School, Houses and Traffic

It's been a while, but things have been busy around here!  February, March, and April are always my busiest times of the year.  First, I have my normal two classes that I have been teaching all year, and now a third class is added into my schedule.  Four days a week, I have a group of six - eight students who are in math tutoring in preparation for the TAKS test.  Then, club volleyball really gets busy with practices twice a week and tournaments on almost every weekend until April 19.  And then, track season starts in the middle of February and runs until the middle of April!  So needless to say, my life gets crazy this time of year.  Add in wedding planning and the fact that I work out three times a week, and yup, it's busy!!

School is going well as we are gearing up for the TAKS test.  The 8th graders take the reading test this coming Tuesday, and then they take the math test on April 7th (yikes!).  I am doing everything I can to get the kids ready, and it is officially crunch time.  My classes are going well - I am adding, subtracting, and multiplying polynomials to the Algebra kids and they are pretty excited about it.  My grade-level kids and I are struggling through geometry (which mainly just involves using formulas to find surface area, volume, etc) together and are about to move into our next unit of probability.  Those two units - geometry and probability - are probably the hardest ones for these kids to understand, so they are the most difficult ones to work the kids through!  BUT...the light is bright at the end of the tunnel.  Only TWO WEEKS until spring break!  And then, we have about 15 weeks until the end of the school year.

For spring break, I am spending the majority of the time in Houston working on wedding plans.  Then, I will be back in Austin at the end of the break for the volleyball tournament I have that weekend.

This past weekend was the first weekend I have been free in a while, so Travis and I went back to Del Rio again to look at another round of houses.  We actually found two houses that we really liked this time and have filled out paperwork for both of them!  We are pretty sure we won't get the first house, which is beautiful and perfect in every way, so we have a back-up that we like just as much, but will require a little more work to be perfect.  We really like both houses, though, so now we are just waiting to see if our first offer gets any response!  We're keeping our fingers crossed and hoping we have a house by April!

Travis is almost done with instructor training in San Antonio, and as people are finishing the course in front of him, he is starting to move faster through the lessons and flights.  He will probably be moving back to Del Rio at the end of March.  Right now, he is enjoying his flying mixed with golfing and hanging out with his friends.  As soon as he gets back to Del Rio, though, he will be pretty busy as he starts his new job!  It has been nice to have him so close for the past five months, especially since I have been pretty busy.  Going back to Del Rio will make it a little harder for us to see each other so often, but by then, I won't be so busy, so I will have a little more time to travel!

The trip back from San Antonio today, though, was pretty miserable!  I left San Antonio at 12:45pm and did not arrive back at my house until 5pm.  What should have been a 1.5 hour drive turned into a long and boring wait on the freeway.  Apparently, right after I got on the freeway, there was a HUGE accident about fifteen miles in front of me.  I traveled pretty easily for about ten miles, and then traffic came to a shuddering halt.  From 1-2pm, I traveled 0.75 miles.  From 2-3:30pm, I traveled 0.5 miles....total.  The entire freeway was closed down, and cars were just sitting on the freeway and feeder road.  No one was moving, and when we did, it wasn't far.  People were getting out of their cars and standing in the middle of the road, trying to see what was going on a few miles ahead of us.  I was really glad Travis and I had gone to Target to wander around that morning, because I had bought two new books and had them with me in the car.  I read about 100 pages of one of those books while I was sitting on I-35.  Finally, at 3:30pm, the road was opened and traffic began moving again.  Traveling on the road with a whole bunch of drivers who had been sitting for two and a half hours, though, was no fun.  People were speeding and narrowly avoiding more accidents as we all continued driving towards Austin.

So, finally, I am home and am fixing to watch some hurdles videos to prepare for track practice tomorrow.  Then, I am working on updating my registries with the new dishes I just found at Crate and Barrel!!  And somewhere in there, I am spending time with my attention-deprived kitty who wants nothing more than to cuddle up in my lap and meow in my face while I am trying to do everything else!!

Summer in four months, wedding in five! :o)