no rest for the weary

after my rough day yesterday, i laid down ready for bed. i usually fall asleep rather quickly, but i just laid there last night waiting for my mind to settle down. it took almost an hour.

when i woke this morning, i woke from a dream about my students.

there we were, it was the end of the school day. the bell had just sounded and my kids were still sitting in their chairs, not in line with their backpacks as they should have been. i frantically tell them to put their things away and get in line. they do not move. i tell them again and again and again and they refuse to move. my 21 6 year olds continue to sit in their desks coloring and reading and talking. of course, as i am ignored my voice raises and begins to shriek as i cannot believe what is happening. i eventually start pulling kids out of their chairs and pushing them towards their backpacks. i was astonished when i pulled theodore from his chair and noticed that he had wet his pants. YES! he wet his pants. that is how long these stinkin kids sat in their chairs not listening to their teacher. they sat there long enough for a child to actually pee in his pants.

it was the most hideous dream and as you can imagine, i was not anywhere next to rested or calm by the time i got to school today.

we had another rough day. a few minutes before we left i actually told one of my students (who has been acting like a monster for weeks) that i had a bad dream last night and that it was because of the way he has been acting. he was actually quiet the last 15 minutes of class.

i think maybe i should be fired.

crazy, crazy, crazy

my kids drove me crazy today. they asked question after question after question. they asked things that weren't important and things that they know we do every day at the same time. they even asked questions i had just answered, if they had been listening.

i left school as quickly as possible.

my dog drove me crazy today. she rubbed all against me. she ate her food and rubbed her dirty mouth all against my pants. she whined. she barked. she stared at the front door. i took her out, thinking she needed to go potty, she walked around and then sat at my feet. we went back upstairs where she continued all of her annoying things.

i left the couch as quickly as possible and started cooking in the kitchen.

my husband is driving me crazy today. he won't stop singing silly songs. he won't stop watching annoying tv shows. he won't stop making the dog go crazy in our second story apartment.

i, uh...don't have anywhere to go very quickly now...

you know what my daddy always said? "if bob and joe have a problem, and bob and sue have a problem, and bob and steve have a problem. bob is probably the problem." so...i think, today, i may be the problem

welcome casen!

i'm proud to say that casen was born beautifully today around 12:30.

i'm so happy for you crys and i absolutely can't wait to meet your sweet little boy. i love that he has dark hair and looks like jacob. i'm coming to town as quickly as i can!

i'll see you in two days, my friend! i love you!

ummm...

my husband, darling husband, is bringing home taco bell.

uh..for himself. i...of course..am having a salad. a salad with every vegetable imaginable and only 1 tablespoon of dressing.

yeah-that's it. i'm having a salad.

:) hehehe!!!! don't tell anyone else, but i'm totally having taco bell!

playing catch-up

• my friend is having her second son the day after tomorrow. i can't wait to meet casen.
• i miss my friends and my church.
• i love my coworkers here, but still can't wait for summer.
• we are thinking of buying a house, but are set to making wiser decisions with our money and may have to wait another couple of months or so. we are thinking we will build and that has my creative juices flowing so much that it is almost all i can think about. waiting may be hard.
  
• we got a letter from our apartment management today that asks us to remove the trash (a cardboard box) from our balcony as they have received a complaint from our neighbors.
• i would like to complain about two of our new neighbors whom do not clean up after their dogs. nasty.
• i have just finished reading, rhett butler's people, his side of the gone with the wind story. i loved it.
• i could eat spaghetti, the way michael makes it, almost everyday. it's delicious and easy.
  
• i don't feel like cooking tonight but we ate out yesterday. what's a wife to do...
• michael has been working so hard that he comes home a little later than usual from work. i hate it.
• friday is an early release day at school. my kids will be gone by noon and my teammates and i will be off for a great lunch. we'll come back and have staff development that afternoon.
  
• i am going to san angelo this weekend! i get to meet casen! i get to see my friends!
• i am going to san angelo this weekend! i get to get my hair highlighted and cut (anybody wish they could see anything different on this ol' boring head of hair?!?)!
• i haven't talked to my mom since she left last Monday. what the heck is up with that? i think maybe she got all of me she could handle.
• my beautiful niece, ellie belle, is almost one year old. i can't believe it.
• i think i could crawl into bed right now and sleep until morning.
  

expectations...a little too high

my mom is here!

with michael and i wanting desperately to spend some time away from driving in cars, mom decided to come see us. she came down saturday morning and brought jules home.

jules has been in san angelo since dec 21st, when we headed there before christmas. she stayed there while we were in vegas. we spent that next weekend at a wedding in dallas and then the following weekend holed up in our apartment.

mom was missing us almost as much as we were missing her so she decided to come spend the weekend. she brought jules.

we were so excited to see jules and thought she would be equally as excited to see us. we even decided beforehand that we would go downstairs so that when the car pulled up, she could run around and jump and be excited to see us.

uh...she didn't do any of those things.

she didn't even shake her butt and her name is "butt-shaker". it's just what she does.

instead, she saw us and let us pet her and then leisurely walked around the apartment grounds smelling and sniffing. we even used our excited voices and whistled and patted our legs. nothing. she wouldn't even walk over to us.

it was the saddest thing of our whole lives.

in fact, i saw into the future about 16 years. when maybe our own human daughter would be a teenager (no i'm not pregnant). she will probably treat us with the same disdain and our hearts will be broken. gosh, that's so sad.

jules, has slowly warmed up to us again and we guess that she's forgiven us for leaving her for so long. we left today and when we got home, she had regained her previously mentioned nick name. she loves us again!

whew!

thank you, Jesus, for turning the hearts of the children back to the parents. :)

a new plan...

to workout.

michael and i together.

daily.

6pm.

hurray.

a weekend stay in the big sa

michael and i were going to travel to san angelo this weekend to get our baby jules. she's been staying with my mom since we went out of town.

we miss her big time.

we miss sleeping in our bed on the weekends big time.

we decided to stay here and leave our baby dog in san angelo for another week. or, michael's friend who may be coming to play golf tomorrow, may bring her with him. if that happens, we'll have the best of both worlds.

we'll have our sweet baby jules and will have been able to stay in our home for the first weekend in about 4 months. whoa. that's a long time.

get this...

yesterday, was mine and michael's ten month anniversary.

WHAT?!

TEN MONTHS?!?!

yup. ten months.

it's weird how sometimes it seems like it's been a few weeks and sometimes it seems like we've just always been married.

i do know this: i was made for marriage. i love it so. i realize my love for michael in the most simple times like when we're lying on the couch watching tv. last night about 12:30am, he got out of bed to watch tv because he couldn't fall asleep. when i heard him shut the door, i called to him just ask what he was doing. he came right back, crawled in beside me and cuddled with me for a while. it was so comforting.

it's things like that i just love so much.

i can't believe that in two short months, we will have been married a year. so crazy.

happy ten months, baby. you were made for me.

ugh...

i just realized, after listening to a voicemail from marme, that my last grocery store post was probably something so totally newlyweddish.

remember something sort of like this, "i just love going to the grocery store. my sweet, wonderful, handsome, darling husband goes with me and it's just so wonderful and fun. there is nothing more fun than going to the grocery store with my sweetie. blah, blah, blah. etc."

gag.

michael has been very busy and extremely tired when he gets home from work. he also does so much for us like paying the bills and checking the mail and calling anybody or any business we need to call, getting the house sold and...paying the bills again. we had plans to go to the store sunday, monday and tuesday but didn't make it because by the time he got home, he really didn't want to leave again. i let that slide because let's face it, i really didn't want to go either. then i thought, "heck, i can go to the stinkin grocery store by myself. i'm a grown woman for goodness sake."

i think the store became a chore in that one moment. but, i guess like la said, i should enjoy the errand as it is now, before i add kids to the mix. i don't know how you women do it. you are amazing.

i'll tell you this much, having tasty water to drink when you're thirsty is worth a million hours in a grocery store.

who would've thought?

when i was a kid, i loved to go grocery shopping with my mom. it was always fun to see what she was putting in the basket, especially if it was lucky charms or little debbie swiss cake rolls. i always really liked to see what she was getting that she would be cooking us for dinner.

i always, always tried to sneak something in the basket. that is one of the main reasons i never missed a trip to the grocery store with my daddy.


in ft stockton, daddy and i would go to the grocery store together to get a gallon of milk. we always got the milk, and we always got donuts. yummo! we would eat our donuts on the way home in the car and then we'd be dying of thirst. lucky for us, we had a gallon of milk!

so, with all of this fun as a child, who would've thought that i would hate, HATE grocery shopping now?!

i spent an hour and a half in the store today, right after work, and then carried a ton of groceries from my car to my upstairs apartment. oh well, i guess i beter get used to it. i know it's going to be a great thing for me to do for the rest of my life.

one good thing? i bought some grapes that might be the B E S T grapes i've ever had in my life. they are perfectly crisp, sweetly juicy and amazingly tasty.

hating the errand i once loved to dearly...who would've thought?!?!

an apology

sorry for my ridiculous absence. i just suddenly had blog pressure. for a while i just didn't feel like posting when i got home (teachers get that way around the end of december). after that for a little while, there seemed to be too much to say. i didn't know where to start.

i know that "warning" is now probably the most annoying word in the world. i'm sorry you had to see it so much (that is if you kept checking my blog like i always do to everyone else).

after i made myself post today, i'm feeling a lot better. i'm hoping i'm back. the good thing? even while i had no desire to post, i kept reading.

i love you my friends.

what happens in vegas...

gets posted on my blog!!! :)

before we left, landon said to michael, "what happens in vegas...God sees." it was hilarious!

as our first vacation together, las vegas was really great! i know it's called sin city, but really...there is so much to do there besides sin! really! :) our first stay was for two nights about 10 miles away from the strip. we stayed at a hotel called the suncoast. michael played a little bit of blackjack and we both played some slots. it was really fun, but nothing addicting, so...that was good news! we had a nice big room with a huge wall-sized window with a beautiful view over the golf course.

our viewmichael eating our room service breakfast. he had steak and eggs and was enjoying it so much that i thought it was worth remembering. i had french toast. it wasn't nearly as good. bummer.

after our first two days, we hopped on the shuttle with our huge bags and were dropped at a suncoast sister hotel and had to find our way to the luxor. it was hilarious! we jumped on the monorail. walked all the way through the mgm grand, crossed a walkway over las vegas blvd, fought our way through many, many pedestrians, walked through new york new york (where we were given show tickets to Magician Lance Burton and two buffets for promising to go to a time share thing. we went but didn't buy), across another walkway to a tram which we took from new york to mandalay bay and then on to the luxor. all the while, pulling our luggage behind us. we were stinkin' tired by the time we got to the front of the check-in line. standing there, we were informed that we had been upgraded to a large suite. this thing was basically bigger than our apartment. super cool.

we had such a fun time. we spend the next four days looking at the different hotels, finding our way downtown to the freemont street experience, watching the fountains at the bellagio (which were amazing), falling in love with an artist named peter lik, eating pizza at new york new york, watching a cirque du soleil show ka, being amazed at a magic show by lance burton, and walking our butts off. the last two nights we went to be late and woke up late.

las vegas blvd the day we arrived.

new york, new york. you have no idea how huge these hotels are. need something for comparison? that red circle in the middle...yea-that's a roller coaster!

inside new york. looked just like it!

the view of the luxor when you got off the tram. amazing, isn't it?

sarcophagus lined the front entrance of the hotel. michael looks tall huh?

he's not really! look at me at the guys knee! those things were huge! (well, while i was checking this before publishing, i noticed that my picture was missing. i guess there may be a picture limit on blogs. it was a picture of me standing right next to this guy and with my arm straight out, i was touching his knee. silly thing.)

an itty-bitty, teeny-tiny portion of the casino in the luxor. i mean, minuscule portion.

michael and i waiting to go into the shark reef at mandalay bay.

here was a diver cleaning the aquarium. if you look closely, you can see a huge fish watching over the divers shoulder. he stayed like that for a really, really long time.

michael touched a sting ray at the petting area of the shark reef. i touched one too, but man it took some encouraging. they are so soft that you almost can't feel them.

yours truly near pegasus at ceasar's palace.

michael standing way in front of the trogan horse in ceasar's palace. that was huge too! man, everything there was oversized.

handsome and i in paris.

paris, las vegas

planet hollywood. along with a huge casino on the bottom floor of this hotel, there is a mall. yes, you hear me, a mall.

the fountains at the bellagio were so amazing. they showed every 15 minutes and were set to music with lights and huge amounts of water being shot into the air. it was so beautiful!

we woke up at 4:30am on saturday to fly to dallas for my friend, leah's, wedding. due to mechanical errors, our flight was delayed and we were late to the wedding. we drove home later that night. went to bed at two and slept until 3pm on sunday. whoa! we still haven't gotten back on a regular sleep regiment. it stinks.

las vegas was fun and there was plenty to see and do, but if you ever go, make it a 2-3 day trip. otherwise, you'll just come home stinkin exhausted.

thanks baby for a wonderful vacation. you make everything great!

my christmas

we had such a wonderful christmas. we got to spend about a week in san angelo before heading to odessa for a short family christmas and then to vegas for vacation. our christmas has so much tradition that it makes it so fun. we all sat around in our christmas pj's and opened presents one at a time. i loved giving everyone gifts that i thought they would love and appreciate. everything i got, i loved so much. there was one present, that when michael opened it (it was to both of us), it took me a second to realize what it was. at first i thought it was one of those "kiss me goodnight" boards that you can get in fredericksburg and other cute places like that. then, i noticed the last few letters of kotze and my name.

sarah, my wonderful sister, found someone online who makes these boards. she ordered one for michael and i with our anniversary on it. i cried. michael cried. sarah cried. dad cried. ellie cried (although, i don't think it had anything to do with my sign...). it is so beautiful and special to me. thank you sister, you're amazing.another great thing us girls got (another tradition just started) were james avery charm bracelets. mom already has one so we each got one too. from now on, we will get a charm that represents something important that happened in our year. thanks marme, you're the best!

ellie belle at christmas time

it was ellie's first christmas and while i'm sure sarah has more wonderful pictures, i wanted to remember the ones i have. ellie was a little tired during this part of her christmas morning, but she was fun to watch and i think had a blast opening her presents.

what is it?!?!

here she is with uncle michael opening her new laptop!checking it out...

grama and ellie opening more presents.

and more. notice the pacifier. she might be serious about this one.