end the sentence

my good friend jennifer did this little game on her blog, so here is my version. read jennifer's too, she is expecting her 4th in less than 2 months. she has 3 boys and this one is a girl!!! she makes lots of cute baby gifts so check them out! please copy & paste these sentences into your blog too!

I just wanna...
rent a big RV and go for a long road trip with our family and see some things. i've only been to 6 states: texas, colorado, michigan, florida, arkansas, new mexico. i need to get out more.

Tomorrow I...
will be celebrating my 7th anniversary with my wonderful husband (it's actually monday, june 2, but we're leaving for austin tomorrow).

I have a...
mess all over my house. i can only see small sections of carpet in our house b/c the rest is currently covered with puzzle pieces, barbies, books, balls, other various toys, shoes, dirty laundry, couch pillows, etc. and the carpet i can see is stained with cool-aid, dirt, dog stuff, you name it. so in a few minutes when i get up to walk away from the computer i will need to choose my steps very carefully so i don't hurt myself.

Can't we...
get that RV and just leave?

This weekend...
is special, it is the end of school, the beginning of glorious summertime, our anniversary and our first time to be kid-less for two whole days (thanks mom & dad!)

In my spare time I...
usually consider doing dishes or picking up the house, but quickly relinquish those thoughts and return to my own selfish pleasures of sleep. read. blog. email. etc.

I can't believe...
i'm going to be 30 in a few months!

Who knew...
an NCAA softball commercial could bring tears to my eyes (the one with the little girls running out to the grass field with their gloves on, then you see them grow up to be college players) -
i seriously wept.

I can't...
believe i get to be a stay-at-home mom all summer, can i get a hallelujah?!

I love...
summer. late nights b/c we don't have to get up early. movies, eating out, going to the pool with the girls. doing whatever we want each day b/c there are no time-constraints. lazy days. summer is like a long weekend that lasts 3 months! i love it!

I absolutely can't stand..
trying to think of something i can't stand. i like most things & people.

I have lost...
my motivation to run. i miss that, but i don't see it coming back any time soon.

Can I have another...
hallelujah? it's summertime!

Blessed Week!

monday: memorial day, we did nothing. brian took avery to our neighborhood pool and i stayed home with tatum b/c she wasn't feeling well (neither was I).

tuesday: gave 1st period final and said goodbye to that sweet class. signed my contract for another year of teaching. i'm really okay with it, not excited, not depressed, just kindof "oh well". hopefully by the end of august i will be ready to go back. a new friend from sunday school, amanda, and her precious little boy jackson came over to play. he & avery played in the sandbox and gave us some good laughs. amanda has a GREAT blog, i added it to my friend list, so check it out. I especially like her title "baby bangs"... I am currently in the midst of a battle with that horrible phenomena that new mothers must deal with. those baby hairs that will not stay clipped back and will only stand straight up on my head, which makes for some pretty depressing hair-days lately. i think i need to buy myself some cute hats.

wednesday: said goodbye to 3rd period... not too terribly heart-wrenching. bethany, jeannine & I took our 7 kids to the pool and let them go nuts for a couple hours. we brought in panera for lunch, yum! i got my first sunburn of the summer, but it's turned kinda tan now. tatum is fearless, she tried several times to dive head first in the water. the kids had a blast and it makes me so thankful for good friends to "do life" with.

thursday: 2nd period came and left. brian found out he got hired for summer school - thank you Jesus! we needed that job. he also found out he doesn't have to coach football next fall, so that opens the door for him to start his master's next fall. again, thankyou Jesus! we are excited about that opportunity. my mom came in town so she could keep the girls friday. we went to clay's resturant again. we love that place!

friday: went to inservice, had to get a bunch of signatures to sign out for the year... really just jumping through hoops. i'm not one to stir the pot, so i jumped through them and drove away from school with a HUGE grin on my face. got fuddruckers for lunch with brian, mom and the girls. another HUGE grin on my face. on TV, watched the aggie girls' softball team beat louisiana and advance to the final 4 - whoop!!!

saturday: we are planning to take the girls to the pool in a few minutes. tonight brian & i are driving to college station to see the aggie regional baseball game - hopefully our boys can have the same outcome as our girls.

tomorrow brian & i are driving to SA to leave the girls with my parents for a few days, so we can get away for our 7th anniversary. we are going to austin - not sure what all we're going to do yet, but we're excited about it. i'm pretty sure our plans will include a round rock express baseball game. Lane's (my best friend growing up) dad is the pitching coach for the express! yes, we do really like baseball.

thankful to be a mom

tonight i am thankful to be a mom... it is so fulfilling to rock my little tate until she's sound asleep and totally at rest in my arms without a care in the world, and to lay next to avery in her bed with her little nose up against my nose and her little giggles make me start to giggle and we just hug each other and laugh. there's really nothing like it in the world.
avery's new thing is doing my hair, i think maybe b/c of her two new barbies, she's really into hair. anyway, every night this week she told me, "mama i need to do your hair." so i sit down and she brushes and clips my hair. brian took a video of it the other night (see below). yes, sometimes i'm biting my lip b/c she's not the most gentle hair-stylist ever, but i can't scold her...she is so focused on doing a good job and getting those clips to stay in!!!



i also wanted to include a picture of the new sandbox steve (brian's dad) built for the girls. i asked him several weeks ago if he could make one for their birthday party, and i just showed him a picture of the small 4x4 wood sandbox that i had in mind. anyway, he made this huge, wonderful thing, and we had fun painting it the day before the party. the girls LOVE it. once tatum learns not to eat the sand, i'll be loving it alot more too.

my little helper.

happy memorial day! our plans are.... absolutely nothing! and we are so happy about that. only 3 days of school left and summer is here! thankyou Jesus for bringing me through this school year! i took some cute pictures of my students last week, here they are.

1st period- LOVE this class, will truly miss them!

2nd period- quiet, but funny & sweet class

3rd period - crazy, loud & friendly class

God blessed me with wonderful students this year. part of the reason i'm worried about teaching next year is b/c i don't see any way i will have kids as good as these ones. good luck class of '09!

psalm 121

funny how sometimes when it rains, it pours. i mean, i have it really good compared to most people on this planet, but sometimes it is a daily struggle just to get up out of bed and focus on the tasks of the day, when your mind is so otherwise engaged. this past week a friend from work, a coach who is about my age, went in to get her appendix out. the doctors saw some dark spots on it and sure enough, she has cancer. she got two feet of her colon removed last week and will probably be starting chemo soon. another close friend just suffered her second miscarriage.
i just started doing beth moore's "psalms of ascent" study and she suggests during this study taking the time each day to literally get on your face before God. it doesn't have to be long, just long enough to confess that He is God and I need Him. I have been doing that for the past couple weeks now and i can't say that i feel any different or that I've experienced any miraculous signs, but i do know that telling Him that each day makes me realize that it's the truth.
anyway, my dad has always liked psalm 121, which is the 2nd psalm of ascent. it starts with "I lift up my eyes to the mountains, where does my help come from? my help comes from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip..." i have reminded myself of this psalm over and over the past couple weeks, and shared it with my friend.

so brian and i still haven't figured out what we're doing next year. there is so much uncertainty in our lives right now it is almost funny. i have never been one to hate my job or hate working, in fact i have always liked "work." but somehow i just don't feel the least bit of excitement about signing my contract. i am praying that God will either open another door for me or give me peace about continuing on where I'm at. i believe He will, i just hope He remembers my contract is due next tuesday. :)

okay i'm almost 30 and i'm a little worried about something... is there ever a time in your life when you just sit back and enjoy life? because i love my husband & girls and we have a good life, but sometimes i just wonder when is life going to start? when are we going to just soak it all in? i'm afraid that i'm going to keep this pace and i will look back one day when i'm 60 and realize that i never really lived. does that make sense? how do you change it? i know you're supposed to "slow down", but i don't know how. sorry this is not the most inspiring post, but it helps to get it all out.

the zoo and a GREAT book

well things have been very busy lately. some good, some not so good. last friday brian decided to take a half-day so we could take the girls to the zoo. we've never been as a family before, and we had such a fun time. avery LOVED it, her favorites were the elephants and the ankole cattle (the enormous cows with horns as big as people). my favorite was the giraffes, and brian liked the eagle and the yucky reptiles. i almost skipped that part, but it was air-conditioned inside the reptile house, and i'm no martyr, so i cooled off with the snakes.

my little monkey

brian's eagle

over the past couple weeks, brian and i both are considering some major changes in our jobs. brian is deciding if he wants to stick with coaching baseball, which means he will need to coach football too, or if he should start back to school for his masters in administration. we are leaning toward him going back to school, but that will probably mean the end of coaching for him.
i am happy to teach, but deeply desire to be home with my girls, and so am praying for God to open a door for me to be home more. i have pretty much no ideas of what else i could do besides teach, but i feel like God will show me something if i wait on Him.

i read a book last week called "same kind of different as me" by ron hall & denver moore. basically a autobiography by two men - one a homeless black sharecropper and the other a rich art dealer. true story lived out in fort worth, texas just a few years ago. this was one of the top 5 books i've ever read in my life. i could've read it in about two days, but i made myself stretch it out to 6 days. some have wondered, when do i have time to read? well, when my girls are napping, i could do useful things like clean my house or do laundry, but i lay on my couch and read. seriously, the way i see it, their nap time is my sanity time, so this is for my health. anyway, if you are looking for a good book to read, i super-highly recommend it.

lastly, a complaint/vent: i am so sick right now, i feel like there is absolutely nothing else on my body that could start hurting, b/c it's all hurting already. i got my flu shot this year, so i don't know what this is, but i feel awful! anyway, right now brian and i are watching "the office" so the pain is temporarily numbed.

11 days of school left... How-la-lula (avery's version)!!!

THREE!!!

we're not actually having her party for a couple weeks... it worked better to have one party for both girls, and since tatum's birthday cake-eating has to coincide with her galactose challenge (for duarte galactosemia), we are doing the party on tatum's birthday. anyway, we did some celebrating this week and she got family gifts on tuesday. nana was in town early this week she took us to clay's resturant to celebrate! the girls had fun playing in the sand and petting lots of animals! we will definately go back! it was an unseasonably cool day, so very pleasant.

we are two very proud parents of our big three year old. below she is holding her new barbie doll we gave her. she calls it bobby. it goes against my grain slightly to give my daughter such girlie gifts since i was such a tomboy, but she has no interest whatsoever in sports, so i have already relinquished my hopes of her being the next cat osterman. i may as well indulge her girlyness!
today while we played outside i made a bargain with her that if i swung her "super-high" in her swing, she had to play baseball with me. begrudgingly she came and stood about 3 feet away from me. after about 3 tosses, she said "i think i'll just go play with belle-belle now". yes, that is my girlie-girl.

she loves her new car from gigi. it took a little guidance on brian's part to teach her how to steer, but she finally got the hang of it. now, look out, she is fearless!


here she is holding her new pink MP3 shaker and her $$$. she has no idea why she should be excited about that green paper... oh the innocence~
she is quite a singer. she knows the words to more songs than i do. recently i've been singing her "my chains are gone (amazing grace)" before bed, mostly because i need to hear myself say those words. but anyway, tonight she asked me to sing "the chain song" and she sang right along to most of the words. i think i might need to start thinking high school choir or band for her. arghh!


by the way, tatum is much better. thanks for praying. her appetite is back and she is happy and sweet again. thank you Lord! and please pray for her to easily pass the above mentioned galactose challenge! thanks!