Kids, Kittens, and Kool Weather (Not!)

Alright... Sorry for the brief hiatus. A lot has happened since we last chatted. :)

To begin with this week I started subbing! Yay! Surprisingly I worked four days during the first week of school. Thus far I've taught middle school sign language, science, and language arts (without a lesson plan!) and 5th grade. Not too much trouble yet. Each school is vastly different in the socioeconomic make up of the students and in the design of the school. Two of the schools I've been at have reminded me of motels where all of the doors open to the outside... There are no hallways. Really strange. So far this week I'm scheduled to teach middle school math on Tuesday.

Barber is hammering away at this law books. He puts in around 10 hours each day of reading and class! He's not very exciting so there's not much to report on him. Haha. :)

Last weekend we got a little kitten! Her name is Nala Bear and she's precious. She's super curious and really likes attention ALL the time. Even if you are not playing with her she wants you to be in the same room watching her. She's been a fun adventure so far and isn't causing any problems. :)

I've been looking into getting involved with coaching a soccer team and stumbled upon an adult league! I contacted the director and she put me on her team and we had our first game this morning. It is a 7v7 girls league. It was great except for EXTREMELY hot. I think it was 97 degrees at the end of the game... It's just ridiculous. I like my teammates a lot and now I have some new friends! Yay. One of the girls was talking about a coed team she was on in the same league and I got Barber a spot on it... He just had his first game a little while ago which they lost 5-4 although it was a nailbiter until the end. (My team tied).

Thus we've got some new things going on... In other fun news we booked tickets to Dave (Barber's cousin) and Tracy's wedding in St. Thomas in October!! We're really really excited for that. Kent is graciously putting us up in his hotel room so we just had to figure out a way to get there. :)


Here's a photo of our living room now that we have an accent wall. Very dramatic I know. :) We're debating on what kind pictures/shelves/things we should put on it... What would have taken us an entire weekend and cost at least $150 of supplies alone the maintenance men did in half an hour! haha.



Here is the crazy coffee table project I told you about earlier. This is the coffee table you gave me Aunt Martha! First I painted it the two shades of blue... The I modge podged the collage on top. It's pretty much stuff cut out of magazines and a few pictures.... Then I sufficiently glittered the edge... And finally covered the entire top in resin to seal and protect it. Very fun and entirely usable now. I salvaged a random end table from our trash dump area and am planning that as my next project!

Meanderings...

For the past week I have had zero obligations. No where to be, nothing that has to be done, and no one to see (because, well, I don't know anyone). This I've concluded, is possibly the only time in my entire life that this has been so. And if money weren't such a necessity and if I wasn't a person with a little more in store for life I could really get used to this... I've finished two books, gone to the beach (although it was cut short by rain from "Bill"), layed by the pool, gotten a library card, been to the farmers market and an arts market, experimented with our new crock pot and started a very glittery/sticky/collagey mess of a project with our coffee table.

Hopefully next week I'll get to begin subbing and making some of that necessary money. :) The one downfall of being the one that's not busy is getting all of the not fun tasks; like buying car insurance... which I am in the middle of figuring out how to do right now.

Pictures of the sticky collage project and newly painted rooms soon to come!

The First Weekend.

Our first ever full weekend in Florida was a success (couldn't think of a better word). Friday night we looked up the nearest movie theater to us and went and saw '500 days of summer.' It was cute but just ok.... I would probably wait to see it on video. Interestingly though, almost the entire place was full of teenagers. There was a group in our theater that had a number of kids who came in and out of the theater at least 5 times.... They couldn't have even known who the main character was. :) This didn't really bother us too much seeing as how we aren't that far from the stage of being annoying teenagers ourselves but we probably won't be going back on a Friday night.

On Saturday we finally went to the beach!! (After a day of more house stuff, the pool, and of course studying on Barber's part). The beach was lovely and fully of shells (mother!!). We were there in the evening and ate dinner at a restaurant in an area called "the corner" which has lots of bars, restaurants, and shops (this was recommended to us by a young guy who opened my checking account at the bank for me). We ate seafood (of course) and I'm looking forward to going back to the beach this week.

Today we went to Borders and Sam's. Borders so Barber could read and because I had a gift certificat that expired today... and Sam's because it's 'Sample Sunday' (although we were too late for some of the good ones) and we needed things in mass quantity. Haha. I'm still adjusting to this whole concept of Sam's and Costco seeing as how I've never been a member until recently. :)

Another interesting thing I forgot to mention about the apartment was our music playing capabilities. Literally one of the first things we (Barber) did after arriving was set up 3 different receivers with two speakers apiece running to various places. We have surround sound in the kitchen, bedroom/bathroom (very schmancy) and a set in the living room. We've found that playing more than one at the same time is a bit excessive.

That's all from here... Tonight Jewell soccer begins their pre-season training which is a bit sad to think about. :( But good luck to everyone there!

Here's a few pics... although we're still finishing up a few rooms so i haven't put pictures of those up.

We got some nice people to take a picture of us in front of the water although it's too dark to even see it.

Here's Barber acting scholarly in his "office"/ guest bedroom (see the futon on the right!)

The living room from the same point of view as the earlier picture. Don't mind all of the laundry that is spread out on the furniture to dry. And we are having the wall behind the tv painted a maroonish/red color next week so that will change.

And finally a pic of the hammock we are so proud of. On the side of the porch you can't see is a little tea table and chairs that we are about to paint bright pink and black.

Moving Pics!

This is right before we closed the truck up. Despite a little bit of shifting everything made it safely and in one piece!

Hey Janet and Kent! Barber was all time driver for our long journey.

Goodbye Missouri!

This is our living room viewed from the dining room.

Standing in the living room as pictured above this is a view of our dining room and kitchen.

All the pictures for now... A more comprehensive look to come soon!

We Made It!

Hello! As the title shares... we made it! When Barber was struggling to stay awake an hour and a half into the trip I can't say that I wasn't worried. We persevered though and two McDonald's stops, several lunchables, two bags of sunflower seeds, 6 cups of coffee, a 15 minute nap at a gas station, 7 chapters of Wicked read aloud, 13 playings of Taylor Swift's new song, 23 hours of driving and 36 hours later we arrived.

Some of you may not know that two days before we left KC our apartment complex kindly upgraded our unit. Apparently there was a pest problem in the unit we were supposed to have so we were upgraded to a 1300 square foot, two bedroom apartment in a nicer location (and although it goes for $200 more than our original one we get to pay our original price!) As soon as we arrived they showed us to said new apartment, we tried to suppress our giddiness at our good luck and then spent the rest of Saturday hauling stuff up to our second floor apartment. We crashed hard around 10 pm after being awake for about 25 hours straight.

At this point we are almost all moved in and organized... We just can't seem to pick these last few things up off the floor even though all of the boxes are unloaded. We've been to Sam's, two grocery stores, Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond twice and Home Depot 4 (yes FOUR) times (most of which we've spent in the hardware aisle [aisle 3]). :) After all of that we have shower curtains, toilet paper and all the things we think that houses are supposed to have... including a few irregular things like a hammock for instance.

Barber had Law school orientation and got his class schedule; he starts on Monday. And I've been hired as a substitute teacher in the Duval County School District and have already been to orientation for that... School starts for me on the 24th which means I have a good week of pool/ocean time to look forward to.

A few things I've learned since arriving in FL: it may be more humid here than in Missouri. Florida is the only state that begins with 'F' (whenever you pull a drop down menu for states and click F it goes straight to it... As opposed to having to scroll through Minnesota and such for Missouri). The main fact that people know about KC is that it's home to good BBQ. And there is no tax on food!

I'm waiting until we are officially done with the unpacking/decorating for finished pics... Probably by Saturday!

Miss everyone!