Hi friends!

It has been about a week since I updated and I apologize for that, but I have been so busy! I went to San Antonio last Thursday to take my sister home and to spend a week with my family. I just got back to Flower Mound this morning.

I got to spend some really fantastic time with my parents and my sister, and also some friends back home. My mom, sister, and I went to some cool thrift stores one day and to have a greek lunch. Another day my mom and I hung out at the pool to get some sun. My mom has a much higher heat and sun tolerance than me! Another day my whole family went to an awesome flea market where I found some great deals on Halloween decorations. On Monday night, my oldest and dearest friend Emily came over, along with her sister Valerie and her mom Becky. The five of us, my mom included, had a sleepover! We played games, watched movies, and caught up with each other's lives. Emily and I have been friends for 16 years, and even though we haven't lived in the same town for 5 years now and may not ever again, I always enjoy our time together and things always seem so easy with us.

I missed Kevin so much while I was gone! This is the first time we have been apart for even a night since we have been married for over a year. It was great to be with my family back home, but I was happy to get back home to my husband. I left San Antonio at 5:30am this morning to get back in time to see Kevin before he left for some afternoon appointments. We even went and had a nice lunch together :)

After Kevin went to work, I tackled the job of cleaning our shower. It has been leaking for a while, and Kevin fixed it while I was gone. The problem is, while it leaked for a week or so, some mildew formed in the grout along the bottom. I'm pretty sure I inhaled too many of those fumes, because I have been feeling sick ever since :( Before I got into cleaning the shower, I re-organized some closets and unpacked. Busy day!

Like I said, Kevin fixed the shower while I was gone. He also hung our surround sound and completely replaced our kitchen sink fixtures because they were messed up. I also came home to a freshly mowed yard and beautiful growth in all of my flower beds because of the fertilizers and root stimulators he has been putting out weekly. I am very lucky to have such a hard working husband!

I'll be heading back to school in no time... I'm counting down the days until I can get back into my classroom after the remodeling is finished to see/start cleaning up the mess that will inevitably have settled in my room. That's the bad part about being the closest classroom to the office and bathrooms - when those things are torn down and rebuilt mine is the closest to demolition :(

More to come later in the week!

Hello all!

My parents left yesterday to head back to San Antonio. It was a wonderful weekend, and I enjoyed being a hostess in my new house! We just spent a lot of time around the house, playing games and grilling outside. It was a lot of fun!

Lindsay is staying here with me for the whole week; then we'll go back to SA. We went shopping today, tomorrow we're headed to Six Flags, Wednesday pedicures and church, Thursday more shopping, and Friday we'll head home.

Kevin and I spent a lot of the morning (while Lindsay was still asleep) doing our budget. That was not so fun - necessary, but not enjoyable. It's stressful to put into writing where every penny of your income will go until the end of the year! Sometimes being a grown up is not all its cracked up to be...

I feel like I am getting the "wife" thing under control finally. I have actually been cooking "for real" dinners, as Kevin calls them, every night. And I actually enjoy doing our laundry and dishes...maybe it's doing them in our new home. I also absolutely love spending time in our yard gardening, and even though I have much more house to clean now, I enjoy doing that too! I feel like right as I am getting everything under control it's going to be time to go back to work.

I can't believe that I will go back to work in 4 weeks, and the kids will return in just 5 weeks! The summer has really flown by, but it has been the most eventful and exciting summer of my life (with the exception of the wedding last summer of course)! God has really blessed Kevin and I in our first year of marriage and into our second. We are so thankful for all the He has done in our lives.

Pictures of our hard work

Due to a few requests, I have decided to post some pictures of our new and improved yard. We are basically done with the work we want to do, with the exception of a large project in the backyard. We want to turn the whole back part of it (in front of the brick fence) into a flower bed with river rocks and potted plants, etc. That will come later, as I think we will hire someone to carry in and spread the 100 bags of rocks!

The first is of the front of the house. It shows where we ripped out the big bushes and made flower beds with purple periwinkles.

The next is a close up view of the new flower beds. I also chopped some pieces of this really cool bush in the backyard off, stuck them in a vase of water for a week, and they grew new roots! So then I planted them in the front and they will turn into new bushes. Pretty sweet!

The back is where we have done the most work! We ripped a HUGE overgrowth of ivy off of the deck. It took us 4 hours to remove and bundle up. Now we just want to build a tin roof on the top :) Here is the first picture:

The next picture is a view of the whole backyard. We removed 4 rose bushes, another huge bush, and a bunch of grapevines growing on the brick fence. We also trimmed a bunch of trees that were hanging over our yard from the neighbor's yard with Kevin's new pole saw that is "the coolest thing ever." We are so domestic.

Last is a picture of our adorable dogs enjoying a sunny day in their new backyard. We love them so much!!!

In other news, my family is arriving at about noon tomorrow!! I am so excited to see them and for them so see our house. It is strange that we have lived here almost 2 months and they have yet to see it. But I forgive them, because they have been super busy! Then my sister is going to stay with me for a whole week, and it is going to be awesome! Then, I'm driving her back so San Antonio and I'll stay for almost a week to visit with some friends back home. It is going to be a great couple of weeks! And then school will be back in no time...

Tonight I'm headed out with the "tres amigas" and some other friends to sushi and karaoke. Last week I actually sang by myself, which if you know me, you know it a huge deal. We'll see how confident I'm feeling tonight.

A New Yard and a Trip to the Vet

The last few days have been filled with working in the yard! Kevin and I ripped out three huge bushes from in front of our house by tying them to his truck and driving away! Then I filled the beds in with dirt and planted like 60 more flowers. It looks so much better! Then we ripped all of the ugly vine off of our "purgula," or detached deck, in the back yard. (We had already ripped down the sides, but we scraped it all off of the top as well). Then I hung a bunch of baskets with flowers and painted a bunch of my old clay pots to decorate with. It looks so nice and clean now! Finally, I hung a beautiful wind chime :) What I am most proud of, though, is that I (ALL BY MYSELF) got the electric hedge trimmer and trimmed and shaped all of the many, many shaped bushes in our front yard. Yard work is tough, but it is so rewarding to see the finished product!!!

Today I took Bella to the vet for her annual check-up. I swear you cannot get out the door there for less than $100. Today she got a blood test, exam, rabies vacc, and that other vaccination that I can't remember. It has distemper in it. One time Kevin got mad that Tex had to get it because he read too much into the name that thought that Tex didn't need it because he "has a great temperament!" It was HILARIOUS. So anyway, all of those things came to $109.40. Geeze.

I ended the day with a trip to Garden Ridge and Kroger, followed by laundry and a nap. It was another perfect summer day. I am wondering how on earth I am going to return to work next month and have time for all of these chores. It shall be interesting!!!

My family gets home from Brazil tomorrow so I can go back to talking to them every day again! And then, they come to visit in one week to finally see the house! Yay!

The dump is the smelliest place on earth... seriously. I would know.

So Kevin convinced me to help him tear out 2/3 of the plant life in our jungle of a backyard. We ripped out bushes, vines, and even small trees. During the 5 hour dilemma, I got sunburned, cranky, and made friends with several spiders and chiggers. In fact, some chiggers now call my legs HOME. But that's not even the best part.

We ended up with an over-stuffed trailer and the back of his truck full of junk. Where do you suppose this junk had to go? To the DUMP. So here I go with him to the dump...and if you know me, you understand that this is a very spectacular thing for me to be doing.

We pull up and are handed two neon green hard hats and reflective vests. Apparantly we are not allowed to be at the "dump site" without them. As a teacher, the first thing I thought was LICE. Who knows who has had this on their head??? I was so busy trying to figure out how to line the inside of the hat with two socks and some kleenex that I did not even realize the scene we were approaching. When I looked up I saw multiple garbage trucks dumping their loads onto the most disgusting pile of trash ever. There were also three bulldozers crushing and crunching it up into an ungodly mess. Kevin parked the trailer no more than 10 feet from this commotion.

As I stepped out of the truck, my gag reflex set in and I spent the remaining 10 minutes (felt like an hour) suppressing my "sick." I have never lifted such massive amounts of brush and bricks so quickly in my life. I just wanted to get out of there.

I am never going to the dump again in my life. That's right Kevin. NEVER.

...but at least we have a nice, clean slate to work with in our backyard. The jungle is no more.

First Time Blogger

Howdy everyone! I have never done the blogging thing before, but since I am extremely bored this summer I decided to give it a try.

A little about myself: I have been happily married to my husband for one year now, and I am a first grade teacher in Richardson ISD. I have two dogs - a lab mix and a chihuahua. My husband and I just bought a house in Flower Mound, Texas and we love it. I have a fantastic, loving family and amazing friends. I pretty much consider my life to be as close to perfect as they come - and I thank God for every aspect of it. That's why I chose to title my blog "Counting My Blessings;" I am extremely blessed!!!

This is my first summer as a teacher, and thus my first summer with absolutely nothing to do. Kevin says I need to work this summer. I told him that I AM going to work... work on my TAN! If the paycheck is still coming, I deserve my break!

This last year of teaching was pretty much amazing. I fell in love with every single one of my students; we were like a little family. On the last day of school I cried more times than I can remember. I already miss them, and it is going to be hard to see them come down the hall and pass my classroom to go on to second grade. I'm proud, but sad at the same time. First grade is a hilarious place to be. Let me give you a brief recap of my year by listing the top 10 memorable moments (and believe me, there were many more that I cannot remember, and I left my journal at school over the summer):

10) I am not a gullible person, but one of my 6 year old students convinced me that he had a tiger for a pet. He knew what to say his mom fed him...everything about him! This was at the beginning of the year, before I learned never to underestimate that kid.

9)One child was obsessed with Chuck Norris and decided to give Karate lessons to all of the grade level at recess. That was sure fun to watch.

8) One girl wrote a new ending to the Three Little Pigs in which the wolf was angry because the little pigs busted in on him while he was "using the bathroom."

7)After I had a tiny temper tantrum one day, directed at one certain student...another one chimed in and stated "Wow Mrs. White, you sure have a way with children!" and subsequently rolled his eyes.

6) A girl told her mom, when asked if I liked to drink coffee, "I don't think she really likes it, but she drinks it so that she can put up with us at 8:00 in the morning." -- oops. They'll repeat anything.

5) "Mrs. White! On Friday, my dad ran me, my mom, and my sisters out of the house and then he drank A LOT of beers!" (If the parents only knew what they told me :))

4) A kid told me he wanted to bring me a present, and then asked him I liked pets. Then he went on to ask me if I liked SLIMY PETS. The next day he brought me a frog in a little cage, which sadly died by lunch time.

3) The first time my husband met my class, one student yelled out at him: "HEY! When are you gonna get a kid with Mrs. White???"

2) After a rough day with one student in particular, he told me that I should be Squidward for Halloween because I'm "kinda mean."

...AND THE BEST...

1) When making observations about a class Venn diagram that we had just completed, one student stated that it looked like "testicals." THAT was an interesting conversation that ensued.

I'm sure the upcoming year will bring many more laughs :)