Making Up for Lost Time: Thankgiving--A Photo Essay

This year, our friends Damian and Rebecca from Baton Rouge came to visit us for Thanksgiving. We had celebrated Thanksgiving together for several years before we had Amelia, but this was our first time to get together for this holiday in four years! The holiday is best explained by the photos below:

Two days before, a 5:45 a.m. trip to Wal-Mart, Starbucks in hand

A fried bird, 'cause that's the way we roll

My dressing, which was perhaps the best it's ever been

Two kinds of cranberry sauce, both canned and high-brow

The iPad, a tool used to babysit my child so I could cook stimulate my child's brain and motor skills

A good post-meal nap, complete with a blankie

A good Black Friday shopping experience

A sign, in case you ever need to know how to get to Snow-ville or Chilly Town

Lights!!

Busting out the onion dip because we hadn't had enough to eat at this point

Girls hanging out at Buffalo Wild Wings while the boys watched the game

Making Up for Lost Time: Amelia's Birthday

So yes, it was a month ago.

We celebrated Amelia's birthday at the same place we had her birthday last year. It's one of Amelia's favorite places, and having it there means I don't have to clean my house only to have it demolished by three year olds.

This year we went with a Tinkerbell theme. Amelia was totally into it this year and enjoyed seeing all her friends. Here are just a few photos:

Amelia and her friend Sophia:

Most of the crew:
Amelia dancing like a crazy woman with her friends:

The Birthday Girl with her cake. Unfortunately, she tripped and fell right before so her face was still streaked with tears...so I didn't get a great "cake shot."
Seriously...three years???

Amelia and the Train

Darryl, who somehow turned into a Christmas elf this year, bought a train that goes around the Christmas tree. In the first video, Amelia is dying to open the train. She was on the floor, just staring at it, for about 20 minutes before the first video was taken.

Enjoy!

Train Anticipation

The Train's First Run

37

And continuing my retrospective of the past month (see Halloween post below!)...I turned 37 on November 3rd without much fanfare, but I enjoyed a nice dinner with Darryl and Amelia.

And just before Thanksgiving...Allow Me to Present Halloween!

I know, I know. Halloween was, like, several weeks ago.

Ahem.

Anyway...

Last year, we didn't get to do many Halloween festivities because Amelia was sick. We made up for it this year!

Halloween weekend kicked off with Amelia's daycare party. Here's the class, all dressed up:


As several of us were leaving the party, a couple of kids decided to sit in the "cubbies." Pretty soon, we ended up with this:

Saturday, we went to Amelia's friend Sophia's birthday party. Because it was princess-themed and costumes were encouraged, Amelia was able to don her Tinkerbell outfit once again.


That afternoon, we did the Trick or Treat thing at the mall. It wasn't very good...it was crowded, and many of the stores didn't participate.


Sunday morning, the preschool department did a "heroes and princess" theme to close out their month's series of lessons. Darryl works in the K-5 area, and they had a hoedown theme going on, and he was expected to dress accordingly. Allow me to present my cowboy and Tinkerbell:

See my fancy carving work on that jack-o-lantern?

And FINALLY, that night, we went to Sophia's house to Trick or Treat. The two girls were so cute together, running from house to house, saying, "More candy! More candy!" They had so much fun, and it was probably my favorite part of the weekend.

Disney World--in Pictures

Almost three weeks ago (I know--I'm a horrible blogger), we met my parents at Disney World for the weekend. We drove down on Friday after a half-day at school and returned on Monday. We spent Saturday and Sunday having all kinds of Disney fun. I started out writing a post that probably would have been of no interest to anyone but us, so I thought a photo approach might be best. Granted, I have about 200 photos of the weekend, but here are some of my faves.

On Dumbo, our first ride


With Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen from The Princess and the Frog--she was so in awe of all the characters she met that she didn't give much of a smile, but she is still talking about it several weeks later.

I'm not going to post a photo of Amelia with every character we met, but since she is currently obsessed with Tinkerbell, I just had to post this one.


This is at a character breakfast we went to (the food was SO good), where we got to meet Minnie, Donald, and Goofy. You can't tell it in this photo, but Amelia was so excited when each character came to our table!


I love this photo, mainly because you can see the fall decorations, "Main Street USA," and Cinderella's castle in the background.


This photo makes me LAUGH. Darryl took it (he was sitting in front of me and Amelia) on Mickey's Barnstormer kiddie roller coaster. Amelia laughed the whole time, and my mother (in the back) was trying to hold on to her glasses. This is actually only one photo in a series of about 10, but this is one of the few where I don't have a massive double chin. :-)


I know the color is wonky in this photo, but I like it anyway. We went to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and Amelia was dressed as Tinkerbell. Her personality completely changed when she put on this dress. Suddenly she was Miss Priss, twirling, singing, and acting prissy. It was quite comical.


Also quite comical was the fact I decided to don some Minnie Mouse ears for the party. Amelia got a kick out of it (anything for my kid, right?). Here we are, enjoying some Sugar Babies (remember them?) before the parade.

We really did have a wonderful time. I do have more photos I will probably show, but it takes a while for them to load. I might do a Part 2 soon...

I also have some super-cute Halloween pics to post, and I am really going to do my best to put them up in the next few days.

The Pumpkin Patch

Saturday we went to Burt's Pumpkin Farm. I was all set to get some great photos, but the sun wasn't "just right," and Amelia was too busy trying to pick up 50 pound pumpkins anyway.

It was really more fun this time around, though. She was really excited about all the pumpkins, and she picked out her own special "baby pumpkin." Here are a few of the better photos.






Yep. We went on a hayride, too. Amelia really enjoyed it and kept saying, "Hold on!" the whole time.

Afterward, we went to an apple house and had stocked up on some apples and...a few fried pies. Oh my word at the goodness.

It was one of those weekends that you don't want to end. Sigh.

What we've been up to lately, in bullets

• We took Amelia to a sing-along version of Beauty and the Beast at a movie theater the other night. We all enjoyed it. Amelia was antsy for about 30 minutes in the middle of the movie, but there weren't many people there, so it was okay for her to walk around in our row a little bit. We made it to the end!
• School has been hectic. It is obviously approaching time for a Fall Break; I'm at that point where I could choke some of my students (and they probably feel the same about me) if we don't spend a little time apart soon. :-)
• I'm happy for the return of Fall TV. I got sucked into Dancing with the Stars again, but I've also been watching Glee, Modern Family, and Grey's. (For the record, the Britney episode of Glee was terrible in my opinion.)
• While school has gotten me down a bit lately, I have enjoyed writing a few recommendation letters for some students from "my favorite class ever" from last year. It is exciting to watch (and help) them get to the next step of their education.
• Amelia is taking swimming lessons. Our goal is to have her swimming by next summer. She's doing pretty well, but we still have a ways to go. :-)
• We are looking forward to an exciting trip coming up soon, but I'll give you details "after the fact." Just know we can't wait!
• My Keurig bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. Something was wrong with the water pump in it. Costco took it back (without a receipt!), no questions asked. I ordered a new one straight from Keurig, but it is significantly louder than my old one. Hmmm.
• I have returned to carrying a purse full time for the first time since we had Amelia and I had to switch to a diaper bag. After leaving my clutch wallet behind at several places and going through the panic of "what if my wallet is gone?" I decided I needed to buy a bigger purse. I found one that rocks my world. Darryl mocks it because it is big, but I love it. Yea for fun purses!!
• Amelia is going to the potty more, and apparently everyone has seen her "pee-pee" in the potty except me. What's up with that?
• I'm enjoying the cooler weather. Fall is most definitely my favorite time of year. Time to pull out the pumpkins and the delicious soup recipes!!
  

Fairy Princess

While Amelia can still have some "terrible twos" moments from time to time, I am loving this age right now. Of course I have loved Amelia immensely ever since I knew of her existence, but she is really melting my heart these days.

When I pick her up at daycare, she drops whatever she is doing and squeals, "Mommy!!!" and runs to me with her arms wide open for me to pick her up. Then she turns to her friends and says, "MY momma!" Of course, I interpret that as, "This is my mommy and she is so awesome!" Ha!

And she is into Tinkerbell and fairy princesses big time. Really there is nothing cuter than a little girl with wings and a wand, is there?

The other day Amelia put on her wings and her wand, and we played outside while Darryl grilled some steaks. I super-love these pictures. Her wings are upside down, but I think that just makes the pics even cuter. :-)




She is going to be Tinkerbell for Halloween, and oh. my. word. Her costume is too cute. I've had to hide it in the back of Darryl's closet because she wants to put it on all the time.

These are fun times!

My dad's birthday weekend--almost three weeks late

Two weekends ago (the 10th-12th), Amelia and I made a quick trip to Florida for my dad's birthday and to go to fish fry that my parents were hosting. I did much better with taking photos this time around. In fact, between me, my cousin Tina, and my Aunt Azalea...well, we were almost as bad as the paparazzi.

Amelia and I got there Friday evening--we left straight from school--and we were both pretty tired. Saturday was a full day, though. Here are some pics:

Here's my mom, cooking up a storm and ready to host.


Here's my dad, also hard at work with food preparation:

Here's my Uncle Joe, wearing an ugly shirt in front of a hideous jeep. :-)

Ah...that's more like it. At least someone in this family has good taste.
Here's my dad and his brothers and sister:

We all had a wonderful time visiting, and the food was great, too! After everyone left, we had some fun outside with some kind of bubble toy that my parents had gotten Amelia. She loved it.


I think Nana enjoyed it, too.

The next morning, we enjoyed some pancakes and sausage and hit the road, but not before I snapped this photo of Amelia and the birthday boy:
His cap was his "less serious" gift. It reads, "RETIRED: Someone tell my wife." Ever since he retired a couple of years ago, he has had a lot of items on his "honey do" list...but I think he fits in plenty of fun, too.

It was a quick trip and I was exhausted when I returned, but it was worth it. We had a great time!

(I started this post almost a week ago, but I had some photo issues with Blogger when I first tried to put this up. Boo.)

Holy Cow

I really don't remember a beginning of the school year quite like this one. My classes have been fine...but once again, I am teaching three preps (meaning I teach three different courses: AP, Honors, and "Regular"). I did this last year, and I was fine with doing it again because I like a little variety in my day. However, I am finding this year to be a little more difficult for some reason, and I have vowed that I can't do the three-prep thing again after this year.

We also had some unbalanced class loads at the beginning of the year--meaning one teacher might have 90 students and another one 135 or more--so many students (and some teachers) had their schedules redone to make things more even. The third week of school, I obtained 30 more students. Score! (When you are an English teacher, you automatically do the math in terms of how many essays you have to grade.)

So anyway, enough of that stuff. This past weekend I didn't work at all, and I've enjoyed the down time with Darryl and Amelia. I truly feel as though I've had a break, and that's a great feeling. As I was uploading some photos the other night, I noticed a few I should share. These few pics are from Amelia's friend Bella's birthday party, which was the last weekend of summer vacation. Amelia's face is kind of weird in the first one, but I think the pic is cute:


I apologize to whoever's rear end is in that last shot. I'm not sure whose it is, but at least it is a small rear end.

The first weekend in August, I went with my friends Tim and Max (and Anna, who is technically their friend, but maybe she'll consider me at least a pageant-attending friend) to see Miss Cobb County. We go every year, and it never disappoints.
My parents came the second weekend in August, and I'm kicking myself because I was not great at taking photos that weekend. I'm going to see them this weekend, though, for a family event, and I will definitely make sure to get lots of good pics.

Here's another fun pic of Amelia, just for kicks:
Speaking of Amelia, she has had some weird nights lately. The other night I was grading at Starbucks, and Darryl put Amelia to bed. Around 9:30 he heard something in her room, and when he walked in there, she had changed her own diaper (!) and had put on her clothes to wear the next day. She did the same thing last night, too, but opted to go bare-bottomed instead of putting on a different diaper. What is up with that?

As if you can't tell...

I've been so, so busy.

Some evenings I don't even get on the computer. Yep, that busy.

I'm not in love with this school year so far. There's lots of stuff I probably shouldn't talk about on here (teaching "stuff" that really has nothing to do with teaching). Sometimes I feel like teaching has become about 30% of my job, and the rest is ridiculous nonsense.

I'm sort of in a crappy mood about it, but you couldn't tell that, could you?

I hope to post about happier things soon, but right now I have to make up a test on Early American Literature. Rock on.

The First Week Back

School started this week. Teachers went back Monday, and the students joined us Thursday.

I don't know enough yet to get a feel for how the year is going to go. I have a completely new crop of students this year (last year I taught many students for the second year in a row), and I hope it is an enjoyable year. I don't know what it is about that first week back, though, that is so completely draining. I feel completely and utterly worn out.

On Tuesday--because we were at school all day and had Open House that evening--The Varsity truck came to serve us lunch. I totally enjoyed my chili dogs and onion rings, and that evening, Amelia enjoyed this hat:

Amelia's Big Girl Room

Last Thursday (not two days ago, but the Thursday before that), we made Amelia's room into a "Big Girl Room" complete with the "Big Girl Bed." When we bought Amelia's bedding and decor for her nursery, I wanted something that could transition well into a room for when she got a little bigger. We kept the same "theme" (daisies) that we used for her nursery, and I absolutely love the result.

Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Here is her nursery. This photo was taken a little before Amelia made her appearance in the world, and the only thing missing is her name on the shelf (because we were keeping the name a secret...and somehow Tim got us into the practice of calling her Coretta):



And here is the Big Girl Room:
I think the glider will eventually be replaced with a pink bean bag for Amelia to sit and read her books. On the adjacent wall to the far right is Amelia's changing table, which is actually a "real" dresser that now has its mirror attached to it. It wasn't really exciting enough to take a photo of yet, but I plan to put a couple of things on that wall, so when I find what I'm looking for and get it up there, I'll take a photo of that, too.

The only snafu we had is that the place where we bought our crib gave us the wrong rails to convert to the full-sized bed. After a VERY heated phone call with the store (Georgia Baby, by the way...I'm totally going to call them out), Darryl finally managed to convince them that they should exchange our rails for the right ones, but they had to order them. (They wanted us to produce our receipt from three years ago to get the rails. I could understand that if we were wanting to exchange the whole crib, but seriously? For the rails? Are you kidding me? They also said WE should have caught the mistake three years ago...when we were getting the bed ready for an infant. Whatever.) So anyway...the boxsprings and mattress are just sitting on the floor right now. There will be a footboard when the rails come in.

Amelia has done really well with the transition, though. She was a little hesitant at first to get in the bed, and I could tell that she thought I was going to share the bed with her. (We shared a bed at the beach, so I think that is where that idea came from.) But she has stayed in her bed each night, so I think she really was ready for the change. She had been crawling out of her crib herself for the past two months, anyway.

So my goal this summer was to get Amelia off the paci completely (check, done!), get her transitioned to a big girl bed (check, done), and get her potty trained (um....). In the words of Meatloaf--and I suspect this will be the ONLY time I will quote Meatloaf, "Two out of three ain't bad..."

The Last Week of Summer, Part 2...A Little Late

A couple of posts ago, I detailed what we did the last week of summer, and I really dropped the ball on finishing up that week. I know...you have waited anxiously for the conclusion.

Thursday, Amelia and I went to the pool that morning and had a big time. Of course, I always seem to make it there just in time for the lifeguards to take a break, so about as soon as we got in the water, we had to get out. It's fun explaining to a two-year-old why she can't get in the water when it is only three feet away, but she handled it pretty well.

That evening, we picked up Amelia's big girl bed and rearranged her room so that it is a big girl room. That deserves a separate post, so I'll wait and discuss those details there.

Friday, Amelia and I rode the carousel at the mall once again. She absolutely loves it. Then we had lunch with Darryl and came home. We ended up going to the indoor "jump and bounce" for one last summer hurrah.

I also did a little shopping Friday night for some school clothes for me. I really need to lose about five pounds (yet again) for my pants to feel "right," but I typically do shave off a few when school starts back because I don't have round-the-clock access to yummy food. I did buy a few shirts, however, and have attempted to break out of my comfort zone by buying some more colorful shirts. I tend to go the black/gray route, but I think I need to change it up a bit.

See...wasn't that conclusion of the last week of summer riveting? I thought so!!

As you can probably tell...

School started back for teachers yesterday, and the weekend before school starts is always ridiculously busy. It's like I suddenly realize all I need to get accomplished before I go back and work, work, work to get it all done.

Anyway...all that to say that I realize I left you hanging on the events of The Last Week of Summer. I know you haven't been able to sleep because of the anticipation.

I hope to fill you in soon. Very soon. Maybe even tonight, if a full day of work (including meetings--yuck) and Open House doesn't get the best of me.

Until then...