Spring Fever

So, I decided to do some “Spring Cleaning” this afternoon. For one reason, it needed to be done at some point… but I did have some motivation to get it done now – Travis’ parents will be here in a week. They are flying in next Friday to spend some time with us before they continue on their vacation to Florida with some of their friends. It happened to work out really well… they had planned a trip to Orlando the same week that I have Spring Break at school (and had planned a trip to Destin). Through e-mails, his mom and I figured out a way to merge our plans for the first part of our vacations. His parents are now going to fly into Atlanta on Friday and we will leave on Saturday to spend a few days together in Port St. Joe. By the way, hi Claudia – I know that you read this…

Anyway, I discovered that it is amazing how much dirt you will find when you are looking for it! In the past, I have lived in apartments – which are cleaned by professionals before you move in. Then, you have no excuse to not keep them clean. They are tiny, how hard is it to clean 3 rooms? Well the house that we are now renting is another story – I’m guessing that some parts of it haven’t been cleaned in years!

For example, notice the picture of the large window and the other picture of the small window:

I clean the large window all the time. It is in the den, so I notice it - I look out of it on a daily basis. When I cleaned it, not much was on the paper towel. However, the small window was another story… a very gross one - one that you don’t tell kids under 13. It is a window in the half bathroom downstairs that I had never thought to clean. This is the pattern that happened for the rest of the house. I’m glad that it is all clean now, but I’m a little disturbed by what we have been living in. Although I’m not sure that Travis cares - he makes fun of me for being too anal about cleaning the house… maybe I should show him the “paper towel proof” of how dirty some parts of it was.

Also, I want to add that Bailey was NOT happy about the cleaning – it involved spray bottles - so he hid… which I don’t understand, because he loves to swim in the water. Maybe he was trained with a squirt bottle of water or something when he was younger (I adopted him when he was lost at about the age of one). Anyway, here is a cute picture of him hiding under the coffee table while I was cleaning.

Aaack! - A "Tag"

Alright, I got my first “Blog Tag” from Staci – a top five survey. This means that I have to answer questions about myself that someone else listed… I don’t have a whole lot of spare time due to work this week, but I did take the time to quickly answer them (so keep in mind that I probably forgot some of my favorites and that they are in no particular order).

Here it goes:

5 things you cannot live without under $10:
1. brightly colored pens (it makes work fun)
2. toilet paper
3. Post-Its
4. fuzzy, soft stuff (socks, blankets, pajama pants… some cost less than $10)
5. canvas tote bags

5 favorite movies:
1. The Matrix
2. Shrek
3. Fight Club
4. Forest Gump
5. The Green Mile

Baby names you love (but won’t use): this was a tough one – I had never thought about this before

Girls
1. Penny
2. Bailey
3. Savannah
4. Elizabeth
5. Alexis

Boys
1. Rusty
2. Michael
3. James
4. Christopher
5. Joseph

5 songs you could listen to over and over:
1. “Over the Rainbow/Wonderful World” - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
2. “Carry On” - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3. “Christmas Song” - Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
4. “Danny’s Song” - Loggins and Messina
5. “Closer to the Sun” - Slightly Stoopid

5 things that stay in your purse all the time:
1. wallet
2. keys
3. phone
4. chapstick
5. sunglasses

5 obsessions you have right now:
1. finding things to blog about (not really an obsession, but a new hobby)
2. my Nintendo DS
3. food (I’m dieting, so I think about it constantly)
4. the end of the school year (Staci used this one – great idea!)
5. sleeping (I’ve been really tired lately)

5 places you would really love to go:
1. a beach resort with a “swim-up” bar
2. Australia
3. an adult summer camp (they have cool ones with extreme sports activities)
4. Italy
5. on another cruise… they are fun

5 people you would love to see do their top 5:
1. anyone that has a blog and reads this (I don’t know anyone to tag)

Hoppy Easter!

Travis and I hid eggs for each other this morning, which was obviously my idea, but it was fun (and he even humored me by wearing the bunny ears)!

Can you spot the eggs?

We also dyed eggs this afternoon...

Pretty in Pink

Heather came over this weekend to hang out...

We made dinner, watched a movie, hung out in the hot tub, and she painted my nails for me (I'm not very good at painting my own nails - it gets very messy). Unfortunately for Bailey, it didn't stop there - we apparently didn't have enough to entertain ourselves, so he got to participate in the fun too. Here are our nails:

He didn't enjoy this though, so we were only able to get one paw done.

Savannah or Bust

I went to Savannah on Wednesday and Thursday this week to help chaperone a field trip that the 8th grade students were going on at my middle school. The trip entailed about 440 students, 30 chaperones, 10 charter buses, and over 125 hotel rooms (it was an overnight trip).

We took the students to see Fort Jackson, the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, and the First African Baptist Church. We also went on a walking tour of historic downtown Savannah, ate breakfast on the Savannah River Queen, had a “dinner and dance” at the Roundhouse Railroad Museum, and learned about beach ecology and oceanography on Tybee Island.

Unfortunately, I feel like I shouldn’t post the pictures I took from these activities because they have students in them (and I have some really silly pictures of the kids). However, I do have one picture of the girls from my bus (with all of them looking away) learning about the beach from their guide:
While on the beach, we were also able to fit about 20 minutes of time to hang out on the beach into our schedule. It was warm and sunny – the kids loved it (and the chaperones also enjoyed a few minutes to relax… well, after we stressed to the students that they were not allowed to go in the water). Here is a picture of me with some of the other teachers on the trip:
It was a lot of fun, but exhausting!

Also, I know that this shouldn’t be the highlight of the trip, but the fountains were already dyed green for St. Patrick’s day… so that was fun to see.

I’m Seeing Double… No, Triple!

Today was twin day at the middle school I teach at. However, I team-teach with two different teachers, so we became triplets. It was great for me because I was a twin in all of my classes. They; however, probably looked pretty silly when I wasn’t in the room with them. Since I am a weirdo at heart, I wanted to wear something funky – not just jeans and a solid colored shirt that matched. I convinced (it wasn’t hard) both of my team teachers to wear jeans with matching shirts, hair styles, shoes, and socks. However, they weren’t just normal socks, they were multi-colored toe socks.
Here are some pictures of us together…

I thought that we were going to entertain the kids (and we did), but the music teachers would have won if it was a competition. They happened to walk by when I was eating lunch (if you can call a 140 calorie lean meal lunch) and I got a picture of them.
If you’re wondering, that is his real hair… he just normally wears it in a low ponytail, so it isn’t very noticeable. I’m honored to say that I work in the same school as a man that is confident enough to do that. The kids must have loved it!

Grill Master

Since I am on a diet for Spring Break, I have been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables (and other healthier options). I have been really bored with my normal diet foods, so I decided to make kabobs for Travis to grill. To me, they are healthy and definitely fancier than other options. Here is a picture of the kabobs once I put them together (I probably burned off the calories in my dinner cutting up all of the ingredients and sticking them on the skewers).

Apparently, grilling is a spectator sport because Bailey and I were out there watching Travis. I was really hungry at the time…

They were really good (well, especailly to me, since I am sick of eating frozen diet meals)!

Soak the Sun

It was so nice out on Sunday… sunny and 70 degrees! After I took Bailey to the dog park, I decided to go outside and lay out. I desperately need to get some sun before Spring Break to help avoid getting a bad sunburn. Travis decided to join me and we both soaked up some much needed Vitamin D…

Bailey even joined us, but he preferred to lay in the shade.

After that, we went out to dinner and played miniature golf - it was a nice day.

Also, I have pictures of my fort from Friday night – it was huge! It’s really hard to convey it in pictures, but I will try. The picture on the left shows the fort in progress – notice the strings holding the sheets up (they are hanging from the ceiling fan). I had to sew loops to the sheets so that I could suspend them. The other picture shows the outside of the fort once it was completed.

I also draped sheets, blankets, towels, etc… over the furniture to “fortify it” and block out the rest of the house. Sadly, it took me two hours to do this (which mainly consisted of me looking at it and trying to figure out my next move). If you’re wondering… yes, Travis was laughing at the effort I was going to. I then put up white Christmas lights inside of the fort and loaded it up with pillows, blankets, and other soft stuff I could find. Also, while building it, I made sure that the couch, fireplace, TV, and my laptop were accessible. You gotta have all of the comforts of home in a fort (and yes, I do realize that it was IN my home). Anyway, here’s Heather and Bailey enjoying the fort. She came over on Saturday night and we watched the movie Martian Child in the fort.

Goodbye Kitty

I did build a fort this weekend (see the post below), but I’m not in the mood yet to blog about it… Kitty (that’s what we called him) passed away on Friday night. Everyone says that their pet is the best (and they are all correct), but my cat truly was one of the best. I got him when I was around nine or ten years old when my dad finally gave in and got me a kitten on the premise that he would be an outside cat. That lasted for about two weeks… he quickly became an inside/outside cat. The nice part of that was that he didn’t use a litter box; he would just go when he was outside. He had the best of both worlds – he would go out during the day and hunt, then come in and take a nap on one of our laps. I remember worrying about “rodent breath” when I was a kid… I didn’t want to kiss him or hug him too closely if he had just eaten something (and left the guts on the doormat for me to clean up).

If you did the math earlier, that means he was 18 when he died. I know that’s old, but it was so sudden. He was fine on Friday afternoon… then my parents called to complain that “my cat” (he continued to live with them when I moved out) was throwing up at around 8:30. An hour and a half later, I got another call that his body had shut down and that he wasn’t going to make it. They took him to an emergency vet, but nothing could be done. We buried him by the lake on Saturday morning.

Here are some things that I want to remember about him:
- he would get a “red neck” after sticking his head in whole to look for a rodent
- he once brought a live bird into the house after catching it, then set it free
- he would “rake the blinds” with his paw to wake us up when he wanted to be fed or to go out
- he’s the hunter, but he slept through a snake being in the house when we were doing construction, it was the dog that noticed and barked
- he could always find the most inconvenient place to take a nap (whether it was on top of what you were reading, or on your pillow when you were sleeping)
- I named him Oreo when we got him, but the only time he was ever called that was at the vet