My porch is complete!

I had a fun visit from my parents this weekend. They came to Houston for Robbie Hansen's wedding. That was on Friday afternoon and I had them all the way until Sunday morning!

The big project this time was finishing the ceiling of the porch cover my dad built. We've been gradually doing more and more to it, but now I think it's about done! Katherine helped me pick up the bead board at Lowe's earlier this week. I stained some of it prior to their visit, but we did almost all of the work on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

We only had a ladder and a step stool, so my mom got creative with this Swiffer mop to help hold the boards in place while my dad drilled them into the beams.

After the ceiling was all in place, my dad added the ceiling fan! It works and is lovely out there! Good times with some GREAT parents! :)

Another Farewell

I had another friend leave this week. The only good news is that I don't think I know of anyone else who's leaving. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Wednesday night we said good-bye to Julie who's heading back to BYU Idaho. Hopefully she'll be back in December for an internship. She left on Thursday morning. For her last night out, we went to the Movie Tavern and had dinner while watching the new GI Joe movie. We got some frosties from Wendy's afterward and just had a bunch of fun. Julie, we'll miss you!

Back to School!

Well, it's that time of the year again!

My first official day back (pre-kids) began with a limo ride. The leadership team rode in style to our district convocation. One of our staff members has a boyfriend who owns a limo company. He donated two for us to ride on over that morning. How nice was that?

This is my new first grade team in front of one of the new murals that were painted in our school over the summer. I really like my teammates.

This is my class. I took this one yesterday after lunch. I got a new student today so he's not in the picture.

Here's one with me in it. We did a silly one just before this and I don't think some of the kids got it out of their systems. Here goes my 9th year of teaching first grade!

Girls Night!

We had a fun girls' night out last weekend for Rachael's birthday.

We had a delicious dinner at Olive Garden and then went and watched "The Time Traveller's Wife." Too bad that we all had to spread out at the movie. We got there too late to get seats next to each other. That gave several ladies freedom to cry without wondering if anyone would see or what they would think! :)

The rest of these are a bunch of random shots around the table . . . just for fun. Here's Kim, Rachael, and Megan with her spiffy new haircut!

These are Rachael's roommates - Bonnie and Hillary.

Heather, Nikki, and Adena

Yours truly and Mauren.

Rachael, Stephani, and me again!

Here's the cute song the waiters sang to Rachael. It was a great night!

Hilarious Jokes

I love The Office! I never get tired of this video clip. Watch if you need a good laugh!

Last Day of Summer

Friday was the last official day of my summer vacation. I didn't count the weekend since I'll have those off anyway. A group of us decided to have some fun, so we went down to Galveston for a relaxing day at the beach.

Julie's going to kill me for posting this picture, but it was too funny not too. She can plug her nose like this! I couldn't believe it. Of course, we all had to give it a try! None of us had that talent.

We took the ferry over to Crystal Beach. Stacie was asleep for these next few pictures, but we wanted to get a few group shots of us.

We were pretty excited that we all found matching shirts at this surf shop in Galveston.

This is on the ferry coming back. We saw wild dolphins on both legs of the ferry trip. It was a lot of fun.

We finally got Stacie in a picture.

We were heading back at sunset and it was so beautiful. Kim got this shot at SeaWolf Park. It's been a great summer!

Prank War

We have a prank war on our hands. Luckily, I am not a target, but have sort of assisted in both sides.

The other night Julie put cookies all over Nate's windows on his van. It was really late at night, so he left them on. The next day while his van was parked at work, the cookies started to melt and slide down, then it rained so they were all mushy and nasty. He had to go through the car was twice.

His payback came quickly. He got some of Jr.'s diapers and melted chocolate candy bars in them. We actually caught him with the last two in his hands before he put them on her car.

There were quite a few on there!

It looked pretty nasty, as you can see.

This one was especially bad. At least it smelled good, though! Julie's got for a week and half; we'll see if she retaliates!

More of Kath's House

Lots of my last few evenings of summer have been spent over at Katherine's new house. She's really been working on EVERYTHING, but luckily, she's had some fun friends to help out.

I'll admit that it hasn't all been work. This paint fight happened a few weeks ago.

Nate and Kim got the worst of it, but somehow, I got a wet paintbrush shoved in my mouth. It wasn't Kim.

Samira and Julie were working on this blue accent wall in the master bedroom and Samira couldn't resist Julie's dare to make an imprint on the wall.

Katherine's brother Ricky put in tile flooring in the kitchen, laundry, and both bathrooms. He did tons of other work as well the week he was here. In this picture Stacie is taking off the fronts of the drawers and cabinets for staining.

Kim did most of the actual staining.

I helped out with that as well. This picture was the day Kirsten came in and was also the day before the luau - that's why I had my hair braided, so it would look more Polynesian-ish for my dance.

This video of Julie cracks me up. Nate had her using the nail gun to put up some trim and she would yelp or scream every time she shot it. By the time I got the camera out, she was trying to hold it in, but I caught a little one in this video.

Just a couple of nights ago after working at the house, I got to cut Nate's hair. I was pretty excited about it. I've only ever trimmed Susannah's hair so I was excited to try his.

I thought I was pretty cool until he told me he usually lets his kids cut it! Great!

I posted a few of these to show the world that most of my guy friends cannot seem to make nice normal faces in pictures. Why?

I loved this shot of Katherine taking a break from putting some texture on her ceiling! It's been fun and there's still more work to do!

Bye Scotty!

Summer's almost over, which means a lot of things. One of the sad things is that some of my friends are leaving.

Scott was just here for the summer for an internship. He has to go back to Weber to finish up school. We had a couple "farewells" for him before he left. First, he had a bunch of tickets to get into this giant arcade place called ITZ. We had a lot of fun. The guys got kind of hooked on this car race game.

He left on Monday. We had dinner and game night at my house to say good-bye. Here's a group picture of the friends who were there.

Before Scott drove off into the distance we set off a few firecrackers. It was pretty loud! We'll miss you Scotty!

Luau

It's time again for our annual Houston YSA Luau. Our ward was in charge once again.

Sort of a change this year, was that they got a real pig. As you can see, it's not very big, so we still had a bunch of roasts that were cooked as well.

It was quite the ordeal to get it on the spit. I took a lot of pictures which look pretty gross now! It smelled good out there while this was roasting, though!

Here's Scotty already to do the Haka!

Here's the finished pig. I think it was more for show during the luau. Don't worry, though, I'm sure it got eaten.

Here are some of the fabulous servers.

There was a good sized crowd there - around 400 people!

Nikki did the Tahitian number with me this year since Susannah is now a resident of Idaho. She was kind enough to let Nikki borrow her costume.
We wanted to take a few pictures before our dance so we wouldn't be all sweaty! :)

We had to take a hip shaking picture before our dance.

Nate showed up just before the performances started. He brought Katherine's brother, Ricky, who was in town to help her out with stuff on her house.

Here are some of the guys doing the Haka.
My dance turned out pretty okay. For some reason, I can't get the video on here. If you want to see it, check it out on my Facebook profile or come visit me! :)

Kirsten

Kirsten has been in Guatemala all summer. She's been learning Spanish and doing all sorts of volunteer work.

It just so happened that she had a layover in Houston on her way back to UT. Kim and I picked her up at the airport and got to hang out with her for about an hour. It was great to see her, but I wish she could have stayed longer!