Just have to share...

After an extremely busy day in Kindergarten with Whitney, I was pretty whooped tonight. I was ready for bed but Jo was NOT! After getting up for oh...I think the 2nd time, I was getting a little frustrated and told him to get back in bed. This is what you would have heard at our house tonight...

ME: "Get back in bed, I love you GOODNIGHT!"

Jo: "Goodnight, I love you"

Me: "I love you too, now go to sleep!!"

Jo: "As soon as I wake up in the morning, I'm going to tell you I love you mommy!"

Me: *with a soaring heart and a tear in my eye* "Me too buddy!"

Boy, I am blessed! Thank you Lord for an amazing life! I don't think I give You the glory enough!

Say a prayer for a more peaceful day in Kindergarten tomorrow!

P.S. Here is a couple of pictures of Jo on his first day of 1st grade! I will have to take a picture with his teacher tomorrow, I was way too busy to remember to do it today!

Love watching what He has planned for me!

The Lord has been working in some mysteriously cool ways in our life lately!

One amazing piece of news is that I will be teaching kindergarten from January to April all on my own! YIKES! A dear friend of ours (and Jordan's Kindergarten teacher last year) is adopting a baby that will be born in November (and we are so excited, she is going to be an amazing mommy!) She wants me to cover her class for her while she is home with that sweet baby for 3 months! We found out last week that it is approved and I will get to do it! I'm so excited and honored for the great opportunity and also that she has that much faith in my teaching skills! I told her that it was just so wild that for the past few months, my heart has really been pulling towards kindergarten and it scared me senseless, now I know why!

Another great thing is that the woman from the college emailed me again to tell me that my Educational Aide Exemption will be granted in the fall! That is great news, still kinda stinks that we have to pay for the summer classes by taking out a student loan, but every little bit helps!

And lastly, I was asked to teach the 2 and 3 year old mission friends class at church yesterday! I feel like it was God's way of saying "You said when you finished school you wanted more responsibility in the church...HERE, HAVE IT!" I'm going to tell them that I would love to be the full time teacher in the fall, but see if they are open to the possibility of me bailing for a few months when I'm teaching kindergarten...just in case I get exhausted come Wednesday nights! But I'm going to try!

Okie Dokie, that's all of my news for now!

Let's get this off my chest...

So my friend Sam has become a super blogger while I...haven't posted in how long?! hmmmm

While reading up on her blog today, I decided to join in and link up to Living in France for F Bomb Friday.

I have been in a particularly bad mood for a week or so thanks to Texas A&M Commerce. Why, you ask? I have been taking classes to finish my Elementary Education degree for 7 years now! Seven! I know! As I posted before, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I will finish in December of THIS year! Since attending Commerce, I have been able to get my tuition paid in full by the state of Texas because I am an elementary aide in Wylie. It has been such a blessing...until now! I filled out all the needed paperwork and sent it in just waiting to see my tuition balance go back to $0. I'm still waiting...It ain't happenin' no more. First, I get an email saying I forgot to fill in one of the questions on the application. Done. Check it off the list, I fixed it and sent it back. Not an hour later I get a email that is titled "Denial Letter". I went through all the emotions possible at once; confusion-that couldn't be right, laughter-haha she's kidding, anger-what the crap? Why?, and sadness-wow, I'm going to have to pay for all of that myself? GET A TISSUE, THIS GIRL CAN'T STOP CRYING! Poor Sam was on the phone with me when I got the email and I am pretty sure I completely cut her off in whatever she was saying to have my own pity party. Sorry!

What I have come to learn from this so called "financial aid advisor" from the college is that I was denied because my husband made a whopping $3,000 more last year and it put us over the limit that deems us needy. It just makes me so mad because Jeff gets paid by commission, so we never know what his check will be each month. Way to go Honey, you worked your butt off and look where it got us...DANG!

So anyway, here it is a week or two later and I'm still pretty ticked off about it. I thought maybe if I blogged about it, I would get it off my chest-so thanks for that!

If you need to vent and get it all out...write your own F Bomb and link up with Mimi.

Jo's Birthday Party in Pictures

Start at the bottom and work your way to the top....I forgot how blogger adds photos backwards and really, there are far too many to fix it! As you can tell, this picture is from the end of the day when nobody wanted to go home!

"Hiking" in the frisbee golf course.

The Buckleys

The Carters

The winners... :(

And we were the losers. We played the boys in washers and I talked so much smack in the beginning of the game that it came back to bite me at the end of the game...

Uncle Jay and Aunt Reese

Cute boys!

Aunt Jen

Taci Bo!

Love this one of the boys playing!

Mrs. Weir. The three boys are her current students, the sweet little girl, will be hers next year for sure!

Blowing out the candles!

So many presents!

The giant frisbee got stuck on the roof of the bathroom and John gave Jeff a "boost"! hehe

He was so in love with the cake

The boy was so excited all morning, he counted down the hours and then the minutes!

Do you see that?!

It's the light at the end of the tunnel! And I can now see it!

I have signed up for my last 4 college classes! I can't wait to graduate! As long as I can pay for summer classes, I will be graduating in December! If not, we might end up having to push it back to the spring, but I'm praying for a way to pay! Just wanted to share! Thanks for everyone that has helped and supported me through this very, very long journey!

Dear Someone...

Since I am home for the day, I thought I would join the cool kids like Sym and write letters to to people that will probably never see them, but it gets things off your chest! It was quite fun, I might have to keep up with this!

Dear Teenage girl working in the registrar's office at Commerce,

I believe I was very nice and patient with your ignorance until the 4th time you put me on hold to go ask someone the answers to my questions. I admit it was my stupidity for clicking the add button for Anatomy and Physiology before realizing it was II and not I (but in my defense it was 12:30 this morning); but you my dear girl, should not be answering the phones if you do not know how it all works to begin with! Oh well, I didn't need your help anyway, I cheated the system and got the dreaded class dropped. But I guess the joke is really on me...I have to drop another class for a summer session I don't plan on taking; therefore I have to do it your way...Such is life!

Love,

Frazzled College Student,

Heather

Dear little Brother In-Law,

I'm sorry you are going through some tough stuff with your girlfriend right now, but OH TO BE THAT YOUNG AND CAREFREE AGAIN! Remember you are only a freshman in college and you have lots of life to live! I do like your current broken up with girlfriend, but I want you to experience life to the fullest. So go live it!

Love,

Your big sis in-law living life through you sometimes,

Heather

Dear Rain,

You do help the Earth so much...but we are quite tired of you in Texas! It was such a tease for you to disappear over the first part of spring break, but now you are back and we don't like it! It makes the days long and gloomy.

Love,

Missing the sunshine and 70 degree weather,

Heather

Go check out this give away!

Hey guys! My totally awesome friend is hosting a give away on her blog. If you are into movies this is the perfect give away for you! On the 15th of the month she will post a line from a movie and you have several ways to enter in the give away! You can always do like I did and google most of the answers! I knew one of the answers, but the rest came right off the internet! Gotta love the net for that!

The quote this time is "Happiness isn't happiness without a violin playing goat."

So go check it out!

Do I? or Don't I?

We stopped by Dad's house last night after dinner so that Sarah could get some clothes to stay the night. We ended up staying a couple of hours and helping with some of the cleanup help from the remodeling. Dad is fixing up the house and is spending quite a bit of time doing it (I know I probably would have given up long ago). He scrapped the popcorn off the ceilings and retextured them this weekend.

Jo wanted to help so bad so he was handed the mop. My first thought was "hey, if he is somewhat good at it, I can let me do it at home every once and a while". He started out really trying, even opened the pantry to get the floor in there...but then...he found it fun to try and get Bree with the mop instead. Like she said "he mops about as good as he rakes". I didn't get any more pictures, but he had way more fun with the squirt bottle. I'm with Jen...next time we hide the squirt bottle!

So, will I let Jo mop the kitchen at home...The jury is still out!

Silly Boy...

The other night Jeff and I were cleaning the kitchen and living room while Jo was eating some dinner. We had the music turned on and were moving right along. Okay, let me be honest with you, I WAS CLEANING, JEFF WAS SINGING most of the time! Big shocker I know! I threatened to turn the music off so that I could get some help and as I did, The Chair by George Strait came on so my sweet hubby and I danced in the kitchen. Jo thought this was the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen! I'm not sure if it was the fact that we were dancing, or if it was because it was in the kitchen...

Another story for ya:

This morning Jo wanted someone to get him some cereal and he came up with a plan on how to decide who. Remember when we used to play Any, Many, Miney, Mo? Here is how his new song goes...

First, Second, Third

Elementary Nerd,

High school Turd,

You just said a bad word!

Where do kids get these things anyway?!

Snow Day!!!

I know it was over a week ago, but we had "snow" much fun I forgot to post the pictures!

Soni was say "Sowee" for throwing slushy snow in Jo's eye.

"Hey! You cheaters!" Sam and I were loaded that basket full of pre made snowballs so that we could finally whoop the kids, but they caught us!

Diving in the snow!

Crazy!

Jo, right before I smashed his face in the snow!

Wanna see my rock?!

My assistant principal started this "You Rock" award this year. Each week we are to nominate coworkers that we think "rock" for whatever reason. The teacher with the most nominations that week wins the rock! We have a weekly assembly on Friday mornings and we play the "We will, we will, rock you" song and the kids really get into it. This week I WON! I felt less like rocking though because I was not in the assembly to even hear my name being called! haha I had just finished up my duty in the cafeteria at the breakfast tables and walked into the work room to eat my orange. Luckily, one of the teachers had seen me in there so when my name was called and they were looking for me she told them I was making copies and she ran to get me! At any rate, it made me feel pretty special to get nominated for doing a good job. So I really owe a big thanks to my coworkers that nominated me, I will have this crazy cute rock sitting on my desk for the week!

What do you all think of this?

19%...I think more like 98%!

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Geneology - Genealogy software

It has been a loooooooong time since I have updated you all on the happenings around our world. I'm sure I will skip a lot, but I'm going to start at the beginning of Christmas Break.

Sarah stayed with us for the first 5 days. Jo loved it, I loved it, I hope Sarah loved it! We attempted to make a gingerbread house, but we decided it looked more like a barn! But hey, for making it from scratch, not kit at all; I think it turned out great! Jo added army tanks and Jeff added some suicidal gummy bears; I think he just wanted them to fall off the roof so he could eat them first!

I took Jeff and Cam to Cowboys Stadium for a tour as one of their Christmas presents. I think I enjoyed almost as much as they did. It was really cool. Here are some pictures of the boys.

We hosted Christmas Eve with Jeff's mom's side of the family at our house for the first time! It seemed to be a success. Our house is a bit smaller than Jeff's parents, but that just meant we all had to stay in the same room and actually talk to each other! I stressed a little (okay maybe a lot) because they all showed up an hour earlier than I had told them and I was just getting started on cooking.

Jo wasn't very specific with what he want for Christmas, he wanted "every boy thing; no girl toys". Santa brought him a basketball goal. We have only had nice enough weather to play with it once since Christmas though. And "Santa" forgot the antifreeze for the bottom where you put the water, so guess who has to suffer and park in the driveway?! If you guessed me...you got it! arg!

And here is my little stud with his mp3 player. He liked it so much that he opened presents with it going. Too Cute!

Well world, I have more I need to catch you up on (like Jo's first school/family dance), but that will have to come later. Hope your Christmas was filled with as much love and fun as ours was!