Răchel's Bachelorette Party

This past Saturday was Rachel's bachelorette party in Ft. Worth. We were sorority sisters in college. We all stayed in a hotel right in Sundance Square. When we all got there we had a fun shower for her at the hotel. Then we headed to Joe T. Garcia's for some good Mexican food. I had never been there before and could not believe how big the place was! It was fun seeing girls I haven't seen since practically college. We must get together more often!!! After we ate we went back to Sundance Square and this is awful, but I don't remember the name of the place we went to. They had live music and a giant outdoor patio. I don't even think I saw the name of the place when we went in. It was a fun night out with the girls and I can't wait until her wedding! I'm so excited for her as she begins this new chapter of her life.

Some of us girls at dinner

The bride-to-be and me!

Nicole, me, Ra'chel, and Candace

Fun times with my family...

I woke up Tuesday morning to a fun surprise from my husband. At the last minute his sister and her boyfriend decided to drive to Dallas to meet Dan's dad for the Rangers/Angels game, and they wanted us to go, too. Having not been to a game yet this season, I of course said yes very quickly! We left right after school and met up with them. We sat in one of our favorite sections-the all you can eat seats. I think at one point in the game I had a bag of peanuts, some popcorn, a hot dog, and nachos in front of me. And since they don't have any dessert out on the buffet, my sweet husband who knows my sweet tooth bought me a cookie ice cream sandwich after I was done stuffing my face. The Rangers won and it was a great night even if we did have to drive right back to Abilene after the game. My husband was nice to drive so I could sleep since I had to work in the morning.

Friday night I headed back to Dallas to meet my dad for the Rangers/Cubs game. I got us the super cheap seats, but if you know my dad, you don't sit in your assigned seats the whole game. We started the game right behind the bullpen and had fun watching the pitcher warm up. When the section started filling up we decided to head to our 'real seats'. They were actually pretty good seats and there was a nice breeze. They had a fireworks show after the game so that was a fun way to celebrate the win. I think I need to get back to the stadium quickly seeing as they are on a 2-game losing streak.

Colby Lewis warming up

My second home in the background

I am discovering more and more each season how much I like baseball. I have to be careful though because there is no way I can get season tickets to the Rangers. That is 81 home games!! Luckily I can watch them all on TV. I am so passionate about the Cowboys that I just don't have room in my life to be that passionate about TWO teams. Maybe someday when I'm old and retired and the Cowboys stadium is too loud for me, I'll switch over and get Rangers season tickets.

I was excited to get to Plano after the game this weekend because my mom and I were celebrating a belated Mother's Day on Saturday. We went out to breakfast at our favorite spot, Mimi's, and then we went shopping. The Cookie Bouquet store near my mom's house has half price cookies between 3 and 4 on Saturday and we finished off the day by buying a cookie...or maybe two. Fine, we bought three...or was it four? Ok, confession-we bought 5 cookies. But we split them and they were good and that's all that matters.

I love my family and I love spending time with them!

So Proud of my Little Family!

This was a great week of celebration for my family! We have so much to be thankful for and this week reminded me of just that many times.

My parents drove in Tuesday to see my "Teacher of the Year" reception/presentation. It was such an honor to be nominated several months ago by my coworkers, and I was so appreciative of both my coworkers and my family for coming out to see me get the award. It kind of felt like graduation all over again. Walking across a stage, shaking hands with someone, smiling while your parents took your picture, etc. But it was fun and we ended the night by heading out to Perini's. Dan and I love going there and we were excited to share it with my parents who had never been. This photo is of us after dinner. My parents spent the night Tuesday, so I took my mom to school with me the next day while Dan spent the day with my dad. They left Wednesday afternoon so it was a quick trip, and I'm so grateful they were able to make the trip to support me. I'm looking forward to celebrating Mother's Day with my mom next weekend when I make a trip out to Plano.

Wednesday night we celebrated Dan's mom. His sister, Michelle, had a bar-b-que at her house for all of us. His mom brought her dog, I brought Charlie, and then Michelle has a dog as well. They are all about the same size so they like getting together and playing. They were all tuckered out by about 10 p.m. so we knew it was time to go. It gave me a glimpse into the future when all of us 'kids' will eventually have our own kids and instead of our dogs getting tired, our kids will be getting tired! Fun times ahead for us! I had to laugh when Dan's sister, Heather, told us about how when Dan and her were little and receiving a spanking, Dan whispered to her, "Put a book in your pants and it won't hurt as bad". Michelle and I couldn't participate in any of these spanking stories, because as we remember it we were too good to ever receive any!

Charlie made us proud because he won an award for a photo I entered of him in our newspaper. He won 3rd place for best dressed. It's a photo of him in his Cowboys jersey watching the game. They displayed them in the Grace Museum Thursday night and since dogs weren't allowed inside, I posed next to the picture in his place!Dan also had a proud moment this week. He has been working really hard at the restaurant lately, and since business has been way up, his boss gave him a raise for being such a great manager! I couldn't be more proud of all the hard work and long hours he puts in up there.

And that is why I am so proud of my little family!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I'm so lucky to have such a great mom. She is my best friend and just a great person! She has a very caring spirit and is always doing things for other people. I can always count on her for anything and she has always been there for me. She will be a wonderful grandma someday. She's proved that already by being a fabulous dog-grandma to Charlie! She loves kids and I know she will love my future children even more!We always have so much fun together. Our favorite thing to do when we're together is talk and eat, eat and talk, and then eat some more and talk. We know all the best restaurants and bakeries. And of course when we're done we love to shop, too! I can think of a million good memories with my mom growing up and even more recent ones. It's hard to just pick one. As a kid we used to color together and read lots of books. When I was growing up I used to love going grocery shopping with her and taking walks together. And now since we are 3 hours apart, I look forward to our daily phone conversations. It's fun sharing our school stories since we are both teachers. I'm also excited about our new annual mother/daughter trip that we started last year!Every year when I see my kids in my class and the difficult family situations some of them are in, I am always reminded how grateful I am for such a loving and caring mother! Love you, mom!

Broken House

We've lived in our house for almost 3 years and I have 'broken it' on several occasions-the latest one being this past weekend. I used to be embarrassed about these little mishaps the house and I were having, but now they make me laugh. Let me back up to the first two incidents. Right after we moved in, I was closing a window we had opened and I forgot our windows have storm windows on them so when I was gently letting the inside window down, the other window came crashing down and broke. Oops.

The second incident was probably the worst. I was leaving to go to Dallas with Charlie and I remembered I forgot his leash after I had already backed out of the driveway. I was in a hurry so I quickly pulled back into the driveway and was going to run in real quick to get it. Can you guess how I broke the house? I may have forgot to put the car in park and my car (with Charlie inside) was headed towards the garage door! I quickly opened the car door and put it into park as fast as I could, but too late...it already hit the door pretty good. When I walked into the house I was so afraid Dan would be upset. Once he realized his truck, that was also in the driveway, was okay, he just laughed at me. And luckily he was able to push most of the dent back out. But you can still see remnants of my near collision with the rest of the house. Lesson learned: teach Charlie to drive in case this happens again.

Now back to this weekend when yet again, I had to confess to my husband that I broke our house......again. Apparently I wasn't paying attention when I was backing out of the garage on Saturday, and I was a little too close to the left side. My side mirror decided to take a little chunk of the siding with it as I pulled out of the garage. Don't worry, my mirror is okay.

I do feel better about all these things though because as I was watering our yard the other day, I noticed there are little pieces of siding chipped off on the bottom side of our house. When I asked Dan about it, he confessed he may have accidentally had a weed-eater collision with the house.

I love this house dearly and I do feel terrible for all the pain I have caused it. But, I've stubbed my toes many times and ran into enough walls/doors/etc. that I kind of feel like the house has gotten it's revenge with me.