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.

Alone Time

Everyone who knows me knows that I don't do alone very well.  Maybe I will bury my head in the couch for a little while, but I usually want company while I do it.
For that reason, I have loved the last couple of weeks.  I get up and go to work every morning, start the coffee, put paper in the copier, and stand at the door to greet everyone as they walk in.  I'm surrounded by wonderful teachers all day and children who adore me (well, a few do, anyway.  None of them hate me yet, at least),  I get to make their copies and stand watching the rain with them.  And then I meet Leslie at the front door as school is getting out to have our mini party planet meeting, I put my group of kids on the bus, and drive home to Cricket and Jesse, and dinner and ice cream and Harry Potter, and it is fantastic.  Jesse says I'm a workaholic, but really I just love all my people and I want to spend time with them and do everything I can for them.
Also, James finally managed to make it up to see us!  He brought some MREs and his fake jeep (which just means its a funky color and isn't lifted or anything cool or whatever), and said he's just here for the free food.  I will say this: it is so nice to have someone really appreciate my cooking.  I love Jesse, and I know he loves and appreciates me and the fact that I cook for him, but no one will ever love my bread the way James does.  I baked a loaf today.  It came out of the crockpot around three, and was gone by 5:30; it only lasted that long because I told the boys they had to save some to have with dinner.  But I also promised french toast in the morning, so here I am, at 9:42 pm, with bread dough rising.  Still rising, I should say.  I say that because it has already risen for an hour before I realized that there was no yeast in it.  Niiiiice.  That's what I get for being distracted, talking to my mother's answering machine, while mixing it up.
And here I am.  This is the point of what I was saying!  All that about me not doing alone and all that jazz...here I am, in my apartment, at nearly 10 on a Saturday night, totally alone, and quite enjoying it!  It's crazy.  I left the boys at Charlie's to shoot pigs, dropped Cricket off at work at Party Planet, and came home to wait for her to get off.  I turned on some Netflix, started my (unleavened) bread, vacuumed, and did some yoga in my underwear.  Do you know how long it's been since I've been able to wander around my house in my underwear, much less do yoga in my living room in such a state?  I never, ever, ever, never thought that would be something that I would have any desire to do, and I apologize for all of you out there with vivid imaginations, but sometimes you just have to enjoy your alone time.  A whole year (sooooo much time....ha!) of marriage has taught me many things, and that is one of the most important, though more difficult for me to deal with.

Beach! Beach! Beach! Beach!

We finally made it to the beach!
Let me make a few statements.

1. I love the beach.
2. I had not been to the beach in over a year.
3. I miss the beach.
4. Texas beach is not like Oregon beach.

So from the beginning.  Thursday afternoon, as soon as Jesse got off work, we piled into the Tahoe, accompanied by a few duffel bags (apparently I packed enough for two weeks), an ice chest full of Mt. Dew and sandwiches, and a massive tupperware tub of caramel popcorn, and headed south.

I was told that Galveston is the place to go, so that's where we went.  It

is a 400 mile drive that we managed in about 7 hours.  We hopped into a muggy, salty smelling motel, and crashed.  The next morning we got up and drove around town looking at all the dirty water.  Jesse saw a dolphin, but I never did.  Oh well.  We found a lovely IHOP where Cricket got pooped on while waiting for a table.

Basically the pancakes (and brief dolphin sighting) were the best part of Galveston.  So we piled back intothe Tahoe, accompanied by a few duffel bags, and ice chest with a couple Mt. Dews, and a massive tupperware tub half full of caramel popcorn and headed further south, to Corpus Christi.  It turned into a very long drive.  Corpus Christi, however, was worth the 230 miles.  The water was much clearer, and it started to look like Jesse's dreams...white sand....blue water....lots of salt.

It was the first time I had ever been in a warm ocean!  I must say, I'm not much of a water person.  I mean, I love water, but salt water in my nose, and over my head, and picking me up and sweeping me out to sea...Not the best thing ever.  I think I snorted about half the ocean.  It's not super pleasant.  Jesse told me I have to be 'namaste with the ocean" and that I have to "fight the waves" which I feel is quite contradictory.  

So anyway.  That evening we trundled our way down to SPI, which was also nice, but way more crowded and way colder.  Jesse got grumpy because we decided to walk to Blackbeards for lunch and it was farther than we thought it was and I talked him out of taking the bus.  Oops.

He is also now slightly obsessed with skim boarding.  Apparently you can run up and down the beach and jump on your little board thing and you can skim along the edge or you can surf with it too.

Among other things, this trip has also inspired a need to move to Hawaii indefinitely, regardless of any consequences, like leaving jobs without warning.  I am a little bit afraid that I might come home one day and find the bags packed and Jesse ready to go.  So if you can't get a hold of us....try Yavette and Glen.

Bugs

I have been sadly lacking in the documentation area since Cricket got here, for which I apologize. It has been lovely having a sister again for the last week, to keep me company, and take out the trash, and things of that sort. We picked her up at DFW last Friday and then got very lost. Cricket and I were so busy chattering we didn't notice Jesse had been driving around in circles for an hour. Thankfully, we had stopped at Costco to do our shopping before we picked her up, so we didn't have many more stops to make.
While at Costco, as a side note, we only had half an hour before Cricket's plane landed, so Jesse and I split up in order to make better time. I heard him call me from down an aisle as I was booking it to the frozen chicken breasts, and, well, you know those Costco floors...my cart was pretty full by that time, so when I tried to stop, it kept going (object in motion acted upon by an insufficient force), and I got dragged behind it a few feet. Not embarrassing at all. A quick addition to the side note: we made it out of Costco in less than 30 minutes for less than $300. That must be a new record or something!
So anyway. We got Cricket, she didn't get lost anywhere in the massive Texas airports, and eventually we made it home to the shining city of Breckenridge.

For our anniversary that weekend, I had convinced (or coerced) Jesse to actually put on a nice shirt (he said it was a fat old man shirt) and take us out to dinner. His friends suggested the beehive, in Albany, run by these old Iranian brothers that are allegedly the best storytellers in Texas. Well let me just say one thing: small Texas towns do not have restaurants that are frequented by people in heels and pearls, escorted by handsome men in slacks. We were rather overdressed. But I don't really care. I like to get dressed up and go out on occasion, and it doesn't really matter whether we're the only people in the joint not wearing flannel and cowboy boots. The food was good, there were little roses on the tables, and the Iranian guy was quite nice and amusing. He even showed Cricket a magic trick; he drank wine out of a wine bottle without opening it. Very impressive, let me tell you. You'll have to ask her to show you sometime. Sometime in about 3 years, anyway.
They say the first year is the hardest...Jesse says if that's the case, we're set. Am I the only person that cherished a fantasy that at the one-year mark ever problem magically melts away? Well, if you count bed bugs as a problem, let me tell ya, first anniversary magic doesn't work on them. I honestly didn't realize that bed bugs were a legitimate thing. Like, I always assumed "don't let the bed bugs bite" referred to generic bugs that happen to be on your bed. It doesn't. Bed bugs are tiny, flat, nasty, black, blood sucking, ridiculously hearty, parasitic bugs that climb into your mattress and your carpet and your box spring and your clothes and your books, and reproduce and suck your blood and leave nasty little bite marks all over your body. We thought I was having an allergic reaction to something like pineapple or the carpet or something. Nope, it's bed bugs. Soooooo nasty. I really hope we get them dealt with and don't send then home with Cricket. We got the apartment sprayed a few days ago, and they have to come back again in two weeks. I haven't seen any, but I do still have a few bites....yick. Bed bugs are seriously nasty.

Anyhooooden. Cricket has been introduced to Party Planet and all its wonders., and is working with me this weekend. It's just the two of us, and it's been quite nice, if I do say so. I don't have to worry about the person I'm working with showing up late, or playing nasty music, or anything unpleasant like that.
Next weekend, however, we are planning on finally taking that trip to the beach! I can't wait. It will be lovely, and it will also be my last chance to take advantage of Jesse's 3-day weekend. I have three days of workshops starting Monday, and then all my I service begins the next Monday and from then on I am booked solid. I even put up a real calendar on the wall so that when Jesse doesn't see me for days at a time, he will know where I am. I do feel bad about leaving Cricket at home by herself all the time, but I suppose she will survive...she'll just get really good at forza so she can really kick my butt next time.

In short, our days are fairly uneventful.  The most exciting thing was getting my resistance bands and foam rollers in the mail, and getting attacked by Jesse and having our phones confiscated for trying to take pictures of him with elastic bands on his head.  I regret to inform you that he won.  It was quite the sight, I assure you.
There is currently a waterfall being dumped on my head because I am on my phone and not making dinner, so I bid you adieu.  I hope your hair is drier than mine.

 

BYC Dance Company

Good morning!  It is currently 7:14 am, I got almost 6 hours of sleep last night, got up at 5 and made Jesse breakfast.  Since he left for work, I have chosen music for dance team auditions, created a secret facebook group, researched and written a liability form that is in accordance with Texas state laws, put what should be the finishing touches on a sponsor letter, and read over my calendar for the umpteenth time.  Wow, "umpteenth" is in the blogger dictionary.  Learn somethin' new every day!  One thing I have not done is brush my teeth....excuse me while I go do that.

So why am I sleep deprived and living on my laptop?  Let me tell you!  Last Thursday, at the end of our dance camp, Leslie said to me "hey, wouldn't it be fun to put a group of girls together and do competitions?"  Well you know me.  Dance competitions?  Where do I sign up?!
A few days later I sent her a very long email saying basically "this would be really awesome, and here is why, but if we're gonna do it, we need to make it happen, 'cause we're runnin' out o' time."
Like an awesome person, she totally jumped on board, so on Tuesday I headed out to Party Planet, and we set a date for auditions.  From there it has snowballed extraordinarily.  I created a Facebook page that has 90 likes already, and we started promoting.  Well, Leslie started promoting; I don't know anyone.
Someone that I do now know (or hope to know soon...I don't think FB messages count as knowing), is a guy by the name of Trevor.  He runs a company called Not About Dance.

"Using dance as a tool to make a difference in the world."

Basically they go around and do workshops and donate 20%-30% of  their profits to organizations that do good stuff.  You should read the website.  Whoever wrote it is much more eloquent than I.  Anyway, I found Trevor and his company because I was looking for a hip hop choreographer.  I know the kids will want to do hip hop, and I'm not totally comfortable with choreographing for competition.  I can throw something together for a dance camp for 7 yr olds, but I don't want to set my team up to fail, so we decided it would be best to hire that one out, at least this first year.  We'll see where I am next year.  Aaaaand the bunny trail brings us back around....I threw out some questions on the good ol' F.B., and was referred to Trevor.  I looked him up on YouTube and decided he looked pretty good.  I sent the link to Leslie, and she said he looked pretty good, so I messaged him and was like "here's the sitch, Trevor Parmentierrrrr..."  Not really.  I was very polite and professional.  He said that he would be willing to drive all the way here from Austin to teach my kids (when I get them), and that's a long drive, so I am appreciative.  And super excited.
One hurdle jumped, a whole lot more to go!
That same day I started on the team contract and calendar.  That took me most of the day.  Yesterday I ran (literally, I was quite proud of myself) back to Party Planet, and we continued hashing things out and figuring out our budget.

Side note: while I was there, a lady was talking to us and said "oh, you must be Mrs. Smith!"  It kinda made me feel a little famous.  End note.

Last night I finished (hopefully) the contract, found a couple more competitions for us to go to, started looking at shoes, started a sponsor letter, and wrote out the budget so that everyone can see exactly what they are paying for.  And it still is cheaper than cheer!  Go us!
And that brings us to 6:00 this morning, when I usually go back to sleep for a couple hours, but I couldn't because I had so many things running around my brain!  And so the liability waiver was born.  Party Planet recently purchased a van so that we can pick kids up after school for KidFit and other classes, which is totally awesome, and also will be a means of transportation for BYC Dance Company!  But if we're going to be driving kids all over the state, we need a good release form.  Apparently they don't mean a whole lot in the state of Texas, and there aren't any iron clad laws about what has to be in a release form, but it has to be understandable to the average Joe, state clearly what it is that they are waiving, and it has to have the important parts in all caps, or bold, or something to make it stand out.  I took a swim team waiver and a college travel thing waiver and used them as a template to create my own, awesome, hold harmless agreement that I believe is understandable and precise, and has a bunch of capital letters, so it should be good.  I'll send it off to some people who know more than I do and see what they have to say about it.
I believe today's major project (after I finish this, do my yoga, do the dishes, sweep the upstairs bathroom, and maybe vacuum) will be going to Party Planet, going over everything with Leslie (again), and then printing it all out and putting it in a binder that I can keep there, so that when people come in and want to know what's going on, anyone who happens to be there can say "here is the application for audition, the calendar, the contract, the liability form..." and should be able to answer any questions.

So yeah.  BYC Dance Company is my baby, and I'm really hoping that we will get a good turnout at auditions, the first week of September.  Wish me luck!

"Just Dancin, and Singin in the Rain"

Today is amazing.  I got up this morning and it was sprinkling a little bit, so I actually wore a shirt with sleeves, and set out to walk to party planet.  I had gotten about 1/4 mile down the road and it started really raining.  Not pouring, but enough that my hair was still wet an hour and a half later.  Yay rain!  But I had to keep going, because we had our last day of dance camp today.  Leslie and I spent the last four days working with a group of girls from about 6 yrs- yrs, 2 1/2 hours a day, doing ballet, jazz, and hip hop.  You all know what a huge fan of hip hop I am, but honestly, I felt pretty good about it.  They all had fun, it was cute and happy and girly, and I think it went well.  I just wish I had gotten a video of it...Maybe it's better that I didn't.  Now I can't pick it apart, and will have to remember it as being good.  I gotta say, though, the best part was hearing the girls all complaining about being sore after ballet.  Music to my ears!

I'm totally excited for regular classes to start again, now.  I'm really hoping that we get some of these kids to
sign up again, because they're just so adorable.  The other thing that Leslie and I have been talking about doing is holding auditions and starting up a little competition team.  Jlyn used to do ACC (the competitive cheer teams), but she moved to Houston (I think....somewhere like that) and is therefore no longer doing cheer, which leaves a pretty big hole in a lot of these kids' lives.  One that I would happily fill with dance.  Leslie says that most cheer and dance competitions around here are combined, and she still gets info about all of them because of cheer, so it wouldn't be too hard to get into, once we got some kids trained up a bit.  It would be so amazing to get to go to competitions and conventions and stuff like that again.  I've missed it terribly, even though it does eat up your weekends.  I looked up the Texas Dance Educator Association, because I know that they do some conventions and such for teachers, and I would love to go to one and actually meet the dance people around here...And guess what?  Their convention was this week.  Great timing.  There's another one in January, though, so maybe we will be able to make it to that one.

Leslie also said that she can teach me to spot the kids in their tumble classes, so I can help out in her gymnastics and tumble classes, which should be fun.  Hopefully I'll get to do all kinds of new things this year....

=]

International Spy Academy

This week I was helping out at VBS, aka international spy academy, and yes, that includes having all the songs stuck in my head ("agents of the one true God!") allllll night while I'm trying to sleep. I was working in the kindergarten classroom with a lady named Stephanie, who I'm pretty sure is the nicest person I've ever met. Not even kidding. Also laughs more than anyone I know. She rarely makes it through a whole sentence without laughing, even when she's exhausted and stressed and the kids are yelling at McPatty, the irish dog puppet with a mustache. The puppets were handled by a kid from the church and whatever friends he managed to bring along with him, and they had those kids rolling every night. He used an Irish accent and never really stuck to the script; you never knew what was going to happen during the puppet show. Like a horse named Buddha, for example. I thought Stephanie was going to die when he came out. Apparently she had told the boys that they could use the horse puppet, but only if they changed his name. I guess that condition slipped their minds. It was good to get out of the house and actually do something in the church, finally, but it was frustrating that vbs happened in the evenings, because I didn't see Jesse for 3 or 4 days. He's been leaving for work at 5:45 am, and not coming home till almost 5, which is half an hour after I left for work at party planet. Then I would go straight to vbs and not make it home till 9:30, by which time he was already in bed so he could get up at 5. He says it was the perfect arraignment. He got up and breakfast was on the table, his lunch and second breakfast were packed for him, and he came home to an empty house with dinner ready to go in the oven. It was like being a bachelor with a maid. Yesterday he was playing watchdogs on the Xbox with a bunch of kids who kept shooting him in the butt because they thought it was hilarious. I was working on some choreography for dance camp next week, so I had my headphones in, and he had the headset on, so I couldn't hear much of what was going on, but I was watching him laughing as these kids ran around their virtual world with him, and it reminded me how much kids always love him. It's kind of amazing how well he gets along with them, even when it's just online games. We went to 6 Flags for 4th of July with the Figueroas and Jesse and the girls made it their goal to make me throw up on the teacups. I am pleased to say that it didn't happen, even though we went two rounds, and even Jesse admitted that round two was a bad idea. My head was still swimming the next morning. He'll get another chance, though, because we bought season passes so we can go back when Cricket comes (13 days!). It will be good to have a sister in the house again. I'm hoping to rope her into doing yoga with me. Jesse makes fun of me for doing yoga, but whatevs. The other thing I need to start doing is learning to tumble. Leslie said that she'll teach me, I just need to actually make it happen. Anyway, I have digressed too far to make it back. Have a good weekend, errbody! Somebody should go to the beach for me, and mail me some sand, or something.