Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Number 63– Check!

This is really small and not really significant, BUT it is on the list!

I’m actually quite proud of myself seeing as how I generally am destined to kill all plants that require even the smallest water source. It’s sad really.

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The goal was to plant a seed {or many in my case} and keep it alive, so it would produce a flower. Not an easy task for me!

What’s really sad about the whole thing though is that I planted the seeds, didn’t save the seed packet, and forgot what I planted!!!

Seriously? I must be the most ridiculous blogger around seeing as how most bloggers tend to know and record every detail of something of this sort.

It’s kind of funny how much time I’ve spent inspecting this unknown flower though. When the sprouts started coming up, I could only beckon how many sprouts I had at the beginning of the day, throughout the day, and every night before we went to bed.

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Now, I inspect and count the flower buds. How excited was I when I woke the other morning to discover my first flower! You would think I won the lottery.

It’s the little things in life, people!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Easter Extravaganza

I told you that I would be back with more Easter extravaganza! What kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t keep up my end of the deal?

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Now, it has been quite busy for about the past week. Last week in school, we had our Easter egg hunt and party. It was a party indeed. I think it was harder getting ready for this party rather than our Christmas party.

IMG_4178 Homemade cupcakes by yours truly

At Christmas, you only have to worry about 17 presents. At Easter though, you have to worry about 204+ eggs that have to be stuffed and taped shut. Don’t let me fool you. I didn’t stuff them. I just had to make sure they were taped, and my ever-so-helpful aide reduced the amount significantly.

IMG_4242The hundreds and hundreds of eggs for the kiddos to hunt

At Christmas, we just have the party. At Easter, we have the egg hunt and then the party. It makes for a much busier time trying to get everything prepared and cleaned up.

Totally worth it though for my 17 babies!

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In addition to decorating for Easter, we also added in some general spring decor.

I never in my life thought that I would enjoy teaching kindergarten as much as I do. For me, they’re just the right age. Even though some days can be tough with all of the little voices calling your name, it makes it worth it when you see them make progress and know they love you.

I hope you all had as great of an Easter as I did!

Monday, April 25, 2011

A Terrific Last Holiday

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If you read that and don’t know what I’m talking about, you do not teach school. This past FOUR DAY WEEKEND was our last holiday before the year is up, and it lived up to my expectations.

This weekend was one of celebration and thankfulness for the blessing our Savior gave in remembrance of us to save us from our sins. What a selfless act! For that we should be unbelievably thankful and seek to do his Word, while all that we do will never be enough to repay him for what he did for us.

While we celebrated the ascention of our Lord, we also took part in many other traditional Easter activities all including Easter eggs hunts and fellowship with friends and family.

MY BIL and SIL, Judd and Abby, paid us a visit this weekend as well. While they were here, we took part in an Easter dinner at my MIL’s house with Colby’s family. It’s so nice to gather around the dinner table with everyone and just enjoy each other’s company.

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Dot prepared us a beautiful dinner, which was quite tasty as well. There is no telling how many hours she slaved away in the kitchen to have a feast fit for more than just the seven of us.

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Afterwards, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the Langham family farm. The boys worked on the tractor while the girls sun bathed and drank a few Co-Cola’s {as we say in these parts}. A farm trip rarely goes with a little fishing though no matter what one goes out there for.

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On Sunday, I went to church to sing the Lord’s praises and followed it with an afternoon picnic at my aunt’s house by the pond.

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Aly egg hunted, and then we spent the rest of the day resting off the previous parts of the weekend.

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I can honestly say I didn’t do a thing today other than pick the house up a little and read. It’s been a blast!

It’s now back to work tomorrow, but the good news is that it is only a four day week, and Friday is pay day! That’s always a good week!

Only 22 more student days left of school! It’s exactly one month away! 24 more work days for me though! Not too bad!

Summer isn’t that far away! Oh, the projects there will be this summer!

My excitement nearly overtakes me!

I’ll be back {hopefully sooner than later} with more Easter events {a.k.a. my home away from home….school}!

Monday, April 18, 2011

All in a Flower

I’ve been doing a little sprucing up around the place. I haven’t had the time nor the money to decorate for Easter, so I’ve had to do some decorating with some flowers. It did the trick though! It’s looking a bit more refreshing inside this old house we call home now.

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These flowers were free thanks to my green thumbed MIL. She has flowers all over her yard compared to my non-flower bearing yard. Yet another perk to leaving next to your in-laws. Free, fabulous flowers!

I quickly became aware that my front door looked dreadfully awful and boring. I pulled out a door hanger that was given once again to us at a wedding shower by my MIL it turns out! I had not figured out how I wanted to use it until this past week. A little plastic lining, left over ribbon from the wedding, and a few flowers from the trusty Wal-Mart later I had decor to adorn my door.

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On a more serious note though, we all need to be praying for the families that were affected by the tornadoes that swept through our state and our area.

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I couldn’t believe what I saw when I drove up just a little up the road from Colby’s farm. We were blessed that it didn’t touch the farm. It certainly was a shock to see, especially as we explored more around the area.

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This particular tree wasn’t snapped off, but the tornado twisted it so much that the bark popped off of it. You can see the mess behind the tree though and that is nothing compared to the rest of the property.

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Some of these people will be starting completely over, and I feel certain that some of these people whose homes were destroyed did not have any form of insurance to cover their tragic loss. The trailer in the back was flipped over upside down with several people inside. Luckily, no one was killed in our area.

More blog posts will hopefully be coming!

Friday, April 15, 2011

We’re Baaack! {said in a sing-song voice}

We got back from our trip to the mountains on Wednesday. I was sad to go. It was just too relaxing to leave, and it rained pretty much the entire day on Tuesday which made me feel like a whole day of vacation was taken away from me.

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When you have plans to do all kinds of outdoor activities, this really puts a damper on your plans. So, instead of being able to do all we planned, we spent the day driving around looking at the sites from the car for the better part of the day and chilling out at the cabin.

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This was a nice surprise as we were wondering around aimlessly. The small {yet still wonderful} waterfall was coming down the rocks literally beside the road by my window.

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While we were driving down the road, we saw another couple stopped. I told Colby to slow down because it must be something good to see. I was quite surprised to see this large waterfall when we pulled over.

Since it was so rainy, we decided to do a bit of shopping. I knew I had to share some of my great finds with you all!

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I’ve shared with you before that the cabin in Colby’s family is basically finished but still needs to finishing touches and accessories. Are these not the most perfect salt and pepper shakers for it? I found these at the Apple Barn for $10 for the pair.

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I picked these up for the cabin, too. I just couldn’t resist!

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I couldn’t not get some for myself though…especially since everything in the store was 50% off. These towels were $9 for two sets! A steal if you ask me!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I’ll be enjoying my last few days of spring break before it is back to school time!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

A Mountain Experience Like None Other

Note:

Today’s post is a summary of day two of our trip. This was actually written on the morning of day three, but I refrained from posting it due to any crazies out there who might take advantage of us going out of town.

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Now….on to my story!

We spent the better part of yesterday in Cades Cove again. It seriously does not get any more relaxing than being with nature and just observing the beauty God has created for our enjoyment.

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I have never been to the Smokies during the spring time, and I must say that it seems that our spring in Alabama came much sooner than theirs. Everything seems to just now be blooming.

We were a little disappointed in the amount of wildlife we had been seeing during the day. It was few and far between.

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When it was time for lunch though, we decided to go down to the creek and have a picnic {on my 101 list}.

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We brought a quilt, but Colby had to go back to the car to retrieve it when I took this picture. I love picnics though, and I wish I could do it more often. 

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Because we weren’t sure when the bad weather was going to start rolling in, we opted out of the hike we planned on taking. I feared being on the middle of the hike and the bottom fall out. A chance of a long hike back in a thunderstorm on a mountain = Brenna doesn’t hike.

Instead, we decided we would go horseback riding. Colby had never been, and I’ve done the ride through Cades Cove. This led us to a stable my mom told us about.

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Colby was given “Gunsmoke,” and I was given “Cinderella.” Now, one might think that Gunsmoke would be a horse that might be trouble, and Cinderella would be the horse that was sweet and loving. BUT, one couldn’t be more wrong.

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Meet Cinderella!

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Meet our guide {whose name I forgot after “the incident”}

We were supposed to be going to see a waterfall, which turned out to be on top of a mountain. It was the only way to see this particular waterfall, which I thought would be pretty neat.

I could tell immediately that my horse had a mind of her own. She constantly wanted to take a break to eat {as in every two feet} which meant I had to constantly pull on the rein a bit to hold her back. She also liked to walk to the edge {which makes one a bit uneasy if you’re not accustomed to horses on a mountain}.

Colby’s horse on the other hand seemed to do pretty well except for the fact that he would run in to my horse since mine was so slow and wanted to stop on occasion.

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I started to worry when I saw this ahead. I wondered where we could go from here. Surely we weren’t about to turn around?

Oh no! We crossed that stream, made that sharp turn, and we saw this….

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It was truly stunning! And there we were standing in it!

Then, it took a turn for the worse. Colby’s horse got a little too close to mine one too many times and while we were going down the mountain she decided she had had enough. She stopped and kicked those two back legs at Colby’s horse. She nailed him right in the chest, too.

I had no idea what had just happened. I just new that my adrenaline had kicked in and that I was scared to death about what was about to go down. Of course, my head was giving me the worst possible scenarios in all of five seconds of the worst that could happen. You know…throw me off, take off running down the mountain with me on it, throw me off and down the mountain, start bucking around.

All I knew to do though was to hold on for dear life and try to stay on. And that I did. I couldn’t get back to the stable quick enough after that. We ended up switching the horses around though after that incident.

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We were good sports about it though. What else could you do? After all, they’re animals and no matter how much they are trained they still have a mind of their own. I just wish she wouldn’t have decided to have a mind of her own on that steep hill down with me on it.

All is good though!

We went back to Cades Cove right at dusk to try to see more wildlife, and we did see more deer. The storms moved in late last night, and it is supposed to shower some today, but we will see!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

We made it!

Note: I blogged while we were on our trip. I was just a little nervous to post it while we were gone due to some people who might take advantage of the fact that we were out of town {a.k.a. robbers}. So, this is the morning of day two when I’m writing a summary of day one.

After a nice {long} drive, we have finally made it here to the mountains! Now, I know what you’re probably thinking.

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“If you’re in the mountains, why in the heck are you on the computer blog posting?”

Well….let me answer that for you. My lovely alarm clock I like to call my brain woke me up at 6:30 this morning. I couldn’t go back to sleep. After all, it’s really 7:30 here and the sun was shining what seemed to be right into my face. So, why not be somewhat productive and drink a coke {my substitute for yucky coffee, eat some cookies {homemade}, and blog a little?

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We got here yesterday around 3:30 {eastern}. When we got to the place to pick up our rental information, they informed us that we had a cabin swap. The poor girl at the front desk could probably see by my face a state of worry of what we were transferred to, so she immediately offered to show us pictures of our new humble abode’ for the next few days. After seeing the pictures, I knew they had made a good choice and that everything would go fine.

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We unloaded and changed clothes since it was burning up hot when we got here {not the cooler I expected}, so we could head out for what seems to be a tradition in my family when you arrive here….we went to Cades Cove.

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Not our best trip through either. No wildlife. Idiots who think Cades Cove is  raceway and want to honk their horns when people don’t go fast enough for them. In addition, these idiots also drove LOUD motorcycles and would proceed to “rev” them up when they were irritated. Needless to say, I was glad when they were gone. I hope to have better luck with that today.

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Oh, and I almost forgot! Can someone explain this picture for me?

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I may have missed the memo or something, but I have never heard of “broasted” chicken! What in the world?

I hope all of my teacher friends are having a wonderful SPRING BREAK!!!! And, I hope the rest of you all are having a terrific week!