Friday, August 31, 2007

College Colors Day


Are you wearing your college colors? Well, today is College Colors day. In anticipation of the first weekend of college football someone (not sure who) came up with this day. Steve received a message from BU suggesting participation by wearing green and gold. Well, we got my parents and sister involved so not only were there lots of gold shirts there were many props in the pic. He was to send in a picture of his spirit to the athletic marketing dept. The winner gets game tickets, figures since we bought season tickets this week!! He had two classes this morning and got them involved. He included math with a code on the board, gotta love math :) Go Bears!

Monday, August 27, 2007

1st Mailer Sent


YEAH!!! Our 1st packet was sent to GWCA today. I was so excited that our doctor office was able to finish up their part of the paperwork. My goal was to have the 1st mailer in by the time school started and since the students begin tomorrow I have met my goal. A funny thing happened as we were mailing the packet and taking pics (of course we took pics!), we saw my good friend Cari as she was leaving work. She called and we laughed about taking pictures of the important things like this and mailing her wedding invitations. Guys just don't get it :)
Our Mailer 2 is due in another 2 months but I really hope to have it turned in earlier. Our homestudy should be finish this week as well so that can be mailed in as well.
Good Luck to all those educators out there on your first week of school. I hope your year is successful and fun!

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Inservice

This week at work has been filled with many hours of inservice. For those who are not in the education world, inservice is basically professional development for educators. We just love it, just kidding!!! For my school district we had 3 keynote speakers. I thought keynote meant one speaker but I guess I was wrong. The last one was the funniest and kept me laughing. I think most of us are looking forward to one last day to work in our roomsor offices before the kids come on Tuesday. My school had "Meet the Teacher" night on Thursday. It was great to see so many smiling faces of my kids. We will not have prek, 4yr olds, on our campus this year and I will miss them. I chatted with several 5th graders, 2 who were taller than me, YIKES! One of my least favorite things about being at school is bulletin boards. They are a necessary evil I guess. I have to do 6 of them throughout my building. Sometimes it's not so great being the counselor :) I have included a pic of one of my boards. You can see why I spent last weekend laminating things. It is a bboard for careers. My schedule this year is changing a lot and I am trying to figure out how I am going to fit my guidance lessons, individual students, and groups all in. I am sure it will work out somehow!

Steve started back to Baylor this week as well. He is teaching 2 precal classes and 2 math for fine arts classes. He was glad to have desks in his rooms as they are trying to get the building back together. We had date night last night and went to see Becoming Jane. It was a great movie, although more for me than Steve. The movie originally came out in London while we were there in March but we didn't get to see it. I had to rewatch Pride and Prejudice this morning to get my Jane Austen fix.

I hope you all have had a wonderful week!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

American Birthday




On Friday night we celebrated Faye's birthday. Faye is an international student from Beijing, China. My parent's are her welcome family. We were so glad to give her an 'American' birthday with candles, cake, and ice cream. She was surprised when we brought out the cake. We included a special candle that my sister picked up while she was in China. It lights the little candles and plays "Happy Birthday". What fun!! Faye enjoyed opening gifts that included a BU tshirt and a picture of the family for her new dorm room. We look forward to getting to know Faye and her friend Sarah more! My nephew went with them to the BU spirit rally for new students. They should be all ready for Saturday football now.
Steve and I both had to get ready for the beginning of school during the weekend. I spent lots of time cutting out laminated things and Steve got his sylibi ready for classes. It is hard to think about summer being really over. Steve and I enjoyed a Sunday school get-together Saturday night. I also helped at Mission Waco on Saturday morning with EJ. What fun it was to give out school supplies and see some families from my school.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

homestudy finished, I think :)

Our last home study visit was on Monday night. It went really well and our social worker said everything looked great. She has to wait on our medical exams and then will write the final report to be given to the officials in China. I wonder how my home study's those officials have to review, yikes! My parent's new international student (they are her welcome family for BU) is from China and her aunt works for the China adoption office. Maybe she will read ours. Thanks for all the calls and emails asking how it went!! We are hoping to resolve some issues with our employment letters soon and then the packet will be ready. Who knew getting a letter about your employment could be so hard. Let's just say the government (US or China, I don't know) is VERY specific on what is included and how it is worded. Not everyone understands the importance and I think the HR secretary for my district wishes I would bug someone else. The picture is of my precious niece her first day in America. That will be us with our own daughter in a few years :)

On the home front... our bathroom remodeling is pretty much finished. The new shower surround was put in and it looks great. They replaced the drywall which will have to be painted. We are going to be redoing the walls once things settle down a bit. There is wallpaper now which will be gone. I haven't really liked it since we moved in. Every summer we work on a new room, makes things a little slow but I have a hard time with change :) My sister is officially a Wacoan. The moving van unloaded their things yesterday. Now comes the fun job of unpacking.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Back from the beach...

We are back from a fun trip to the Texas coast. This is the 4th year my parents have taken my sister's family and us for a beach trip. We stay in Corpus Christi and head out to Port Aransas to the beach each morning.
We went down to San Antonio on Wednesday night. It was Cheryl's last day at USAA and our last time to be in their SA home. I will definitely miss our visits to San Antonio, it is such a wonderful town. We headed out to Corpus on Thursday morning. After stopping by the hotel we headed out to the beach. We were very lucky with the weather. It was nice and sunny with a breeze all four days.
I like going to Port Aransas because you can drive on the beach. We set up camp for the day out of the back of my parent's minivan and our car. We have shade and seats as well as plenty of play things for the water. My nephews and niece all really enjoy swimming and playing on the beach. My mom is always prepared with plenty of sun screen, snacks, and cool drinks.
This year we went on a dolphin watching tour. It was great to see wild dolphins in the bay. As many of you know, dolphins are my favorite animal. The boat ride was a good break from the beach and gave our sun kissed skin some time to cool off. We spent two more days at the beach and then headed home today. We made it back to Waco in about 4 1/2 hours and were reminded how close we really are to the coast. It might be a lot for a day trip but still something to consider.
The sad part is I am officially back to work tomorrow for the 2007-2008 school year. I have three days of workshops and then will be working at my school starting on Thursday. The students don't start back till the 28th so I have some time to plan out my year. Steve has to move back into his office at BU as they have been renovating his building all spring.
As for our adoption... we have our final home study meeting tomorrow night with our social worker. We both have to have physicals this week as well. I think we will be sending our packet into Great Wall by Friday. It is a very exciting step in our adoption journey.


Sunday, August 5, 2007

4 years ago...






What were you doing 4 years ago? Some of you were at our wedding. Yes, Thursday, August 2nd, was our 4th anniversary. We were in Lubbock celebrating Steve's dad's birthday so we waited to celebrate our anniversary till last night. We headed down to Austin to eat at The Oasis restaurant. It is on the lake and has an amazing view. I know many of you have been there. I can't believe we hadn't gone before. There was a live band and we had lots of fun dancing and checking out the view.


Saturday, August 4, 2007

to Lubbock and back


In the past couple of days Steve and I have spent more than 15 hours in the car together. Luckily for us we have many CDs to sing too (especially for me since Steve does all the driving :) We traveled to Lubbock on Thursday to celebrate Steve's dad's 75th brithday. Happy Birthday Milton! It was great to get Steve's sister and two brothers together for this special occasion. I know his dad was very excited to see all his kids at one time, in one place. That doesn't happen very often since they are scattered throughout Texas. The picture is of the family who was able to attend the party.

We came back Friday to pick up our friend Karen and go to Dallas. On Friday alone we spent 10 hours in the car. We took a very quick trip to Dallas Summer Musicals to see Sweet Charity with Page Davis. It was a funny show although I didn't like the ending at all but oh well. The music and dancing was fun.

Today I helped host a baby shower for a friend from church. It was great to see some ladies who have moved away. We were able to catch up with each other and it was great to see some of their new arrivals.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

so far... so good

This week has been great! Many things have just fallen into place and I thank God for it all. We had our home study yesterday which went very well. Our social worker was very nice and I got a sense that she was excited for us which made me feel great. It was wonderful to tell her that we have great support from friends and family about the adoption. Everyone we have told is excited for us, we thank you for that :)

Another amazing thing was that Steve was given some good news about the new year at Baylor. There were some decisions we had to make and we feel affirmed by God with what we needed to do. More good things... we got an estimate on our bathroom that has to be redone and it was within our budget, another blessing. They should start work next week. And to top it off my sister sold her house inSan Antonio, the day after they closed on the one in Waco. I included a pic of my niece and nephews at their new home. I celebrated today by giving into my vice of getting pedicures. I love having pretty toes in the summer :)