coke products from all over the world that we got to drink until we were sick. The kids are still talking about Beverly, the horrible drink from Italy. And, I was alive when Tab was around, but never actually drank it until yesterday -- Ugh!!! Who in their right mind drank that more than once? It was a lot of fun, and we got to take home a free bottle of Coke as a souvenier, which was nice because they force you to walk through the gift shop at the end, so the kids weren't as tempted to ask for things when we were leaving. We then ate lunch at the food court in the CNN center, and then headed back to the Marta. At the Marta station, like all subways, once you pay and go through the gate, you can't leave unless you're done for the day or are willing to pay to get back in. Well, even though the kids went to the bathroom twice at lunch, their little bodies just couldn't handle all that carbonation and liquid. We got into the Marta station and Drew was about to explode...again. There was no bathroom anywhere. Then when we got to the station to make our switch, we couldn't find a bathroom there either. She was miserable, and I felt so bad for her. She couldn't even bear (or bare?) to sit down on the train. We had about a 15 minute trip from there, and thank goodness she made it. Back in Doraville we found a bathroom. Surprisingly, the kids fell asleep on the way home, even with all that caffiene and sugar in their systems.

Field Trip

This is a picture of me with my class, plus a few extras. We have four 4th grade classes, and there were only 3 guides at the place we went to, so we had to split a class. I was supposed to have 5 extra, but I ended up with 8 extra for various reasons. One just decided she didn't want to go with the other class, and the other 2 live in outerspace the majority of the time, so they just went the wrong way. By the time I caught them, the other teacher was gone. Anyways, I haven't talked much about school because, while everyone asks, "How's school going?" I am aware that it's like asking "How are you?" You're generally just looking for a "Fine." But, since we went on a field trip today, I thought some highlights wouldn't hurt. We went to this place called Tallulah Gorge, which was pretty neat. It's this huge gorge (obviously) with a few waterfalls and lakes. It's so pretty because it's up in the mountains with these overlooks that make your knees weak because they're so high. This crazy guy (too tired to remember his name - starts with a W) walked a tight rope across it back in the 70's. So anyways, when we first arrived, one of the busses broke down. Every bit of oil in the bus leaked out all over the parking lot and it wouldn't restart. So, the whole time we were in the museum and hiking and petting snakes they were working on the bus. When it was finally time to go to lunch, the bus still wasn't fixed, so the other bus had to take one group and drop them off, and then come get the rest of us. They finally got the bus fixed, but at that point we were running late. When we were about 5 minutes from school, the principal called me (no clue why I was the chose one - I'm the new one!) on my cell phone to tell me that one of the other busses was being split and as soon as we got to the room we had to figure out what kids were being sent on different busses for the day. Also, fundraiser items had been delivered, so we had to pass those out. So, we ran back to the room 5 minutes before busses had to be loaded to go home. I'm trying to figure out who has to ride a different bus while passing out fundraiser junk and parents from the field trip are in my ear asking if they can go ahead and take their kids. It was all crazy, although it doesn't sound so crazy without me there in person to add in the hand motions and the excitement. I was telling Andy about it and he kinda mentioned that it sounded like a mess, and the sad truth is, it was really just another day. It seems like the end of every day is crazy. Parents call and decide at the last minute they're gonna pick up their kids instead of sending them on the bus, or they decide at the last minute to send their kids home with someone else. I've even gotten a note 2 minutes before it's time to leave from a kid who forgot to give it to me in the morning stating that he needed to ride the bus to a certain address, but the parent has no idea which bus that is. Oh, I could go on and on, but most of you are probably starting to skim at this point and are over the picture of all those kids you know nothing about, so I'll close for now. I have to say, though, as stressful and crazy as it gets, I just love it. And I'm not just saying that the way some people act like their life is perfect when we all know they're full of it. The truth is my house is a disaster, the laundry is piled way too high, and there's nothing I loathe more than house work. But, I really love my job.

Mmmmmm...

This weekend we went up to Helen, mainly just for some caramel apples. For those of you not from here, Helen is this little tiny German-themed tourist trap of a town with souvenir shops filled with all the junk and Harley-Davidson memorabilia you could ever want. They also have several little camp grounds and a river that you can go tubing in. We went up there for the homemade candy. We got stuck in traffic before we really even got there, because, being that it's German-themed, they had started Oktoberfest, so it was packed. We decided to stop at the little candy shop just before the town instead of actually getting into town. So, once we got in there, Andy told the kids they could get one thing and could pick anything they wanted. In a store that's wall to wall candy, that was a bit overwhelming for them. Their brains went into overload and nobody could make a decision. They ended up migrating over to the tiny little section of name brand candy that you can get in any gas station, so we had to convince them that everything else in the store was so much better. Eventually Drew settled on a caramel apple with nuts and Evan and Alli chose a rice crispy treat on a stick dipped in chocolate with sprinkles. We went to this little picnic area by the river and ate our candy while we laughed at the people trying to tube through a river that was way too shallow due to the horrible drought this year. They kept getting caught on rocks and having to get up and drag their tubes through the river. After that we went to the Corn Maze -- the same one we went to last fall for those of you loyal to my blog. We got there before dark and sort of followed the same pattern as last year letting the kids run us around wherever they wanted. The only problem was I couldn't figure out the map and Andy was thoroughly enjoying wandering aimlessly. By the time we decided to get serious and figure out the way out it was dark and we couldn't even see the map. Normally I would've freaked out in the dark in the middle of a corn field, but, fortunately, we weren't the only people lost. We finally made it to the edge after a couple of hours of wandering and just cut through the corn to get out. I don't have any pictures of it this time because I left my camera in the car, and once we were in there, there was no getting out. We topped the evening off with a viewing of The Apple Dumpling Gang, which 2 of the 3 kids fell asleep in the middle of.

Build-A-Bear

Last weekend the kids went to a birthday party at the Build-A-Bear workshop. It was a great deal, considering our kids have never been there, but have passed by it a million times in the mall. They all got their own bear and outfit as a party favor, so that was super exciting for them. In the first picture, Drew is holding her bear's heart and making a wish. Then Alli is helping the girl stuff the bear. And then Evan is washing his bear after getting it stuffed. They were all pretty proud of the final product. They've slept with them every night and Evan and Alli have even been taking them to school to sleep with at rest time.

Stephanie's Wedding

Well, Stephanie finally got married this past Thursday. It was such a pretty day and such a nice wedding. Everything was beautiful and went smoothly, and I know we were all relieved to finally get the show on the road. The pictures are of both the rehearsal and the wedding. I'll let them speak for themselves.