Back-Porch Crashers :)

Welcome to my personal piece of Heaven!!

Bryan & I owe many, MANY thanks to Paw!! Not only did he build us our very own amazing porch swing, but he also helped Bryan install the back swing door with a puppy door (as you'll see in a moment).

Ronnie & Bryan spent this morning in some serious heat up in the attic (sooo hot) & backyard (also insanely hot) hanging the wonderful porch swing that Paw built. I'm sensing a theme of thanks :) [Meanwhile I tutored and signed up at PureFitness (more on that later too).]

This is me. I am HAPPY. :)

How wonderful is this?!
You may notice a member of our family is basically absent from all of these pictures. That is because he was a little (or majorly) concerned about a moving bench :) I think it may take Maverick a little while to warm up to it, haha.

I feel like there should be a spotlight on the swing in the following picture:

The other major improvement would be the following:



A swing door that fits in nicely right behind our backdoor. It sports the super convenient doggie door just for one particularly awesome (and perhaps spoiled) puppy.

It took Maverick maybe a couple of hours to feel completely comfortable running in and out, and less than 24 hours to get the impact of such a convenience (i.e. he can go out whenever he wants to use the bathroom, roll in the grass, chase bugs, etc.). It's been especially wonderful when Bryan & I are both at work! We set up a pen around the inside and he's free to go in and out whenever he pleases. The screen door has a lock, though, so people can't get in from the outside - unless very determined of course.

Now he lets himself in and out all day long - and really loves the freedom!
Bryan & Paw worked VERY hard to get it hung. It turns out that it's a bit more difficult than it looks :) Thank you guys!!

Doesn't he look happy?

Anyway, what with the screen door, the porch swing, the table & chairs Bryan and I bought, the fire ring, and the recent gift of the Coleman BBQ pit from my parents, our backyard is pretty darn snazzy!!

Cute Overload

Just in case you were wondering if Maverick is still adorable ...

Yes. Yes he is :)

He's still doing really well with staying at home - which we are very thankful for.

Ready to enjoy the weekend!!!! :)

Happy M Ranch: Cuero Edition

The new Happy M Ranch is gorgeous!!

Again the menfolk stayed super busy unloading machinery and barn stuff, while the ladies unpacked boxes and got the ranch headquarters set up. Granted, the people who lived there before us left, quite literally, nearly EVERYTHING - from mounts to bedding to kitchen items like pots, pans, plates, & spices to furniture (way more furniture than necessary I might add) to incredibly pretty decor. Who has enough money to so completely decorate a place with high end stuff and then just leave it when they move? Crazy.

Photo Gallery through the new place!

First the outside pictures:







Some of the bedrooms:

Den:

Dining area + Kitchen

It's official - our towels are in the bathroom!! :)

Fire Ring:

House:

Yard around the house:

Maverick absolutely LOVING all the space to run and run and run:

Looking pretty awesome, no? I didn't pictures of everything - but still, even from these you get a good idea. Granted, I need to put up some pictures from what the deer cameras caught :) I think it'll blow your minds!

Maverick's trip to Coleman

Last weekend I drove up to Coleman with my parents to help them pack up and get ready to move to the new place. We, of course, brought along my favorite puppy dog :)

As you will soon be able to tell below, Bryan has come up with a solution for my picture problem!!! Thank you!!!

Since Coleman is cursed with an over-abundance of sticker burrs, I put these little booties on Maverick's little paws:



Although he was not exactly thrilled, and walked really funny :) they did help for the little while they were on. Plus he didn't fight them much! However, we soon figured out that it is in fact SOOO dry that all the sticker burrs were dead. They were still absolutely everywhere (and Maverick's fur is basically velcro for that kind of thing), at least they didn't hurt and were easier to get out of his fur, so he did eventually get to walk sans booties :)

Maverick loved exploring the indoors - and was quick to make an enemy out of the bobcat in the living room! Don't worry, he made sure to protect us!

While the menfolk (Dad, Uncle Dwayne, Kevin, Al, Kenny & Papaw) loaded up the machinery and barn, Mom, Meemaw, & I packed up what was going in the house. With all of us pitching in, it took surprisingly little time to get it done!

Naturally, Maverick was a huge help too :)

Mom working on packing up the kitchen:

And then loving on the pup who is so starved for attention:

We saw a coyote!! Keep in mind this is taken with my camera at FULL zoom from very far away. Not too bad given the distance!

The next day saw us loaded up and taking another 6 hour drive - this time to Cuero, TX where I got to see my husband again AND see the new ranch for the very first time!

Still no pictures ... but good times at work!

Although I still can't filter through the crazy dumping ground that is my accumulation of pictures, I wanted to let y'all know that my first couple of days back at work have been going really well!

We've set up a pen for Maverick that goes around the back screen door, which we installed a doggie door in. This way he has 16 square feet of space INSIDE with cold tile, a little pet bed, his food, water, toys & the TV on for background noise AS WELL as being able to go outside to wander around, chase bugs, roll in the grass, and go to the bathroom. It's really as best to both worlds as I think we can do for him. I do realize he sounds spoiled :) But, hey, I feel much better at work knowing he's got the best possible situation while we're both gone!

Thank Heavens both days he's been home alone have gone way better than expected!

My first day involved a New Teacher Orientation. We learned about the software they use for lesson plans/grade book/attendance/etc, got on the payroll, and learned quite about the expectations for teachers at Legacy. It was actually incredibly informative without being too much of an information-overload. At the very least, I have good notes I can refer to when questions come up.

Today was All Teacher In-Service, which included sessions on leadership (which was really good! the theme was "ready for battle"), business policies, a run down on how a day at Legacy is going to work this year (which is WAY different when you're in a leased church than a regular school building!) as well as a few other bits and pieces.

After work I took the StrengthFinder2.0 required of all Legacy teachers, which our principal really utilizes. I've been told she keeps copies of everyone's top 5 strengths when she goes into meetings so she can better delegate to who might be better at what. I think that's wonderful. Maybe she won't give me too many detail-oriented tasks :)

My top 5 strengths are:
1. Futuristic (forward-thinking, visionary)
2. Relator (enjoy close relationships, enjoy working hard with friends to meet goals)
3. Input (craving to know more, like to collect information)
4. Empathy (can sense the feelings of other people, and imagine themselves in others' lives or situations)
5. Communication (find it easy to put their thoughts into words, good conversationalists and presenters)

I think it's really accurate! Except maybe Input ... I do love to learn more about specific things, but honestly I'm not really into just collecting information about everything for information's sake like Bryan & Paw - now THEY are TRUE Input people!

Then Mom & I finished getting my Word Wall boards done, and they look great! (Pictures WILL be coming eventually!)

Now I'm sitting back, lesson planing, "relaxing" with my hubby and pup. I'm ready to go back and learn some more tomorrow!

Wondering why I'm absent?

Bryan & I bought a MacBook Pro a little over a week ago. It has the potential to be amazing! But I'm currently extremely disappointed with its photo organization tools. I don't get it. Bryan doesn't get it. And once I upload photos they disappear into this horribly unorganized dumping ground of photos from the previously well-organized photo folders from my PC.

Since it currently frustrates me enormously to find photos to put into my blog, I will be on a temporary hiatus from Blogger.

I have lots I want to blog about, and will do so as soon as we can figure out how the world to keep my pictures organized.

Stay tuned!

God is Good ...

... All the time!!

Anyone who has talked to me in the past 3 or 4 days know that I've been incredibly stressed out. I received an email from Legacy (the school I'll be working for this next year) on Saturday reminding all their teachers about the upcoming co-teacher training with parents where we'll need to have our syllabi and plan for the semester (long-term lesson plan ideas) ready to share. YIKES! I've never worked for a school that required syllabi, and I still hadn't heard what curriculum we'd be using for Speech, so I was feeling a little concerned (let's be honest: I was feeling scared out of my mind!).

However, on Sunday at church our Reverend was preaching about Matthew's (there he is again!) accounting of Jesus walking on water towards the boat, the disciples believing he was a ghost, and Peter asking Jesus to prove himself by having Peter walk on the water to him. This worked out until Peter took his eyes off of Jesus, and started sinking.

Like Peter, I will hand my concerns over to Jesus, and almost immediately snatch them back - as if I could do a better job of taking care of them! And that's usually when I begin sinking - and stressing. I think on Sunday I finally managed to actually hand my concerns over ... (and with lots of self reminders) managed to KEEP trusting.

And guess what?

Today at my meeting those concerns were HUGELY taken care of!!! The classes I will be teaching changed - I WAS going to be teaching 9th grade English, 9th grade World Studies, and Speech. NOW I will be teaching 9th grade English, 10th grade English, 9/10th World Studies (with a co-teacher) and Speech. I feel infinitely more comfortable teaching English than World Studies (which amounts to Ancient History) - and this way I can teach what I know twice, and what I'm excited about but not so knowledgeable about once with someone else who IS knowledgeable. And I still get to play a huge hand in developing the Speech material!

I also had the opportunity to pick up the rest of the materials and see my classroom today, which again, made me feel like I had a better understanding of what this year would bring. Thank goodness!!

All the time ... God is good!