Teacher's Appreciation Week

No, your Google Reader is not messed up, The Hines Herald is posting again! Can you tell that I am finished with school?! Before it gets too far away, I wanted to show you some pictures of things I received for Teacher's Appreciation week. Although it was not mentioned on our school calendar, I still received some nice gifts.

Don has begun his summer schedule where he gets Saturday, Sunday & Monday off one week and the next he will only get Sunday. They call it the swing shift. He actually doesn't mind it because every other weekend we have a 3-day weekend and we are able to get away to see the area. His first weekend on the swing shift, I still had to work Monday and I was feeling quite well, so I couldn't use one of my sick days =). Then, it was also the night we had a shower for Kristen, so I was getting home late. I had asked him to do one favor for me . . . to clean out my dryer vent because it was taking sometimes 3 - 70 minute cycles to dry our clothes. He did that and it works like a charm! Also when I arrived he said he did something else for me. So, he sat me in front of the computer and flashed up the following pictures that he took throughout his project . . .







Pastor Eric and Jalyn had installed lights under their cabinets and I loved the effect. So, I simply told Don about it. We tried a cheap way of doing it, by putting those battery operated lights that you push in and the lights come on. It lasted about three hours before the lights burned out or the batteries died. So, when I arrived home I was shocked to see Don had installed real lights and ran the wires through the cabinets. Thanks to Brinks, he has learned a lot about running wire and electricity. Thanks sweetie for thinking of me and giving me something that I didn't need, but something I wanted for your Teacher. And thanks for the fabulous shots of you being my handyman and allowing me to laugh at you! Your so funny!

Here is a picture of my pile of stuff that I received from school. The one special gift was the bouquet of flowers that I recieved from one of my students from TWO years ago. It is always special when they come back to see you and give you hugs!



Here is some pictures of my kids during our fundraiser - the Lions' Pride Golf Classic/Walk-a-Thon.





That same week, the second grade class went on their annual field trip to the Virginia Living Museum, SPCA Zoo, and Huntington Park. We had one little hitch, our bus broke down and were late getting back to school. But I was so thankful that we broke down in the park, so the kids had an opportunity to get out and play in the park, while we figured out what to do with them. We were headed across a major bridge in just a few moments from that place and I can not even fathom what it would have been like to be stuck on the bridge with 40 second graders who cannot get out of the vehicle when it was 80 degrees outside and stopping traffic. The only good I could have seen out of that situation would have been, that we would have probably made the news! =) However, God's sovereignty would have us break down in the park - I'm so thankful!

Tagged

I've been tagged by Shannon Conley and thus, I will abort mission of catching you all up on my last few fabulous weekends full of fun and excitement to tell you a little bit about myself. After posting these rules, each player proceeds to list 8 relatively random facts/habits about himself/herself. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names. (I've edited this to only 6).

1. I attempted bow hunting when I was in late middle school - early high school. I had my bow and arrows and was quite faithful at going out and practicing my shot, which was not too bad. I remember my step-dad, Doug, encouraging me to continue on. I eventually got the guts to overcome my fear of heights and climb a tree stand and practice shooting from there. I never did end up going out to really hunt, I valued that one-on-one time with my mom too much to give it up to be cold and bored sitting in a tree, never knowing if I would actually be able to shoot an arrow at Bambi's Mom or Dad!

2. Along with that, Doug, also took me out after he had shot a doe, to go track it down and find it. That was pretty fun going through the woods tracking the blood trail left and watching my step-dad's amazing ability to find any leaf or twig that had a spot of blood. Next, I held the flashlight as he gutted the deer and drug it back to the four-wheeler!

3. I dated only ONE guy before finding Mr. Right for me!!



4. Back to my adventures in wildlife - my parents were big into "Mushroom Hunting". This takes place in the early sping, like around Mother's Day, Morell Mushrooms begin to grow and are found in Michigan. They are edible and pretty hard to spot. We would go out one weekend in the year and would find them through out the woods. Again, my step-dad's keen eyesight aided in finding many a mushroom, even zipping down the two tracks in our mini van, he would slam on the breaks, send us into the seats ahead of us, jump out and cut down a few mushrooms, and continue along the way!



5. Giving a shout out to the Carnes' side of the family - my family all own cabins very close to each other in Michigan and many weekends I would spend up there with my Dad. I have many funny and crazy stories from those times. One of which would be our annual "Stump Hunt". We would head out with at least 3 pick up trucks. The adults would ride in the cabs and the rest of us cousins would ride in the beds of the truck. We would head down the two-tracks and stop periodically, then we would turn the row-bar lights into the woods. The kids would scatter finding as much downed logs, branches, or burnable material for the camp fires as possible, haul it back to the truck beds, and back out for more before the caravan of truck would begin moving again. We ended up bringing back enough wood to last most of the summer. We would also look for a stump that we could remove to put onto the fire that night. Simple fun!

6. I have taken after my mother in the organization catagory. I alphabetize my spices! =)

7. I LOVE SPORTS!! Especially those MIchigan teams! Right now we're following the progress of our DEEETROIT BASKETBALL TEAM - The Pistons. We were following the Red Wings until they got booted. We always hope that our teams make it to the playoffs, because that is the only time our major-sport-free state of Virginia will play any Michigan teams on our regular three or four stations, since we are the 2% of the American population that does not pay for the 360 some-odd channels just to get ESPN. However, we have spent a few nights in bed listening to the games on the radio!! It was good to see the Tigers in the World Series last year and our Michigan Wolverines ranked #2 for a while so that they will televise those, especially since our neighbor is a Ohio State fan!




8. I like the taste of frozen shredded cheese. Pretty random.

I will tag the following individuals . . . however you are not binded by some kind of blogging law that you must do this or be put on blogging probation or any type of discipline proceedure, I am simply interested in your facts or random habits and such, if you are all dried up of any new blog ideas, here is your ticket to tell about you! . . . Kristen Varner soon-to-be Armstrong, Carissa Smith, Becky Gravley, Shannon Logsdon, Julie Baylor, Amanda Lee. Enjoy!

We are Still Alive!

Amazingly, with Don finished with Seminary for the semester, he has been coming home from work at a decent time, giving us time to actually spend together. All this to say, the blog has taken the back burner to spending time with my man who is freed up from spending his time typing papers, reading gobs of books, or studying his Biblical languages. We will try to get you caught up with the highlights of some of the things we have been able to do with our time. Don was still on his school schedule for work during my spring break, so we both had all day Friday to spend together. We spent half of our day working on improvements to the house (what home-owners are blessed with) and the other half playing. He had the afternoon/evening all planned and I just sat back and allowed him to tell me what was next. We began our morning with Golden Corral's breakfast buffet. Then home to work. Next, Don took me to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. This many acre garden located by the airport, was full of beautiful, blooming azaleas and other flowering plants and trees.





Next we headed to an old BBQ joint that still has the car-hops. Remarkably this place still had cheap prices as well. After we left, we realized that the waitress had left her card in our windshield wiper. This card looked like it had been there since the founding of this restaurant. It was a funny "bloggable" event!



Following our dinner, we headed down the street to the local baseball team, the Norfolk Tides. It was their opening night there at Harbour Park. They are apparently the farm team for the Baltimore Orioles. We had gone a while ago, but this was quite exciting to see an opening game.




I must preface my next story that although I don't care for the word I am about to use, I find the situation quite funny and ironic. During the game, we had the opportunity to be two or three rows above a group of guys out having a good time. One of them had been rooting against the Tides the whole game and basically trying to rile the crowd up and be a opposing view. He even went as far as to buy a Tides' T-Shirt and with a Sharpie, put a circle around and line through the name. When he turned around you could see the words: "Tides Sucks" with the -s scribbled out. Apparently got a little hasty with the marker before thinking about proper grammar! =) He ended up taking the T-Shirt off during the 6th or 7th inning when one of the Tides hit a triple that landed two other Tides at home and basically ended the game with a home-opener win!