Moving My Family

Doug and I have been helping my parents move into their new house.  They're still not quite there.  I think maybe in another 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, they'll be mostly moved.  Yesterday, we started moving Chris's desk into the computer area in the new house.  Chris is in the same room that I was when I last lived at home.  He has the same desk that I had too.  In between Chris and I, Kate lived in the same room with the same desk as well.

It's been 10 years since I moved into that room so the desk basically hadn't been moved since then because (1) it is so heavy and (2) the room is too small for any other furniture arrangement.  When we moved it yesterday, look what we found!

Taking a closer look, you'll see some truly interesting finds...

This one was hard for me.  Yes that is an actual check for $96.84 written to me 

from BYU back in 2003.  I don't remember losing a check this big, so hopefully 

I didn't just lose that money.  Do you think I can still cash it?

Yes, that is a bag of hair.  Probably not Chris's

A trumpet brush... not mine or Kate's, we were both woodwind players.

A band pass for Kate from 2003.

Someone's homework.

Gum, anyone want a piece?

Moving has truly been an adventure with my family!

MAKE YOUR OWN... Slip and Slide

I was just going through my camera and found these movies...  Sooo Liza got this idea over Memorial Day weekend and Chris (moneybags) was nice enough to finance it.  Slip and slides are too small for "big kids" so they decided to make their own.

What you need:
-100 ft of Construction Plastic (I think about $50 at Home Depot, but reusable)
-3-4 bottles Baby Oil or Suave Hair Conditioner (about $1 each)
-Access to a waterhose

We started in the backyard on flat ground, but decided after a little while to take it out front and use the neighbor's yard who doesn't live there anymore.  (Yay for us!)  It turned out great!  We ran out of baby oil after a while and the slide was getting kind of rough, so we went inside and got an old bottle of cheap conditioner to put on the plastic.  I think it actually worked a little better than the baby oil.

In this movie you will see, Johnny, Shelly, Liza, and Chris all go down the slip and slide one after another. (Ross, Liza's boyfriend, is holding the tarp for them.)

Unfortunately, Doug and I didn't have our suits, so we did not participate... next time.

Family Festivities

I had been looking for a job this summer to keep myself busy, but Doug and I decided that I should just forget about the job thing and help my family out this summer.

As usual my family is crazy busy and need all of the help that they can get.  They closed on their new house this week and have yet to really start moving anything over to the new house.  I guess there isn't too much of a rush because the old house is still ours.  I think the missionaries are moving into the old house at the start of August, so I guess they'll be out by midnight on July 31st.

Oh yes, my little brother, Chris, got his mission call from our church about a month ago!  He's going to the Mexico, Mexico City North Mission.  He reports to the MTC in September.  I can't believe how fast he has grown up.  He is going to make an EXCELLENT missionary.  I have never met such an obedient young man.  I don't know what my parents are going to do without him.

My sister, Kierstan, who lives in Utah with her husband and two step-daughters on and off got her paperwork through so that she could be sealed to her husband Court in the Washington DC Temple.

Kier and Court set a date of July 9, 2010 and we arranged it so that Chris could go through the temple the same day so he would be able to attend their sealing.  My grandparents flew in from Utah, my sister Heather drove up from Virginia Beach with her family, and we had a couple packed houses.  (Unfortunately my parents had not closed on their new house yet so we could not stay in it!)  It was a very special day and a fun week full of family time.

I don't make it a habit of putting small children in my dryer, but Heather yelled for me while she was ironing Friday morning in the laundry room and I took these pictures...  David, her youngest decided that a dryer would be a fun place to hang out.

My parents have this big blowup water park thingy that they set up whenever the grandkids come over.  The kids had a blast!  Uncle Johnny and Aunt Shelly had their hands full!

You may be wondering about the Graffiti on the back of the shed. Shelly and some of her friends put that on there as a title for a movie they were filming at the house WITHOUT asking mom or dad.  I guess things don't change... anything still goes at the H House.

 We had some built in babysitters at home, so all of the adults were able to go out to eat at some Mexican place.  We decided that we would get Chris used to eating rice and beans a little early!

Starting at left and going around: Heather, James, Mom, Chris, Liza, Doug, Dad, Court, Kier, Ross (Liza's BF), Grandpa, Grandma

I finally got to sleep in the next day, but woke up to my camera taking what I thought was a picture of me sleeping.  It turns out Darwin must have fell asleep while cleaning himself. HA! HA!  He got very nervous with all of the smaller visitors in the house and stayed in our room most of the time.

Last, but not least, Doug celebrated his 26th birthday.  Everyone was there and he thoroughly enjoyed his funfetti cake. I lit his birthday candles in binary because 26 candles would be too many.  He's so old!

Summers Off

You may have heard that three great reasons to become a teacher are...
1) June
2) July
3) August

The school year ended on Friday and work days for Loudoun County teachers ended on Tuesday, so with summer upon me, I was thinking about the whole "summer off" deal.

Right now, we are lucky with Doug's extremely long commute that he gets to work four 10 hour days instead of five 8 hour days.  That got me started thinking...  Using my mad math skills, I calculated that since there are 52 weeks in a year, then that means basically that Doug "has off" 52 days in a year, but he does more than make up for those days with the long hours that he works Monday through Thursday.

My scheduled work hours in my school Monday through Friday are 7:30-3:30.  So I am scheduled to work 8 hours a day x 5 days = 40 hours/week.  I don't actually work just those hours and even our laziest teachers (who have their infirm mothers stamp and seal their report cards for them) work more hours than that.  I usually get to school at 6:30am and leave around 4:30pm (on a good day).  Every weekend I spend additional time on top of that planning for the next week.  So in reality, I really work five 10+ hour days each week plus some hours on weekends.

Continuing to use my mad math skills, I counted up the number of days that I have off of school for the summer to get 45.  Teachers do get a spring break and a winter break so I went ahead and added 10 to that number to get a whopping 55 days off in a year.

If my calculations are correct, it looks like teachers put in JUST as much time as an employee that works a 40 hour week in the private sector.

TA DA!  Now I can feel a little better about my summer off, right?

A parent just sent me this picture and I love it! :) The kids all came to 

give me a hug after the water station during field day in an attempt to get me wet.

Home Sweet Home

This is the current state of my parents' home... the home I grew up in.

Yeah, pretty embarrassing.  The worst part is that the whole half-siding thing has been going on since before I was married... 5 YEARS ago.

This is the house that my family of 11 which includes 2 parents has occupied for the last 30+ years.  It is where I took my first steps and said my first words.  It is the place where I shared a 9 x 9 bedroom with 3 other girls for several years.  It's home.

Now the house has not ALWAYS looked this way.  This is actually the third revision of the outer appearance.  It's gone from yellow to brown (wood) to tan.  The inside of the house had changed even more times than the outside.  The whole house has probably never been finished in my lifetime.  If you walk around the house, you will notice that there are various levels of unfinished-ness.  These pictures below of the kitchen and bathroom have been this way for years.  We're just used to it now.

 

The latest reason why the house is in its current state is my dad's new ideas for additional construction.  Basically what he wants to do is rip off the front right side of the house and extend it about 10 feet or so.  He has some really great updates in mind, but he's decided that he wants to do it himself.  Recently he called a contractor to get an estimate of the foundation.  It was around 7:00pm and I was at the dining room table talking to my dad about it when we had the following conversation.

Jenny says, "Hey Dad, this new house remodel is really expensive. Why don't you just buy a new house?"  Dad says, "Eh, I've thought about it before."

30 minutes or so later... We're both downstairs on the computers. Dad is probably reading conservative news articles. I'm searching realtor.com for houses in the area. (Just for kicks and giggles.)

After searching for about 10 minutes. I say, "Hey Dad, what kind of street name would be good enough for our family?" I say a few and then I find a funny looking one and say, "Ohh, what about this one... 'C' Dr. That sounds just like a street our crazy family could live on!" 

Then Dad says, "Hey, that's where the Bishop lives. It's right next to the church. How much does it cost?" I tell him.  I then tell him a few other specs like land, bedrooms, and bathrooms.

Literally, about 5-10 minutes after I mention the house he tells me, "Print it out and have your mother buy it." Mom walks downstairs and I hand her the paper. "Dad says that you should buy this." Around 9:00pm, mom calls the Realtor and asks if the house is still available.

I leave that night not really thinking that they're actually going to buy a house.

They drive by it Sunday. Walk through it Monday. I get a call around 7:00pm Monday night (less than 48 hours later). Mom says, "We just signed the papers."

Seriously no joke, that's how it went down.  My parents after 30 years of living in the same home are buying a house.  For those of you that are worried about losing the old house, don't worry... my dad has decided to keep both houses.  This house is in foreclosure so it's quite the steal and it's in great condition.  My family has never done anything the normal way, so I guess I didn't expect them to start now.

So that's the story of my parents' new house.  

Here are some pictures.  This new house is slightly bigger than the older house with a whopping 6 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths.  It sits on 0.71 acres and backs up to the church.  Dad says that we can, "Walk to church like Mormons in Utah!"

 

I've actually started to get a little sentimental when thinking about the "old house."  Instead of being embarrassed as I drive up the street, I think of all of the fun memories I have had in that house.  I think of how much character it has.  I know that we're not getting rid of the old house, but it makes me sad to think that my family will not be living in it anymore.  Maybe one day in the future they'll move back in it.  My dad says he wants the space so he can work on finishing the old house.

You're probably wondering what in the heck my parents are going to do with 2 houses.  Well, as it turns out, the missionaries from our church are actually staying in the house that is being foreclosed on, so he's looking into having them stay in the old house.

For right now it's all a little hard to believe, but well... that's my family.

School's Out!

The school year ended this last Friday.  Life has been crazy!  I don't think I actually slept last week.  Not only was last week, the last week of school, but it was also when I scheduled my Activity Day Girl's Etiquette dinner.  We hosted about 22 people for dinner and it actually turned out really well.  The other Activity Day Girl's leader went to culinary school so dinner was amazing.  I didn't take pictures, but you'll just have to believe me that it was nice.

All of Thursday night I worked on my classroom DVD.  I've been doing a DVD as an end of the year present to my students all of the years that I've been teaching. I take pictures throughout the whole school year and then put them to music on a slideshow on the DVD.  I look forward to creating it all year!  This year I created my fourth DVD.  I have to say that it was my best one yet.  Here is a picture of my DVD.  I can't actually show you the whole slideshow and you probably wouldn't be interested in watching pictures of my fourth graders anyways. 

I miss my class already.  I was shucking some corn for Doug's Father's day dinner last night and I was thinking that I should bring in an ear of corn and talk about how it was pollinated with my class.  Then I remembered that the school year was over.  I can't believe these kiddos won't be in my class anymore.  I guess I should be used to it now being that this is the fourth group of kids I've taught, but I'm not.  Putting the DVD together was pretty crazy because you could physically see how much they had grown this school year.  I guess I'm going through teaching withdrawal.  I'll have a new group of kiddos in no time!

Maybe I'll have time to actually blog now that school is out and I am on summer break!

New Header

So... I changed my blog design.  I'm sure you can tell.

Whenever I started my blog back in 2008, I designed a simple header that went with my selected web address and it was done.  I was tempted to change it MANY times as I watched others change theirs and make them beautiful.  I didn't want to mess with it, so I just told myself that I liked the dullness consistency of the look of my page.  

A couple days ago a link appeared on the toolbar that said Design.  I tried it and was hooked.  So here is my new blog design.  Even though the header says that the blog is amazing, it will still be the same old lame stuff that I write day to day or month to month depending on how blog motivated I am feeling. I created it in Picasa, a free google download that is simple to use.  These are all pictures that I took during our vacation to Hawaii.  And for those of you that are wondering... those are my toes.

We Painted

Doug and I finally got around to painting his office on Memorial Day weekend.  We went with a deep blue color.  I like how it looks, but we're definitely going to need more light in the room.  It looks great during the day when the blinds are open and tons of sun is shining in.  When its night time, it can seem like a black hole.  I'm happy with the deep color, but I think this is the last deep color we will paint with.  It took four coats for the blue and then I screwed it all up by waiting too long to take the tape off.  It peeled a little at the top.  I told Doug that this means we need to put in crown moldings because I'm not repainting...

Here are some pictures.  We still are looking for a good desk to go in Doug's office.  I want to get an L-shaped desk with lots of space.  Unfortunately those can be pretty pricey so we're keeping an eye out for sales.

I haven't taken a picture of the room yet without the tape on, but here is what it basically looks like.