More on War Eagle!

Before we went to Auburn on Saturday, I stopped by this little guy's house. Since he was wearing his blue PJ's, we took a picture in our orange and blue clothing!

Stephen is already an Auburn fan at such a young age.You may ask, how do you know he is already an Auburn fan? He can't talk or cheer or acknowledge that the colors orange and blue are so much better looking than crimson. Well this little story may prove how faithful to Auburn he truly is.

Stephen has been a big eater since he was born. This child has never missed a meal that has been offered to him. And I mean never! He eats when he is hungry. He eats when he is tired. He eats when he is upset. He eats whenever his mamma is around. He is always willing to eat, and willing to eat for long periods of time. However, when traveling to Mississippi, the Spooners stopped in Tuscaloosa to feed Stephen. It had been the appropriate amount of time since his last meal, and they decided that now was a good time to feed him. However, the tiny child refused to eat! His parents were baffled! This was a first for Stephen. So they decided to drive on. Then about 30 minutes later, once they were clear from Tuscaloosa, they tried to feed him again. This time it was successful. The moral of the story is: Stephen is anti-Tuscaloosa like any true Auburn fan!

His Aunt Lu and Uncle Nick are hoping his first words will be War Eagle!

War Eagle!

This past weekend was our first Auburn game to attend for the 2009 football season! We have been looking forward to this for a while! The tailgating, orange and blue clothing, the eagle flying, and the football were all very exciting! This game was the Auburn vs. Mississippi State game. This is always a big game for us because Nick and I are both from Mississippi. Also, Nick grew up as a huge MSU fan. However, after going to Auburn for four years, he has converted to an Auburn fan (he still cheers for MSU unless they are playing Auburn). Nick's parents are also MSU fans, and they came over for the game. We had a great time tailgating with them and few other of our State friends! We also had a great time because Auburn won! War Eagle!

We are not going to Auburn this weekend, but we will be watching it on TV. Good luck against West Virginia!

Back to School

Some people say teachers are lucky because we get the whole summer off from work (summer was only 2 months, not 3 like most non-teachers think). Well having the summers off is a perk, but if I had to spend a entire year around 12 and 13 year old students, then I would have to switch professions. Fortunately, I had a really great summer! I have travled, cooked, rested, shopped, swam, and been lazy. Unfortunately I am now back to school.

My first couple of weeks at school have not been too bad. The first week back to school involved getting my classroom ready, attending meetings, sorting paper work, and figuring out what I am going to do this year. The students' first day was August 10th.

This year is only my second year of teaching. I teach 7th grade math, and I have been reading up on how to make my year better. The First Days of School by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary Wong and Shouting Won't Grow Dendrites by Marcia L. Tate are two books that have really helped me start this year off in the right direction. Things are already easier than last year. My main problem now is how many students I have in my classroom! I'm already 3 weeks in, and I only have about 25% of their names memorized. Last year I had about 115 students total. My biggest class was about 23 students. This year I have close to 160 total, and my biggest class is 35 students. It took me one whole Sunday afternoon to just grade all of my students' papers! However, my students this year are more pleasant than my previous group. . Hopefully this year will be a much happier year in my classroom. One thing that makes me happier in my class already is my Keurig Coffee maker. I can now make a really good cup of coffee at any time during the day, and this always makes me happy! I just hope I will come home before 5:00 every afternoon! Not every teacher leaves at 3:15 (this is another myth believed by non-teachers).

Here are a few pictures of my classroom. I am in the same room as last year, but I made a few changes from last year.

Lately....

Lately, I have been busier than normal because school has started! I will soon have a whole post dedicated to that, but until then, I'll show you what else Nick and I have been up to in the past couple of weeks!


LATELY.....


We grew some roses.

We had a few new guest in our pool.

I made some chocolate cake.

And we bought some really good ice cream.

We baby sat the baby.

And then we made him laugh!
We first moved the chandelier, and then we used our dining room table for the first time.
And we had friends over to the pool.

Aquapalooza at Lake Martin

This past weekend Nick and I attended Aquapalooza at Lake Martin! It was awesome! I have really never seen anything like this before. This was like one huge tailgating party, but everything was on water! Everyone had their own place to hang out (on a boat), drinks, food, grills, school flags, and people swam around from boat to boat.We were on the water from noon til about 8:00pm. Alan Jackson was the main event, but he did not play until 6 o'clock. While we waited for Alan, a few other country bands played for the crowd. To give you some idea of how it was like on Lake Martin this past weekend, take a look at these pictures.

This picture is from WSFA.com. This is a shot from the sky.

This is coming in on the boat towards the crowd

As we get closer the crowd gets bigger!

Getting closer to the crowd and the stage

This is coming down the center isle of all the boats

John George, Nick, and Dale floating in the water

This is what we saw to the left of our boat. People are swimming around and shuttle boats are dropping people off on their boats. People came and parked their boat in the spot they wanted on the day before the concert.

This is to the right of our boat.

This is view from the back of our boat.

There was a boat throwing out T-shirts and floats. Nick and Dale swam out to try to get a shirt. During this process, Nick accidently pulled all of the floats from the boat. This caused everyone nearby to swim as fast as they could to get a free blue and white float. Above you can see some people getting their floats. Below you can see what all Nick gained during this time. He got 3 floats, 2 huggies, and a t-shirt! This whole things was very entertaining!

See all the blue and white floats? Thanks to Nick, all of these people left with a new float!

Nick and Stephen floating

This was most of our crowd

More floating pictures:

NOW TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT ELSE WE SAW ON THIS FUN DAY!

We saw some cool boats!

We saw some Auburn fans!

We saw some big beers!

We also saw a pirate!

We saw some cool contraptions for people getting to their parked boat! This is how several people transported themselves and their coolers to their spot.

We saw some BIG floats! And we saw some cool floats! For example, floats with umbrellas, floats that have a special spot for your cooler to float, and floats with moters.

We saw helicopters!

We saw volunteers throwing out goodies!

We saw Marine Police!

We saw country singers! This is Caitlin and Will. They won a season of Can You Duet.

Finally, we saw Alan Jackson! He rode in on his boat, the Hoochie Coochie!

The only bad part of the day is when we tried to leave, and the boat would not go! But we got towed by a friend and made it back to shore just fine.

Thanks to the Hutchensons for letting us use their boat and stay at their house! We really appreciate it!