It's Official!!

Home grown Produce

Here is one of our cucumbers from our gardern. I really shouldn't say "our" because Daniel really did all the work. We only planted tomatoes and cucumbers, but we didn't eat as many as we should have. It was fun having a little project though.

I am part of a Bunco group, and we play once a month. One of our founding members and a great friend, Erica, is moving :( We took this group picture because it is our last month as a group - people are moving, getting jobs, going back to school, etc. Hopefully we can find enough replacements because that one night a month is a great get away to just have a little "girl time". We'll miss you Erica! You'll do great in Texas, but you'll always have a home here.

Already??

School has even't started yet and my house already has been toilet papered!

Last Friday night, we got a loud knock on the door around 11:00 pm...We were just getting into bed, so I was scared to death...I thought someone was going to shoot us or something so we didn't go to the door right away. When Daniel finally went to the door and looked out - what did he see? Toilet Paper everywhere!

They definitely did a better job than last time. He decided that we should go ahead and clean it up in case they came back later to admire their work, then it would be gone. Well, while we were cleaning, Daniel found a cell phone that had been dropped.

We figured they would come back for it, and sure enough - a few minutes later a car came down the road but then turned around and drove off after they saw us. About 10 minutes the same car turned on our street, so we hid behind the car and waited for them to come. They didn't stop though, they kept driving... Our street is a dead end, though, so I knew they would have to come back, so we went and stood in the middle of the street and waited.

It was the same kids that did it last time!! This kind of suprised me since most of them had just graduated - but I guess they had nothing better to do than roll their high school teacher's house.
Anyways, only one car came back for the phone and he looked like a dog with its tail tucked between his legs...He told us who all was in on it and then asked if we had seen a phone. We told him that maybe we had and maybe we hadn't and that in order to find out, he would have to come back with some Moolinium Crunch Ice Cream and we could discuss it.

About 15 minutes later, he was back- ice cream in hand. He gave us the ice cream, we returned the phone, and we all had a good laugh! At least we got some ice cream out of it....I just hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I don't know why I'm such an easy target, but I never even heard them outside.

True Conversation...

The other night at about 3:30 AM, I woke up and realized that Daniel wasn't in the bed. Curious, I went out into the living room and found Daniel standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips.
Kate: "Daniel, what's going on?"
Daniel: "There is not a single smoke detector installed in this house."
Kate: "Why not?"
Daniel: "I just took down every single smoke detector."
Kate: "Okay...Um, why don't you come to bed and we'll fix it in the morning."

It was the funniest thing ever!! Apparantly he had heard a smoke detector beeping from a low battery, but couldn't find which one it was. So at 3:30 AM, he took down all the smoke detectors! I hope we don't have a fire soon, because they are still not put back up.

Summer Time!

School is out, and usually by this time of the summer, I'm starting to get bored and start getting antsy ...Not quite ready to go back to work, but ready for something to do.

But this year has been different...I have been keeping busy, trying new sewing projects, and chasing a puppy around.

If having kids is anything like having a puppy, then I'm in for a lot of exhaustion - and probably even more. Our new puppy likes to use the bathroom inside, chew things, bite you, fight with the cat, bark and whine when he's in his crate, and wake us up multiple times through the night to use the bathroom! I have seriously considered giving him back on more than one occassion, but then he does something sweet like lay in my lap, lick me, or just be plain cute - and then I change my mind. He gets me everytime! He has been doing much better with the potty training and he learned how to sit...Hopefully it will keep getting better as time goes on.

So, if that hasn't kept me busy enough, I'm also taking 3 graduate classes right now, and I spent a week at girls camp - in TENTS! I am not a camper-type person, which is weird, because my family camped a lot growing up. When I was in young women's, we always had cabins. I even got a TICK on my stomach! It was really great seeing the girls grow and have fun and hearing their testimonies...It made me miss young womens and the Baton Rouge Stake. There were only about 30 girls at our girls camp, compared to probably almost 75 to 100 in Baton rouge. I definately want my kids to grow up somewhere where there is a big youth program and they have a lot of member friends. For that reason, and several others, we'll probably be back in the BR when Daniel graduates in two years!

We also celebrated Daniel's Birthday - he is 29! One more year until he is officially old! His real gift is a new i-phone, but since those won't be in until the end of the week, on his actual birthday, he got a "toilet-tee potty putter". Daniel really likes golf, so I figured he might be able to get some putting practice in while he spends some quality time in one of his favorite rooms in the house! (He's going to die when he reads that I wrote that...but it's true!) We also spent a day in Shreveport shopping and eating out. Here's Daniel eating his birthday sopapillas!

We've also gotten some practice in with the potato gun....that thing has some power!

We also went down to Lake Charles for Melissa Kitfield's wedding. Some of you probably know her from Baton Rouge. Her husband is HUGE! They looked really happy and really cute together. It was nice to be able to catch up with friends that we don't get to see as much as we like and pull out some old embarrassing photos!

Look How Cute!

I went to the animal shelter Friday "just to look", and this is what I came home with:

His name is "Chief", since the mascot at the school I teach at is the chiefs. He's so little and cute! I'm not sure exactly what he is, but I think he has some chow in him.

VACATION!

During spring break, Daniel and I took our first vacation alone as a married couple since our honeymoon! We went to San Antonio mainly to go to SeaWorld, which I've been wanting to do for a while, but there were also a lot of other things to do there- including lots of Mexican food, which we ate everyday! So here's what we did on the trip:

We got there on Friday and went to a Spurs game that night. I'm not a big sports fan, but the game was still fun with all the games and music. We were up pretty high, but here is the best picture I could get of Tim Duncan (# )and Tony Parker (#). The other big player is something Ginobli, but he was injured and didn't play.

Daniel also got a picture in front of their four championsip trophies.

Saturday we went to SeaWorld ALL DAY. We got there around 9 am, even though the main part of the park doesn't open until 10, and we got to feed and pet the dolphins before all the crowds got there. Besides Shamu, this was the best part.

Shamu was definately amazing...it's so crazy that such a huge animal can get that far out of the water.

There was also a show with dolphins and beluga whales which also included a lot of really awesome acrobatics- which was equally as amazing as the animal tricks.

One of the cutest things was a play that the animals put on. The sea lion was trying to figure out who was eating all the fish. At first you think it is the otter, but it ends up being the walrus. Words cannot explain how cute this was, and I won't spoil the ending for anyone who wants to go.

Sunday we did the downtown thing- we went to the Alamo, up the Observation Tower, took a boat tour on the riverwalk, and just walked around the shops.

Monday we toured one of the other missions, the San Jose Mission, which I thought was much more interesting than the Alamo. Those buildings were so old and have so much history.

We also went to the San Antonio Temple, which is beautiful. It uses the alamo symbol which is all over the city. Here is a picture of the gate of the temple and the same symbol on a fence at the riverwalk.

The riverwalk was beautiful! It was like a whole underground little city. We even found a CVS on the riverwalk, and Daniel just had to get a picture.

We also found on the map that there was an intersection of Daniel Street and Nathan Street. I had to get a picture of Daniel there because his name is Daniel Nathan. So, we drove all the way over there and took a picture...it ended up being in the mexican ghetto, so we made it a quick picture!

In other news, I realized a negative to teaching (well, I've known lots of negatives, but I realized a new one)...our house got toilet papered by some of my students. They don't know that I know who they are yet, so I'm planning some sort of revenge! At first I thought it was some of my young women from church....but come to find out- it was actually students.

Also, our daffodil bulbs that we planted in the fall have bloomed, and they make our front yard look so pretty!