Long Weekend

It's been a nice long weekend for me. DH is out of town for a conference, and my son started working! We're so proud of him. His first job, and Tuesday he'll be getting his license, so he can drive himself. He wasn't too keen on my taking a picture of him in his Whataburger uniform, so you'll have to take my word that he looked handsome.
I made some magnets with the flat marbles. This is my favorite one, though in the picture it looks as if she has smallpox or something.
This is another fav, though one of the first I made and I didn't put a plain white card stock circle behind the printed paper, so you can kind of see the magnet, but it makes for a better picture.
We got my son a car. While looking for him a car, I found one I wanted, too. It's convertible!! And sooo cute. Only one person can ride with me, though. So my son and I were wondering today, if you're in England and the steering column is on the left side of the car, is the gear shift reversed? Jill? Do you know?I was marveling while emptying the dishwasher at how many Fuzzy's cups we have. I think my DH likes it just a little! haha....there were three more in the dishwasher, and who knows how many he has in his office!
Oh, and you see that stained glass in the background!? My step-mom made it for me for Christmas. I love, love, love it!

Did I tell you I'm going to Jamaica this summer!? I'll be going with the Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf. We'll be staying a week, and I can hardly wait!

Classes start this week, will be interviewing some parents of D/deaf children. If you're interested, let me know!

More Trip Pictures

My dad plays this game in the swimming pool with the grand kids. They hang onto a noodle (the train) and then they go up 'snowy mountain.' On the way up to snowy mountain you go through these obstacles like "Buster's Bumps" and "Bill's Hills." This year was his 72nd birthday, and my clever sister made this cake of snowy mountain!

We built bird houses.
We sluiced for rocks at Hiddenite Mines. The boys loved it.
This is the library in my sister's little town. So quaint. I love it.

Home Sweet Home

Just got back from a ten day trip to see my family.
This swing doesn't get much use.
They live in a small town in Pennsylvania. Very quaint. They have ducks they like to feed on the towpath behind their house. Donkeys used to tow barges carrying coal for fuel for the homes on the canal.

This is my younger nephew. I'll have to do a whole post on 'peeking' shots I have of him!
For some reason I cannot upload any more pictures, so more to come tomorrow!

Nephews

First of all, I have no idea why there are two pictures of the giant green pepper on my last post. I guess I could take one off, but it's kinda funny, so I'm leaving it there.
I've been at my dad's for almost a week now with my sister and nephews. The older of the two nephews rarely stops talking. Seriously~the talking ceases in sleep or during a movie. Midstream he'll say "Can I tell you something?" My responses started with "Yes" then moved to "You already are" and then to "No." Which didn't stop him, he just keeps right on going.
I've also heard "why?" approximately 5,624 times.
If they don't like an answer you get a "WhaT?" with the final consonant clearly articulated. Funny.
The three-year-old likes to tell this joke:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Alligator.
Alligator who?
Just an alligator.
To which he falls down in peals of laughter.

So cute. We've been to the children's discovery place, sluicing for rocks, the aquarium, swimming, swimming, and more swimming, and building Lego structures galore. I'm headed home Sunday. I plan to sleep the rest of the day! Happy Weekend.

I am Alive!

Hi all! Or should I say the two of you that are still here!
This has been one crazy semester! I had my last class this evening. It was my hardest class yet, but I learned a lot! We had to design and implement a research project. It was fun! I did mine on sign language vs. PowerPoint on the effect of learning sight words. As it turns out, neither worked better than the other. I wanted sign language to win! Oh well. I didn't have a lot of time, I think one intervention would have proven more effective had I done it longer.
My last class for this semester is tomorrow night. I'm ready for the break before summer classes start.

Three more weeks of school. June will be rough...I'm teaching ESY, taking a class, and teaching a class. But July....going to see my sister and her family and my dad.

Hope you all are well.

Spring Break

What a great Spring Break! I went down to see my Momma in San Antonio. We shopped and ate a lot. One specific place we went to eat was called the Sand Bar. Very fancy....I'm sure we committed a few faux pas. We ordered the shrimp appetizer and this is what we got. Yeah, the WHOLE shrimp. It was quite off putting. The waiter with an Australian accent explained that they cook them whole so that you know they are fresh. Okie doke. The wasabi aoili was pretty good.
We also saw one of Rey Mysterio's masks. Not really, but it was funny.
My mom and step-dad have a rat terrier. She doesn't eat much. I thought this was so funny because we buy the 40-lb. bags!
My car went from 29,999
to 30,000
My sister-in-law got married. Outside and their new house. It was nice.
Here's the groom talking to my beautiful grandmother-in-law who will celebrate her 91st birthday this year.
And here's a sweet picture of my hubs and the beautiful bride.

Hot Springs

We drove to Hot Springs for New Years. It was really nice. The water coming from the springs is 140 degrees. There were a couple of fountains, and also a couple of places to see the water coming out of the ground.

There is a row of old bath houses that are part of the National Park. Two of them are in operation now. Hubs and I got a 'bath' and a massage at our hotel. It was very relaxing. I highly recommend it!

This is inside the Fordyce Bath House. It is a museum/visitor's center now. This stained glass ceiling panel that is in what was the men's bathing room is made of over 8000 pieces of glass.

Back to work/school tomorrow! I'm ready to see my kiddos.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, blessed Christmas. As you can see by the last couple of posts, we spent a lot of time around the house due to the weather. It has been a nice break, though. I have worked many hours on the quilt I plan to hang in the doorway of my classroom, but am not sure if I will finish in time or not as we are off to Hot Springs tomorrow! One of my husband's friends from high school invited us, he will be proposing. It should be a nice little get away before reality sets in again. School starts back on the 4th, and I begin college classes again on the 20th. I will be taking one and co-teaching one this semester.
Hubby and I are going to try an Irish pub tonight for date night. I hope it's good. It may not really even be Irish!
We have enough candy here from Christmas to last us until Halloween next, which is not good for my waistline.
Talk to you when we get back! Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

We've already had a wonderful Christmas! We drove down to the Metroplex and had Christmas with my in-laws and their families.

Yesterday we were in San Antonio with my Mom and family down there and it was 75 degrees. We had a great visit and had a delicious "Christmas" dinner of homemade lasagna, stuffed mushrooms, and Milky Way cake. Dear Daughter got to make the rounds with us, so it was nice.

We got home just in time for this! Blizzard in Oklahoma. It started with sleet this morning, then turned to snow, with winds gusting around, it's crazy! The dogs don't want to go out. Hubby's mom was supposed to come up and dear daughter was supposed to come back, but it's just the three of us. We have a fire going, I quilted all day, we're going to open one present and watch movies.

I hope you all have a blessed Christmas. Stay safe and warm!

Last Day of School!

Last day of school before Christmas Break (well, they call it Winter Break, but I call it CHRISTmas break). Lots of assemblies and parties and goings on, the kids had a blast.
We are leaving to make the rounds, I'm so excited to see my mom and other family. We will be in the Ft. Worth area and San Antonio.
I hope you have a blessed and Merry Christmas!

Week Two, the Trip

These picts got a little out of order, but I'm too lazy to fix them, because I am leaving for San Antonio to see my Momma on my last free weekend before school starts, even though my room isn't ready yet. Oh well. It'll get done.

Obviously, we went to Vegas. This is a cousin that came with us. Couldn't pass up this shot!

Hubs won $550! Woo-hoo. And I bought a new pair of shoes, and it was gone. Just kidding. About it being all gone, not about the shoes. They're really cute.

This is where we camped at the Grand Canyon. We drove to a place very remote called the Toroweap Overlook.


As you can see, you can get very close to the edge. Too close for my comfort! Ha. It was beautiful!




Before we left CA, we drove into LA and toured Hollywood.



Hubs got better picts than I did at these two places. There are more on my Flickr page.

A also learned to surf at the beach at San Marcos. He loved it and wants to move to California.

Have fun!

Then we were off to Colorado. Now there I could move. It was awesome, and the weather was nice and cool. Glad I brought a jacket. We stayed at Purgatory, but no skiing this time. We rode the Durango-Silverton Railroad and had a blast.


This is what my husband looks like!

Aspen trees. So beautiful, and I remember them from when I was a little girl and we went skiing every year.

Here are my two clowns.

Don't think I told you guys....I got A's in both my Stats classes I took this summer! Woot!

The End.

San Diego Zoo

San Diego Zoo!

Cool lizard. Yep, it was real.

The requisite hippo photo for my daughter.

Really big water.

Messin' around!

Yeah.

Week one of Trip

We had a great trip. We drove from here (Norman) to Carlsbad, NM. We stayed the night and then went to the caverns the next day. We took the Natural Entrance self-guided tour and also did the King's Palace ranger-guided tour. It was beautiful. It was interesting to learn about the young man (Jim White) who discovered the caverns thinking the bats were smoke from a fire.

We stayed until the evening to watch the bats come out of the cave. No pictures allowed, but it was awesome the number of bats that come out. They come out in a spiral formation counterclockwise and we watched for at least thirty minutes.

We drove to El Paso for the night and then on to Yuma, AZ for another night. It was interesting to see the fence demarcating Mexico.

A had never seen a cactus so big!

I loved these flowers.

We then drove to my husband's cousin's in Escondido. I've never had an In-N-Out burger, so of course we had to stop there. Pretty delicious!!