A Year Already?

"To love is nothing. To be loved is something. To love and to be loved is everything"
~Claire Dempsey

Today is mine and James's one year anniversary of being engaged! Who knew that a year could fly by so quickly. He took me out to dinner last night to celebrate at O'Charley's since neither one of us could go this evening. We got to talking about our favorite memories since we got engaged and I said that one of my favorite was just being able to call everyone that night and share the news and also getting to tell everyone at school the next day was fun as well! James said that his favorite moment would definitely be buying our house which has been a huge part of starting our new life together!

James also surprised me tonight by coming home from our school play and knocking on the door. When I came to answer the door he had a dozen beautiful roses and a new wind chime to put outside our house...what a sweetie pie!

Our First Wedding Shower!

I had always wondered when the day would come that I would get my picture on a cake...lol well last Friday that lucky day came when Melissa and Tara threw James and I a wedding shower for all of our friends and c0-workers at school. We had an absolutely AMAZING time and were so touched to see everyone who came to the shower. It definitely made James and I realized how blessed we are to work with a group of such wonderful people that truly care for us both as a couple and as individuals! We were very thankful for how generous everyone was with their gifts as well and we are happy to report that we were able to go out this weekend and get everything we had wanted to set up our new bathroom and kitchen after we get married so we are excited about that as well! We are also going to paint our bathroom to match the new shower curtain so we got some paint to do that as well!

James and I with the wonderful hostesses of our party...we are SO lucky to have such great friends!

Melissa & Tara came up with a game to "Test your knowledge of James & Anna" and these were the four winners of the game (JoAnna, Molly, Meredith, & Beth), great job ladies!

The kindergarten team...yet another group of people that we are SO blessed to know down here...life wouldn't be the same without them!

James with his future 3rd grade staff...he is looking forward to working with these great ladies as well next year!

James and I with good ole Sally who is actually going to be the lucky one to marry us this summer...maybe she will give us a little saranade after the ceremony as well!

Cinco De Mayo

Ole! Ole! Ole!

It's Cinco De Mayo Day!

Ole! Ole! Ole!

It's Cinco De Mayo Day!

Man who knew such a simple song would be so catchy! Just wanted to post a pic that I stole from Melissa's blog of us out celebrating Cinco de Mayo last night...good times were had with Margarita's and Fajita's at Chili's, who could ask for more...OLE!

The OFFICIAL Taste Testers...

OK so I was telling this story to Melissa and she said it was definitely "blog worthy" so here goes! James and I frequently visit a coffee shop here in good ole Monroe and the other morning when he went in to get us coffee he got us volunteered for a job...go figure! Well this one was actually a pretty cool job. We were asked to come by Thursday afternoon to do some taste testing for them for a new drink that they were creating to taste like a butterfinger candy bar. So to make a long story short, we went in that afternoon and they gave us several rounds of drinks (hooray for caffine) and we got to help them to come up with the recipe for the drink. It was definitely fun and took me back to the good ole days of starbucks! James really had a good time as well and he definitely likes giving his oppinion when it comes to chocolate and coffee drinks, now if we could just get that some job at an ice cream store!

As for the rest of the weekend it has been going pretty well. We spent the day today doing some spring cleaning around the house and I have been trying to get my two final papers done for grad school which ends this week...YAHOO! We are also going over to our friends Matt & Molly's house this evening for a little BBQ and then some night golf so that should be fun! Well I guess that is going to be all for now seems how is it about time to get ready to head out. Sorry no pictures on this post, hopefully we'll have some good ones to add soon!

Spring Has Sprung...

Wow...no posts for one whole month and now two posts in a week...we are on FIRE! James and I just wanted to update with a few pictures of things we have done to the house in the last few weeks. We have decided that we really love being home owners but it sure is expensive to do all the things you want to do, especially in the spring! We got new grass for the house (which is finally growing, yippy!) and have also done a lot of planting in the yard. Most of the plants are doing really well except for this one that A.J. has decided that he wants to chew on every time he goes outside!

We have had a really great weekend so far...we tried to go and watch our school choir sing at the park yesterday but unfortunately it got cancelled because of the rain. We did get to see a few families from school though so that was nice! After that we came home and got ready to go see Wicked and as soon as we are about to walk out the door we grabbed the tickets and noticed that the company sent us tickets for the wrong date! They sent us some for Thursday night and we can't go that night because James will be on his Raleigh trip so we had to call the company and they are sending us some for next Sunday instead so hopefully that will work out! If anyone wants to buy the Thursday tickets though please let us know because we are going to try and sell them to make some money back!

Guess that's about all for now...here are some pictures that we took of the house and our updates, hope you enjoy them!

James cooking up some burgers on the new grill I got him for our anniversary! Oh Yeah Baby!

A.J. out enjoying some of the new grass seed that is growing! Nice to see him staying away from the plant he loves so much!

My favorite planter that we bought at Lowe's!

The front of our house where we added a few hanging plants!

Here's the back yard...we added some brick edging to make it a flower bed, now I just have to do some weeding back there!

What a Month...

OK so Melissa (who's birthday it was today...yippy!) pointed out tonight that Saturday will be one month since our last post so i'm just hopeing that you all haven't stopped checking our blog! We have been extremely busy the last month between spring break and everything else going on so doing an update just hasn't happened. Speaking of Melissa I just had to steal a picture of her beautiful daughter that they are adopting from Vietnam, Molly. I noticed on her page that this picture got like 12 comments so I thought I would see what it does for us, haha! Isn't she beautiful?? We can't wait until our little "niece" gets here!


Over our break we were able to go to Tennessee for a week and visit some family there. My parents were back in town taking a break from their boating ventures so it was good to see them and catch up on all the stories they have from the high seas! James also enjoyed being able to spend some time with his family and friends over there as well. Hopefully we will get to go back and see everyone soon! Here is a picture of Brady and I hanging out in the kitchen before our Easter feast that we had at my parents house!


Also over the break we did lots of wedding plans and Mom and her friend Sarah helped me to get the invitations pretty much finished up...less then 3 months until the big day so things are getting down to the wire, we are excited though! Below is a picture that we ended up using on our invitations...i'm REALLY happy with the way they turned out!


I guess the final major thing that has happened to us lately is that we celebrated our 2 year anniversary last weekend on April 6th. It seems like we have been together forever and I just thank God all the time for the wonderful man that he has blessed me with...even though we have our moments I just love him like crazy! I went on the morning of the 5th and (with a little help from Brian and Melissa) picked out a grill to give to him for his gift. He seems to be quite happy with it and him and Brian made us all a nice dinner on Monday night for our first taste of the grilling life! He also got me tickets to go see Wicked so we will be off to see that this Saturday night and I am PUMPED about that to say the least!

James definitely enjoyed seeing some friends back home...can you tell?!?!

Well I guess I will close this one out for now and I promise I will try not to wait so long before our next update...I hope everyone is doing well out there and please leave us some comments to let us know that you are still reading!!!

JAMBO!

Well it seems that no one liked our last post since we got NO COMMENTS on it so I guess I will try again and hopefully you all will like this one better!

Nothing real major to update about right now. Our semester is coming to an end at school this week and we are about to start our 2 week spring break. However, James and I will both be teaching intersession next week so we will only get one week "offically" off of work but that is definitely better then nothing! We are excited to be going home for Easter to Tennessee to be able to catch up with our family. Speaking of family, my parents are heading home from their 2nd leg of their trip and if you haven't checked out their page you should to see some great dolphin pictures...it's clute.blogspot.com! Oh and of course as you can see from the picture below, James and I must brag on our very own star student who recently graduated from his intermediate class at Petsmart! Now if he could only act that well at home...

Over the break I am hopeing to get lots of wedding plans finalized so that it can be smooth sailing from here on out. We are going tomorrow to order our bridesmaid dresses and i'll need everyone to say a little prayer that they get in on time (seems how the estimated time looks like mid June to get them in). Other then that I think we are right on track with things which is great! I just can't wait to get married and to get to see everyone who can make it down to the island...it's gonna be fun times for sure!

The last few weeks at school have been big ones as we finished up our Africa unit and had our big African marketplace where the kids get to come and "shop" for goods that have been made by other classes and play a bunch of African games and also make some sweet roles! We also learned a little bit of Swahili (hope I spelled that right) that is spoken in parts of Africa when we say JAMBO, which means hello! It is one of those very chaotic things that we do in Kindergarten but the kids LOVE it. We also celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by making Green Eggs & Ham for snack one day and yes most of our kids did like it, Sam I am! James has also been busy at work with the writing test that they had this month and now they are working on preparing for their end of grade tests (EOG'S).

Mrs. Runyan & Mrs. Tye enjoying themselves at the marketplace!

Could you, would you in a house? Would you, could you with a mouse?

Well I guess that is about it for our little update right now...I will try and post again before we go out of town next weekend and who knows I might even get James to leave a post one of these days!