Thankful for Thanksgiving Break

I am currently sitting at the AT&T Education and Conference Center at UT in Austin. This hotel is only one year old and is only a few yards away from the center of campus (right by the tower and close to the capitol building). I brought my new MacBook with us and was glad to have free WiFi in our room! So, I am sitting on the bed doing a little blogging and Casey is watching something on the tv. We are taking a little time to relax in our room tonight before we go out again! We are having a great time celebrating our 2 year anniversary. I simply cannot believe it has been 2 years already. The time has really flown. We have had some great times in our short 2 years of marriage and I am looking forward to 60+ more years of great memories! :) God has been good to us. :)

I will blog more about our anniversary getaway a little later - I need to catch up on November before I start on December!

Let's see...I last blogged about my November 20th outing to see New Moon with Laura, so now I'm up to Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is greatness as a teacher in Forney because I get a full week off. It is a great time to get some Christmas shopping done, decorate, relax, and take our annual trip to College Station or Austin to see A&M and UT play in the Lonestar Showdown.

This year we spent Thanksgiving morning/lunch time at my mom's new house in Rockwall. She and my grandma, whom I call Momma Sheila, made some terrific food! Here are some pictures from our day there.

Then we were off to our annual game day tradition... this year the game was in College Station (my favorite, obviously). This year we did not get tickets from any students that we knew, but instead we drove down to Aggieland without any tickets. We got there about an hour before the game, parked, and bought tickets from a scalper! They were excellent seats! We sat on the alumni side this year instead of the student section. At first I was disappointed with this because I LOVE the student section at A&M, but our seats were much better than I had anticipated. 40 yard line, second deck. Very good. And to top it off, A&M played the best game they'd played all season. I actually thought we were going to win there for a while. Not too shabby considering we were playing a team that is going to be in the National Championship this year. On that note, we're having a UT/Alabama watching party at our house on the 7th to watch the Championship. Casey has already said he doesn't want any Alabama fans there just in case. ;) He gets to into the game. He's bound to hit someone if they say the wrong thing! Ha ha! Here are a couple of pictures from the game...

Last, but not least, we had Thanksgiving with Casey's family on the Saturday after. We went over to his grandmother's house for lunch. Good food again! And it's always fun to play with our nephew, Caleb. He always gets a fun game that we adults end up liking even more than him! This year it was a "go fishing" type game, but with tires. I think it was called Cars (based on the movie). Caleb has also been on a big cowboy kick lately. He wears a hat and cute little boots and carries a guitar. He even serenaded us with Jingle Bell Rock. :) I was given his great-grandfather's cowboy hat to wear with him. Check it out...

Alright, that's all for now! Check back soon for our Mavs game, Christmas, 2 year anniversary, and New Year's pictures and updates!

Eddddwwwaaarrrrrdddd!

So, a month ago tonight I went to the midnight showing of New Moon! I got Laura & I tickets to the 9pm showing of Twilight showing in Rockwall followed by the New Moon showing at 12:02am! We got to the theater at about 7:45pm and stayed until New Moon was over around 2:30am! That’s almost 7 hours! AND I went to work the next day, mind you! I felt wired all day instead of sleepy. It was odd.

Anyway, for Twilight I wore my black Edward shirt and then for New Moon I put my white Jacob shirt on over it! Haha! I’m pretty sure I was the only one in our theater with 2 shirts to wear. I also got Laura one of the Jacob ones. The movies and the shirt were her birthday present, but I don’t think she liked it as much as I would have, haha. She and I agree that I am the biggest Twilight Saga fan that we both know. :)

Anyway, here are a few pictures of our late night out!

This first one is of us before Twilight at 9 (notice the black Edward shirt)!

Here we are after Twilight waiting for New Moon to come on! When it finally did people cheered :) Notice the change of shirt :) Haha!

This is after the movie – they had a bunch of cut outs and t-shirts to buy! I settled for a picture with the life-sized Edward! :) Don’t worry, Casey isn’t a bit jealous of cardboard. ;)

Have a great weekend everybody! I am officially on Christmas break for 2 weeks! I so deserve it after this past week of putting up with those crazy 6th grade rug rats! :) I love ‘em, but I need a BREAK! :)

A Scrapbooking Victory!

This weekend has been super busy for Casey and I. In fact, this is my first time to sit and relax at all. I am using my time to do a short blog before bed because I have a great new piece of furniture in my house! A scrapbooking desk/table that I’ve always wanted! :) It’s from Pier 1, and I bought it from Natalie Clark-Swartz tonight for $150! I have always wanted one of these tall desks and am now very excited to be an owner of one! Thanks to Casey’s parents for helping us pick it up and bring it home! It is quite heavy!

So here it is! A couple pictures of my super fantastic scrapbooking desk! Wahoo! One side has 6 shelves and the other side has 9.

Tomorrow starts the official “12 days” until Christmas! This month has flown by! I, myself, only have 5 more work days until I get 2 weeks off! As you can imagine, I am VERY happy about that! :) I hope you all have a great week as well!

Granny’s 80!

A few weeks ago we went to Culpepper’s in Rockwall to celebrate Casey’s granny’s 80th birthday! I have only met Casey’s extended family (from Houston) a few times, and some not at all, so it was nice to go and meet/see them again!

Here are some pictures of the lovely birthday event! The first one is Granny opening her brooch from Bailey Banks and Biddle and the second one is of a funny hat they made her wear as a joke while we sang.

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Here’s a picture of the whole Coats group! Starting in the back left we have Aunt Barbara, Uncle Steve, Granny, Bill, Casey, Lauren, and Mitch. Starting in the back right we have Uncle John and Aunt Sue with their 3 granddaughters, then Stephanie and Caleb, and Beverly.

Have a great week!

Harry Potter!

The week after Halloween (that tells you how far behind I am with blogging…) was Young Reader’s Week at school! Each day the kiddos did something regarding reading such as writing a letter to their favorite author, making their own book, and dressing up as a book character!

As you can see, I dressed up as Harry Potter! Not because I like Harry Potter, because I’ve never read the books, but because I had someone that I could borrow the outfit from! And another person to borrow the Hogwarts banner from! This costume cost me zero dollars and the kiddos loved it! Score! :)

Check out some of my other teacher friends! They were so creative! A lot of us, including myself, were put in the Forney newspaper! In that same paper is an article that I co-wrote about my students going to the North Forney High School football game. I had Casey pick up 2 papers for me. :)

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Hope everyone is having a fantastic week! Mine is going great! Only 16 days til Christmas and only 10 days til I have 2 weeks off! Hip hip! Hooray!

I. Promise. To. Blog. Soon

I promise to blog soon. I've got SO much to blog about - from seeing New Moon to book character day at school to Thanksgiving to the A&M/UT game to the Mavs game and even more! I felt like I just needed to write something on my blog to get me started.

So here's my promise.

I will blog by the end of this week. I want to. I miss it.

So, I Promise.

Until then....