Yea Orange! Yea White!

Tomorrow is the National Championship game... in case you didn't know. And my Longhorns are taking on the Crimson Tide from Alabama. Needless to say, I'm a little excited. And nervous. And relieved. You see, for the past couple of weeks I've been trying to figure out how to work my burnt orange attire to fit the teacher dress code at my school. Then today I got an email that made me go running out of my classroom (don't worry- there was a parent reader) to the first grade teachers, where I interrupted their conversation to tell them that tomorrow has been declared a jeans and Texas attire day! Don't worry. They understand me so they didn't look at me like the crazy that I am.

And the pictures above? That's the setup that I'm taking to my kindergarten class tomorrow in celebration of the big game. They also know how crazy I am about my Longhorns.

Hook 'em!

A New Decade

Thanks to Kelly I'm actually posting on my blog! Her New Year's post has inspired me to sit down and close out 2009 while looking ahead to this next year.

5 things I'm thankful for in '09:





1. I'm so thankful for D, of course. I know it sounds so sappy, but I truly do love him more now than ever. He's my best friend, the one I can rely on always. Sure, we get on each others' nerves, but we also laugh at each other a LOT! Life with him is so much fun.




2. I'm thankful for my close friends. I'm so thankful that I can pick up the phone at any time and I know I'll have a listening ear on the other end. I'm thankful for their friendship, their advice, their prayers and encouragement, and for being able to take a break from "life" to laugh and have fun. I'm just sorry I don't have pictures from the past year with each of them!




3. I'm thankful for my family. My brother and sisters are the best. I so look forward to our girls trips (which seem to be increasing in frequency, but I'm fine with that!) My brother's witty ways and sarcastic sayings always leave me laughing. It's so great to have a close family who looks out for each other but isn't scared to give tough advice.

4. I'm thankful that no matter what I do, God never leaves me. I'm thankful for His forgiveness. His grace. His mercy. I'm thankful for the ways He shows me that He's taking care of me. I'm thankful that His plan is perfect. I'm thankful that He knows the end of the story. I'm thankful that He tells me not to worry. In fact, He commands it!


5. This might sound really off-base compared to the other things I'm thankful for, but in 2009 I am so thankful for our summer vacation we went on. It was one of the high points of my year. Taking off and getting away from it all really helped keep me sane.


And of course I'm thankful that my Longhorns are playing in the National Championship game next week. I'm so thankful for being able to go to 3 games this past year, including the Red River Rivalry and Senior Day. Hook 'em!

5 things I want to improve in '10:

1. I want to be more attentive to the needs of people around me. This includes family, friends, and casual acquaintances. I feel like I'm kinda oblivious when it comes to things that others are going through or are needing. I want to be better about noticing these needs and taking care of them.

2. I want to be a better neighbor. I know, I sounds like Mr. Rogers, don't I? I just hate that we live in a relatively small neighborhood and I really only know one neighbor well enough to start up a conversation with. Growing up in the country, we only had 2-3 neighbors (and I'm using that term loosely) so we knew everyone around us. Now living in a suburb, I have no idea how to go about getting to know those around me without looking like a weirdo. Any ideas are welcome!

3. I want to be a better blogger. Not only do I want to make an effort to post more, but I want my posts to be authentic. I want to find the time to write about the things that matter to me as well as things that are going on in my life. This will be a tough one to do...

4. I want to experiment more with my cooking. I feel like over the past 2-3 years I've gotten better at this, but I want to continue improving. I cook with fresh vegetables a lot more than canned or frozen like I used to. No more canned green beans or frozen corn as a side. Now I'm making roasted garlic potatoes or fresh garlic green beans. (Garlic? I told you!) This year I want to try vegetables that I haven't cooked with before.

5. I want to grow in my walk with God. I know that sounds like such a stereotypical resolution for a Christian to make, but I truly do want to become a better Christian. This past year, I found myself straying from having a daily quiet time or reading the Bible at all. In November, I had a wake-up call and have started spending time daily doing this. I'm still not where I should be, though but I'm getting back in the habit. And the anxieties and struggles that I have felt bogged down with have been lifted off my shoulders!

5 ways I want to give and help others in '10:

1. I want to sacrifice more for others. This past year, I found things not going my way and my way of making myself feel better was spoiling myself. My mindset was if things aren't going to go the way I want them to, then I'll just treat myself to this or that. Not that an occasional treat is bad or anything, but this led to a self-centered attitude that is really disgusting. I want to get out of the "what's in it for me-mindset" and become more others-oriented.

2. I want to help an international cause. Compassion is one that has been on my mind. I really like that you not only help a child in poverty, but you can actually develop a relationship with that child. And they hear about Jesus! Sponsoring a child is a responsibility that I don't want to take lightly, so D and I will have to talk and pray about it. But this is something that I really feel strongly about.

3. I want to volunteer in the community more. D and I both already volunteer at our church a lot, but I really want to do something that will help the greater community and will force us to put faces to a need. Our Common Ground group has registered to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, but we've never actually had days work out for us. I want to work harder at trying to nail a date down so we can do this.

4. I want to pray for others and follow up on prayer requests.

5. I want to be a better Common Ground guide and foster community within our group. I want to be in contact with all the members on a regular basis and always seeking ways to help those in our group.

Happy New Year! What are your resolutions? Are you making any?

Blog-cation

If you want to call it that. It's probably more accurate to call it writer's block... or blogger's block. Life has been happening. And I can't find the words to write about it. Or maybe the energy?

I did change the background to get in the Christmas spirit and all.

That's all for now.

Texas!... Fight!

It was a great weekend for the Longhorns... maybe not the prettiest of games, but a win nonetheless! Our Red River Rivalry weekend started Friday at noon when we left Austin for Dallas. I had heard horror stories of how bad the traffic can be, but we didn't run in to many problems until we hit Dallas Friday afternoon traffic. We finally arrived at R&P's friends' apartment around 5. Here R & P relaxing before dinner:


After dinner, we decided to go check out all the pre-game festivities in downtown Dallas. This is where all the trash-talking happens between the Texas-OU fans. I was excited to see it all... D, on the other hand, was not. We walked the streets and ended up at The Iron Cactus where there was a Texas-Ex party going on. The cheerleaders were there to get everyone excited about the game. It was great to be in the company of so many Longhorn fans!

Walking the streets

R & P

D and me

the girls

Saturday would start early for us- 6:20 am to be exact. I had half of a donut hole for breakfast. This might not seem important now, but it will be later. The plan was to get to the State Fair by 7:00 so we would have plenty of time to find tickets. Yes, that's right. We didn't have tickets to the game yet. Livin' life on the wild side... The ticket situation wasn't as favorable as we expected, but D and I found tickets about 30 minutes before kick-off. Actually R found them and he pretty much let us have them. Thank you R! R and P continued to look for tickets while we went inside and found our seats. They didn't have any more luck and ended up watching the game on a TV in a food court at the fair.

Meanwhile, D and I rushed into the fair and found our way to our gate. When we got to our seats, we realized we hadn't eaten anything for lunch. We thought we had used up the majority of our cash (found some later in my billfold that I didn't know was there) on our tickets, so D went to the food court and bought a hot dog and a bottle of water. He ate the hot dog, I drank the water... I was too nervous for food! In the 3rd quarter, I started to feel the affects of the heat and lack of food, so D went to see what else he could get us... a coke and a bag of chips. I drank part of the coke and ate 2-3 chips. Again, too nervous to really be able to eat. Food wasn't important until the game was over!

Here are some pictures from the game:

Oklahoma's flag (which was booed, of course)

The Show Band of the Southwest!

The Lone Star State

We're a little crazy about our flag

The final score 16-13

Sorry- no pictures from the actual game. I was on my feet, cheering and stomping and drowning out Boomer-Sooner with Texas! Fight! more times than I can count.

And remember that video I shared last time that got me so fired up for the game? Well, now I have my own...

I was asked this morning by my mom if the game was worth it... worth the hours spent tutoring this summer to pay for the tickets, worth the anxiety of finding tickets, worth the crowds of OU fans yelling at us, worth my sunburned face?

Yes. It was 150% worth it.

I. Loved. Every. Second. Of. It.

Red River Shootout

I am excited for so many reasons... first of which is that my week is only 3 days thanks to Mr. Columbus and to the title of the post. If you're a Longhorn fan, then you're probably aware that the Texas-OU game has become the biggest game of the season in the recent past... mostly because we're both usually ranked and can be a deciding game in determining what kind of post-season game we'll play. The game is always played in Dallas (a neutral site halfway between the two universities) and believe it or not, D and I have never been to this game. But that's about to change.

This weekend, we will be making the trek (along with about a gazillion other Longhorns) on I-35 to Dallas to enjoy the game, visit the state fair, and hopefully return with a win in our 'W' column. Since it's such a big game, the traffic is awful so we'll be leaving Friday to try to avoid some of the madness. Yay for getting Monday and Friday off! If only every week could be like that...

And with that, I'll leave you with "The Eyes of Texas" played after last year's game which ended as a Texas win- 45-35.

Some Thoughts

D received this list of random thoughts in an email. We both got such a good laugh out of it that I thought I'd share. I don't know the identity of the original author.

Random Thoughts of the Day:

• I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

• More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

• Nothing stinks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

• Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

• I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

• The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase "Regards" again.

• Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

• There is a great need for sarcasm font.

• I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

• I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

• Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

• I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

• Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

• Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

• How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

• What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

• While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

• MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

• Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

• Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....

• You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

• Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

• There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

• I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

• I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'

• I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

• Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

This list is probably more relevant/appreciated by my generation of peeps. My parents definitely didn't laugh/understand a lot of these when I read it to them earlier.

In closing, let's look at my week on the tube...
Today- Leno premieres with his new show. While I'm not a Leno fan, anyone who doesn't live under a rock has probably heard about the West-Hicks controversy. Tonight on Leno, West will be sitting down with Leno and I want to hear what he has to say about what happened last night.
Tuesday- Big Brother 11 Finale (yes, I'm one of the BB followers. I've seen 7-8 seasons and it's one of the reality shows I look forward to each summer.)
Thursday- The Office (Yay for a new season!)
Saturday- Texas vs. Texas Tech (My fingers are still crossed that I won't be watching this on TV, but as one of 100,000+ packing Royal-Memorial stadium.) Hook 'em!

The Giggles

I got the giggles last night for the first time in a long time. You know the kind- the-make-you-laugh-so-hard-you're-crying, everyone-looks-at-you-like-you're-crazy, can't-explain-what-you're-laughing-about-due-t0-lack-of-oxygen, it's-n0t-nearly-as-funny-to-everyone-else hysterics. I don't know what it was- maybe the super-sugary shaved ice at 9:30 at night contributed to it. It was a great end to a crazy week!

This past Tuesday was our first day of school. I'm not going to lie- the idea of having 20 kindergartners was frightening and stressful to say the least. While I've probably had better first days in my 2-year teaching career, the rest of the week went pretty smoothly.

What has really been hard are all the other adjustments I've had to make. I really miss my teaching friends. What I wouldn't give to be able to teach with them again. They were more than just teaching partners, they were friends! And I so miss their presence at school.

I'm trying hard to create a bond with my teaching partner now. She's really sweet. We're just at different points in our life, and while that will be a great learning experience for both, it won't replace the girls I worked with last year. Keep praying that they find jobs soon!

Football season is just around the corner and I'm so excited about a particular game we'll be going to this year. I LOVE football. And when our team is ranked #2 in the nation, that just makes me excited and nervous at the same time. First game of the year is next Saturday. We won't be getting tickets- we'll be enjoying that one from the air-conditioned comfort of our own home!

On the planner for this weekend is hanging out with J & J, ordering pizza (thank you Papa John's for customer appreciation) and playing Wii. Tomorrow they'll be joining us at church where the service will look a little different. I can't wait!