Running, walking, flooding and more.

Summer time has been a blast. I spent the first two weeks being kind of lazy and relaxing for a little bit. I did a couple of trainings but not much really. Then I had a week and a half of summer school. I taught 5th grade Math. It was a lot of fun but discouraging at the same time. The kids I was teaching were ones that had failed the state exam (TAKS) 2 times already and now had a week to get ready to take the test for a 3rd time. They just didn't really care anymore and many of them felt defeated by the test. I think we made a lot of growth though in that week I was with them. They let with a much more positive attitude about school and about math than they had when they got there. I won't ever know though how they did on the test so it's kind of hard to gauge whether they learned anything or not.



Anyway other than that things are going great. The house has been a lot of fun. It seems like the yard always needs mowed though. We have a little garden that is growing a little bit. We have a huge zucchini plant, some green beans that are doing well, two tomato plants and a lettuce plant that is dying. The heat is scorching it. Next year we will tackle a flower bed and try to extend our garden a little bit more.



One of the big things I have been doing this summer is I am training to run a marathon in the fall. So far I have been training for 5 weeks and I have ran over 70 miles. It doesn't seem like much but putting in the miles is a lot of time and work. I did a 10 mile run yesterday, and now I am really sore. It has been fun though and I am excited to be able to have so much success with this. Running a marathon has been a goal of mine since high school so I am excited that I am finally living out my goal. The hardest thing is going to be finding the time and energy to keep up with my routine once school starts. It has been relatively easy when I have almost all day to do it but when I have school and other things going on it's going to be more difficult.



So a funny thing happened to us this week. We had spent the week at Christina's parents in Houston for the 4th and then swimming and just relaxing. When we came home on Friday night we realized that the side of the house was wet and that there was water coming out of the front door. When we came inside there was a half an inch of standing water on the floor. There was a leak apparently to a water filter under the sink that was spreading throughout the house. Luckily the first floor of our house is all tile floor and not carpet or wood flooring. We were able to vacuum up all the water and fan the walls. Everything is dried now and it doesn't look like we have any serious water damage so that is good.



Anyway we are enjoying our summer and just trying to keep up with all of the house projects and get ready for the new school year.

Oh yeah and Jackson starting walking. Exciting. Enjoy the video below.

Summer Time

School is out!!! I have officially completed one year of teaching. I can't wait for next year to start so that I can do it all again now that I know what to expect and how to do what is needed. I have one week off and then I start trainings and summer school. It is going to be a busy summer but I am excited for it. The week was pretty uneventful for the most part. Jackson is getting bigger and cuter. I forgot last week to talk about his birthday. I can't believe it's been a year already. Time has flown by. He went to his one year check up this week and he is a little tall for his age, a little underweight not much but he has a really big head. He didn't get that from me obviously. We are excited for summer to come so that we can go to the pool everyday. That is one of the nice things about our house is unlimited free access to our neighborhood pool. We are going to need that this summer. It's already getting really hot. Come July Jackson might start growing fins and gills. Anyway we are excited for summer and can't wait for all of our adventures.

House

So we have been really bad about updating our blog. I am going to try to get back in the swing of things this summer. So my first year of teaching is almost over and it has been a fun and exciting year. Our students didn't do as well on our tests as I would have hoped. Mostly in reading. They did awesome in writing and about as well as we would have expected in Math but reading was our downfall. Anyway I am really excited about teaching fourth grade next year and going on another adventure with a new class of students.

So our house. We are home owners! With this government program to pay people to buy houses, we decided to jump on board and get some money when we could. So far the government has paid us $4500 to buy a car and $8000 to buy a house. I don't agree with the programs but apparently I am not moral enough yet to turn down the money from the program. We looked around and searched for houses for about 2 months. We put in offers on 3 houses, lost one, withdrew our offers on the other two, and then found the house of our dreams. It is a 2000 square foot 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath home with 3 living rooms, 4 palm tree and tons of storage. We love our house. It has been a lot of work trying to get things together but we have had fun the whole time. For now we just have to keep working and trying to do our best to keep up.

It is crazy how sometimes life passes you by without you even realizing it. It seems so sereal sometimes and yet so natural at the same time. If I start to think about it, I am amazed that I am a college graduate, teaching fourth grade with a wife an awesome little son and house in the suburbs. Heavenly Father has blessed us more than we deserve. We just need to continue to try and serve him the best that we can and show our appreciation for everything that we have.

Wow it's been forever

Ok so I know I haven't posted anything since August so here goes. School is going great. I have 19 fourth graders and they have been awesome so far. I just hope that they are learning something while they are with me. I have so many challenges everyday, but I love it when we can overcome those challenges together. I am also staying busy with my church calling. I am the second counselor in the young men's so I am busy with scouts and deacon's quorum activities. I was figuring it out and between school and church I put in about 65 hours each in school and church related work. Anyway I need to stop complaining. Things are going great. Jackson is getting huge. We are trying to get him to start eating some cereal and things. Here's a quick video of him eating his cereal for the first time. He also loves that exersaucer and that stupid tamborene. He wouldn't let it go. He is getting so big and strong. Yesterday we had him to where he was sitting up by himself for about a minute at a time. He still won't roll over though. He is definitely the boss in the house, and he knows it. It's been fun though. We love having him. Other than that things are going great. Austin weather has been much more tolerable lately. It has been in the upper 70's or lower 80's about everyday. When it rains it stays in the 60's so we are enjoying this time of year. This is why we came here.

End of Summer

The end of summer is rapidly approaching. I have gone through one week of new teacher training already. That was fun let me tell you. It actually wasn't so bad. This last week though I didn't have any trainings so I decided to do some research and try to find a good car deal. The cougar qualified for the $4500 government rebate so we were trying to find a new car to be able to take advantage of the program. We were originally wanting to get a Ford Fusion, but all of the Ford dealerships ran out of them and they were out of price range. We ended up going with a Scion xD after looking at other option. At first I didn't think that Christina would go for it, but the green roped her in. It's a good little car. We got a good deal on it. We have to wait for the paperwork for the trade in to go through so we don't have the car right now. We should get it sometime this week though, depended on how slow the government is. We are excited for it though. It's a cool little car. Jackson got to go to his first major league baseball game this weekend too. We went to an Astros game and Jackson had a lot of fun. Well actually not really. He cried for most of the game. It was hot and he was hungry. He was doing good before the game started, but then he was getting restless. It was fun though. Here are some pictures from the game. The last one at the bottom shows him crying like he was doing for most of the game. We also got to sit on the bench with Craig Biggio and act like we were catching a home run ball. Hopefully next time we go he will have a little more fun.

Jackson video.

This is a little late, but I wanted to post the video of Jackson rolling over. This actually happened at the end of June. Other than that everything is going great. Jackson keeps getting bigger and cuter everyday. I start training on Monday, so my days of sitting around the house being worthless are over (until next summer that is :)).

Austin

So here we are in Austin. I just got a teaching position teaching fourth grade at Oak Meadows Elementary. I am so excited for school to start. I just finished my 6 week summer institute with Texas Teaching Fellows and I am getting ready to start teaching in the fall. I start training next week so this week I'm kind of in limbo without anything to do really. I am just enjoying time at home with Christina and Jackson. Jackson is getting so big. He's as cute as can be. I also just got a calling in our new ward here in Austin. I am the second counselor in the Young Men's. So I'll be working with the deacons. That will be fun. Other than that, we are just having fun here in Austin. I am posting a picture here of Jackson on the fourth of July. He liked swimming with the family and seeing the fireworks at night. I will continue to post pictures of him as he keeps getting bigger.