Mary, Mary Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?

For some reason this nursery rhyme just popped into my head while I was out checking on our growing garden this morning. It is looking really good and I can not wait to start getting fresh veggies to eat. We already have jalapeños and tomatoes that are growing our a lot of our bell peppers have begun to flower, but no fruit yet. One of our squash/zucchini plants has taken off and the other two are moving at a slower pace. The green beans amaze me! Alan set up a ghetto trellis for them to climb up and most of the plants have begun to do just that, all on their own. Here are some pictures to document the growth, sense everyone is just so interested... haha.

Baby Jalapeño 

Cherry Tomato

Squash or Zucchini 

Proof of our ghetto trellis

Winding it's way up the twine

Close-up - it amazes me that it just curls 

around the string on it's own

Another close-up of a green bean plant

In other news, only 4 days until I graduate! I can't believe that in just a short time, I will officially have my Master's of Education. It's crazy to think that after all this time in school, 18 years (including 1-12 grade, undergrad, and grad school), I will finally be done! My dad and grandparents from Texarkana will be traveling down Friday afternoon, and my Granny will come for graduation and dinner and then head home that evening. I'm so excited to see everyone, but am sad that my mom and sis won't be able to come. PGisd decided that prom needed to be late this year, so that is interfering with graduation. 

Well, I'm off to go paint. We're trying to get the master done before family comes down. I'll post before and after pictures once I'm done.

Picture Time

Well, before I get to the picture summary of our weekend, I just have to say... I PASSED MY ORAL EXAM! And I can now graduate with my Master's Degree in Early Childhood Education May 15, 2010. I was extremely nervous beforehand, and it didn't help that my sinus' started to act up the day before. What a weight off my shoulders!

Anyways, this weekend we got our tax refund money. We had the intention of saving it all, but Alan we quickly decided that it was, indeed, time for a new grill. This amazing monstrosity is called The Big Green Egg. Now, my dad has had one for a while, and I was always amazed at the delicious-ness of the meals that it produced, so naturally, I knew we would get one someday. I just didn't realize that "someday" would be Saturday. We moseyed over to The Woodlands to pick it up, and as luck would have it, we were able to take it home that day! Alan then set about building a table for the BGE (or Big Green Egg). We also got a new light fixture for the breakfast nook area, which was my splurge with our refund money. The following pictures are what we were up to with the building of the table for the BGE and my beautiful new light (and partially decorated buffet).

Alan, hard at work

Disassembled BGE

The table is taking shape!

Base is in...

Complete, now just need to cut a hole

I love a man with power tools ;)

It's finished!!

Big Green Egg

Right after breaking it in on yummy steaks and grilled zuchinni!

Beautiful Tiffany-inspired lamp

2/3 of the way decorated... The bottom shelf needs a holder for the cross, but they are engagement/wedding pics on the left and some sentimental cookbooks on the right with our champagne glasses and cake topper. The middle shelf has some Limoges plates with a beautiful plaque from my secret sister (at work). Now just need to figure out what to do with the top shelf. :) Any suggestions would be welcome!

Well, time to get back to paying attention to my class chat... It's the last one! Yay!!!

Closer by the day

Well, not much has been going on lately. We're getting closer to posting a before and after picture of the dining room. We've painted the room, put the chair rail up, and painted the chair rail, now I just need to finish some touch ups and the dining room will be complete... That is, until we can afford to replace the flooring and baseboards. How I would love to do that right now, though. Once we painted, the baseboards started looking kinda yellow, and now that we have the super white chair rail up, it's even more yellow.

On to some more exciting news... I've finally turned in my petition for my course change only 2 months later than I should've... Now I've set up the date for my orals. March 30 at 2 pm. The day I long for, but am not looking forward to. Those that know me best know that I HATE talking in front of people, especially professors. Put in me in front of 25 kindergarteners and I'll do just fine, but it's something about "old people." Not that any of my committee members are old, it's just that they're people I look up to. Oh shoot... I just hate talking in front of anyone, forget that they're professors. Haha.

On another note, King mysteriously got out of our bathroom sometime today. You see, instead of keeping them in kennels while we're gone, our dogs go in our bathroom with a babygate in front of the door. They are both good jumpers, so it was only a matter of time before they discovered they can jump out. Gracie, bless her poor dumb heart just isn't smart enough to realize she can do it, too. Unless Alan just somehow managed to miss out on the fact that King wasn't in the bathroom. It's not like he gets distracted ever... We shall see what happens on Friday, though.

Speaking of Friday, we're off to Abilene this weekend. Yay for more traveling. We haven't seen Alan's parents since Christmas, so it will be nice to visit with them, even if it is a short weekend. And then it's the infamous SPRING BREAK! Oh how I need a break. I love, love, love teaching, but I'm ready to sleep in and do nothing all day for a while. My goals are to finish unpacking, finally, paint some more, and clean the whole house. Only 3 more weeks until my family is coming down for Easter and my brother's 21st birthday. Gotta be spotless.

Pizza's on it's way. Should be here shortly. I'm gonna go pop open a can of Dr. Pepper and wait. =) Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Online School

While I am thankful that I can take my courses online, sometimes I just don't want to do anything for certain classes. Take class chats for instance... I feel as if I could do a better job by having discussions where I can think about what I say and take my time to word it just the way I want. Instead, with class chats, I am put on the spot and have only a couple of minutes to respond. Oh well... Two chats down and only one or two left (we missed one already due to an emergency, so i don't know if we'll make it up or not).

Aside from that, not too much went on at the house today. Now that we have TV and internet I get distracted quite a bit more. I did, however, unpack all of my shoes and folded clothing. I have at least 35 pairs of shoes... Spoiled much? Granted, I have about 10 pairs of flip flops, my cowgirl boots, and ladybug rainboots*, but that is still a lot of shoes.

*On a side note, those boots were a Christmas gift from my previous landlord. My classroom last year were the "Letz Ladybugs," so when she saw those boots she thought they were perfect. Who cares that they were children's boots made in adult sizing!! I actually love the boots and my students love seeing me wear them.

Well, only 20 minutes of my chat left... Gotta get back to answering questions. Tomorrow's another early day for me. I've only commuted one day (Monday), and I'm already dreading the commute, but my students are definitely worth it! =)

Jen