Apples.

You know the saying "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree?"  Yeah, I thought so.  Well, this apple has wandered a ways since falling, but my father was actually in Texas last week, and we got to see him (for about 15 hours)!  It wasn't long, but it was better than nothing.  I was so happy to be reunited with my tree.
We spent those 15 hours talking about pretty much everything, and introducing Jesse to apple goopus.  Can you believe that I had never made apple goopus for my husband?  For those that don't know, apple goopus is just chunks of apples thrown in a cast iron pan with some water, a bit of cornstarch, and a ton of sugar.  It comes out this funky kind of grey color (from the cast iron), and is all glommy and delicious, and you pour it over pancakes.  We ate a lot of goopus growing up.  It was a staple food, in our house, almost like beans and grass.  But I had never made it before!
Anyway, when he left, Jesse said "I didn't realize how much like your dad you are."  Old news, dude, but apparently Jesse hadn't seen the similarity to its full extent, and in the week that has followed, I have continued to see my father in me.  "That's the way it's meant to be...and I find I'm more and more like him each daaaaayy..."  Sorry.  What's a good blog post without a musical break?  Ahem.  Back to the point.  See?  Rabbit trails.  I get those from him.  Along with my hairline.
The reason my father was in Texas is that he was going to this big ol' pastor's conference in Dallas.  I'm not a pastor, but I have always been a fan of those big conference things.  They get me all riled up and emotional and passionate.

As an aside, Jesse told me the other day that I am not allowed to watch Ted Talks before bed, because I get all worked up and want to change the world.  I guess bedtime is not the time for changing the world.  

 One of the stories shared at the conference was about a pastor who realized one day that he was supposed to help the poor.  So, not knowing what else to do, he ran down to Costco, bought a bunch of hamburgers, went downtown, and started "schlepping burgers" to homeless people.  I didn't hear the story directly, so I don't know all the details, but I guess other people started coming to schlepp burgers with him, and eventually the guy ended up leaving his big ol' fancy dancy church, and built a whole new church out of hamburgers.  They spend half of their time doing normal church, and the other half of their time they get out and DO STUFF.
My father sat on my couch and told me this story, and I could hear the passion in his voice.  I grew up hearing my father rant and rave and extol and exhort and urge us to DO THINGS.  I knew it was important, even as a child, because he pushed himself to do the same, and he grew frustrated when he was unable to make a difference.  He taught me that to be discontent is not always a bad thing, because it can push us to DO THINGS.  But he also once told me "I am not entirely happy with my discontent", and I say that to myself all the time.  He taught me to ask "so what?" in everything I do and hear and see and say.  That if you're going to do something, you need to know why you're doing it.  What is the So What?  But I am getting off subject yet again.  My father sat on my couch and told me this story, and shared his desire to be DOING THINGS.  I sat on the couch across from him, and I could feel the same passion welling up, and wanted to go out and schlepp burgers, anything.  I want to DO THINGS.
After church today, I was talking to Jesse about my desire to do things.  More things.  Different things.  I love everything I do.  I love both of my jobs, and I am so thankful for all the kids that are in my life every day.  I love being at the school, and I love working with the kids.  I love listening to seven year olds who can read any word I throw at them.  I love sitting on the floor with other seven year olds, walking them through the alphabet, praying that today they will be able to recognize all their letters, and rejoicing when they even know the sounds that they make!  I love going to my baby ballet class and seeing all my little girls in their little pink leotards and frilly skirts and big hair bows, and sitting on the floor while they take turns dancing around the circle with my scarf and letting their adorable personalities shine.  I love going to rehearsals and working with my older girls, trying to prepare them to go out on stage in 21 days and be able to hold their own doing something they've never done before.  I walk along behind them as they do chaine turns so when they throw their arm too far back it will hit me, because I am trying to train them to have good technique and do everything exactly the same.
I love all of that.  But I want more.  I want to stop being a pew potato, and I want to be involved in our church.  I want to take the talents God has given me and use them for Him.  I know that being there in the school for those kids is good.  I know that giving kids the opportunity to dance is good.  I know that I am there for them, and I hope that my being there is given them something that they need in their lives.  But I want to use my dancing for worship.  I want to be able to share those things with anyone who wants to praise His name with dancing, not just dance to Taylor Swift with the little girls in the pink tutus.  I want to take what I do and make it real.  I keep asking myself, So What?  I teach dance.  So What?   Why can't there be more to it than just cute little girls?  Don't get me wrong, I love my cute little girls.  Dance classes serve a purpose, and I don't want to belittle them, because dance has given me so much, but I want more.
However, dancing in church is awkward.  It just is.  It's a hard thing to incorporate.  I've been to churches where people just get up in the middle of the service and start waving ribbons in the air, and it made me a little uncomfortable.  It might make me less uncomfortable now, but I have a feeling that if I just got up in the middle of our southern baptist church and started dancing, some of the old folks would be pretty surprised, and probably even a little unnerved.
My other problem is that we're trying to buy a house that is 40 miles from our current church, so we don't know how long we will be going to church here, and I don't want to push to get something kind of outlandish started, just to leave and go to a different church.
So I'm at a loss.  If you have any suggestions, that would be cool...and in the meantime I will continue to be discontent, and pray that God will show me why he's made me discontent.  He's pushing me to DO SOMETHING, but I don't know what it is.

One thing I am content with is that I didn't fall very far.  I have to thank my husband for reminding me of that last weekend.  It's another thing to be thankful for.

Christmas!!!

Oh my goodness, it's almost here!!!!  And I have felt so christmassy lately.  I listened to the Pentatonx Christmas station while I was doing my yoga this morning, and it was wonderful.  Jesse actually started it.  Last night he was showing a video of a bunch of country a capella guys singing All About That Bass, and from there we went on to Hailey Reinhart, and this guy who plays bass and has so much soul!  My goodness, that guy can sing.  And then we went back to a capella, and by this morning we were on Pentatonix, and Jesse played The Little Dummer Boy right before he left for work.  Well, it just had to happen.  Christmas music, all the way.

Plus, it has actually been cold and rainy, lately, so I was able to rock the scarf and leg warmers this
morning.  You have no idea how long I have been waiting to break out the leg warmers!  And, by the way, I took that picture in the second bedroom that is full of everything we didn't bother unpacking, and just got shoved out of the way until we move again.  So yes, it's a mess.  I took a picture in there so you can't see how messy our actual bedroom is...

And then, at work, I found antlers in a cupboard while I was trying to find the manual for the copier!  It was just a christmas day.  I did not wear them around...just long enough to take a picture to share with you.  And then a while longer...but just for a little bit.

So anyway.  Moving right along...It was cold, so I decided to try my hand at making the tomato bisque soup that we had at the tournament thing the other day.  It actually turned out pretty good!  I'm not sure if I have just overcome my aversion to tomato soup, or if this is just a dang good recipe.  Someone else will have to try it out and let me know.  I made some garlic toast to go along with it, which was fabulous, but I did have to buy bread to make it happen.  I just did not have the time or energy to make bread last night after I had been to work and dance and made dinner and ran to WalMart for milk and a broom (we managed to leave our broom and dustpan at the old apartment...oops).  So WalMart bread had to do.  It was better than no bread!

And now...the highlight of my evening....besides dance practice, of course, which is always an amazing, frustrating, lovely, makes-me-want-to-tear-my-hair-out kind of thing......

My christmas "tree"!!  Cricket and I bought the materials to make my tiny basket tree when she was here, and I have just had it stuffed away in a closet, waiting for an acceptable time to decorate for christmas.  Well, now may not exactly be acceptable, but I did it anyway, and Jesse even helped!  He covered the boxes inside the baskets with camouflage duct tape so they won't show through under the garland.  He is a smart man.  I am quite happy with the way it turned out, and it really was very simple.  Just three baskets, a few boxes, some camo tape, a garland (I bought two, and definitely only needed one) wrapped around it all with some lights, and then I just stuck glittery pine cone sticks into it and attached a spikey glitter ball to the top, and it is done!  At least for the moment...my carpet is full of gold glitter and bits of fake garland.  And so is everything in the tub that it was all stuffed in in the closet...but hey, things could definitely be worse.

Happy Christmas!!

When we win the lottery...

Tonight I was reminded again of why I decided to spend the rest of my life with Jesse.
 We disagree on many things.
 He likes the AC blowing all the time, and I want to bundle up in a million blankets and sweaters and fuzzy socks and drink hot tea all the time. Jesse likes boxaroni, while I feel like the laziest person in the world every time I make it, and kinda think it's nasty. I could read for days, but Jesse hates most of my favorite books. The degree to which bacon should be cooked. We will never agree there. I believe (and rightly so) that Captain America is the most amazing Avenger ever, and Jesse thinks he's kinda lame. Really, Jesse?
 Sometimes I have to stop and remember that we agree on the important things:
 Superheroes are all awesome. They just are.
Ice cream is delicious.
God has brought us to where we are, and He will continue to take us where He wants us for the rest of our lives.
And this evening, while we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a new local restaurant, we talked about what we would do if we won the lottery/someone died and left us lots of money. First on his list is moving to Hawaii, which is not something I agree with, but the rest was. He wants to buy a bunch of rental properties (first in Hawaii, and then use the profits of those to buy more in Oregon), and eventually be in a place where he could afford to provide low-income housing for wounded veterans; if they couldn't afford to pay rent, he wants to be able to say "you've already given me enough." Another dream that we share is to open a YMCA type place. Daycare for younger ones, tutoring for the older ones, basketball, dance classes, foam pits, dodge ball, giant trampolines, laser tag!!! The longer we talked, the more extravagant it got, and before our dessert got there, we had quit all our jobs and were running a full time daycare/dance studio/giant fun time place for all the children of single parents; all the children who have nowhere else to go after school; all the children who need help and don't get it at home. We had raised $4 million, and had a floor plan figured out. Aren't castles in the air wonderful?
It  is just a dream, but dreams have an amazing way of becoming reality, sometimes. The important thing for me is knowing that my dreams and my husband's dreams compliment each other. It makes me proud to know that my husband is a man who desires to care for other people, because I want caring for other people to be at the core of everything I do, be it dancing or teaching or making coffee or a chicken pot pie. I know that no matter what we do in life, when loving people is our focus, we will do great things, because everything becomes great when it is done out of love. Even making boxaroni.

Happy Homes.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  Leo Tolstoy

I'm not sure if I believe that.  I like Tolstoy.  I like that book (Anna Karenina).  But I'm not sure that I agree with him.  You may disagree with me...But I don't know.

This week I've have been doing my best to have a happy family and a happy home.  I usually have a happy home, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it's hard, and I have to work at it.  One of the things I did was order a bunch of essential oils and make Jesse some beard oil!  Beard=Happy Jesse;  Soft, oiled, not-scratchy beard=Happy Rianna.  And so do hippyish oils and such.  It took a little fiddling to come up with something he was ok with smelling like...Hemp oil has an odd smell, did you know?  And roseamary oil smells like Vicks.  I didn't know that either.  So I ended up with a little bit of cinnamon and a bunch of cedarwood oil to cover it all up.  I may have to try something different next time.  Maybe something that looks less green....

Then this weekend, as I mentioned in my last post, we went out to Jesse's boss' house to house sit.  It was probably very good for us.  You can't really tell, but that is the bathroom in their guesthouse, and behind me is the big Jacuzzi tub.  It might be my favorite thing about their whole house and guest house and entire property.

So we went for three days, and we slept in and ate boxaroni and shot Jesse's new pistol and relaxed and it was great.  But then we came home to a messy house, and instead of cleaning it Sunday night, I made a bigger mess making chocolate and baking things, and instead of cleaning it Monday night after dance, we sat and watched X-Men Days of Future Past.  Well then this morning I got up, made oatmeal for breakfast (which neither of us like, so we didn't really eat), got Jesse up (he's been feeling sick, so he's having slow starts lately), ate breakfast, packed Jesse's lunch, got dressed, went running, did some yoga, took a shower, and got dressed for work.  Then I did a few dishes, chopped up potatoes for dinner and threw them in the rice cooker for Jesse to turn on when he got home, gathered up the laundry (also for Jesse to start when he got home), wrote "laundry" and "clean the freaking house!!" on my ToDo list, put away a few jackets and sweatshirts that were scattered around the living room, packed my lunch, gathered up everything that I needed to bring with me to dance class this evening, and ran out the door.

Then work was work...we had a teacher call in sick, so she didn't have anything ready for her poor sub who came in.  I'm sure the guy is a great high school and jr high teacher, but I think he was ready to pull all his hair out after a day in first grade.

Then I went to dance, and it was good...I'm trying to really get work done, this week, because I've been getting lazy and all of a sudden I realized that we only have 6 more practices till competition and we haven't even finished our lyrical dance....ahhhhh!!  Anyway.  I think the girls knew I was stressing and it made them stress.  Either that or I was just not as much fun as normal and that made them grumpy.  I dunno.  

Then I got home and Jesse had turned on the potatoes, but forgot to start laundry.  No big deal...I started laundry and started gravy, and started making cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread so I could use up the oatmeal that we didn't eat at breakfast, and tried to do dishes, and started stressing over the fact that my kitchen had not been mopped in at least three weeks, and started freaking out, and asked Jesse to come help with the dishes, and then when he did he said something (jokingly) about how he was having to do my chores and I should have done the dishes instead of going running this morning and I got upset and threatened to throw a spoon covered in hot gravy at him and then started crying.

I didn't really feel today like my home was very happy...it was stressful and messy and we're trying to move, so we have boxes everywhere, and I was being mean and resentful, and it just didn't look very happy.

"we have salt; you don't need to cry in the gravy."

Anyway, my point is, I have a happy family.  I am struggling with figuring out how to have a happy home and a happy husband and a happy me, and make it all happen with work and dance and everything else....but I have a happy family.  I also grew up in a happy family, and I don't feel like my family here with Jesse looks very much like the family I grew up in.  Sometimes that confuses me, and I believe that my kitchen must look like my mother's, and my husband must act like my father, and that my marriage must look like my parents' in order for us to be a happy family.  But I don't believe that a family is only either happy or unhappy.  I believe that we all have our mixtures of everything, and no two families are alike, either in their happy or their unhappy moments.

So I will end on a happy moment!  The bread I just made....is fantastic.  And the whole apartment smells like cinnamon.  And the kitchen is clean and the laundry is done, and I even found time to pack some of my clothes and write a blog post.  I am thankful for my home and my family.  Always.

The End.  =]

Aaahhhh....vicks!

The sweet smell of winter! I'm typing this as I lay (or should I be lie? That one always confuses me) in my bed, sniffling and choking back phlegm, listening to my dear husband do the same. The weird thing is, the AC is on. Yeah. It's the end of October, we have colds and are relying on Vicks (though rosemary oil has an eerily similar effect) to continue breathing, and it was over 90 today. What witchery is this? Crazy, I tell you.
But anyway. It is the end of October, and that means the jig is up! Or the lease is, anyway. We are moving (again!) on Friday into another apartment. For people who don't like apartments, we are going to be apartment masters here pretty quick. I've heard these ones are the nicest in town, and pretty quiet; apparently a bunch of teachers and cops live there. We should fit right in, then.
Speaking of teachers...one of my first grade boys brought me a flower on Thursday! So cute. He's
such a sweetheart. Chivalrous.
Which brings me to the medieval times tournament we went to this weekend! I guess Jesse's boss was given a couple tickets for this jousting dinner show shindig a while back, and he passed them along to us, so we went. I wasn't too sold on it at first, but hey, we got to eat about half a chicken with no utensils, and watch men in sparkly tights chase each other around on horses. It was pretty good as nerd moments
go. And it was like, two hours long. And they served soup that Jesse actually enjoyed, AND I found the recipe on their facebook page. How courteous is that? Nobody posts their recipes on Facebook. I'm gonna be making a lot of dragon eye soup this winter, let me tell you.

Some other things that I will be making a lot of include braided pie crusts (because they just look so pretty!), and homemade chocolate. Oh yeah. Chocolate made with coconut oil and sweetened with honey. That's like...healthy! Seriously. And not even difficult. Smash up some cocoa powder and a lipid, add it to some water (it looked kinda funky here, but just go with it), mix in some milk and honey, and viola! Chocolate that makes fantastic coating for peppermint patties. It was a kitchen day. And that's all, folks! It's past my bedtime.

PS.  it was a messy kitchen day.  Peppermint patty filling is sticky.  I used a lot of dishes.  More on that later...

Hip Hop Hippy

This weekend Leslie and I packed the girls into the Party planet Van (is that a thing?  A party van?  Let's make it a thing.), and headed to Austin, TX to meet our fantastic hip hop choreographer, the one and only Trevor Parmentier.  We all met at Party Planet at 9 am and had to be in Austin at 2 pm.  It's a 3 hour drive.  It's funny how, when you're 10 years old, 3 hours is a lifetime, and it requires blankets and pillows and Cupcake Wars on the Ipad and entire ice chests full of snacks....and then you get older and it's just a jaunt down the highway.  I remember when driving three hours was like losing an entire week, but we went there and back in one day!  It was a long day.

 Trevor taught them some adorable choreography...

 He even threw in some back handsprings, which they were pretty darn excited about...

 And I was pretty darn excited because he couldn't stop talking about how amazing they were.  As soon as we came in he commented on how most groups come in with "sports bras and hot shorts and barefoot" but our girls "already look(ed) so hip hop."  It made me appreciate Leslie's decision to get them all the harem pants before we went.  Let's hear it for not having to do this alone!  Also, I appreciate my own decision to get their names printed on the back of their shirts, because he never had to ask them their names.  Stroke of genius.  Or it would be if that had been my reasoning...I didn't think about it until after they were made, by hey.  My subconscious is brilliant.  My gut feelings are good.
And that's all before they even started!  Once we got going he kept telling us how awesome they are, and how surprised he was at how quickly they were picking things up.  We had scheduled 3 1/2 hours, and he said at that point he's normally scrambling to get everything finished, but they were done in 2.  He said he has never taught a group of their age so quickly.  Yeah, they're pretty great.  Now if only they would learn my choreography that fast!  So since they had extra time, they were able to break some stuff down, and work on stylizing things, and a little bit of cleaning.  Then they still had time, so they were able to talk about dance, and how he tried out for SYTYCD and did a duo with Twitch (which I cannot find a video of to save my life!), and all these other wonderful things.  I also discovered that Trevor is only 23.  Seriously?  It's so not fair.  How do all these people who are my age keep doing amazing things that I can't/haven't done?  I wish I had my own dance company, got to do a duo with Twitch, or maybe worked for Disney, or went on world tours dancing with famous people (like Lady Gaga).  That would be cool.  I mean, as Leslie pointed out, I did get married and move across the country, but still...I really should tryo out for SYTYCD....Just to say that I did.
But I digress.

Before we left, the girls gave Trevor a card that they completely covered in stickers.  I made the mistake of passing my entire sticker collection to the backseat without supervision.  Oh well.

On the way home we stopped for  celebratory pancakes and FroYoz, and I don't know what they were doing, but it involved throwing those little squishy balls of yumminess that they put on frozen yogurt at each other.  It was good.
I am so glad that we decided to go ahead and hire Trevor.  I'm glad that we decided to take the day and drive down instead of having him come to us.  It was loud, long....laborious??  haha anyway.  It was good time spent with the girls, and the dance looks great already.  I can only imagine what it will be like in a few months.
Now I just need to convince Trevor that I need to work with him and Not About Dance.  He mentioned it once...I should talk to him about it.  That would be pretty darn awesome.  Except that it's based three hours away.  But it wouldn't be all the time....Just sometimes, right?  Anyway.  It's a thought.

In the meantime, there are other thoughts to think.  Like house thoughts!
The Victorian dream has ended...It was big, and it was beautiful, and it was surrounded by oak trees that reminded me of the ranch...and it was falling down and rather outside our price range.  But hey, it was a good dream.  We also looked at some other houses, and last Thursday we actually met with the owner of one of them and spent a couple hours walking around it with Jason and Mandy and the girls and Mandy's dad, who is the president of a bank and also an electrician.  He walked us through the whole mortgage process, and got us all the paperwork to fill out.  We just filled it out this evening, and it's looking like we're going to attempt to continue that process.  It will be another big adventure, and one that's going to be a bit of a gamble...Hopefully we can do enough work on it for little enough money to be able to make something off of it when we leave.  We've been talking about new cupboards and windows, and possibly a peninsula in the kitchen, and Jesse even said that we can put hard floors and mirrors in the giant living room and let me run a tiny studio out of our house!!  How awesome would that be??  Like totally awesome.  So I'm pretty sold, just for that.

What else is there to say?

Well, I have the best job ever, where I get to make lion masks and my teachers love me so much that they give me cedarwood oil (for Jesse's beard) just because they "want to do something" for me, because I'm just that awesome.  And I tried to be a hair hippy and dye my hair with tomato juice, but it didn't do anything.  Sad Panda.  Oh well.  It was worth a shot.

Housewifely adventures.

So this is me being a housewife.  See the cute little apron?  Yeah.

Let me tell you about some of my recent adventures!

First of all, this week my head swelled up.  No idea why.  Just went to work on day and everyone started saying "what is wrong with your face?  Did you fall again?"  Nope.  I just had a lump on my face.  I left it alone for a while; it got bigger.  I put some benadryl cream on it; it got bigger.  I slept on it; it was still there.
So poked it with a safety pin (Jesse was convinced that it was full of nasty spider pus, or an actual spider living in my forehead) and nothing happened.  Then I talked to the school nurse, and she had never seen such a thing, but suggested icing it.  So I went home and threw an ice pack on it.  Well, eventually it went away, and no spider crawled out, so it's all good.  Crazy stuff, though.  My body does weird things.

I finally bought myself Breckenridge apparel!  I kept putting it off, because I wanted to actually buy it from the school, so I would actually be supporting something, and all that, but I finally broke down and bought a sweatshirt from WalMart.  I was planning on going to the game, and it was supposed to rain, and I kept not ordering anything every time the school was getting stuff, so I just did it.
We walked the two blocks to the high school for the game, and met up with my friend Amanda, the dyslexia therapist who is letting me use her stuff to work with a kid who is having trouble reading, but hasn't been able to get tested for dyslexia yet, and it's amazing!  But anyway.  Football.  It started sprinkling a few minutes into the game, and all the Texans broke out their umbrellas.  "Wow, it's really coming down!"  No, no it's not.  Silly Texans.  About half an hour into the game or so, they shut everything down and herded everyone into the gym to wait out the lightning.  It was pretty amazing.  We waited around for another half hour, but by then we were over it, so we ran home in the pouring rain and got totally soaked in two blocks.  It was wonderful!  I love rain, and running through it, even though my calf was ready to kill me.

Jesse refused to appear on camera.
He did not refuse, however, to smear mascara all over my face and laugh about the fact that I looked like a monster.

As an aside, I have taken to doing choreography in my bathroom, because I have a mirror...It's pretty great.

You may remember that last Saturday Mrs. Brooks and I (and Jesse) went to a first grade football game because we are the best teachers ever.  Well since that happened, we are now expected to be at everyone's football game, even when they happen at the same time.  "I have a plan for y'all.  You go to the cowboys game, and she goes to eagles!"  In the end, Mrs. Brooks was busy, so I went to the Cowboy's vs. Seahawks game, because I watched the Eagles last week, and I promised Mason, who is on the Seahawks, that I would watch him.  I think I have now watched all the boys in Mrs. Brooks' class play football, and a bunch of others as well.  I was walking home again and hear somebody yell my name and saw a tiny hand sticking out of a window.  The girl in the front seat told me it was Blake, my little buddy from dual language who always calls me "mija", which I was told meant daughter, so I always responded with "hola, padre", and then he said "yo no soy tu padre!"  and I said "si!"  and I even learned to say "si eras yo(which doesn't actually work, because that means "if you are", not "if I am", but yeah...) tu mija, entonces tu es mi padre."  But then Sarai said that it didn't make any sense, and said that while "mija" is used by mothers to address their daughters, mija and mijo (or something) are just terms of endearment.  "It's just his way of loving on you".  So I tried calling him mijo, and he didn't like that either, so I asked if he was mi amigo, and he said maybe.  Little stinker.

But Mrs. Collinsworth, the counselor, told me that she was considering buying rosetta stone and learning spanish, and she found it for really cheap, and it comes with five user accounts, so we're maybe going to split the cost and both get to learn spanish!  She said she'll look into it some more and let me know.  I'm excited.  My cafeteria spanish lessons aren't getting me very far.

Si eras va afuera, entonces usted debe coma tu comida.

I'm working on piecing together the things I know into phrases I can actually use.  Coma tu comida is my most frequently used.  And Que??

My foot is asleep........

Alright....what else have I done today?  Well it was a day of backwards kitchen shortcuts.  I wanted to make a crescent roll pizza thing, but instead of making it easier by using explod-a-crescent rolls, I made my own, and then cheated by using prego as the sauce.

Then I made french fries, and instead of slicing up potatoes and covering them in seasoned salt, like I feel would be the "normal" thing to do (is it?), I used frozen fries and mixed up my own seasoning.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Strawn after church and potluck, and we are going to look at a house.  just like, drive by it and peek through the windows, but I am in love with it.
Oh my goodness.  I won't even say any more until we have seen it in real life, but...just look at it on craigslist.  Just do it.

Things that make me feel like a child:

Sitting on the living room floor, eating hamburger helper, and watching transformers.
Hot chocolate.
Falling asleep on the couch at 7pm (and then going to bed and sleeping all night. Best idea I have had in ages! 9 hours of sleep on a school night? Whaaaaaatt??!)
The bowl of tootsie rolls in my living room.
New dance costumes for my girls (!!!!!!!!!). I can rival any ten year old in excitement, let me tell you. I may not show it...but it's there.
Jesse's jokes.
Dancing around the cafeteria while all the first graders state at me like I'm crazy.
Learning (or trying to learn) Spanish.
Christmas!! Everything about it. I love Christmas. It makes me child-happy. It is good.
Eating brownies and ice cream until my stomach hurts.
Kites.
Rain.
Snow.
My panda pillowcase. Jesse hates him. He used to be a panda pillow, but Jesse threw away the pillow part while I was at work the other day, so now he's just a pillowcase.
Robin hood.
My fair lady.
Many hymns and songs that are found in the little green book.
People playing the guitar.
Legos.
And play dough. Oh my goodness, I love play dough!
 I'm just gonna stop there....there are so many things! And you know, I think these are mostly just things that make me happy...so I guess that says a lot about my childhood.

Things that make me feel like a grownup:

1. People calling me "Mrs. Smith"
• I have been addressed as Mrs. Smith every day for a year, and I am just now getting used to it
2. Emails
• Using emails instead of texting or Facebook as one of my primary methods of communication, and checking my (3 different) emails periodically "in case I get anything important (and actually getting important things!)
3. Meal planning

• When my coworker sits down with me at the end of the day, pulls out her menu for the month, and asks me what is on mine so she can get ideas.  And sharing recipes with her that we found while hanging out in the computer lab with the kiddos.
4. Bread
• I have scheduled days to bake bread.  It's a good thing.
5. Landlords
• It's not a good thing, but it still makes me awfully grown up when we're fighting with our land lady about ridiculous things (and house hunting again...."but that's another story, never mind")
6. Coaching my very own group of little dancers!
• It can be stressful, and it's already been a learning experience for all of us, but I am loving it!  And this is where I will break from the bullet points and actually tell you something about my wonderfully grown up life.

So, BYC Dance Company is in full swing!  As I have told you, I have four girls, around 10 and 11, and they are wonderful, but sometimes I forget how young they are.  I made one of them cry this week...She is easily frustrated, which I can identify with.  But they are really quite wonderful, and I can't wait until we start getting a little more comfortable with choreography, because they are going to be so great together.  You know how kids tend to either all do their own thing, or they have a group, and there's a fairly clear leader in the group, and the other little girls just do what she does?  These girls aren't like that.  At the beginning of every class and rehearsal, I have them warm up (duh), and I just turn on a song and tell them to bounce around and just get warm.  I don't care what they do, as long as they are moving, jumping, getting their heart rates up, for a full minute.  So I ask them what song they want (usually All About That Bass or Boom Clap), and they dance.  But they all dance together, and for some reason, every single time it just amazes me, and makes me so happy, because one will start doing something, and all the other ones will follow her for a few 8 counts, and then another one will break off and start something else, so they all do that for a bit, and then another will start, and they just trade off, and eventually they'll get a pattern going, and it's just so cool the way that they work together without even realizing it.  I love it.  I just love watching them warm up.  Is that weird?  I don't even know.  I feel like it's not, but whatever.  Anyway.  They make me happy.
We get to go to Austin in two weeks to learn our hip hop choreography!  Needless to say, we are ALL pretty excited for that.  I have scheduled 3 and a half hours with Trevor, and I am really hoping that they will be on top of their game, and are able to learn the whole dance in that time.  They are usually pretty good about learning choreo (as long as it's not too crazy, like my choreo seemed to be this week...I thought it was simple, but it wasn't clicking with them), but you never really know what will happen.
Last week at rehearsal, I told the girls that everything was set, and all that jazz, and they were all jumping up and down, and then said "can we watch the video again?"  Well we had just finished watching the video of their last run through in practice, so I pulled it up and they were like "No!  Not us; we want to watch him!"  They're totally obsessed.  "Is he nice?  What's he like?  I forgot what he looks like.  Have you talked to him?  Yes, we want to see that video!  We don't care if it's just him talking, I want to hear what his voice sounds like!"  I guess that's to be expected...It made me laugh, though.  They're pretty darn excited.

They are also excited about costumes (and shoes, and cookies, and games in PE, and instagram, and tumbling [I cannot get them to stop tumbling in practice!!!], and hair, and birthday parties, and pretty much everything), which I ordered on Thursday!  I'm pretty excited about that, too.  Fancy that.  I'm just as bad as they are.  I managed to order these pretty purple dresses (which come with the little hair flower that we probably won't use), and all their paws, plus two extra pairs (just in case someone loses, forgets, rips, allows a dog to eat, or is in any way unable to use their original pair), and some harem pants (not my favorite things in the world, but everyone and their aforementioned dog seems to wear them), and some cute little stripey sports bra like shirt things for them to wear at practice so they can be all matchy matchy and stuff.  They were on
clearance: $3.99 each.  Leslie and I couldn't resist.  And we've only spent just over $40 per girl, so we still have $60 each left in the budget!  I am good.  We almost went ahead and ordered their hip hop shoes as well, but we decided that would be a bad idea, since we don't know anything about the dance yet.  We'll wait on those to make sure we get something that fits the dance.
So anyway....They're awesome, and I'm loving every minute of it.  Except when they cry....I don't love that so much.  It has been difficult to do all this on a sprained ankle, though.  I would probably have fewer tears if I was able to adequately demonstrate what I am asking them to do.  But last Monday I sprained my ankle, and I've been gimping around ever since.  I managed to only take one day off work, and spent 1 1/2 on crutches, and by today I was able to walk all day at work, without looking like a total tard, and it was the first day that I have come home and not had to ice my foot, and my other foot, and my knees and my hips, and pretty much my entire lower body from the awkward usage of normally unused muscles in order to keep weight off that ankle.  I still can't rock back on my heel, but as long as I stay mostly on the ball of my foot I am good.

 I got an ER visit out of the deal, and I will just say this: If you are like, sick, don't go to Breckenridge ER.  We went there because it was 6am and nobody else was open, but it was an experience.  The nurses had no idea how to put my information into the computer, so when the secretary got there she had to come in and do it all over again.  But in the process, we discovered that she is from Medford, Oregon!  It's the ssn that starts with a 5.  She sees a lot of ssns.  There was blood on the floor of the room I was in, which was like "biohazard!!!!!!!!!"  But I didn't say anything.  I probably should have, but I didn't have any open wounds or anything.  So if someone randomly contracts AIDS after going to the Breckenridge ER, I will feel responsible; I should have said something.  So the doctor came in, asked what my level of pain was ("About a 3."  Jesse: "3??  Why did I take you here for a 3?"  "Well it was your idea."  "Uh, you were crying when I called you."  "Well it hurt really bad, then!"), poked it, said "It's sprained, they'll do some X-rays."  The lady came in and did 6 X-rays.  She was super nice, I liked her.  Then she left and we sat for 20 or 30 minutes listening to the doctor hang out a the nurses' station right in front of us talking to all of the nurses loudly about patients, by name (which was like "HIPPA VIOLATION!!").  When she was done telling her story, she came in, said "It's sprained, you need to rest it and ice it and take some motrin" and just turned around and walked out.
I'm not a super needy person (I don't think), and I've done this all before, I know what to do, no big deal.  But there was no "you need to stay off it for this much time" or "do you have any questions" or "do you need crutches or an ice pack or an ace bandage or anything?"  Nah.  Just "take some motrin and get on with your life."  I half expected them to hand me a big straw on the way out.
So Jesse and I went to CVS, got some super Ibuprofen, and then he went and bought me a nice, big, soft ice pack, and an even bigger bag of candy.
Juggling crutches and purse and dance bag and yoga mat and lunch box and everything the next day was a little difficult, but I managed.
So anyway....it is time for me to go watch a flag football game.
That also makes me feel like a grownup.

Tune in next time for "Things that make me feel like a child"!

September

I love fall!  It's the best season; it's full of pumpkin flavored dessert-y things, scarves, boots, colorful leaves, and drinking hot chocolate at drizzly football games, right?

Not in Texas.  Let me tell you about September in Texas.  Yes, you can make pumpkin flavored dessert-y things, but I haven't felt the urge to do so, because it has been 100 degrees, and I'm still wearing flip flops and tank tops, there are no leaves, colorful or otherwise, and football games?  Yeah, the flip flops and tank tops are present there, too.  I do still always bring a sweater, because my Oregonian Daddy raised me well.  Last Friday did break the mold a little bit.  It was all drizzly, and chilly, and I really just wanted to bundle up, get some hot chocolate, and go to a football game.  Yes!  I actually sought out football.

"Everything must change/nothing stays the same...."

So football.  Yeah.  It was freeeeeeezing.  It was raining, and the game was all the way in Abilene, and the wind was driving the rain right into the sides of our souls, and Gramma's umbrella was digging into Jesse's knee, and I didn't even get my hot chocolate!  Hot chocolate really would have made it much more endurable, but it was an alright evening anyway.  People become quite companionable when you are huddled together to reduce the risk of hypothermia.  We introduced Cricket to Jason's cousin/nephew/some sort of relative dude who plays all the sports and was the DQ player of the week, but she didn't immediately drop down on one knee and pledge her undying love, which was our plan to keep her in Texas forever (but in her own, nice, cozy little Texas house, rather than ours).  So that plan failed.  Oh well.

So far, the month of September has been a little crazy.  First of all (I just have to get this out there, because it
makes me happy), I have started making my own pasta!  I even made spinach pasta, and it was fantastic.  I can't even begin to explain how much I love homemade pasta.  It is like, the epitome of comfort food, for real.  I do need to invest in a larger pot....all those noodles in my little baby pot kinda makes them look like Franken-noodles.  Spinach pasta, though.  Jesse hates spinach.  Spinach is good for Jesse.  Jesse can't taste the spinach when it's in noodles!  So Jesse gets all the good vitamins and stuff that are in all those good, dark green veggies, and doesn't even pretend to barf while he eats it.  Best discovery of my life, right thurr.

Ok, now that I'm done obsessing over food....wait, I'm not!  I am bringin' back the frozen crock pot meals.

 Ohhhhh yeah.  Giant batch of spaghetti sauce, throw the leftovers in the freezer, Wednesday morning before work I can throw it in the crock pot, turn it on low, and when I get home at 7:30 pm, Jesse and Cricket will have already fed themselves spaghetti!  It's fantastic.  I also made crock pot cupboard soup last night, aka take out a can of everything in the cupboard and throw it in the crock pot.  It came out kinda like chili, and kinda like taco soup, but we poured it over broken up tortillas, so I'm going the mexican route this time.  Next time (when I pull those leftovers out of the freezer), I'll make a pan of cornbread and it will be chili!  I am such a smart domestic person.

Um.....what else?  I'm trying to get the little things out of the way and save the big story for the end.  We finally finished reading the Harry Potter series, I never actually cried, Jesse has become a PotterHead, and we started The Magician's Nephew last night.  I decided it was time to give him a little taste of my childhood, and Cristin and I have decided that Moby Dick might not be the best way to do that.  Great Expectations probably wouldn't, either, though they were both very memorable aspects of my childhood.  At least, the parts I managed to stay awake for.

Jesse is determined to draw blood by throwing playing cards at Cricket and me, and it turns the living room into a bit of a battlefield, sometimes.

I got super bored and tried to put cornrows in my hair.  I can't pull it off.  I could do like, one side, and then pull it into a bun kinda....maybe...something like that.  But yeah.

I'm getting to work with the dyslexia teacher in the mornings, during breakfast, which is super exciting, and rather challenging.  I obviously can't talk about the student I'm working with, but let's just say that it's more of a challenge than I expected.  I am definitely enjoying the experience, though.

Ok, getting into the good stuff, now.  My dance classes have started at Party Planet, and I have 8 little girls in my Monday night Ballet/Jazz class!  It is going better than I expected it to, and I think they are all really enjoying it.  They're just so cute in their little blue and pink leotards and buns

and everything!  My older girls would show up in jeans, half the time, and it was so frustrating!  But the little ones, you know, their parents just want them to be cute.  Most of them are kindergarten and 1st grade, but I have one who is around 4, and one who is 3rd grade, so it does have a bit of a spread.  Also, my barre (I have barres and mirrors now!!!!!!) is only 10 ft long, so it's a bit cramped when we try to all use it.  It's definitely better than nothing, though, and I am not complaining.  I think that working in the school has definitely helped my teaching, even in the studio.  Not to toot my own horn, or anything, but I feel like I have improved so much, just in the last year, and looking back to when I very first started teaching, it's hard to believe I'm the same person.  I guess I'm not, in many ways.  I never thought I was good at the baby classes, and I know I'm still not the best ever, I don't wield any great pre-dance magic, but I am so much more comfortable doing it now than I was.  It helps to have a class that is all my own.  I miss my dancing friends desperately, and I would love to be able to work with them again, but I am so grateful for this experience.

And speaking of having dance things my very own....I have a tiny little dance team!  We had tryouts last weekend, we had 6 girls show up, 5 ended up on the team, and now we are down to 4, so it really is tiny, but it is going to be great.  They are all about 10 yrs old, all cheer girls, and all will need a lot of work, but they're hard working kids that just make me happy.  I turned on a song and let them have a dance party at the end of their first practice, and just watching them goof off made my day.  I get it, Chelle.  They are "my joy", and we've barely even started.  I know it's going to be fantastic.  Because they all love hip hop, and I do not, I decided to look into hiring a choreographer.  I found one in Austin, I think I may have talked about all this before....anyway, long story short, I told him I wasn't sure we were going to be able to afford him with such a small team, and he said he would cut his fee almost in half for us!  I am so thankful and excited for that, and can't wait to get to work with him!  He's gonna have to go on the Christmas card list, just for being so awesome.  And by that, I mean I'll make the girls sign a card for him, because let's face it: I don't have a Christmas card list.

Neat segway, here....Christmas!  So excited.  It's like, 3 months away, and I have a real house this year that I can actually decorate, and I already know half of the presents I'm going to give, and Cricket and I are going to go shopping this weekend to get it started!  Yaaaayyy!  It's gonna be a more DIY Christmas this year.  At least, I hope it is.  I may get all of these projects started, and then run out of time/fail miserable and resort to good ole Etsy to save my derriere, you never know.

And that's my September.