Nice Neighbors and Classroom in Del Rio

While we were away on our honeymoon, our neighbors across the street took care of our house and got the mail.  We came home on Sunday morning at 2am with a big trailer full of my stuff.  We parked in the driveway and went straight to bed!  After flying and driving all day, we were exhausted!!  When we woke up the next morning to unload the trailer, we found that our neighbors had put a fun sign on the trailer to welcome us back:

Our house and my classroom were a mess for several weeks after the honeymoon (it's only been five...), and we are finally finishing up and getting things clean!

The weekend before school started, I finally got my classroom ready for my students!  We started school a week ago, so it is not quite as clean as it was in all these pictures... The piles on my desk have grown to immense proportions, and the desks aren't in straight rows anymore, but it still looks pretty good! :-)

Here are some pictures (click on the collage to make it bigger)...

My classes are packed to the brim, so I have had to add 8 extra chairs so all the kids in my geometry class don't have to sit on the floor!  Luckily, the school likes to freeze us out in the mornings, so it doesn't get hot and stuffy until about the end of 7th period.

School is going pretty well, although it is quite an adjustment to go from 75 students to 175!! (Actually, I haven't done official class counts in a few days, and they are changing almost every day, so I'm not really sure how many kids I have....)  I have learned all the names of the kids in 5th period, though, and know all of them by sight (almost).  I'm still working on the other classes, but I feel like I am making good progress!!  The papers everyday, though, are a little staggering, but I think I can get used to it.

The kids make me laugh everyday, and some of them drive me to the edge of frustration every day.  They are just your typical 15 and 16 year olds!  I actually received a hug from a kid the other day...one of the freshman boys in my class.  I was a little shocked, but it felt nice to know that I was accepted by at least one person!  Another kid wanted me to pound fists with him the other day...I'm still learning those moves. :-)  I've had a great time getting to know the kids and the teachers, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year.  Busy, busy, busy!!

And, on top of this, I have started a master's program at the university in Del Rio.  The school district is paying for the math and science teachers to get their master's degrees as part of their school improvement plan, so of course, I had to jump on board.  Who would turn down that kind of opportunity?!?!  So, I'm going to classes on Wednesday night and working on an online math class as well.  It's all very exciting, and I am glad to be doing it!

Now, off to grade papers and finish planning for tomorrow...

Wedding and Honeymoon!

The wedding was amazing and beautiful and was everything we hoped that it would be!!  We have so many pictures to look at from all of my friends, family, and professional photographer!!  If you want to see the professional photos, here's the link to the website: www.blackburnstudios.com.  Click on the "more photos" icon in the bottom left, and scroll down until you see the "Kinley-Daniels wedding".  Then, you can click on the photos to see them bigger than thumbnail size!!  My cousin also took some amazing pictures, and I have a great assortment to look at from my friends!!

Here are a couple of my own pictures:

My bridesmaid and house party at the Chocolate Bar in Houston!

Left side: My sister and I

Top right: House party girls - Sarah, Jen, Sperry, and Niestradt

Bottom left: my bridesmaids - Kelly, Katie, Jen, and Catherine (my friend Laura showed up later, on the day before the wedding!)

Getting our hair done and getting moral support from my bridesmaids!

Getting dressed before the wedding!

Why I love my friends :-)  (We were all laughing so hard over this...)

My dear friends Brad and Jen Ragan and my new husband! :-)

Our honeymoon was amazing.  Costa Rica is a beautiful place, and we absolutely loved it.  We arrived there the Sunday night after the wedding and had private transportation to our beautiful hotel in San Jose.  The next morning, we had another private van to take us to the Tabacon Springs in La Fortuna.  The trip out there was beautiful, and we had a very talkative guide who told us many things about the country!  I practiced my Spanish a little bit and was so glad he was so patient!  We stayed at the hot springs for two nights, enjoying a horseback riding trip by the famous volcano which led us to a beautiful waterfall!  Travis was also really excited about eating a banana straight off a tree.  We couldn't find the perfect one, though, until we made it to our next stop!  Here are some pictures (you can click on the collages to make them bigger)...

After our two day stay at the hot springs, we had (yet another) private transportation to our next stop.  We were heading to the river for a rafting trip which would take us to Pacuare Lodge, a "hotel" out in the middle of the jungle!  We met another couple from North Carolina, and they joined us on the river for the six mile raft into the jungles.  We stopped at the lodge, where we stayed for two nights in our own, private honeymoon suite.  It was quite a hike to get up to our lofty residence, but the view was stunning, and we enjoyed the seclusion.  We were waited on, hand and foot, by really nice people the entire time.  They cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday for us, and the food was amazing.  We took a canopy tour on the ropes course they had on the property, and we hiked to a waterfall (twice!).  It only rained once while we were there, and it was the most relaxing morning I have ever had.  We sat in our room and watched the rain come down.  There wasn't any electricity, so at night, we saw by candlelight.  The dinners were candlelit, and the rooms were also full of candles.  It was amazing!!  Here are pictures...

Along the way, our driver stopped to show us this really cool tree full of iguanas!  The man who owned the "Restaurante Las Iguanas" apparently feeds the iguanas so they will stick around, and has about 45 - 50 giant ones hanging out in the tree outside the restaurant!

This was our private honeymoon suite! :-)

After our two day stay at Pacuare, we got back in the rafts with two other couples and a family and started out on the 13 mile rafting trip back out of the jungles.  We stopped at a beautiful waterfall along the way and also had a stop for lunch.  The guides, again, made an amazing lunch and treated us like royalty.  Our rafting guide, Jose, was so awesome and made the trip really exciting.  Even when I lost my paddle, he still had a good attitude! (It floated downstream later, all bent and gimpy...)  He ran us straight into a rock at one point, and almost all of us fell out of the boat.  We almost lost him in one of the rapids, but we finally all made it out together.  A kayaking guide was also there, and he would speed ahead of us and take pictures as we were coming down the rapids.  This is why we have so many amazing pictures to share!!

This was the beautiful waterfall where we stopped along the river...

And, some of our fun river pictures!!

Once we got off the river, we had a four hour ride back to San Jose.  We dropped the other couples off at their hotels, got stuck in traffic, and FINALLY made it to our hotel by the airport.  After all our beautiful lodgings that week, the Holiday Inn wasn't really that exciting. :-)  We were so tired, though, that it didn't matter.  We laid out all our damp clothes from the rafting trip (which smelled awesome, by the way), had some dinner, and went to sleep.  We didn't really want to leave, but we drug ourselves to the airport the next morning to catch our flight.

The trip was absolutely amazing, and we both really enjoyed it!  We are looking forward to the chance to do something like this again.  Pura vida!

Fourth of July Wedding!

Travis and I traveled to Portland, Oregon this weekend to attend our friends' wedding on the fourth of July.  Calvin and Travis lived in a duplex together during pilot training in Del Rio and became pretty good friends.  I was there for the graduation when Danielle came to visit, so she and I got to know each other pretty well.  We had some fun adventures running errands for the guys while everyone was preparing for graduation!

So, Travis was an usher in the wedding this weekend.  He and four other of Calvin's friends from the Air Force were all in uniform and led people to their seats.  Several people wanted pictures with them, too!  Then, the guys all did a saber arch at the front door for the bride and groom to walk through at the end of the wedding.  It was a big hit!  We had a blast at the wedding, and we were really glad we could make it.  There were some major flight delays out of Del Rio, putting us in Portland 7 hours later than we expected, but everything turned out great!  We spent a total of 41 hours in Portland, so we are looking forward to having a chance to go back someday when we can actually tour around and see things!  The smalls bits of the city that we did see were absolutely beautiful!

Here are a couple of pictures:

The bride, groom, and all the ushers!

Walking under the saber arch at the end of the wedding

The formal, fancy picture of all the guys...

And then the fun, goofing around, boys playing with swords picture, of course!!

And, I was lucky enough to get a picture with one of the handsome ushers as well! :o)

Summer is flying by!!

I can't believe there are only 25 days left until the wedding!!  It's already the end of June!  SO much has happened in the past month, and I am really looking forward to July!

First thing, good news!  I officially have a job in Del Rio for the next school year.  Del Rio High School called me and offered me a job I just couldn't say no to.  I am going to be teaching Geometry and Algebra to 10th graders at the high school.  I went last week and signed all the paperwork and took a picture for my new id badge!  Then, I went and met the assistant principal and the librarian to get copies of the textbooks for my classes next year.  Both were very nice, and I enjoyed meeting them.  I feel really good about this decision to work at the high school, and I am looking forward to getting started in August.  I will have about a week after I get home from the honeymoon to finish unpacking, and then I have to be at school for inservice.  Since I'm new to the district, I will have two weeks of training and inservice.  This will be good, though, because I will have more chances to get to the school and get my classroom set up and get ready for the classes.  I'm also looking forward to meeting all the other people who are going to be working there!  The place is huge, so I will need to know somebody!

Second, I have officially moved all of my stuff to Del Rio.  I hired some people in Del Rio to unload my huge truck of stuff, and then Travis, my dad, and I all moved the furniture around into the right places.  So the skeleton of the house is in place.  Now all that is left to do is unload all the boxes (currently filling up the garage) into all the correct places, and we will be set.  I'm excited that we got as much done as we did!!  Travis has also finished building the fence, so he's excited to move on to all the other little projects around the house that he wants to complete.

Then, I spent a fabulous weekend in Colorado with Travis and his family.  We stayed in Silverthorne, Colorado, but drove around to different places each day for different things.  We went hiking, shopped in Breckenridge and Vail, and ate lots of good food cooked by the family!  Travis and I also spent a day driving out to Colorado Springs to see the Air Force Academy, which was so much fun and awesome to see.  We also visited the Garden of the Gods before we came back for dinner.

Tomorrow, I have my bridal portraits!!  I can't wait!  This weekend, I am going with Travis to Portland, Oregon for one of his friend's weddings.  Then, it will only be a few more weeks until the wedding!!

Wedding plans are coming along very well.  All the big things are taken care of...now, we are just putting the finishing touches on our projects and paying the final deposits.  We are starting to cook and freeze food for the week of the wedding and preparing for all our guests to arrive.  My mom has lists (and lists...) of things to do, and we are checking things off, one by one.  It's going to be a great wedding!  Don't worry, I'm savoring every moment.  But...I am still so excited for everything to happen!!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer.  Happy 4th of July this weekend!!

25 days left to go... 

Fence Progress

This will be the last post today, I promise!  I just had so much to catch up on, and finally had a chance to sit down and share!  It's been a little busy around here lately!

While I am working on my house, Travis has been working on the fence at our house in Del Rio.  He is making a lot of progress and is almost done!!  Here are some shots of what he has been doing:

He's done some welding for the metal frame of the fence, and then he built the trench to mold the cement around the base.  He had some help pouring the cement, but then he drilled in every single board by himself.  Now he is in the process of painting the fence with a sealant to keep it from rotting too quickly.  What amazing work!!

Time to pack...

Since school is over, now I have time to focus on the next major project: packing my house and moving to Del Rio.  I am packing everything up this weekend, and then moving it all to Del Rio later in June.  In the meantime, I will be living in Houston so my mom and I can finish up the wedding planning!  Right now, my house is full of boxes that are being carefully and neatly stacked in the closets and garage so that I can continue showing my house:

There are boxes everywhere!! And yes, there is furniture in the closet.  I can't wait to be in our new house in Del Rio!  I am living out of suitcases and travel bags for the next two months, and my house is full of boxes!  And, I'm grateful for the fact that I will be moving every three years.  I have accumulated so much junk just living here the past few years; I have made a trip to Goodwill almost every day with more bags of donations!  I have also sold at least 100 books!

My garage is a disaster at the moment, but when my relator showed it today, she said it was okay because "you can still see all the space."  Haha...

And here is my charming ball of joy and fur who was "helping" us all weekend.  Actually, he was pretty amused by all the packing material, and I was constantly pulling him out of bags.  He always gets really nervous when I start packing my suitcase, because it usually means he is alone for the weekend, but he is not sure what to think about my packing of all these boxes!  He's a little confused, which is possibly why he looks so angry in the picture...

 

My dad has been in town helping me to pack this weekend: he packed the entire kitchen and would build boxes for me on command!  We went out to the Oasis for lunch one afternoon for one last hurrah in Austin.  It was a beautiful day, and all the umbrellas kept us nice and cool on the patio.  Notice how incredibly low the lake is...not good for all the boaters this summer!

So, this week, I am working the volleyball camp at school in the mornings and continuing to pack my stuff in the afternoon.  I have a meeting with my relator and other last minute things to do in Austin, and then I am heading to Houston on Thursday!  And, great news!  My dress has arrived in the store, and I have my first fitting on Thursday of this week!  Whoo hoo!  I know it's going to be too big, because I have lost some weight since I tried it on in January, so hopefully the alterations won't take too long.  I can't wait!!

I won't post the countdown of the number of days until the wedding, because it really freaks my mom out, but it's close!! :-)

District Champs!

And, one final awesome thing that happened at school this year: my volleyball team tied for 1st place in the district!  It was very exciting, because it meant that the school finally got a banner for the volleyball team.  So, I am leaving my mark on the school by helping to earn the first volleyball team banner that will be displayed in the gym for several years to come!