Fun Friday!

Well lets just say that today was a BUSY Friday to say the least! We started off our day in Kindergarten today with our African marketplace. Our kids have been studying Africa for the past two weeks and they made goods to be sold in the market today. They got to come in and barter with us to buy some things for themselves! It is always one of my favorite things that we do each year and this year was no exception...the word "Jambo" means hello is Swahili which I why I chose the song for this post just in case you were wondering! Anyways here are a few pictures from the market!



After school we had a baby shower for one of our first grade teachers, Andrea, who is going to have a little boy in just a few weeks! We got to see some 4-D ultrasounds of him and they were really quite amazing!

The mommy to be with her new hand made blanket from Diane

A cool little "diaper cake"

Melissa & Andrea


After the shower we went back to Melissa's room and I got to cut James's hair! Our neighbor usually does both of our hair but she had surgery a few weeks ago and is unable to cut hair yet so James was stuck with me doing it instead! I was a little nervous at first (and I think he was too) but it turned out pretty good if you ask me!

Here we go!

The "before" shot...doesn't he look happy?

Melissa putting on the finishing touches and trimming up around his ears.

Well Melissa and I are off now to go see The Wizard of Oz which is being put on near us and it includes a lot of students from our school as munchkins so it should be fun! Never a dull moment around here...hopefully we will get some rest and relaxation in at some point this weekend though!

Will it blend?

Say it ain't green?

The idea of a green smoothie has been an interesting one to me. Most people I know would love to try a smoothie made out of banannas and pineapples etc, but not many have jumped at the idea of trying one made with Kale or romaine lettuce. We were in Costco a month or so ago and this amazing piece of creation caught out eye.

We stalked it for a few weeks and were able to get a good deal on it. Anna has even been heard calling it her "NEW LOVE". Who would have thought that I would have been replaced by a blender. It is pretty useful and I am starting to see where she is coming from. We have a short video that follows that shows you one of our green smoothie creations.

We are still working on the recipe daily to get it just right for a good ole St. Patrick's day celebration. A.J. thinks we are crazy but little does he know that he will soon get to experience the yummy green treats for himself. Yes...... thats right green smoothies for dogs. Oh Boy!

You can watch other videos of the blender in action at

http://www.willitblend.com/

Other than the blender we have started watching season one of Prison Break. It is a show that we have wanted to watch for a long time but quit because we missed most of the episodes. We are almost through seaon one. Sorry this is short but gotta get focused on more Prison Break and progress reports for school. Oh Boy!

Hope everyone is well and that everyone actually not just reads the blog but starts leaving us comments. It is easy to do!

Here are some pictures of flowers that I got Anna for Valentines day. She is such a great wife and deserves everything in the world. The flowers just help radiate her beauty! Enjoy.

This is really the size of her heart. I thought it fit.

Here is the video. Click on it to start it. Hopefully you like it. It may even inspire you to start your own green smoothie revolution. Good luck! Sorry the video is sideways. It just adds to the experience.

A Beautiful Day!

Well with the absolutely amazing weather that we got today we were able to get outside and get some fresh air by taking AJ to the park which was a great time. I just finished up some grad school work and wanted to update the blog since I haven't done that in a little while...but realized that I really don't have much new to update with...so I decided to add a few more pics from our trip that we didn't have in the previous posts...who knows maybe it's the warm weather that makes me think of it, I don't know!

Looking at each one of these pictures definitely makes me smile though and makes me so thankful that I have such a wonderful husband who took the time to plan each detail of our trip just for me...as I was adding pictures to this post James was sitting in the living room and working on some papers for school and one of the songs from our wedding, "I Will Be Here" by Steven Curtis Chapman came on the radio...for those of you who were at the wedding that is the song that played while we screwed up the unity sand (haha!). Anyways it only took a few notes of the song before we both knew what it was and James called me into the other room so that we could dance together for a minute...it's times like that one that make me remember how lucky I am to have such a wonderful man who cares so much about me! Ok enough lovey dovey stuff...here are a few pictures!

James and I on our big date night on the boat...we went to the "fancy" restaurant that night which was fun but I don't think that either of us REALLY know what we ate that night!

This was in Ft. Lauderdale before we left on the cruise at the Hard Rock hotel...can anyone guess why we took this pic?

Our cruise ship, the Miracle!

This was our first sunset picture that we took on the boat, that is the city line in Miami.

A few other sunset and sunrise pics from our trip!

Each night when we came back to our room our bed was turned down and we had a little buddy waiting for us...we had to take a few pictures of them!

This is probably one of my favorite pictures that James took...it is a horse in Cozumel wearing a sombrero...I thought that was awesome!

We saw a lot of iguana's in both Cozumel and Hondurras

Here we are on New Year's eve, our first night on the ship wearing our matching shirts!

Me with our awesome waiters, Rosanna and Martin...they definitely made each night at dinner a fun experience!

And of course you all know I couldn't post pictures of the cruise without including a tiki hut!

Alright well I hope I didn't bore you with more pictures from the trip...hopefully I will find something else to update about soon when I find our camera too that is "temporarily misplaced"...whoops!

Our 2nd Annual Superbowl Party...in 3D!

Here are a few quick pictures from our little superbowl get together last night. We had a few great friends come over to join us while watching the game and of course eating a few yummy snacks! Although I have to say I wasn't too impressed with the commercials this year, we did enjoy getting ourselves ready for the 3-D commercials with our lovely glasses! Here are a few pictures...yes don't we all look amazing in 3-D glasses??

Here we are...yep we make those glasses look good!

Matt & Molly...who now that I think about it never ended up taking off their coats...you guys think our house is cold or what?!?!

Beth & her friend Jim stopped in for a bit to join us in the fun...just in time for 3-D...lucky them!

A picture of Melissa and I...her quote for the first half of the night was "Is it time for our glasses yet James?" We are glad Melissa was able to make it even though we wish Brian could have been there too!

Hakuna Matata

Most of the time I like to post about things that James and I do together or stuff going on in our life but I guess this one is a little bit different...
Let me start out by confessing something about myself...I am a worrier...a lot of times a BIG worrier...sometimes I even worry about how much I am worrying about things.

I have definitely worked hard to try not to do this so much and am lucky to have a great husband who always helps me to look at the bright side of things (usually by singing me a verse from the song Hakuna Matata from the Lion King)...but it still is a struggle for me. When I get home each day after school I guess you could say I have the habbit of checking updates on blogs and on facebook first thing. Today when I read our pastor's blog (www.stevenfurtick.com) I was really hit by one of his posts on this subject. I think that with the economy and life the way it is right now the "worrying syndrome" is probably effecting a lot more people then ever before so I just was moved to share what he had written about the topic because it really made me think...

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” -Matthew 6:3

"God supplies all the strength we need to do all that He’s called us to do.But He rations this strength much in the same way He rationed manna to the children of Israel.He provides sufficient strength each day for the challenges of that day..and that day only.This strength doesn’t carry over from one day to the next. You either use it, or lose it.And He will not give you enough strength today for the confrontations, obligations, and challenges of next week, next month, or next year.That strength will be deposited in your account precisely when you need it- not a moment before.
If you’re stressed and overwhelmed today-check your strength supply.I’ll bet you have enough to get you through this day.And that’s all you need for now."

I think that what paster Steven has written here is SO true and the fact of the matter is that I (we) only need to focus on the things that are happening right here and now and just trust that everything else is going to turn out OK...and that ultimately the "plan" so to speak is not up to me so it's just a matter of knowing that He will take care of giving me the strength that I need for today!

Snow Day!

James and I woke up several times in the night last night and were excited to see it snowing outside! Our school district decided to wait until about 5:30 this morning to make the call that we weren't going to have school but we were happy with the choice even if it did come late! We decided to sleep in until about 10:00 and then James got up and made us banana pancakes to eat while we watched our 44th president, Barak Obama get inagurated into office. After that we went outside and did everything that you could imagine to do when it snows...we built a snowman, had a snowball fight, and made snow angels! After that we came inside and warmed up with some home made hot chocolate that one of my students gave me this year for Christmas (thanks Georgia)! Last but definitely not least we are going to attempt to make some snow cream! After that I think that we are just going to finish up by doing a little relaxing around the house, turn on our fire in the fireplace, and just enjoy our day off together!

We are making "How To" books with our students right now so we thought we would take some pictures of each step to show them! "First you roll the 3 balls..."

"Next you give it a face and arms."

"Last you give it buttons, a hat, and a scarf!"

Making snow angels...

Here is our bowl of snow ready to make snow cream! We made sure to take Melissa's advice and stay away from the yellow snow!

AJ also enjoyed getting to play in the snow! When we first opened the door to let him out this morning he came right back inside and wasn't to sure about the snow but once he went out he loved it and ran around like crazy!

AJ was up to his usual tricks and found some sticks to dig up in the snow!

Last but not least this is just a picture of our University of Tennessee well in our back yard that we got as a wedding gift...thought it looked pretty neat in the snow!

The Final Port: Roatan, Hondurras

OK so here are some pictures from the last port that we went to on the trip which was Roatan, Hondurras. I have to admit that when I found out that we were going to Hondurras I wasn't all that excited about it...I guess because I didn't know very much about the area. When we got there though I COMPLTELY fell in love with it to say the least. It has beautiful green trees all over the place and that amazingly blue water that you only see in the movies. When we were there we went on an excursion called pirates, birds, and monkeys. It was really neat because we got to see a lot of the island on our bus ride to the park where the excursion was and then we got to go for a hike (and cross a scary swinging bridge over the water) that lead to an area where there were a bunch of Macaw's (a type of parrot) and they would come and sit on your shoulder. It was really neat! James and I had a lot of fun with this...until one of the birds decided to say hello to James by giving him a little peck on the head...whoops!

After we left the areas with the birds we went on to visit the Monkey's! There were several different types of monkeys that we were able to see which was pretty neat. These guys would just come up to you and climb up your body and sit on your shoulder and jump from person to person! It was kind of hard to get a good picture of them sitting on you because they were so active but I think that we got a few good ones! One of the things that they warned us about before going in there was that the monkeys will steal things from you and if they steal something from you then they really think that it belongs to them so not to try to take it from them and they will eventually get bored with it and give it back.

Here I am with one of the howler monkeys...he just kind of sat right in my arms

Yep, the monkey climbed right on top of his head!

One of the monkey's stole a bottle out of James's shorts pocket and they took it up in the trees to play with it!

I have to say that I literally begged James to let us stay in Hondurras as we were getting back on the boat. My plan was that we could quit our jobs and just move into one of those cute little huts on the beach and become professional scuba divers and live a nice happy life together on the beach. Well as I'm sure you can tell he said no and made me come back home but hopefully we will be able to go back there and visit some day! Here are a few more pics from our stop here that I thought were pretty neat.

There were a lot of banana trees here and we also saw them in Costa Maya...I thought they were pretty cool looking!

While we were there we found some coconut trees by the pool that we layed out at...too bad we couldn't quite get one to bring home!

This is a picture of the hut that we could have lived in...looks like fun, right?

One final picture as our boat drove away from the island...hopefully we will see it again someday!