2009 Christmas Pix

Hey everyone. Well now you all get to see my RED hair. It is a different look for me than what you are used to but it is kind of growing on me now. Anyhew it will go back to normal after a month or so.

Last week Matt and I had our Christmas photos taken at Maymont Park in Richmond. It is a beautiful location. There is a zoo, stables, and a Japanese Garden located inside this park.

A HUGE thanks to Cami for taking the photos for us. Here are a few of my favs. Enjoy!

Humm part 2

Still not any wiser this year maybe by next year. I'm excited though we are supposed to get snow today, that is a nice surprise.

Thanksgiving Bliss

I am so sad because today is the the last day of my Thanksgiving week off. I had such a restful week of working on Christmas gifts, (sorry mom, won't let it slip this year what I am doing) planning and making our Thanksgiving feast, it truly was a feast this year. I made everything but the stuffing, Seth did that and everything turned out wonderful. Last night Matt and I put the ornaments on our tree and sat back and listened to Christmas music and admired all of our little ornaments.

Thanksgiving feast menu:

perfectly golden turkey

brown sugar baked ham

Boston Market sweet potato casserole-totally yummy!

mom's famous spinach leaf salad

stuffing

corn bread

mashed taters

3 streusel topped pumpkin pies

I even have a picture to prove it. But I can't download it till Matt gets back form St. Louis at the end of the week.

I have already turned over the house from autumn decorations to Christmas decorations. Our neighbor will be putting up our house lights this Thursday for me while Matt is away. They are going to be all over the house for the first time in 2 years. I am sooooo excited for the lights to go up.

I must say that I am so excited for the Christmas season! I love Christmas so much. Matt and I are getting professional photos by a friend of a friend, and I am so excited for them. Matt and I are also flying out to AZ for Christmas and a family reunion on my side of the fam. My Grandma is turning 90 this December so everyone is coming out to celebrate. I haven't seen some of my cousins since our last family trip last year. (Goal for me is to have lost 15 lbs by then.) Oh yeah if you didn't already know, I have a personal trainer kicking my butt 3 days a week right now. I will be healthy by mid next year and down 60 lbs. That is my goal.

That's it for now, pix to come later! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Must Reads!

I have to tell you all about my new fav series of books that come in a close second to the Twilight books. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I read Hunger Games last year just after I finished reading Twilight a few times, I really enjoyed the book. I was upset cause I would have to wait a year for the next book to come out. Catching Fire came out in Sept and I have been waiting for it to be released on Kindle so that I don't have to buy the hardcover book, cause since I have the Kindle I shouldn't need to buy the hardcover. Well it still has yet to be released and Matt let me get the book. I started reading Catching Fire and felt a little lost since it had been a year from reading, so I decided to re-read Hunger Games, and fell in love with it again. I went right into Catching Fire and in about 7 hours I finished the whole thing. AMAZING!!!!! I loved the book better than the first one, and I am mad cause I have to wait another year to read the 3rd and probably final book of the series. So everyone I highly recommend the Hunger Games series. It is a teen book but has some violent attached, as it is a book about kids who fight to the death. It is very good!!!!

Halloween '09

People have been asking for some pix of halloween this year. So here are some pix. Just some info, Matt did not wear his uniform as a costume, he left for his military duty from the party so I got a few pix with him and that is it.

This year we have about 250-300 kids stop by for some candy. We were going straight from 6-9pm with kids. It was a lot of fun. My students had a ton of fun stopping by to say hi. I even had some families that don't participate in Halloween stop by just to see me. It was a lot of fun. So enjoy the pix!

Out of the Mouth of Babes...

I LOVE TEACHING!!! I just had to say that first off. I want to tell you what happened yesterday that brought me to tears but first lets have a flashback to the 90's

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In the 7th grade I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had other "Backup plans" such as, Astronaut, Zoo Worker, Housewife, and Storm Chaser. I know I was weird. Well in the 7th grade I met Miss Verde/Mrs. McGee we called her Mrs. McVerde, she got married later my 7th grade. Anyhew, she was my favorite teacher, my band teacher. I loved her. She was so fun and entertaining in band and pushed our band as much as she could to make us be the best. She helped me love music, and I mean really love music. I told her at the end of my 7th grade year that I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. So I decided that I was going to be a Jr. High Band Teacher. For the years to come I had it set in my head that I wanted to teach that age group with the idea of instilling one student with the same love of music that Mrs. McVerde passed on to me.

Present:

Well the dream of teaching Jr. High was quickly squashed during my college years as I helped out with a local High School Marching band, granted it was not Jr. High but I figured that it was close enough of the age group that I couldn't handle it, as most of my charges were freshmen. So when Matt and I married I told him I wanted to teach privately when we were at a place long enough to make a difference in the kids life. My dream of why I wanted to teach came true yesterday with my cute little red-headed horn player. Her mom talked to me after the lesson and told me that her daughter told her that she wanted to be just like ME when she grew up, and teach private horn lessons. she loves music and loves playing the horn Her mom said that she has never been so excited about one thing other than animals in her entire life and they are very thankful for me. This is huge for the daughter, because she has always only wanted to do something animal related for her future, but now she has changed and wants to teach horn, and she said that she might need to learn piano as a backup teaching instrument. I started crying because that is the EXACT reason why I wanted to teach. So dream fulfilled, I can stop right, NO WAY! I am going to help ALL my students love music. I LOVE MY JOB!!!!

Seeing Red

I have finally painted a new room in my house. In my favoritest color of all RED. A deep dark red just like I had with my wedding roses. My dining room is now a beautiful, appetite inducing, inviting room. It took a while to find the perfect shade of red but I finally found it thanks to the Pottery Barn. It is one of their Summer and Fall colors for 2009 called Caliente. but I will will tell you that it was very frustrating to do this red. I did 2 coats on Saturday, and finally my brother in law, Seth, finished off the third one yesterday while I cut in. He just did a better job at applying the paint than I did. Here is a swatch color and pix to come.