Memorial Day weekend

(I asked Grandpa to stand in front of his Lincoln Continental before the parade)

(Grandpa headed up the parade in his Lincoln Continental--he is a WWII veteran)

(My uncle Doug driving the company truck--my cousin Ben is in the passenger seat. They asked me if I wanted to drive the truck since I still have my CDL but I said no...didn't want to be responsible for running over little children picking up candy in the street)

(My brother Chris and my cousins Tom and Eric riding on one of the company trucks in the parade)

Our plane landed last night at about 10pm from Indianapolis. We had fun there in Milford this weekend. It all started out on Friday when we left Rowland...

Friday afternoon: I was chompin' at the bit to leave that afternoon so that we could fly to Indiana and begin our family fun. Kyle picked me up at about 2:20ish and we drove straight to the airport--turns out we were really early for our flight with was going to leave at about 6:30pm. Oh well, we weren't in any hurry once we got there, which is how I like it. We ate a leisurely meal of Wendy's hamburgers and frosties. We went through security and walked all the way down the concourse area to concourse D instead of taking the train. We walked into one of those news stand stores and I bought a wordsearch puzzle book to keep me busy and we continued to the gate and waited for about 2 hours. We finally got on the plane and sat there for what seemed like forever when the pilot came on the speaker and said that they were having fuel panel problems and there was a chance that we would not be able to take this particular plane. I was hoping we wouldn't have to switch and finally the pilot announced again that the problem had been fixed and that we would take off momentarily, which still made me a little nervous. We landed in Indy just fine though without problems. We got in our rental car and arrived in Milford, IN at about 11:45pm. We went straight to bed. I was surprised to see that Grandma was so full of energy and awake at this hour. The reason was she was pumped full of Prednazone because she caught Poison Sumac (sp?) and the doc put her on that stuff. It was kind of funny.

Saturday: We woke up at about 8am so that we could go eat a healthy breakfast of pancakes and sausage that the Kiwanis club was hosting. It was all you can eat. Needless to say, we ate all we could eat. It was a sausage and pancake fest. Mmm... I was full for most of the day and probably could've gone the whole day without eating anything else. Then, some family members of Grandpa came up and we went to the cemeteries of Milford and Union Township because one of the ladies was very interested in geneology. It was interesting to see all of the old tombstones. It started to rain, so that cut short the Union Township visit. We went back to the house and then we decided to go out to eat with Amanda (my cousin) at Hacienda and then we went out to the Frog (a bar). Food was good, drinks were (pretty) good. The bar was so loud and I didn't enjoy that too much. My brother, Chris, had this weird friend, whose name he didn't know, that kept coming over to our table and bought me drinks (2 Jager bombs to be exact)...ick. Anyway, after all was said and done, we left and went home for the night.

Sunday: got up for church and then came back and went out to lunch with Gma, Gpa, Chris and Tom. It was a really nice restaurant and we had a great time together eating. Amanda, Kyle and I went to go see Pirates 3. It was a really good movie, but it was terribly long. Some of the parts I didn't quite understand what was going on just because of the accent from Calypso the goddess. The visual effects were awesome though. After the movie, we went to Ted and Becky's to cook out over a bonfire. Mmmm...we had hotdogs, burgers and s'mores(my favorite)! We stayed til about 10:30 or so and went back to the house.

Memorial day: got to go see the parade--something I had never been able to see before! It was so much fun and I have pictures that maybe I'll post later. After the parade, we went to a service out at the Milford cemetery. My grandpa spoke at the service because he is a WWII veteran and he was in charge of listing veterans who had passed away in the past year. It was a very good service. It really made you think. I wished that some of my friends and people I know who are totally against war and whatnot could've been there to hear it. It probably wouldn't have changed their minds anyway. :( I like those country songs that talk about war. Toby Keith is a great example: he says, "We'll put a boot in your a**, it's the American way"....haha. Basically, those songs talk about never forgetting what happened and that we'll stand up for what's right. After the service, we all went out to Dan and Nilah's for food, food and more food. We also played a quick game of softball-- and my muscles are STILL hurting, especially my shoulder from throwing the softball so hard. We left for the airport at about 3:30 or so and I was sad to say goodbye to my brother. I cried. I didn't cry as hard as I did when we left my mom's side of the family but I think that's because I know I'll probably see the Brown side of the family at Christmas (more than likely if we can get the time off and have the money). Plus, Katie and Joe are going to be about 8-9 hours away from us while they're in Montana for the summer.

So, it was a great weekend. I'm tired though. At least I didn't have to be at work until about 8:30am. Only a few more hours until we leave for the summer!

Last day of school!

Today is the day! School's out for the summer!! I forgot my camera which is disappointing because I wanted to take a picture of all my students... :( One of the second grade teachers said that she would let me borrow her camera and then she would email me the pictures. At least I'll have that grade level.

I'm going to try to get out of the school today around 2:20. Kyle is going to just come pick me up and then we're going straight to the airport. It'll probably be good that we're going so early because this will be a big travel day for a lot of people. We want to make sure we have plenty of time before our flight. We'll be flying into Indy around 8:00pm and then we'll grab our rental car and drive the 2.5-3 hour trip up to Milford. It should put as at about 11:00-30 getting there. My grandparents said they would stay up for us--they would take little naps throughout the day so that they are able to stay up late--haha. I can't wait.

I love going up there...always have. My brother and I used to go up there every summer for 6 weeks and play with our cousins. We would go swimming, boating, have sleep-overs and we were known in the town for having a little parade around the block after my parents would leave us there. We would dress up in silly clothes and drag the wagons around the block and ride bikes too. Then on occasion, we would have cookie and lemonade sales. We got our picture in the local newspaper for having the sale. We wanted to keep the money, but Grandma said that wouldn't be right and so we gave our money to a little charity organization. Car washes were also our thing. One guy brought his motorcycle over for us to wash. Ahh...those were the fun and carefree days of being a kid. Whatever happened to those times? Why do we have to grow up and get lives? Oh yea, so we can have money to survive and have families and move away to the great potato state...that's why. Dang it. Oh well, it should be a good summer this year. Kyle and I are going to have a whole new situation on our hands.

Btw, we think we might have settled on a house. I think I've convinced him on this one we saw while we were up there. It's a 2-story, very cute on the outside (neat and clean), and it's reasonably sized for the money. Plus, the price was lowered which is also good. Kyle's reasoning as to why he likes the house is it's on the irrigation system, which is cheaper so we don't have to use the city water and pay a lot to water our yard. Hopefully nobody puts an offer down on the house before we get out there again.

Home again for a little while

We arrived in ATL at about 5:30pm and had to wait forever for our bags. The plane ride home was horrible because the seats were very uncomfortable and the flight attendants were stupid. One of the girls came over the speaker at one point and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a problem..." and of course I jolted awake and my pulse started racing. She continued, "we don't have any ice for the beverages...sorry for the inconvenience." Kyle and I had to calm our heart rates down because we thought it was a real emergency. ICE is NOT an emergency nor a problem. Anyway, we got here relatively unscathed but with a couple of aching backs due to the terrible, non-ergonomic seats that the Canadair Regional Jet had to offer.

This week is the last week of school! Yippee!

Some more sightseeing and foothill adventure

After going house-hunting, we decided to go once more up to the foothills and take advantage of our rental car's abilities to climb mountains (we had an all wheel drive subaru). We probably won't do it again in our personal cars once they're moved up to Idaho.
We went farther up the mountain and we got some different views the higher we went...

There were some cool rock places that I had to get a picture of and so Kyle was my model...
This was looking back at the road we had already taken...we were a far piece from civilization. However, it was a very busy day for the 4 wheelers/dirt bikes/mountain bikes. The weather was perfect.

These yellow flowers kept appearing the higher we got also...

I would've posted more pictures but after awhile, it all starts to look the same so I didn't want to just keep identical pictures...you can thank me later.

So, we went to dinner tonight at Johnny Carino's and I know what you're thinking...why go there when you can go somewhere native to Idaho? Well, we didn't really want to go back to town because we're tired of being in the car and we just wanted a hop, skip and a jump to an eating establishment and Carino's was the best place for that. We ate too much and we both feel like pigs now. We've been eating way too much on this trip...this is our very last eating binge--promise. We leave tomorrow morning to come back to ATL and then I have one more week of school with the children--woohoo!! On Friday, Kyle is taking me to school and picking me up in the afternoon so that we can go straight back to the airport to go to Indiana for Memorial day weekend. I swear...I'm going to be so tired of airplane rides after all this is done...I guess I better get used to since that's the only way we're going to see family--unless we decided to drive our car...NAAAHHH.

House-hunting extravaganza #2

Today we went on our second round of house-hunting. We only saw 7 houses today as opposed to yesterday's 15. We saw probably 2 houses that we really liked and were comparable to the ones we liked yesterday. I think I already fell in love with one house but I won't tell Kyle that because he told me not to fall in love with any houses. :( Anyway, I got this really good feeling about the house. It was a 2 story house and we think only one guy lived in it. When we walked in though, it didn't look like a guy had lived there. It looked like a woman did just because of the decoration. It was tastefully decorated with pictures on the wall and it was above all CLEAN! To our surprise, when we walked up the stairs, there was a small pen to the left. The pen had a tiny dog in it--we didn't even know there was a dog in there! We didn't even smell dog in the house! The upstairs had a really cool bonus room that had hardwood flooring. There were like 2 other bedrooms up there but one was made into an office. When we came back downstairs, all of the sudden, there was a cat under the kitchen table. We didn't even realize he had a dog and a cat there! We smelled absolutely no animals in that house! It was amazing...

Another house we liked was a single level and it was also neat as a pin. We loved it. The other bedrooms were kind of small for my tastes, but I guess they could work out. Needless to say, we had a very productive house-hunting trip with a little fun on the side. :)

Bad news or good news depending on how you look at it...

Well, as we were riding around with the realtor looking at houses, my cell rings and it's Meridian High's principal...he turned me down for the job :(. Sure, it was disappointing and kind of embarrassing that I had to get that call in front of the realtor. Oh well, at least it gives me a chance to possibly go and either further my edumacation/certification or I can find something else that I want to do.

Enough about that...let's talk houses. We saw some awesome, great, good, not so good, and HORRIBLE houses! There are about a handful of houses that we're mildly/really interested in and we may look more into them again when we come back out for the final time. The first house was small, but with the vaulted ceilings, it made it actually look pretty good. There's probably little storage in it though. Then, we saw another house that REEKED of cat spray--UGGHHH!! I love cats and I don't mind having them in the house, but come on!! Fix that cat or throw him outside if he doesn't quite spraying. It was unfortunate because the house actually looked decent and the living room was cute. We saw another really good house and we're actually considering it because the house looked SO neat and clean and we could tell that the owners took pride in their home. The house just gave me a positive feeling when I walked in. We saw a few more good homes but I don't feel like describing them here (too much typing). Plus, I don't want to bore people. :)

I really want a house soon. Hopefully we will get one shortly after we get out here for the final time.

Traveling around the foothills of Boise

We decided to do some driving around in the foothills outside of Boise city and we ended up getting some really cool shots from higher elevations...


Such a peaceful location and we constantly heard birds, but where do the birds sit? There aren't any trees!

This in the city and this is the state capitol building.
This is our rental car after our off-roading adventure. Hertz is gonna love us!
City shot.
Cool rock formations within the hills...

An aerial view of some of the town of Boise...we loved this area so much because it was like nobody was up here and we were escaping reality.

Today, we're going to look at houses so we may not have much time to do more driving around.

Boise..."the city of trees"

This is a shot from the plane when we were getting closer and closer to Idaho. I believe we were over Wyoming at this point, and yes, those are snow-covered peaks, folks!

We finally got into Boise about 12:30pm (mountain time) and I was so tired. We went to check into the hotel and we had no idea it would be this luxurious looking! A nice king bed and a huge room! It even had it's own little mini-sink off to the side with a microwave and fridge. We don't do fancy hotels most of the time. The last fancy hotel we stayed at was the night of the wedding and that was at the airport Westin off of I-85.

This is obviously the bathroom. The toilet is off in its separate room to the left. The tub is a really deep one--lots of space!

This is the bathroom that was in our hotel room--very fancy stuff!

We drove around town and the outskirts after we dropped off our stuff in our hotel room and this is the scenery we took in...yeah, I know, where are the trees? Instead, you get the wild, blue yonder.

Now this is a pretty good picture. The clouds are spaced out just perfectly.

The bad thing about this area is there aren't any trees to hide construction trash and junky areas. Atlanta, at least for the most part, has tree coverage so that it kind of takes the harshness out of the construction sites.

More of the same...

Anyway, that's just the first day of our house-hunting expedition. Oh, and I almost forgot to write something. Tara, our realtor, left for us at the hotel a nice little welcome present full of snack/junk food and all this adverstisements for housing. The food was an excellent gift since I nearly starved to death on the plane ride(s) over to Boise. Then, while we were driving around, she called us and told us to be careful while we're out and about tomorrow. She said that if we should happen to go into an open house and there is a realtor there, tell them we're already working with someone and DON'T sign anything!! Man, these realtors take things REALLY seriously. They are extremely territorial. This should be an interesting trip.

Trying not to pack too much...

I'm trying not to pack too much like I usually do. I'm not a fan of recycling clothes but I also don't want to have so much in my suitcase that I can't even pick it up. argh.

Interview is at 1:30pm on Thursday. It's kind of an odd time of day because it interrupts the day. Oh well, at least it's not at 7:45am (which is when the school starts, I believe).

I finally told the kids today about my leaving and not coming back next year. My 3rd graders were kind of sad, but no really big reaction. One of the kids raised his hand and said, "I have a question..."
I said, "What, Jeremy?"
"I'm going to miss you", he replied.
It wasn't quite a question but heart-warming nonetheless.
My 2nd graders had a huge reaction. Almost all of them responded with a loud NOOOOO!!!
A girl in Mrs. Wiggins' class said, "Why doesn't your husband just go for the job and you stay here?" Again, cute but impossible.

I really am going to miss (most of) the children when I leave here. I've had some really good memories both in and out of the classrooms and made some good friends with the other (substitute) teachers/specialists/secretaries that work at Rowland. I hope that we can stay in touch--whether it be through email or just this website. This probably was the place to start out at as a brand new teacher. It was a huge family of people who made just about anybody feel welcome. *sigh*

Interview for High School position

I forgot to post this yesterday but I have a job interview already with a high school out in Meridian, Idaho. The principal, Mr. Stands, called me last week and left a voicemail on my cell, which said, "...if you are interested, please call me back. Even if you aren't interested, call me back so that I may persuade you otherwise..." wow! Is that promising or what? I mean, it sure did give me a jolt of excitement that I may actually have a job right away when we move out there. It will be good for me to have a job while Kyle is working also--we'll be making good money together and also, it'll keep me busy so that I don't think too hard about missing people in Georgia. :) The interview is on Thursday at some point. I don't know what time it is yet but he said he would get back to me when he could set up the time with the department head. I'm now officially nervous.

Four weeks and counting...

We are moving in 4 weeks. It's exciting and scary at the same time. Both of us are native Georgians so our families all live here in Georgia for the most part. We haven't bought a house yet but we're planning on going on a house-hunting trip to Boise this week. No idea if we'll find the house of our dreams on this trip but we'll try. We think we'll take advantage of the 2 months worth of free temporary housing that Kyle's company is offering to us until we can find our house. It'll probably be worth waiting.

Today is Mother's Day and we went to my grandma's house after church. Emotions hit me strong when we were about to leave. I totally didn't expect it--I just exploded into tears as I was hugging everyone goodbye. It was a pitiful sight. Oh well, probably not the last time I'll do that.

We plan on taking a lot of pictures on the upcoming trip of the city and the houses that are out there so that we can make our decisions as easy as possible. This is going to be a nightmare.