Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - Viva la Shamrockfest!

Well, the cat is now allowed out of the bag about Kendra leaving. Had to keep my mouth shut for a few days until she informed our athletic director (important that the boss doesn't find out 2nd hand). Having what will probably be our last hoorah at a party on Saturday and then off to Shamrockfest for some more hoorahs. Quite looking forward to it. Nothings better then beers, pinching, and tons of green...........not to mention the live bands and really great times with friends. Totally looking forward to hanging out with Jeremy and whomever else may show up that I don't normally get to see.

Sunday, March 05, 2006 - Iceball..........oh wait, that's supposed to be baseball.....

Disclaimer: This is the first of MANY blog entries from my old MySpace blog. I'm thinking I'm going to cancel the account, but I didn't want to lose the blogs.


I think that somewhere in the rule books there should be a section under inclimate weather that states if the temperature (windchill included) drops below 38 degrees on any given day, that the game/games should be rescheduled for a different, much warmer, day. Today actually seems like it may warm up and not be too entirely insufferable. Let me just say that on Friday, while the poor little girls from Trinity were out there in shorts, it was 30 below freakin zero and that was before the windchill factor. Amazingly I never had to call 911 or treat a single girl for hypothermia, but that was purely by the grace of God and definitely not due to the weather. And, it only took my feet about 3 hours to completely defrost themselves and regain feeling.

Bad blogger

Ok, ok - so I'm officially a bad blogger. I am sorry people, but ya know, life gets in the way sometimes. It's certainly not for lack of bloggable material - God knows I get PLENTY of that on a regular basis. I've been debating about blogging on a specific incident that happened to me yesterday, but frankly it just made me so absurdly mad that I'd rather just forget about it instead of putting it up here to be read and reread for eternity.
So, I was just reading a friend's blog, and she was kinda smart to go through and pluck stuff from her old blog and post it to her new one. I might do that to, cause I don't use my MySpace anymore, and I'm seriously considering deleting my account alltogether, but I have a ton of blog entries on there, and I'd rather not lose them. That being said, I will tell you that it has been nearly 3 years since my trip to Venezuela, so don't get all excited when you see those posted up here.
Incidentally, my next trip, in less than two weeks, will be to Puerto Rico. I'll be working my tail off while I'm there, but that's ok cause I'll be working my tail off on a nice Caribbean island where there's sun and sand and pina coladas. Frankly, work seems less like work where sun and sand and pina coladas happen regularly - ya know?

2009 Recap

Holy crap! Where'd the year go? It seems like just yesterday I was moaning and groaning about how much my body hurt, about the crazy bumps and plaques brought on by the PUPPs, and let's not forget how I couldn't wear shoes. The time really flies when you're having fun..... or not. All I can say is "whew, glad that's over!" While 2009 was a rough year in many ways, it equally fabulous in so many more. Obviously the major highlight was the arrival of our precious Brinley. She is so fabulous I don't think there are actually words to describe her. I mean, I'd been saying for months how this kid was going to come out walking and talking and peeing in the potty, and while that was completely absurd (purposefully so), she certainly did come out happy and healthy and sleeping through the night (which is all one can truly ask for with a baby). As the months have gone by we've enjoyed watching her grow and change. She's on the verge of crawling right now, and is all about "real" food and less about a bottle. My current wish is that she'd hold her own bottle, so that I could consider moving her along to a sippy cup. Nonetheless, I'm certain that will come with time.

In other news from 2009:

Joshua turned 8 and got braces (though only on his two front teeth). He graduated from the 2nd grade and is now doing well in the 3rd grade. He's cruising right along with tae kwon do and is now a brown belt. A few weeks back he started a weekly Spanish class. He struggles with it a bit, and I wish it was a couple times a week to help him retain more.
















Brad "graduated" from college! I put that in quotations because he walked in the ceremony, but is currently finishing up his final class, biology. I'm incredibly proud of him and this accomplishment. It has been a long road, and he has worked very hard to get good grades. By the end of the month he will have achieved his B.A. in Business.

Home for the holidays

It is t-1 week until Christmas. I guess I'm done with my shopping.... not that there was alot to get done in the first place. My tree is up, but still remains only partially decorated. Josh and I put a solid effort forth last night, but we bought a pretty tall tree this year and Brad is the only one tall enough to reach the top. Considering that we're flat broke - I did manage to get several nice things for Josh. Brad won a Wii and Wii Fit at his company party, but gave the Wii back for someone else to win since we already have one. He kept the Wii Fit, so that'll be a nice one under the tree from Santa. For the first time since I've been working a "9-5" job, I am taking off the week between Christmas and New Years. Our office is open, but it always a barren waste land. I can't do much work because the people I primarily work with are teachers, and they're not working. The rest of them are folks who also work with teachers, so they're not working either. I figure I've got the time to take, so why not use it to enjoy my holiday. Josh will be off of school, my babysitter is going to Venezuela, so it just makes sense for me to be home. Too bad Brad won't be able to join us. I can think of so many projects we could get done if we were all home together for several days.

On the road again

I need a "slow down" button. Life is blazing past me and I can't quite keep up. A year or so ago I used to have perpetual anxiety about making my flights. I had so many trips piled up on top of each other that I was literally dreaming about the next trip as soon as one had ended. I deduced that this was likely my brain trying to prepare for the next event, but it just made me nervous all the time. Now I'm all lackadaisical about traveling all the time, and I find myself a bit unprepared for upcoming trips. This weekend I'll be busy. Tomorrow I'm working all day at the Soccerplex (or at least I'm pretty sure I am, unless they call and tell me it's been cancelled because it's under water), and then Sunday evening I fly out to KC for four days. I haven't been away for that long since I went to convention back in March. I've been trying to keep up with stuff around the house, and Brad has actually been doing his part (for the most part), by doing the dishes and then vacuuming periodically (oh, if only he'd do the stairs). I spent a good bit of time working on laundry (cause you can't very well pack for a 4 day trip without clean clothes), and then I try to tidy up daily (which is nothing new). I still find myself panicking when I think about having to go away. Like I'm completely unprepared, but actually I am prepared. Brad and I are both taking Sunday off, and I'll have all day to do whatever needs to be done before I take off that evening. I'll be back late on Wednesday, but then have to hit the ground running again as I'm working next Saturday and Sunday at the Soccerplex as well. At least the next week is Thanksgiving. I'd like to say it'll be a nice relaxing break, but my mom is coming and by this point you should fully understand that no relaxing will happen. I'd like to focus on going to Puerto Rico in late January, but I have to get through my trip to TX and annual leadership meeting first. That is also somewhat stressful, though the meetings always go well. I can at least focus on KC BBQ for next week and Root burgers after Thanksgiving.

Laughing, but perplexed

I'm grappling with the fact that people I know are at a stage in their life where they have kids who need to maintain a certain GPA in order to play school sponsored sports. Compound that with the additional fact that at least one of these people has decided that it is more important for their kid to play sports than to do well in school. Yep, that's right. I honestly thought that ridiculous idea went out of fashion (sadly, I had athletes in the high school where I worked a few years back who had similar parents). I just cannot wrap my brain around the idea that somehow it is ok to bash the school for requiring kids to maintain a certain GPA in order to participate in sports. I also cannot fathom how these folks seem to think it's ok to put sport participation over doing well in school. Please, someone, tell me where the train derailed here? Now, I will say that my life has been considerably different that this particular person's life. Nonetheless, she wasn't an athlete of any sort. She wasn't in to the arts. Hell, she wasn't in to anything extracurricular as far as I could tell. This perplexes me even more. I guess somewhere, I could maybe comprehend a bit of this sort of sentiment from someone who'd been a 3 sport athlete and had gone to college on scholarship. Maybe, just maybe, an argument could be made by THAT person. But, she's not that person. I have to laugh because I pointed out to this person that the school wasn't in the wrong. In fact, the school is struggling, struggling hard in recent years, just to get a half decent education to these kids. To my amazement, it seems they've started offering foreign language to kids at the middle school level. I think this is fabulous, because it's a huge step forward from what was previously offered. Sadly, the person I speak of thinks it's an aberration. She literally made the argument that the only reason Spanish was offered was because of the diversity in this country. Seriously? I couldn't help but put in my two cents on the issue. This only led to more laughs because others actually chimed in to support the crazy ideas she was spewing. Alas, I am now one less "friend" on FB, which makes me laugh even harder. Oh well, no more redneck entertainment for me.