more shopping

So... I guess being on vacation has turned Nate and I into shopaholics. We do pretty good at home not to spend too much money on stuff we don't need... but seriously. We have gone CRAZY the past week. We shopped in San Antonio, San Marcos, and now Austin. I have like 5 new pairs of pants from places like Delia's, Express, American Eagle... some really nice sweaters, victoria secrets pj's, sweats, and sweatshirt... I got skirts and shoes etc. etc. Not to mention all the good coffee I have been drinking. Nate got a blue ray player and today we found some not too expensive blu ray discs at Fry's Electronics... where we spent like 4 hrs roaming and being nerds with all the elctronics. We did well to walk out with just 6 blue ray movies and nothing else. One of the projectors was quite tempting, but that should wait until we have our movie theatre room... if it happens. With all that said and done... NATE AND I ARE SPOILED!! We actually had this conversation... we are totally, completely spoiled. We don't usually do much more than work and work related things... which keeps us busy, but we are really spoiled. We're thankful for the abundance we have, but we have set some goals for the new year and are going to work toward being completely debt free, save wisely, and give wisely. Besides... I don't think I ever want to go shopping again. It actually made me dizzy today... and I have no more money to spend. :) Good thing the relatives are allowing us to stay with them!! By the way... this part of Texas is pretty neat. If you ever get a chance to visit San Antonio or Austin... do it! Now I hope to go to bed... oh yeah... It's my dad's birthday tomorrow... good times!

Christmas Vacation

Merry Christmas!! Nate and I are in Austin, TX. We took a detour to get here... enjoyed a day at Carlsbad Caverns then a couple nights in San Antonio at a really neat hotel on the river walk, which to me is like another country... here's some pictures.

Our living room in our hotel room














This is the path just across from our hotel... so cute. At night it's all lit up with white lights that follow the arches. Our room is above and across from this spot.


















A nice fountain.


Here's a picture of our hotel. Our room windows are the second windows up on the right side. We had a nice view of the river walk.















We left San Antonio this morning and stopped at the largest outlet stores i have ever been to and we walked like 20,000 steps today ( i wore a pedometer to see) and I am exhausted now and not feeling well. I am glad to be in vacation mode and able to sleep a lot and live without a watch. I shouldn't get too used to it though... the drive home and back to work life is not far off...
Merry Christmas!!

Legos and Robots Rock!

Yesterday was the Wyoming FLL (first lego league) Championship. I volunteered to help with our school's team and we have been practicing since September. I helped as much as I could, but being a new teacher requires many meetings and taking classes, so I missed almost half of our FLL practices. Anyway... FLL is pretty fun for 9-14 year olds. It's basically like being on a basketball team for nerds. The top team goes to Atlanta to compete against teams from all over the world. Our team tied for 10th for Robot round points. They did pretty good considering they are mostly 4th graders and competed against 8th and 9th graders. Also, we were in 1st place after the first 12 teams and by the time 58 teams had gone were were still in 5th. It was a LONG, but fun day.
Here 2 of our team members are helping their robot get ready to run another mission.












Here's a look at the competition tables from the stands.












Here's the crowd during opening ceremonies. I am guessing there were about 500 kids there plus coaches and parent. Good times. All four of us who coached our team are very glad it's over, but we'll probably all help next year because we are nerds and enjoy this kind of science, robotics thing.




Today Nate and I went to church to watch the children's choir, then went to lunch with my mom and dad, then did a bunch of Christmas shopping and we have just a few things left to get, but we're pretty much done. Now I am exhausted and can't believe we go back to work in 10 hours. YUCK! Weekends aren't long enough. I did absolutely nothing in my house this weekend... that's always awesome later in the week. :(
I better get some stuff done before I go to sleep... have a great week!

I actually wrote this update last night, but didn't post it until my internet was working again... so here's the post...

Why does the long weekend have to come to an end? I really enjoyed all the time off we had this week. We both had Wed-Sun off and if was great! We went to a movie, had everyone over for Thanksgiving on Thursday… and by everyone I mean 11 adults and 2 kids in our not so huge dinning room, but it worked and was a good time with the family. Someday we may not all be able to get together like we did this year, so it’s awesome that it happened.
On Friday we went to Pottery By You with Erika and mom and had a fun few hours painting pottery. I can’t wait to see what my cup turns out to be… it was fun painting. Then Nate and I went home and decided that we had time to do something that every couple should do once in their lifetime… Watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy back to back… it didn’t work out to watch all of them at once, but we watched in shift and finished the third one Sunday afternoon after church. They are good movies, but I don’t know how you could watch all 12+ hours of the extended version in one sitting… way too hard!
Sunday night we had friends over to our house and it was very random, but fun. I got to see Bernnie… our friend who has decided to become a Georgia girl. She and her husband even bought a house there… Nate and I will go visit someday. Anyway… it was a good time with the friends, many whom I haven’t seen in a while, and we even got a carpet cleaning lesson. Isn’t it weird how things happen in groups or pairs? Hear me out… our dog Shadow is a very well behaved dog. He never makes messes, hardly ever barks and is just fun. Tonight he puked on the carpet right when people were showing up, so we cleaned the carpet and discovered our carpet cleaner was stupid, then my friend Jamie was balancing her cute baby (Jordan) and a plate of salsa and chips and the salsa ended up on the carpet in a different spot. How crazy is that?! We haven’t spilled on our carpet at all (except water) and the dog never pukes and both happened tonight. So I ran to Wal-Mart and bought some good carpet cleaner and all seems well… it’s just odd how things come in pairs like that.
Now I am watching Nate play Wii Music and it’s kind of a crazy video game. We played lots of Wii Fit this week too and it’s awesome! I want to try to do it every day and see if it really does get me into shape. My muscles hurt from it. Well… I have lots of other things I could write about, but this is already long. It was a good long weekend and I am sad that it is ending, but maybe it will be good to get back into a routine and I do want to see my school kids again… they are a hoot.