Wow...

tomorrow is the first day of school with the little ones, and I mean really little ones:) I am used to second graders, and now I am teaching first grade. These little guys are still officially Kindergarteners...Last night I had open house, and believe it or not, every single kid in my class came for open house. I am actually really looking forward to being with kids and not being in meetings:) I think I am going to like teaching in Branson. It is sooooooooooooo different than what I am used to. But sometimes, stepping outside of your comfort zone is all you need, right? Everything is so much more technological, and it is so much bigger. I am overwhelmed with resources, and with everything else that comes with the beginning of the year. Hope all is well with everyone else. I am especially needing to YAWN...right now.

Kinzley..

is just the cutest thing ever! Look at her toenails that Jess painted to match her zebra print top.

Lots of Pictures...

Well, some pictures, I should say. There are lots more to come. I am just ready to get down to the water for a bit, so I am taking a break from my post. The first picture is of Kylan when I was in Oklahoma. I have lots more to post from that trip.

This next picture is of Bethany and I. Believe it or not, we went the entire time without taking any photos. I hate it when we do that! So, this is the only one I have from my time in Texas. I have pictures of her new sister, Hope, but I will post those later as well.

This picture is of Rich, Rachel's hubby, and someone I am glad to call my friend. I had such fun with them when they drove here all the way from Pennsylvania.

This is my good friend Heather. We spend lots of lake time together:)

Here is Rachel, me, and Heather, chilling on the boat. We had such a good time that weekend.

Like I said, there are many more pics to post. These are just the first of the batch. I'm going to go try to get some time in the sun. I am quickly realizing I haven't taken advantage of the lake like I should have this summer. I can't believe I am about to be back at work. I still have so many projects I had hoped to complete. I spent a few hours this morning power washing the patio. It got too hot, so I jumped in the water. I am going to finish it and move on to the deck this evening. I must say I felt pretty empowered using that huge power tool. Who knew I could be so handy??? Anyways, in between projects, I am going to plan on having plenty of lake time in the days to come:) Happy Tuesday to everyone!!!

Summer...

is simply flying. That is the only way to say it. I know people who aren't teachers don't care about our summer, but I am becoming overwhelmed with the thought of a new school year. I have begun taking all my school stuff out of the attic. I have to get it all moved in. I think I had four or five carloads when I moved from my old building. I tried to pack seasonally so that I wouldn't have to take everything at once, but still, it's a task! I figure I will work on getting everything down and prioritize what I am going to take with me when I go to my room. Does anyone know a good website for ideas on setting up your classroom. My room is a blank slate right now. So I am looking for ideas. It is always shocking to me how overwhelming the beginning of the year is. We will make it though...we always do!

Anyway, I saw on Heather's blog that she added a bookshelf. I love this idea!!! So I added some of the books I have read this summer. Right now I am reading The Last Summer by Ann Brashares. I am really enjoying it.

A New Layout...

from when my family was here. The large words that I have on the page come from the sticker. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I had out all kinds of patterned paper, and didn't use one piece of it. I thought that was kind of unusual. I finished it last week, but I am just now getting it posted. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Hello Again...

this time from the Sooner State:) One thing I love about being in Oklahoma is driving around and seeing all the Sooner signs, license plates, shirts, etc. It makes me excited for football season to come.

I am here with my family now. I arrived on Sunday evening, and will be here until Wednesday afternoon, then heading back to Missouri. It's been a really nice trip so far. My niece, Kylan, spent the night with me last night. We had a lot of fun. She loves all my makeup and clothes right now. She keeps going in my room and looking through all my stuff, wearing my heels around, putting on makeup, asking me to paint her toes and fingers, etc. She is at a really fun age. I have lots of pictures, from when Rach and Rich were here, Texas, and now, Oklahoma. Hope everyone is well and having a good week!

HOWDY...

from Texas! I am here with Bethany and Jeff, and enjoying my time with them sooooooo much! I have pics to post, but I will do that later. Just wanted to say hello! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend:)

Just a Quote...

that I ran across. I can't stop reading it. Anyone who knows my situation will understand why this one stuck.

"If your situation is such that you can cultivate kinder feelings, forgiveness is the most freeing option. Hatred binds us to its object as mercilessly as does love. Forgive, and move one, or stay angry and remain stuck."

Hope everyone has a good week!I just had to post this beautiful picture!

More pics from my weekend with family...

We took these pictures right before they took off for Oklahoma. It was starting to rain, so our photo time was cut short. We had such a nice visit together.

I am so excited because I finally got print cartridges for my printer! I can start printing photos at home now. That means I will have photos in all different sizes again! I have gone to get them so many times, and every time I have gone, they have either not had the pack I need, or they have all colors but one, etc. So, needless to say, I was excited when I went to Staples and there it was! I can print at home again:) Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Pictures from Silver Dollar City...

when my mom, aunt, grandma, and cousin were here. We had a really nice time. I have been slow getting these posted because I have had company since last Friday. The picture on the right is on the huge barn swing. You can see me wearing the black tank top. Max, my cousin, is sitting next to me. It was the hugest swing I have ever been on. The other picture cracks me up. It shows my Grandma and Max on the lazy river ride. They got soaked. I'm not sure if Grandma liked it as much as she thought she was going to. I have other pics to post, but right now I am doing laundry, so I will post them later. I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Rachel and Rich were here, and we had a wonderful visit. I have lots of pics from our week together too. It is so nice to have people come and visit. Coming here is like a vacation, so it is always fun to take people to all the cool places around here, and of course, to just hang out at the lake:) Happy Monday!

Exciting Stuff!!!

Last summer I had submitted layouts to this book, and they picked one up. The book was supposed to come out in December. I had finally decided that it wasn't going to happen, and that maybe my layout was lost. However, much to my surprise, this book came in the mail with my layout inside! (My layout was enclosed also:) The book is full of sketches, and then there are different layouts showing how different people interpreted them. It is pretty cool. I am looking forward to using it as a tool really soon:) I used the sketches last summer for submitting, and I loved all the results I came up with. I must say it was kind of a neat feeling to see my layout in print. It came on kind of a down day too, so that made it even better! Sorry for the sideways picture of the book, but I can't get it to post the right way for some reason. The pics are blurry too, I didn't realize that until I looked at them on my computer, so sorry about that as well!

Rachel and Rich are set to arrive at around 4:00 am. I am trying to stay up for a little while, then take a short nap, wake up when they get here, then nap again while they sleep. They left at around 11 this morning. She says lots of Red Bull and Diet Coke have been the key so far. I can't imagine that long of a drive!

Just a note...

to say hello. I hope everyone is doing well! I will say it again and again...I LOVE SUMMER!!! It is so nice to have time to just be...and not be going here and there and everywhere, just time to regroup and get things done and figured out. As this is my first summer alone, I was afraid I would have a hard time adjusting and filling my time, like maybe I wouldn't have a purpose. Was I ever wrong about that!!! I have had time to reflect and think about life and choices and all kinds of stuff. Some happy, some sad, and some just kind of in between. But when I was working, I didn't have time for all of that. I was just in a pure mode of survival. I had my mom, grandma, aunt, and ten year old cousin

here this weekend. They came on Thursday and left on Sunday afternoon. We had a really nice time. But I think everyone was really worn out. We went to Silver Dollar City on Friday, we went to the Landing on Saturday, and shopped on Sunday. It was a really nice time. I have pictures, but I haven't uploaded/edited them yet. I will get to that. I am posting a picture of my huge cactus that I loved when it bloomed! Unfortunately, those blooms are gone now, and we are back to just a cactus, but it is unbelievable how huge it became, and how pretty those yellow blooms were! I just wish it would do that all summer. Anyways, have a great day, and I will post more soon. I am preparing for Rachel and Rich. They are driving from Pennsylvania Thursday, and will be here Friday through July 5 or 6. I am super excited to see them and have them here with me!

New Layout...And Other Stuff Too!

I finished this layout last week. It is my Grandma June and Shelton. The pics are kind of blurry, but they will have to do.

This is Harley at the dock-doing her thing! She just runs around and chases fish. She occasionally jumps in after one. Then she swims for a long, long time. She will not get out of the water until she has gone underneath every slip on the dock. It is funny. She loves it down there!

This is a gift from my friend, Woody Woodpecker! I am so stinking tired of that little guy. I filled the holes-again with caulk this weekend to try to keep him away. We will see how it works out. I am getting ready to repaint too, and they say that should help to keep him away.

I hope everyone had a great weekend and a wonderful Father's Day. I had planned to go to Oklahoma and surprise my dad, but found out he was on a fishing trip until Saturday night, so I stuck around here. My Mom, Grandma, and Aunt are supposed to be heading down here this next weekend, so I need to start getting ready for them. Have a wonderful week!

Rain, Rain...

GO AWAY!!! I really want to go outside and play:) I am so sick of all this rain. Is it ever going to stop???

I was trying to post a picture, but blogger is just too slow today, and I have GOT to go run errands! Have a great weekend! I'll post more later, and please rain, please, GO AWAY!!!

HELP!!!

I am trying to get my scrapbooks organized. How do you store your pages? I have always done an album for each year in chronological order, but that doesn't seem practical anymore. They get too huge. I am wanting to do an album each for my nieces and nephew so that they can have them when they graduate. So as I am pulling out my layouts from scrapbooks, I am left with blanks, and I just think I need to change it up. What do you do??? I am considering a friends album, family album, holidays album, etc. Has anyone done it like this? I am overwhelmed, and I can't believe how many pages I have, hundreds, literally to sort out.

I Scrapbooked:)

Thanks to Allison, I copied your title. But I was so excited to have scrapbooked something. I haven't done that in so long. I keep telling myself I haven't printed any pictures...Ha Ha! I have enough to last a lifetime without ever printing again. I had separated some out during the winter but never did anything with them. I love these pictures of Shelton. He looks so sweet in them. They are from last summer. I will be happy if I can get through some of the stacks of pics I have separated, then I want to get my albums redone. I need to redo them and put them in more of a logical order. I really like this layout considering I haven't scrapped in soooo long. I wasn't too happy with the journaling, but I just scrapped with no plan. So considering that, I think it turned out alright.

So far summer is off to a good start. I have actually had time to BE at my house. I have been spending so much time driving and chasing after things for the past 7 or 8 months, that there just hasn't been time to BE here. I must say it feels really, really good. The first day, I kind of felt lost, like I didn't know what to do with myself. But by Tuesday, I had a little routine together. Get up, eat something, walk for an hour, and just BE here. Angie came down on Wednesday, and we spent the day at the dock. It was so nice to have her here. We went and saw the movie Sex and the City. I was so glad to see it. I miss that show so much. It was good...not as good as I had hoped, but good nonetheless. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week and has an even better weekend! Happy Friday! Amy

I can't believe it's finally summer:)

I am so excited that it is finally summer vacation! I almost feel like a different person this morning. I have been meaning to post some pictures of the flooding at the lake. If you have ever been to Table Rock, you have probably driven over or boated under the Kimberling City Bridge. This is it now. Just a few weeks ago, the water was up to the road. You are not able to drive a boat underneath on the far left. It is really weird to ride under it because it looks like the boat will scrape the top of the bridge. There used to be a huge space between the bridge and the water.

The picture on the left was our dock last summer. The picture below is our dock now. One of my neighbors actually went and got the bridge from a walking trail that no longer exists, and bolted it to the end of the dock. You can see where the silver things are. That is how far out the water goes. Where the canoe is, is where we used to park our golf carts at. It is truly unbelievable!

The picture below is my friend Heather trying to canoe to the shore from their dock. It is not an easy task, but pretty funny to try and even more funny to watch:)

And of course, I can never resist a beautiful sunset picture at the lake. It is truly the best time to be out there. I had such a good Memorial Day weekend with my friends Heather and Eric, and their company from Kansas City and St. Louis. We ended up escaping a huge storm, luckily. We were out on the water when the storm moved in, and getting to the dock felt like we were in the show Deadliest Catch. When we finally got to their dock, there were strangers parked in their slip. We had to ask them to move over to the slip next to the one they were in. We sat under the dock trying to stay warm and dry for over an hour. If you look at the picture of Heather in the canoe, you can see the raindrops. She was determined to get up to the house. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! To all my teacher friends, HAPPY SUMMER!!! Enjoy, because we all know how fast it flies!

Happy Memorial Day!

Here is a picture of a rose just getting ready to bloom. These roses are just growing like crazy. They were actually a gift from a kid in my class last year for Teacher Appreciation Week. I kept not planting, not planting, and not planting them. However, I finally threw them into this planter outside. Thank goodness I did, because now I have so many beautiful roses! Every day there are more and more blooms, and the stems are so tall! I never actually even thought that they would grow. However, I guess life throws surprises at you every single day! Now I look at these roses and thank God that I threw them in this pot. I had no idea how much pleasure they would be bringing to me one year later. I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day Weekend!

A cute picture

A friend sent this picture in an attachment. I thought it was so cute.

I hope everyone is having a great week! Two weeks from today will be our last day of school!!! So excited about that:)

Simple Things

My friend Tiffany posted about five simple things that make her happy. I loved the concept because it is true that the simple things are the things make life good. I had more than five, so here are six little things that bring me happiness:

1. My spring flowers...They make me smile everyday!

2. Some of the sweetest kids in my class make me things all the time. The fact that they are so young and that they know everything I love makes me smile. They are constantly making me signs that say OU Rocks, and asking me what my favorite color is so that they can use it. They are so genuine, and it has been such a blessing that I have this class this year. I am getting really sad about the end of the year coming. I will miss some of them so very much.

3. The beauty of friendship...I have the very best friends in the whole world.

4. Talking to my mom on the phone nearly everyday. I have come to realize that she isn't only my mom, but she is my friend. I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out. But I am so blessed to have her.

5. Laying in the hammock...my favorite spot!

6. Snuggling with Harley. As she has gotten older, she has turned into such a huge snuggler. She is by my side almost all the time. I wouldn't have it any other way:)


Hope everyone has a great weekend and finds time to enjoy the simple things that make you smile! For all my teacher friends...Yeah...No more Saturday School!