Michigan!!

OK so Tara & Melissa ASSURE me that people are still reading the blog so here I go with a post!  I am up with Melissa & the kids visiting Tara & Justin in Ohio right now and I was able to rent a car and go to Michigan yesterday for a night!  I stayed with Laura and got to finally meet her two wonderful children, Maddie and Charley!  Here are a few pictures from my visit with her!

Here is little Maddie being an artist with her chalk!

And sweet little Charley in the new outfit that we got for him...what a cutie!

Spring Is In Bloom

OK so I realize that once again it has been FOREVER since we have updated the blog but I honestly feel like we haven't really had that much exciting going on in our lives lately...I am proud to say though that over spring break I finished up my National Boards and shipped them off to be scored so now it is totally out of my hands and we are just praying for the best!  James has also been working hard as always on his doctorate degree and he is looking forward to a small break that he has coming up soon as well!

Over break my mom and aunt Eileen came out to visit and they decided to surprise us and plant some beautiful flowers around the house for us so I thought I would update with pictures of those!

My mom passed on this planter to us last year and we have been so excited to get it filled with flowers!

They also found us this beautiful rooster planter that is so colorful on our front porch!

My wonderful husband also bought me some gerber daisy (my FAVORITE flower) hanging pots today for us to put on our front porch...it is looking nice and colorful out there now!

Well that is about all of the news for now...hopefully it will not be so long before an update next time.  Please leave a comment and let us know if anyone is still out there reading!  :)

Our newest addition!

As many of you know James and I got a new puppy this weekend!  He is a sweet goldendoodle and we have decided to name him Kaiden...which means "loyal friend and companion"!  Over the last few days he has been wonderful and has not (knock on wood) had any accidents in the house!  His puppy personality is definitely coming out though and we are looking forward to him getting out of the chewing stage!  So far him and AJ get along OK for the most part though they definitely have their moments where AJ wants to be an only dog again!  Hopefully time will make it better though :)

Happy Valentine's Day...and a few other things!

James started off my Valentine's day weekend by having flowers sent to me at work on Friday...he is such a sweetheart and knows how to make me feel loved when i'm at work!  We didn't have much money to go out and celebrate v-day this year so we decided to stay in and we cooked together...I made James a special pizza (his favorite food) for dinner and he made me some yummy chocolate covered strawberries for dessert!  That is probably my FAVORITE treat and he makes them for me every year!

The heart shaped pizza I made...we ordered a heart shaped pizza from papa john's a few years ago but this one was made with much more love!!

We also got some snow this weekend on Friday night...it was very fun we got a few inches that came quickly and unfortunately it melted just as quickly as it came.  Before it melted we got up Saturday morning and went out and enjoyed it with a snowball fight and a little fun!

Last but definitely not least I thought I would put up a few pictures from when my parents came out to visit last weekend.  They came for four days and came into school to visit both mine and James's classes and they helped us out a lot around the house too!  We definitely enjoyed our visit with them!

Dad helped me hang up lots of things around the house!

Mom & Dad also brought the newest member of the family, Oliver, to visit our house!  He is definitely a sweetie!

We had our first official family gathering at our house too when Shelly and Gary and the boys came over for dinner.  It was a lot of fun for James and I to be able to entertain family in our new house!

Well guess that's about all for now...I will try to do better this month with updates...if anyone is still out there reading!

A Long Overdue Update

Well as Melissa has pointed out to me SEVERAL times it has been over a month since we last updated and I guess it is finally time to put one up!  So much has happened over the last month and I was not in a place where I could update so I guess I just let it all pass by!  I think I am just going to let the pictures tell you the story so that I don't leave anything major out so here goes...

Just after we got out of school we had the Kindergarten team over for a Christmas gathering...we drank lots of great wine and exchanged gift cards...a good time was had by all!

James and I also decided to bake Christmas cookies this year and deliver them to our neighbors.  I think he got a little more then he bargained for when he signed up to bake cookies but it was fun delivering them to our neighbors and getting to meet more of them!

Then we headed to Tennessee to have Christmas with our families!

Mom got us all "poppers" that had little flutes inside for us to play a song together...it didn't sound very good at all...we definitely need more practice before we go on the road!

A nice picture in front of the tree of the Bogusky side of the family...guess our side doesn't like to have a picture taken!!

After Tennessee we headed to Michigan and Illinois (there and back in 3 days) to visit Eric and Grandpa.

Yep...we saw LOTS of snow and even some deer in Grandpa's yard which was pretty cool!

And THAT my friends just about sums up the month of December for us!  We started back at work this past weekend after 3 weeks off and are currently enjoying our 3 day weekend since we have Monday off for MLK day!  James and I are right back at it with our graduate and doctorate work and are also trying to do a reading with our church...the new testament in 30 days...so needless to say we are doing a LOT of reading between all of that!  We are going to also be getting our house painted and a new fence this week so I will take pictures of those and that will probably be our next post! 

This weekend my cousin Tyler is staying with us and we got to take him to his pinewood derby for boyscouts yesterday.  I had never experienced anything like it but thought I would post a few pics from that too!

These are the cars that the boys made...I was VERY impressed by how creative the are!

Tyler (on the right) took 3rd place once, 2nd place once, and 1st place in three of his races so needless to say he was very excited and we were very proud of him too!

OK I think that is all for now...hope that satisfies you Melissa (haha) and we will hopefully post more soon!

Holiday Fun!

Well we sure have been busy around here getting ready for the holidays!  I think that we can finally say that we have all of our shopping done and we have been very excited to decorate our new house and put up our Christmas tree.  Here are a few pictures of our decorations!

Our mantle with the nativity scene that my grandmother made and our Christmas tree!

AJ's Christmas picture!

Last night we also had our staff Christmas party for school.  We all went to a local golf club and had dinner and did some dancing.  It was a lot of fun to get to see everyone outside of work and spend time together!

The kindergarten team...well those of us that were at the party atleast!

"The guidance girls!"

Our principal...a.k.a Santa!

James with Mr. Wright our custodian...Mr. Wright was lookin good and his "pimp hat" was a hot item at the party!

James and I have had a really great start to the holidays so far and we are excited to get to spend one more week at school and then have three weeks off to spend with our families!

Final Project

I had my final level 1 cake decorating class yesterday so thought I would post a picture of my final cake for the class!  Let me know what you think!