Are Only Pretty Decorations

After trying very hard to decorate our house is a festive, our only success was the tiny 4 X 4 foot foyer. Take a look.

Plus a few extra funny Amber pictures.

Severe Winter Weather

It has been rainy quite a bit recently. To be completely honest, I am tired of the rain (I guess it's because I'm from a desert). But last night while I was watching the SNL Christmas special, there was a severe winter weather alert going across the screen. It also had a list of churches that were canceling Sunday services because of the weather alert. Well...here are some pictures taken from the kitchen of the severe winter weather.This is winter weather in Kentucky. :)

Amber and the Tree

Some people just don't understand how funny Amber really is.

New Camera

I've taken a while to come into the digital camera age (I guess it's not just a fad...hehehe). I have a film camera that I got right before digital cameras became affordable. Well, I started to want a digital camera so that I wouldn't have to use Noel's huge, fancy camera or wait for my film to be all used up. Noel knew that I wanted one, so when all of the after Thanksgiving sales were going on, he ordered one on the Sears website. I was really excited about it, so I got to have it early. I LOVE IT!!!! I have been running around taking pictures like a crazy person. :)



Noel's parents, sister and grandparents came and stayed with us for Thanksgiving. It was so fun! Lynne has a good eye for decorating so we did some of that. She made us some really cool pillows for the couch.

Noel and I also decided that we wanted to paint the dining room. It was a really light cream color before. It looked nice, but I was just in a daring mood. So we painted it "sweet currant." Yes, I have a purple room, and I love it. I think it looks awesome with the wainscoting on the bottom third of the walls. We don't actually use the dining room, but it was still fun to make it "our own."
We also bought a rug and put up a mirror in our little entry way. It's fun not having to worry about a landlord getting mad at you for putting things up on the wall. :)

KTIP

In Kentucky, the teachers aren't given a real professional teaching license until after they have completed the Kentucky Teaching Internship Program. And since I only taught one CERTIFIED year in Utah, I don't count as a real professional teacher yet either. So I have to do KTIP this year; I think it's a little crazy but not too bad. But I do have cause to celebrate; I am official done with the first of three cycles. Yahoo! The good thing is that I didn't feel like I had to do all that much work for it either. Hopefully the other two cycles will be the same.

Primary Funnies

I know that I have written some posts on the funny things that I hear kids say, but I'm going to post another one. I'm around children all the time between work and my calling in primary. Today in Primary, we were playing a game of General Authority Jeopardy. The Final Jeopardy answer was Cheryl Lant. I was looking for the question "Who is the general primary president?" So I let each class come up with a response. I turned to the CTR 8's, and one little boy had his hand up and looked very confident in his answer. So I called on him. He then said, "I know this one. Who is the Bishop?" I got a good chuckle out of that answer. I've never known a Bishop name Cheryl, but whatever.
The next funny came during junior primary sharing time. The teacher was giving a lesson on obedience. They discussed the people that we need to be obedient to and the places where we need to be obedient. She asked, "What could happen if we aren't obedient to the laws like speed limits and stopping at stop signs?" "We could get in a crash. We could get hurt." Then she asked, "What happens if we aren't obedient in Primary?" One little girl responded without missing a beat, "We die." I started laughing and the teacher let out a little laugh too then said, "Well, if that really happened, we would definitely want to be good and obedient in primary." It was hilarious!

Birthday/Pumpkin Carving

My 24th birthday was on Monday, and since Noel doesn't get home from class until about 9:00 on Mondays, we celebrated on other days. On the Friday before, we went to this fabulous Indian restaurant with Melea and Jeff. The food is sooooo good, and the company was great too.
Since I had parent-teacher conferences and report cards due this week, I just stayed at work until 6:30 on Monday. But then we got to celebrate my birthday again on Wednesday. I'm all about stretching out my birthday into a week-long event! Melea is a fantastic baker, and she made me a chocolate cake (from scratch) with crumbled Reese's peanut butter cups in between the layers of the cake and on frosting. It was delectable! We had a good laugh because she ran out of space on the cake to write "Amber" underneath "Happy Birthday." So she put it on top; I love how she even punctuated it correctly! We also carved pumpkins on Wednesday. I didn't so much do any carving, but I did help scrape out some of the pumpkin guts! Noel wanted to put a meat cleaver and knives into the pumpkin to make it scarier. Then we decided that it wasn't a really great idea to have sharp objects on our porch for all of the little trick-or-treaters to grab. Can you imagine, "Hey Mom! Look what I got at this house!" So Noel settled for plastic forks and knives. It turned out pretty cool.
Here is a picture of Noel and Jeff with the pumpkins. Melea and Jeff did bats for eyes and vampire teeth. We weren't that creative with the actual carving. Noel's creativity came when he was trying to decide what to stab into the pumpkin.

Football!!!

Last week, Noel and I went to the UK (not the country, but the university) vs. Florida football game. The tailgate didn't end up happening as we had hoped, but we still went to the game. It was so much fun! ESPN College Game Day was on campus which made everyone even more excited about the game. The Commonwealth Stadium is huge, and it was full of people wearing blue. Noel and I felt a little out of place because he was wearing a white and gray polo and I was wearing a gray Kentucky Wildcats t-shirt. We just were not BLUE enough.
We got the tickets from one of Noel's classmates, so we were in the student section which is fine (I almost got a nose bleed walking up to our seats...hee hee). But my schema for a student section is the student section at BYU. They are a little different. Pretty much everyone is intoxicated (varying levels), swearing like sailors, and smoking. There were some guys behind us that were Florida fans, and they did not stop ripping on UK until some extremely drunk guys showed up in the third quarter and threatened to beat them up. Even though UK lost, it was still fun and a great game to watch.

First UK Tailgate

It has not occurred yet, but Amber and I got tickets to the UK vs. Florida football game this weekend (which has been sold out for 4 months). As celebration we are going to have our first ever tailgate party. We will post our pictures and stories Saturday evening...so keep on checking for the latest update.

Isn't it ironic?

We were scheduled to go on a field trip to the Bi-Water Farm today. All my kids were soooo excited about going to the pumpkin patch to get a pumpkin, go on the hay ride, and pet the animals. We are in a drought here in Kentucky, but of course, the day that we have an outdoor field trip is that one day that it rains. We got out to the farm and it was pouring! The kids were upset that they had to wait to go when we could reschedule it, but no big deal. The only problem was that I didn't have a back up plan. So we got back to the school, and I didn't have any lessons planned. Luckily, we have been learning about the life-cycle of plants and there was a video in the library about just that. Close call!

Online

I have been listening to a lot more country music now that I live in Kentucky. I always liked it before but there are just a lot more country radio stations here. I also spend more time in the car since I have a longer commute. I love the song "Online" by Brad Paisley. It is hilarious! The music video is really funny too. Check it out. I haven't figured out how to add a video from You Tube yet, so here is the link.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7GcVnhNjWV0

House Decor

So...we have been in our house for over two months and we hadn't put up very much as far as decorations go. If Adele lived with us, she would have decorated and painted everything by now; she is such a go getter (love ya Adele). I am far less ambitious. Plus, basically having my first year of teaching over again leaves me feeling a little exhausted and very unmotivated to decorate. Well, Noel and I decided we better bite the bullet and get started.

We decided that it would be cool if we bought some canvases and made some art pieces for the wall. Maren did this in her apartment and it looks sooo cool. Well...as you can see some turned out better than others. Let's just say that Noel's turned out better than mine. It's a wonder that I got an A in the art class I had to take. :) As we were painting, I had done about two strokes and Noel looks over and says, "Hey, that looks pretty cool!" It was down hill from there. It ended up looking like an argyle sweater gone terribly wrong! I'm pretty sure my first graders could have done much better. So we just let it dry and painted over it to try again later.


Here are the paintings that Noel did.

Here are some pictures from South Africa that Noel took that we framed and put on the wall. We also bought the over-sized clock for our living room since we have such high ceilings.

There is this really cool, relatively cheap home decor store in Lexington called Home Goods. We went yesterday and got some fun stuff. Here is the bowl and candles that we got.

Here is another clock and candles from Home Goods. We still have a lot left to do, but it is a start!

Pizza Party!!!

As I mentioned before, Noel is the Valiant 9 teacher in our ward. The teacher before him promised the class a pizza party if they brought their scriptures to church so many consecutive weeks. Well, they did it! So we had the five boys over for pizza and games tonight. They were so fun! They are such good boys and are so kind to each other. As they were playing football in the backyard, it made me miss teaching fourth graders (that's how old these boys are). Don't get me wrong, I like first grade. But I do miss my fourth grade kids.

Primary Program

Noel and I have callings in the Primary. He is one of the Valiant 9 teachers, and I am the assistant to the Primary presidency. Just before we moved here, the ward boundaries were re-drawn and a bunch of new families with primary aged kids moved in. So our primary is HUGE...we have about 70 kids that show up regularly. They needed a little more help in the presidency so that is why I am the "assistant." Anyway, today was our Primary program in Sacrament meeting. Imagine 70 kids up on the stand, they did a great job being reverent, but I bet it was humorous all the same. There was one little boy who did not want to be up there, and he started to make a run for it. His teacher had cat-like reflexes and grabbed the back of his shirt to keep him from running off the stage. It was pretty funny. But here is what really got me laughing. We were almost finished with the program--honestly one more song to go. Then this 5 year old boy turns to his teacher (same teacher mentioned above) and says, "I am through with this!" I laughed a little and said, "Hey...we are almost finished." Then he said, "No. Really, I am just THROUGH with this!" His teacher and I busted up laughing. It was hilarious. Don't you just wish that you could get away with saying, "I am just THROUGH with this!" :)

Amber's Accident

Dude...Check out my sweet accident. So the real story is (not the one where I died that Noel tells) that I was pulling out of a diagonal parking spot after getting ice cream for Noel. Another driver was in my blind spot and I in hers. We hit. We yelled. We screamed. I am kidding. Don't be fooled by my incredible prose.

The car is perfectly fine, though. I even included pictures...so check them out.

Amber.

Our house, In the middle of, Our street!

Hi everyone!
Now that we are established in our new home and have time for fun, we thought we would update our blog that is to be completely honest...BLAH! Thus, attached to this post are pictures of our home. Feel free to comment on our posts and tell us how bad of photographer Noel really is.Our living room minus wall decorations and Amber's fat bum. It took us about a month to get couches and we are loving not having to sit on coolers and lawn chairs. Amber was slightly nervous about the black couches, but Noel prevailed and he is in the mode!
This is our pride and joy...our new kitchen table. If you are ever in town, we would love to have you over for Noel's fine cooking and Amber's lovely "Southern" hospitality. To say the least, it is such a delight to not sit on a cooler every night for dinner!

Amber loves her new mailbox...let's just hope she doesn't love it enough to run it over with the car.

This is the front of our house. The east side is really boring because we have no foliage. Plus, it is a corner lot and the pictures made our house look like a doll house compared to the mammoth home behind ours.


Once again, if you are ever in Lexington, please stop by and we will give you a nice southern wildcat welcome!