Five and a half weeks in...

We've made it to our first homeleave. So far the school year has been pretty good. We had a good Senior Retreat, my third in four years. We elected Senior class officers and I think we got some good ones. There were some issues during the retreat, but nothing that we haven't survived, although one of our senior boys was expelled afterward.

My classes are going pretty well. My first section of English is so quiet. I practically have to beg for participation. Second section I have to cut them off. Class dynamics are so weird, one group will love something and the second just won't care about it in the least. My business math class I have 28 students. (!) I'm pulling my hair out a bit with this one. My classroom is too small for this many students and it ends up getting really loud really fast. I'm already really frustrated with it, which is not a good sign. I've made seating charts, I've threatened, I've taken points away, I've nearly cried in class... nothing is working. I'm going to make a new seating chart this week and give it another go.

Our housemate has made it almost six weeks. We're hoping to start integrating him back into the dorm soon. Maybe a night or two a week at first to see how he handles it, and hopefully by this time next month he'll be back in pretty much full time. We've felt mostly pretty good about it, but we do miss our privacy. And he's messy. That's annoying. I mean, I'm no neat freak, but this is beyond that.

This homeleave we went to New York for a couple of days. Tuesday afternoon we drove to Newark, New Jersey and got into our hotel. Then we got tickets to In the Heights, so we went into the city. It was a really great musical. More modern music and dancing. It was about two days in Spanish Harlem. We recommend it. It was right up there with Wicked and Billy Elliot.

Wednesday we slept in a bit and then went to try to get the lottery drawing tickets for Shrek the Musical for the Wednesday matinee. Lucky for us there were only about 16 people there trying for the 16 tickets, so we got cheap tickets and pretty good seats for Shrek. It was fun, not as awesome as some of the other shows we've seen, but still a good time. Then we found the Strand, New York's largest bookstore, with used, new and rare books. My book loving heart enjoyed it. Then we got some awesome Thai food (they have vegetarian duck) down near China Town.

Thursday we went to Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Michael's been wanting us to try out for a couple months, so we finally went. To audition you have to sit through tapings of the show, so it was really long. We got there at about 10:15 and we weren't done until 4:30. To audition, they have you come into the studio and sit to take a 10 minute, 30 question multiple choice test. About 200 people tried out, and they don't give the results until after three tapings of the show. Which was a really long time. We were pretty done by that time. And the test was really hard, so we didn't think we had passed it at all. Only about ten people did pass, and actually, I was one of them, and the only woman! I was pretty nervous. Don't really want to go on TV. Anyway, so after the show I had a short interview with one of the show's producers and they took my picture (we had already filled out these long questionnaires earlier), and that was it. I'll hear in a couple of weeks whether they want me for the show or not. Really, I'm pretty OK if I don't get on, because it just makes me anxious to think about it. But at least I know I'm smart. I guess, it's really just trivia, not smartness. Actually, I think it's just as much about being able to make good guesses as anything.

So anyway, we're home now and enjoying a quiet Sabbath together. Tomorrow we're back on duty. It's nice to have the house to ourselves for a little while.

At Shelli's

Here's Justin and Shelli when we visited them in July in Atlanta. Her apartment is super cute.


A family photo. Shelby is not especially good at looking at the camera. We have lots of shots of half of her face.


Shelli and Justin with the Loser's trophy.


The trade.


Us with the loser's trophy. Not looking real good here. It was about midnight. Right before the drive to Nashville.

July recap

July was kind of a mixed bag. By the first week of being home, I was so bored I wanted to cry. So we started trying to fill our time. We cleaned every room top to bottom and rearranged some things. Put together a new book case and shoe rack for some of our excess stuff. Then we started a diet and we tried out two different fitness gyms (I think we might try another one next week). Michael was the dean on duty in the boys dorm for two different weekends. Then last week his sister came to visit for a couple of days. We went to New York and shopped, tried for the Wicked lottery. There must have been at least 400 people there. We did not get tickets. We did have some amazing Thai food down in the China Town/Little Italy area. They had some fantastic vegetarian duck. We also went to Philadelphia and did some shopping at the King of Prussia Mall, the largest mall east of the Mississippi. We stayed the night last Wednesday, took Amanda to the airport at 6:00, then drove to Atlanta.

We spent Friday and Saturday with Justin and Shelli. Mostly hanging out, playing games, talking, eating, and a little canoeing. Then we exchanged our Loser's trophy. (Michael and I are the most recent losers.)

Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning I drove to Nashville, then Michael kept driving to Louisville. I hung out with the family while Michael was in rehearsal for his longtime friend Joe's wedding. On Tuesday my sister woke me up to tell me that Minnie, our family dog for the last 16 years, was sick. For the second time in three weeks. She wasn't moving and wouldn't eat. We decided it was time to say goodbye. Christa, my mom and I went to the vet and said our goodbyes. The vet and the assistant were really kind and she was gone in just a few seconds. We buried her in the backyard during a very fitting rainstorm.

Tuesday night I got myself up to Louisville, and Wednesday evening was the wedding. It was lovely. And after the wedding we drove back home. We got here about 9:00 this morning and slept until 3:00. Now we're relaxing a little until I go on duty as the girl's dean for the weekend. And next Tuesday we start pre-session meetings. So that's pretty much the summer. It's been good.

Zip line adventures

On Sunday of our Mexico trip we went to a place to go zip lining. The company was Canopy River, and if you're ever in Puerto Vallarta, I highly recommend them. We did some short training first, and then we were off! There were 12 zip lines, they went all over this river valley, back and forth, lower higher and some were very fast and some were slower. One of them the speed got up to 40 miles per hour. I came speeding into that one so fast I almost kicked the camera man in the face. The day before I'd gotten sunburned and was also kind of sick with Montezuma's revenge. (Yeesh) So Sunday I didn't eat a big breakfast, and didn't drink enough, and during some of the hiking between zip lines I started to feel overheated and sick and migrainy. So they let me skip two lines while everyone else went in, and I took off my helmet and drank some water. I started to feel better and was able to finish off the trip. The last two lines took us down to the bottom of the river valley and then we rode back up to the top of the mountain on mules. Never ridden a mule before. The mule in front of mine kept stopping to eat. And the guy riding him couldn't get him to start again. It was hilarious. Also, he only spoke Spanish and I couldn't really speak Spanish, so I just giggled. Anyway, despite the sickness we had a really good time. It was my favorite part of the trip. Here are some pictures of our adventures, unfortunately, no mule shots.

Oh, Mexico

Here are some pictures from our trip to Mexico, we had a good time and I barely got burned.

Flying in to Puerto Vallarta

We had to fly out over the ocean and come back in to land, because the mountains are so close to the beach. Breathtaking.

Our bedroom

The view from our room

Walking on the beach. Who knew it was rainy season?

Los Arcoles (I don't remember if that's right)

These rocks that have archs carved out of the bottom by the water, can't really see it from here.

Going out to dinner one night.

A hanging bridge over a river.

The coast, it was beautiful

On the hanging bridge. A little scary.

Some of the stuff we bought for ourselves and for others.

The sunset one night.

The zip line place

Hanging out.

The truck that took us to the zip line place.


A surfer


A famous cathedral in downtown Puerta Vallarta

She was beading that puma by hand.


Musicians serenading some diners

Some sand sculptures

Very cool


A tiny lizard in our hotel room

Boston and Concord

The hotel lobby. Whoa.

View from our hotel window

Statue of Paul Revere

On the Freedom Trail

Cotton Mather is buried in this very old cemetery - looking out toBoston Harbor

Boston Harbor - it was beautiful


In Concord - reenactment. That cannon was very loud -hence the shaky camera shot from my shaken hands.

At the Old North Bridge.

Our whole Junior class took a picture in this tree a long time ago...

I like this tree



Michael got bored while Idrove home. The result? About 40 pictures of us in the car...

And this.