Finally, a weekend at home!

This weekend has been so nice...spending time at home, catching up on sleep and cleaning.  Travis is spending his last weekend in San Antonio packing and getting ready to head back to Del Rio.  He will be moving back to Del Rio on Monday - he is all finished with his instructor training course!  So while he was busy with all of that, I stayed in Austin.

Friday night was rockin.  I made it my goal to get all my work done, so I graded papers all afternoon and evening.  I also caught up on all my shows that I dvr-ed over spring break.  While I was sitting there working, I got a phone call from a realtor who wanted to show my house on Saturday.  So, once I finished my work, then I had to clean up my house.  Nothing like vacuuming at 10pm on a Friday night!  Whoo!

Then, up at 5:45am on Saturday morning to get to the volleyball tournament out by Dripping Springs.  Miserable experience - the other coaches were out of control while I was reffing and completely ruined my time there.  I was already nervous about having to ref the games, and their comments and screams were so unhelpful.  My kids played well, but for some reason, we can't win games.  I have a couple of girls whose attitudes are bringing the team down, and the rest of my kids are so quiet and shy that they can't stand up for the team.  So the second we start to lose, the girls get mad and get quiet; and then we lose the game.  Only two tournaments left until the end of club volleyball.  I'm not enjoying it as much as I have in the past.  (I think I am just overwhelmed with so much to do that I just can't devote as much of myself to it as usual!)

After the tournament, I couldn't go home because the realtor was coming by, so I went to Target.  And, by the time I left Target, I was in a much better mood!  I bought new makeup, a new hairdryer, new pillow, and even a few treats for Mr. Ed.  I shopped around for other things and found all sorts of new things to try - face wash, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.  I haven't updated all that stuff in a while, so it was fun to shop!  I went home and slept the rest of the afternoon!

And this afternoon, I am going to the mall to hang out with a couple of friends and their babies.   I am looking forward to seeing them!  And an afternoon at the mall is never a bad thing!

Updates on other stuff:

My house selling is going well.  I have had several people coming through to look at the house, and I have another open house today (Sunday) from 1-4pm.  My house is clean ALL the time.  The feedback I am getting is positive, so I am hopeful that the right person will come along soon!  One of my friends in Austin has offered me a room in her house if my house does sell before the end of the school year, so I am not concerned at all.  I know everything will happen at the right time!

School is as busy as ever.  The TAKS math test is coming up in one week (April 7th) so we are all in high gear getting the kids ready.  And sadly, I talked with my principal and signed my resignation letter.  It was really sad to have to sign the letter and tell Susan that I was leaving, but the reasons for leaving are so positive that I can't really complain.  I will miss the school and all the people there; I have worked there for four years, and so much has happened during that time that has brought me so close to all the people I work with.  They have been so supportive of me while I have learned how to teach, what not to do, how to deal with grief, how to deal with success and failure in the classroom, and so many other things that have made me who I am now.  I will miss everyone so much, but I am looking forward to starting the next chapter in my life with Travis.

My hurdlers are doing a great job at the meets and are really standing out and making great times in the races.  I am really proud of myself for the work I am doing with them this year!  We have two more track meets, and I have a few kids who may be able to break the school records, so we will be training hard the next few weeks.

My last volleyball tournament will be at the Dallas Convention Center over the April 17th weekend.  My friend and I are going to be driving up there together, and I am excited to spend some time with her.  We used to coach together, but this year, I haven't seen her at all!  Our teams are on entirely different schedules, so we rarely cross paths.  Also, I have entered my team into a division where I think we might actually do well, so hopefully we can end on a positive note.

Mr. Ed is just as cute and snuggly as ever.  He has been such a trooper through all the changes happening around him.  I had to pack away all of his toys and his bed, so all he has in the house is food and a litter box.  He spends the days with strangers in the house as people are coming through to look at the house.  I am never home because I am so busy, and when I do come home, all I do is sleep.  He still loves me though, and will snuggle with me at night and help me grade papers when he can.  He is currently curled up in my lap, enjoying the fact that I have been home for almost 14 hours straight!

And of course....wedding planning.  Everything is going really well.  My mom has been so helpful in organizing and getting everything together, so it is all moving along smoothly.  I spent my spring break in Houston, and we had some fun and accomplished so much!  There is still a lot to do, but we made some serious progress.

Now, I'm off to clean up the house again to get ready for the open house in *gasp* one hour!!!  Where did the time go??   (That's the story of my life right now!!)

And the countdowns:

1 week until the TAKS test.

2 weeks until track season is over.

3 weeks until volleyball season is over.

10 weeks until school is over!!

17 weeks until the wedding! (118 days!)

 

It's finally spring break!

What a crazy and busy week this has been!  I am so glad it is finally spring break.  It's going to be a fun and busy week!

I'm home for Friday night, cleaning my house for the open house my realtor is having here this weekend.  She's opening my house from 10:30am-4pm on Saturday and 1-4pm on Sunday.  I have volleyball practice tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 8:30am because that's the only time our director could get us into the gym.  (We normally practice on Sunday afternoons, but since I am going out of town, I had to reschedule!)  SO, I am leaving my house tomorrow morning at 8:00am with Mr. Ed and all my luggage in tow to head to volleyball practice.  Poor little cat gets to sit in his box in the car almost the entire day!!  I have no choice though, since he can't be around for the open house and has to go with me to Houston.

After volleyball practice and a couple of other errands around town, I am heading to Houston for almost the entire rest of my break.  My mom has very patiently been collecting a list of wedding things to do, since I promised her I would focus on the wedding over spring break.  We have a whole list of appointments, stores to visit, and things to think about for next week!

Travis is in Del Rio this weekend, getting our new house inspected.  We have signed the contracts and are about to own a beautiful house in Del Rio!  We are so excited about getting it all set up!  Travis will be moving back to Del Rio in about two weeks, and we are planning to close on March 31st, as long as all the paperwork goes through.  He will be living in Del Rio again for about four months before I get there, so he'll be able to work on some of the maintenance things we will need to do there.  Then, when I get there in August, we can make it look pretty too!

As his instructor training is coming to an end in San Antonio, Travis is pretty busy getting all the last flights and tests done.  I am planning to see him next week, on my way back to Austin.  He should be finished with everything (weather permitting) by the 26th of March.  He's pretty excited to get back and get started with his real job, but I will sure miss having him so close!

The last Saturday of spring break, I will have another volleyball tournament.  Then, it's back to work on Monday!

And somewhere in there, it's St. Patrick's day...so wear green, smile, and check your mailboxes!

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)

House Hunting

Travis and I made a trip to Del Rio this weekend to start looking for houses.  We looked at about 8 different houses before we found one that we really liked.  We told our realtor to make an offer on it for us, but when she called, the owners had already accepted another offer....about two hours before we made ours.  It was a huge disappointment, but we are planning on going back in a few weeks to look for houses again.  We found a couple of others that we didn't have time to see on this trip, and we are hoping a few more will pop up on the market by the time we head back again.

Then, Travis and I came back to Austin to keep working on getting my house ready to sell.  A couple of weekends ago, we spent the entire day Sunday cleaning, painting, and moving furniture around.   Today, Travis and I got a bed for the downstairs room, a new set of drawers (some assembly required), and a new comforter for the bed.  Travis also moved some bookshelves for me and fixed some crooked shelves.  Everything is starting to look amazing!  All I have to do now is clean the carpets and vacuum/dust everything else and then it will be ready to put on the market.

So, keep us in your thoughts and prayers while we are looking for a house and trying to sell my townhouse!

Wedding Website

Hey everyone!  Here's my first attempt at my wedding website.  There's not much information on there yet, but it's a start!

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/JenniferKinley&TravisDaniels

More information to come soon!

Another Volleyball Weekend!

I travelled to San Antonio this weekend to coach my Eclipse volleyball team in the MLK tournament.  We had a great time, and the team had some crucial bonding time that it really needed!

We played three matches on Saturday morning and three matches on Sunday morning.  Our record overall was 4 wins, 2 losses.  Because of our solid performance, we were placed in the Gold bracket, the highest bracket in the tournament!  There were about 32 teams in our age group, and only 12 made it to the gold bracket, so I was pretty proud of my team.  We played a match on Monday morning in the single elimination bracket, and unfortunately we lost.  BUT, we played a great game, and I saw my kids doing things I didn't know they could do!  It is a lot of fun to coach my 14s team, as they are much more competitive than the 12s.  They know how to play the game, and I enjoy the more advanced coaching that I get to do.

As for the team bonding, we spent some time with Captain Jack Sparrow as our waiter at the Magic Time Machine restaurant, and we invaded the lobby hotel and ate pizza and made t-shirts for our team.  The girls also had some fun swimming in the hotel pool.  There were about four other Eclipse teams staying in the same hotel, so no one seemed to mind the noise!

Overall, a fun, but busy weekend!

The Proposal

Well, 2009 is off to a great start so far!

The Proposal (I warn you, it's long.  I decided I could write as much as I wanted because you can choose how much you want to read!!)

On December 19, the last day of school before the holiday vacation, Travis came to school and managed to let all the office staff, my 8th period class, and about 15 other faculty members know that he was planning to propose to me that afternoon instead of just talking with my students (like we had planned!).  He came in the front office to check in, and then he asked the office staff for help with his plan.  They eagerly (with lots of screaming, I was told...) pitched in to help and came up with a plan to get me out of my room long enough for him to fill the kids in on the plan as well.  By the time one of the APs had walked him down to my room 15 minutes later, about half the school knew what was going on, and several teachers were waiting down a hallway near my room for me to leave so they could sneak in!  I, of course, had no idea this was going on and was eagerly waiting his arrival in my classroom.  The kids were going nuts, it was the day before a holiday, and I was ready to get to vacation!  When he finally came down to my room, I was a little confused why he was escorted down by an assistant principal, but was quickly distracted by a co-worker running in and begging for my help in an emergency.  I couldn't believe that she was asking me to leave the room after I had been waiting all day for him to get to school!  But, after making the kids promise to be nice to him, I left the room.

I was dragged next door and discovered that the "emergency" was a serious game of hangman that couldn't be solved.  I was a little upset, but started to play along; I couldn't quite figure out why this was important...  So I guessed "A".  The students who were running the game got excited because, yes, there was an A, but then they made me wait while they checked the dictionary to see where it was in the twenty letter word they had on the board.  When that happened, I was done; I couldn't wait another second to get back to my room, so I left.

My door was closed and locked (weird, I had left it open...), and when I finally got in the room, all my students were sitting at strict attention in their desks, and at least 20 teachers, secretaries, and the principal were sitting in my room.  Some thoughts that instantly went through my confused mind: Why on earth was Susan crying? Why are all these people here?  You know, I really didn't think Travis was going to be that interesting!  How did they know he was coming?  I was so throughly convinced that I wasn't getting proposed to (more stories about Travis' clever deceptions later), that I didn't even consider it as an option!

So, while my kids were being so quiet and attentive, Travis started his speech.  He was in his flight suit and started out by introducing himself and saying that I had asked him to come and talk to them about math (I had to have a good excuse, right??).  I settled down, convinced he was just going to say what we had planned.  So, his speech continued something like this....

"Well, guys, I was planning to talk to you about math, but I figured you guys have had enough of that for today.  And, Ms. Kinley told me that I could talk about anything that I wanted, as long as I didn't embarass her.  So, I have decided to completely ignore her request.  Ms. Kinley, would you please come to the front of the room?"

I couldn't believe it.  He called me up to the front of the room, took my hands, and got down on one knee, right there in front of everyone.  As soon as he did that, all the kids in the class yelled out "Will you marry me?" at the top of their lungs.  Everyone was laughing, crying, and generally being excited.  I was so overwhelmed and shocked that I couldn't believe it; I started shaking with excitement and couldn't stop smiling.  All of a sudden, Travis says, "wait, hold on a minute.  I forgot the ring!"  He had to get up and run over to my desk, dig the ring out of his bag, and come back to kneel down again.

I said yes!

It was just about the most wonderful thing ever.  All the little girls in my class swarmed around us, staring at me like I was the most amazing thing they had ever seen.  Teachers and staff kept streaming into the room, congratulating me and giving me hugs.  Students from my other classes were coming in to see what was happening; students I didn't know were stopping by to congratulate me! (For anyone who works in a school, we all know how fast news can travel!)  I couldn't believe it had happened and was so excited!  Needless to say, it was an amazing start to my vacation!

Travis and I were lucky enough to get to spend our entire two week vacation together, visiting our families in Houston and Dallas and then traveling to New York with my family.  It was an amazing time, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  It was so hard to come back to Austin alone on Sunday!

So, now the planning and fun can all begin!!!  What a great way to spend the majority of the new year!!  And all my kids wanted to hear the story and see the ring again on Monday, so I got to relive all the excitement again at work.  I can't wait to see what the future will hold!

Happy New Year to everyone!