Love It

So I love the new look! It's fun to see pictures of everyone and remember how beautiful you all are.

I'm joining Steph on the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. If anyone wants to join in, let either one of us know. OR, if you have pointers on how to do it, i.e. self control tips, etc..., please let us know.

Ummm... i know i don't ever write, but you see, i don't ever feel like i have anything good enough to write. Sometimes i lay in bed at night and have these wonderful ideas of what I'm going to write in the blog, but somehow, between the bed and my computer the next day, those thought are erased. So I suppose you will have to just deal with the boring, non-exciting news of all is well in PA.

Love you girls tons and miss you lots.

Yay for the new look! :-)

So this is exciting...pictures on the page!

Just a quick update from the land of ice and cold weather - yes, Oklahoma.
Things are going pretty well here. The only thing that's on our plates is that we need to move and we can't. Stupid cold crappy weather. So our original date of Jan. 19, will be moved to Jan. 26 pending any other weather related issues. It's really just to icey to chance driving a huge truck into little areas, and we're supposed to get some more snow this weekend, so that put a huge damper on things.

Other than that, STILL working on trying to get some Thank You's out in the mail. Work is going well, although there are some changes within the company that I am not fond of. Don't get me started on that. :-)

Ang and I are trying to do a healthy lifestyle change to lose some of our plumpness. Hopefully we'll have good results. That's about all, I think.
Love to you all!

Yay for fun time wasting activities

Or, at least, I thought it was fun trying to guess whose survey I was reading before I got to the names. J

 

So … it looks like everyone is okay with doing a three-day weekend instead of two? Because I think an extra day would give us just the right amount of time to see everything, and still have some downtime for relaxing. So if it's okay with everyone, let's plan on doing the Friday to Tuesday stint. Of course, if anyone does need to leave early, that's fine too.

 

And based on responses (don't I sound so official), it looks like we'll try to keep the whole weekend pretty conservative in the cost department. Cheap meals and inexpensive activities, and such. Once it gets closer, I'll let you know specific costs for the different activities I'm planning.

 

If all the husbands do come that are planning on coming at this point (four of them!), we may just give them the house, and us girls will find a hotel or cabin to stay in.

 

I tried to talk Adam into making some invitations for the guys, but for some reason, he didn't want to. Oh well.

 

Since you all are paying for plane tickets getting here, I'll take care of the accommodations if the need arises. I'll start doing some poking around, just in case we do need to reserve something, since that is a popular tourist time and things fill up pretty quickly. How fun would it be to stay on a houseboat? Sleepless in Seattle, anyone?

 

Ok, well, hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Love ya!

 

Big News

Hey all...it seems to be that everyone is posting about their holidays, so I'll give a quick synopsis of ours. Our Christmas was wonderful. Nathan and I went into Boston and spent the night before Christmas Eve there. We stayed in the old Police Headquarters, which is now a nice hotel. We also saw The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. Christmas day was nice, and I accomplished cooking my first turkey! That was exciting for me.
In answer to the gift question, I'd have to say my favorite gift was also a diamond necklace from Nathan, which was also very unexpected. We were not supposed to really be getting anything for each other since we had agreed upon a joint gift of a camcorder.
Anyway, in addition to all this, Nathan and I have some big news. It turns out that we are moving in less than a month! A little bit ago, Nathan put his resume out there in Oregon and Michigan just to see what would happen, since we know we won't settle down here, and it could take him a while to find a job. Well, it turns out that there was a company in Ann Arbor, MI that was very interested in him, and who pursued him quite aggressively. To make a long story short, they flew him out for an interview this week, and made an offer the next day! The offer was awesome, and everything really just fell into our laps quite unexpectedly. Seems like God's always got the good stuff for your when you are least expecting it. Anyway, they want him to start in 2 weeks, so he'll be gone from here by then. I'll follow about 2 weeks later, since we'll need more time. So, we're a bit overwhelmed right now to say the least, but very excited.
We'll stay with my parents for a time due to the expense of buying out of our lease when we leave here. But we'll be shopping for a house as well as a job for me once I get out there. So life is more crazy than ever, but very exciting as well. So much to do, so little time! :)

Christmas went fast

Hey guys! I figured it's time for an update. Christmas went really quickly. It was a nice Christmas though. We just stayed in Tulsa. It was kind of fun trying to start our own family traditions and stuff, but it was a little mellow for my taste too. I'm used to being with so many people for the holidays. I kind of missed the chaos of my family. It confirmed my decision that we want more than 2 children though. Two kids is just too quiet. We need at least 3. It just adds that extra touch of drama to family get-togethers. =) But Josh's sister and dad came over Christmas day, so that helped spice things up a bit. Although, Josh only has one sister, so it was still pretty low-key. But Christmas was good and it was watching Seth open his presents. Unfortunately, Seth was sick Christmas day. He had a horrible virus with runny, stuffy nose and coughing and then he got an ear infection. He was sick all week and then Lilah got it the next week, as did me and Josh. I think everyone has it though. It's just going around. We did end up getting to see my family for the holidays though because my grandpa died the Friday following Christmas. So my whole family flew in for New Years. (The funeral was here in Tulsa) I wasn't super close to the grandpa that died. He had an aortic annurism (sp?). He had been in the hospital for Christmas with pneumonia, so we did get to visit a couple days before he died. I'm very thankful for that. We had a very nice visit with him and he was doing well and was released from the hospital on Thursday, and then died Friday. He was a Christian and was passionate about Christ and I'm grateful for that. So, we know where he is now and that certainly makes death easier to deal with. It was sad circumstances, but it was still nice having all the family come in. So, that's about it for us. The kids are well and I'm just catching up from the holidays. Josh takes his next round of Board exams on Jan. 18th. So, we'd appreciate prayer for that to go well. He's been pretty busy studying. Hope you all are well. Love ya!

Digging out just in time for the next one!

Hey girls!!

Things here have been, well, snowy. I haven't seen this much snow since I was about eight. There are the upsides to this snow, like SNOW DAYS!! We've had 6 so far this year. Whoever thought we'd have so many. Plus a longer Christmas break, we had almost 3 weeks off.

Christmas was great. We made it to Denver between the blizzards and fresh snow. Our backyard had no snow, while our driveway had a 4 1/2 foot drift. Nick did all the shoveling during the first blizzard. It was lovely having only one shovel. We did only do one side of the driveway and used his car solely during Christmas.

We heard there was a 12 foot drift of snow on I-25, but as we drove up to Denver we never saw it. The road crews did an incredible job getting the snow off the highways and a horrible job on our street. It took a long time to get our road cleared.

Christmas was fun at my parents house. Everyone made it home. My sister, Carolyn and husband Jason, who live in Canada, surprised my parents the Monday before Christmas. So....it was a FULL house. We broke the toilet, garbage disposal and my sister, Tori, wrecked my dad's car. To say the least, our Christmas was not boring.

My favorite present is a tie between a Nintendo DS from my mother-in-law and new pots and pan from my husband. I love to cook.

Kimmy I read your blog about cooking, and I just want to throw out that I would LOVE to cook during the Sapphire weekend.

I miss you all!! I hope you have a great January. If any one needs some snow...I can send it to you in a box. :)

New year, new hole in my head

January is such a sad, little month. Coming right after such an exciting holiday as Christmas, it doesn’t really have much to offer. Add to that the grey skies and rainy season, and I’m pretty much ready to move to Hawaii. Anyone else?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years! Ours was spent doing a lot of traveling and visiting a lot of family. Miraculously, the bad weather everywhere didn’t affect any of our flights (although we were kind of hoping to be stranded in Philly so we could visit Angie and Aaron!), and we made it home yesterday morning safe and sound. Then we slept. Pretty much all day. Oh, how I missed our bed.

Now that the holidays are over, I can focus the part of my brain that likes to plan things on the Sapphires reunion. Because a tiny part of me is OCD, and also because sometimes I get bored at work, I’m going to send out a little survey for some ideas and suggestions for the weekend. I want to make sure everyone has a good time, or at least acts like they’re having a good time.

So I think my favorite Christmas present to get this year was … a diamond necklace from Adam. Not so much because it’s a diamond necklace, but because it was such a surprise.
Oh, and my new domain name: http://www.kimmysue.com/. Tee hee. Right now, it just points to my blog but maybe I’ll get creative and do something else eventually.

My favorite present to give was probably the little princess chair I bought for our Angel Tree girl – so cute.

How about you all? What were your favorite presents?


And here’s my delayed act of teenage rebellion in the form of teeny tiny, cubic zirconium. Not sure how long it’s going to last, but Adam is warming up to it.

Love you all mucho!

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to tell everyone that I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! Nathan and I are going into Boston today to spend the day and the night there. Our hotel used to be the old police headquarters, and now it's an Irish-owned hotel. It looks to be quite nice. For those of you that don't know, Boston (and all MA for that matter), is split between Irish and Italians. My town is still mostly that way, with the Italians living on one side of town and the Irish on the other. Anyway, tomorrow we're going to see the Nutcracker. I'm quite excited about it, as I've never been to see it before. I'm doing Christmas at my house this year, making the dinner and everything. I'm just a bit nervous about that, but it should be fun. It will be a good opportunity to try out our new video camera, which was our Christmas gift to each other this year.
The week after Christmas will find me in MI, helping my family move. We're both quite sad to see them go. Things definitely won't be the same without my family here. It will be good though too, to have an opportunity for Nathan and I to live away from family for a time.
Nathan and I wish you all a merry Christmas, and look forward to hearing about your holidays.

Wild weekend

Things have been kind of crazy around ol’ Seattle the past few days. We had an unbelievable windstorm last Thursday night with gusts over 100 miles per hour. It knocked out power for pretty much the entire region, including our neighborhood. So by Friday morning the temperature in our house was about 45 degrees.

Adam’s sister Kendra was in town visiting, so the three of us all huddled up on the couch together to keep warm, the animals snuggled in around us. I didn’t go to work on Friday for a few reasons, but mainly because until the afternoon the roads weren’t safe to drive on – there was debris everywhere. Our little storage shed in the back yard was torn to bits – quite a few pieces are missing. I imagine they’re in Montana by now.

We stayed at a friend’s apartment on Friday night so we could at least have heat and warm showers. Saturday morning the power came back on for our neighborhood, so we were able to go back home. A lot of people are still without power right now though, and let me tell you, it is cold here. Not just Seattle cold, but that biting type of cold that you do not want to be in without heat.

Adam’s mom and sister are going home today. It was a short trip, but it was great having them. We spent almost the whole weekend shopping. It was fun, but I’m so over Christmas shopping now. I only have a few stocking stuffers left to get, and they might just come from my office supply closet.

Love you girls!

nothing

Hey girls! I'm sorry you've all been sick lately. Yuk! I have a touch of a cold/cough too but it's not too bad. I hope everyone still has enough energy to enjoy the holiday festivities. We've got our house decprated for Christmas. Although it's not a whole lot, we go pretty mild on the decorations. I didn't even put a tree up this year because Seth would just try to pull the ornaments off all the time. Instead of a month of joy and holiday cheer, it would have turned into the month of weeping and gnashing of teeth from all the spankings Seth would have been getting for disobedience. So I decided to avoid that stress for all of our sake. Seth doesn't care yet anyways, we'll do a fun childproof tree next year when he's more into it. I pretty much have everyone's Christmas shopping done. I hit Toys R Us and then did everything else online. I love the internet at Christmas time! And if you do it right, you can pretty much avoid shipping too. So, speaking of Seth... he loves phones as some of you know. Well this morning I was rushing around to get the kids ready for Lilah's doctor's appointment and I had my cell phone on the kitchen table (we have no home phone). So when I wasn't looking, Seth grabbed my phone and hid it. I spent 20 minutes looking for it and was late to the doc app. So I called Josh from the doctor's phone and left a message for him to call me all day until I answered so that I could find the phone. After I got home, I was looking for the phone again and remembered that I had seen Seth walking around with a diaper wipe before we left. So I found the wipes container and opened it up... my cell phone was inside the diaper wipes container with the lid closed and buried under the entire stack of wipes. I don't even know how he did that.

So, Josh interviewed in Ohio last week for residency. The interview went very well. So, it looks like we will most likely be moving to Columbus. As long as they rank him, we'll be putting Columbus first on our list and that's where we'll go. Which is OK with me because Columbus is a very nice city. I'm just dreading moving. I hate moving and we are going to miss Tulsa and our churh and friends, etc. Well, that's about it for us. Miss you girls and love ya! Happy Holiday Season!

Shhhh!

This is a secret from my husband and I find myself having to tell everyone but him in order to keep it from him! Wednesday of next week I will be going to Galva IL to put a deposit down on our new puppy! Mom and Dad are making babies just this week - a black mama and chocolate papa. (We're shooting for a chocolate male) If the breeding takes, puppies will be born in February and ready to go home in April. The real test here, is trying to keep this a secret from Chris as long as I possibly can! the last time i tried to keep a secret from him, i lasted a whole 32 hours. So far, I've lasted over 48 hours so I'm doing pretty good!!! This sounds totally wrong, but ladies... pray fervently that I can keep this from Chris! My first goal is keeping it from him until after I pay the deposit. Short goals here... yea :)
http://www.crickethollowfarm.com/Puppypage.htm - we're expecting a puppy from Izzy and Boone!

I guess we share everything

Good gracious! We seem to share more than I thought. I spent the entire week after Steph's wedding, and part of Thanksgiving week sick as well. I finally got put on drugs a couple days before Thanksgiving so I could enjoy my holiday. Tis the season I guess.
Oh, and while Tulsa and the entire midwest has been buried in a snowstorm, it's been 70 degrees in Boston! What craziness is going on in the world? We're actually supposed to get our first snow this Monday. Gotta love that temperature change. Well, I'll just cross my fingers for a snow day. Well, I hope we are all back to good health very soon!

siiiiiiiick

here, here, kimmie - I'm sick too. And we have 8 inches of snow! If i were smart, i would have just stayed home today. but instead i made Chris plow our driveway so we could go to work, only to both return home at noon (me due to this blasted cold and Chris to take care of me). Anyway, I'm glad I live in the north, where people know how to drive in the winter-wonder-land conditions. oh, except I'm not thankful for the Florida driver who cut me off this morning and then continued to drive 15 miles an hour ON THE INTERSTATE!!! I'm also very thankful today for my husband who stopped by Blockbuster on his way home to bring me 'over the hedge', of which I've been dying to see for quite some time now. Ta ta, my nose is a faucet!

I'm sick. And it sucks.

Apparently, being sick not only turns me into a quivering puddle of whining and coughing, it also aggravates my emotional side a little bit.

I stayed home sick from work today because I had a fever of 102 this morning. Add that to the fact that the city of Seattle has turned into one giant ice skating rink, and there’s no way I’m leaving my warm pile of pets and blankets on my couch.

So I watched Akeelah and the Bee. And if it weren’t for my pitiful sick state, I probably still would have liked the movie. I mean, a cute little girl from South L.A. who can spell and who goes to the National Spelling Bee? That’s just heartwarming for everyone. But add to that a feverish, emotional girl, and I was practically crying my eyes out.

Then, I check out Jen’s blog today and find that she wrote the most beautiful things about me a few days ago, and I started the waterworks all over again. I miss you girls! I remember being sick in college, and knowing that a comforting hug or a cup of tea was just down the hall. If we were all together right now, I’d pop in You’ve Got Mail and sit back and enjoy the chitchat and laughter that always follow us wherever we go.

strange dream

Last night I dreamt that Liz and Nathan decided to have another wedding (out West this time). So there we all were at Liz's second wedding. The wedding was thrown together very quickly and we were all running around like headless chickens. But it was beautiful (and pink). Here's the strangest thing... I was the minister! I hadn't a clue what I was doing but there was lots of laughter. So, Congratulations Liz and Nathan! It was a beautiful wedding even if the minister was a bit crazy!

Back to Reality...

Hi ladies!
I want to let all of you know how special it was to me that you all came to the wedding. For some of you, I know it was a big deal to get there and I am so grateful to have great friends. I have a new appreciation for my friends and family now, after dealing with some situations that have arisen from Shawn's side (which aren't worth mentioning). I am so blessed!

Our honeymoon was perfect, aside from the fact that it was too short. I would love another week of doing nothing! That would be fantastic! We got back on Wednesday and got busy moving stuff and setting up our home - there is still a LOT of work to be done, but since we will be moving AGAIN in the next few months, we're trying not to get too settled.

Shawn is taking his time finding the right job, and even though it will be a financial struggle for a little while, I think it's for the best. I want him to be happy and truly have job satisfaction. We are just laying low and praying about direction now - enjoying just being with each other and not having a wedding to plan! :-)

I hope all is well with all of you and I plan to make phone calls to all of you in the next few weeks. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and you all get to spend time with loved ones. We are going to Lee and Kathy's for dinner and then putting up our Christmas decorations. Anyone can feel free to give us a call if you get a chance! Love you girls!!!

'Tis the season

So it might be more than like six months away, but it’s never too early to start planning the next Sapphire Reunion, right?
June 15 – 18 (Friday to Monday) is the weekend we’re shooting for. I’ve got some ideas in the works, but if anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to them!

We’re having a potluck at work today. So much good food – I’m going to have to roll home tonight. I made my cheesy corn casserole, the one dish I know how to cook, but had to use a new Corningware dish since I blew up my other casserole dish. So it doesn’t look quite right. But there’s enough cheese and sour cream in there to make cardboard taste good, so I think it will be okay.

I can’t believe the holidays are upon us already. Thanksgiving is next week. That’s just crazy. And that means I need to get going on the Christmas shopping, although thanks to Julie’s jewelry plus the fact that we’re flying and can’t take very much with us, I don’t have a whole lot to buy.

Anyway, just wanted to say hello. I miss you all so much. There always seems to be a sapphire-shaped hole inside of me after our weekends together.

Love you all!

Catch the last plane to Tulsa and I'll meet you at the station

Waiting at the airport in Denver. Got online to kill some time because we have a three hour layover.
So excited to see everyone, I can hardly wait!

Time is ticking away...

Can't wait to see everyone in a week!

speaking of loafers...

Ok so, speaking of loafers, I had to explain to my students what penny loafers are. So now I officially feel old. I've been enjoying being the cool, hip, young teacher who knows the jive and what new movies are out and all that. But the minute I explained penny loafers to my students, I knew I was dating myself. Oh well. At least for now I can appease myself with the knowledge that some of the teachers on my team were teaching the year i was born:)
I'm sorry you were unable to find fall colors Kimmie. You should take a visit out here. We've had some awesome ones this year. Other than enjoying the New England fall, all is status-quo out here. Just keeping busy as usual. Life at school is never dull. We're contantly inundated with new methods of school safety. My students are as unpredictable as New England weather. Today one bolted and ran out of the building, and another one refused to go to language arts. Never a dull moment. Ah well, this is the life they tell me I signed up for. What was I thinking? Naw, somewhere deep inside, I love it.