Renaissance Festival, School Moments, and Random

Ok, are you ready for ten billion pictures? Well tough, there isn't that many but there are a lot! Sorry it's been awhile, I remain insanely busy with school and trying to get stuff done for this huge Christmas program which is next week. It will be Mckenzie's first stage debut so everyone is invited to come see her. My class and I did the majority of sets, decorations, and props for it and I will be running the backstage crew as well. Needless to say that the stress level is very high! But we did get a nice break from things this wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We hosted dinner at our house and had a ton of food. (Pictures to come of that and our Christmas decorations) It's so nice to have a house to put lights on and decorate with a fireplace. We have our tree up and decorated, it is huge. I'm pretty sure it was the fattest one on the lot! We did just a tiny bit of black Friday shopping and rolled out of bed at a lovely 8am just to get a few good bargains. Then on Saturday we went to the Texas Renaissance festival which is totally awesome and I'm pretty sure I could live there. It was sad that we didn't dress up though because I had trouble ordering my dress online and ending up just not getting it, but next year we are going all out and bringing lots of money because I could have bought the place out! Mckenzie loved it too, she was amazed with so many princesses and fairies walking around. Paul went pretty crazy with all the armor and weapon shops too. I highly recommend going to one of these if you have never been!

This is my little celtic necklace I got.

My handcarved wooden jewelry box

Mckenzie and her pewter fairy which she just loves.

Paul got a coat of arms of our family from Ireland with the whole history and meaning of our name which is super cool.

This was a cool tree man walking around.

A cute matching couple.

Mckenzie and a mermaid statue.

A guy in the woods playing a harp.

A big fairy lady.

Paul and Mckenzie watching the "stupid jugglers" who reminded us of my brother Andrew. I could see him doing this.

A cool elf man.

Paul and Mckenzie riding an elephant. This was the highlight of Kenzie's day.

This was my favorite store, but the tapestries were so expensive.

Riding the carousel.

Mckenzie watching the birds and eating a pretzel.

The joust.

Relaxing at the joust.

My little elves hard at work making Christmas decorations.

Antique suitcases I'm making for the show.

Boxes of decorations and ornaments.

My room, such a mess.

My 3rd graders and the Turkeys we made of Thanksgiving.

Halloween and new house

Yes, I know, it's been weeks since I last updated this thing...well it turns out that when you have a full time job that often requires lots of outside time to prepare, you don't have time to update blogs! But I do feel bad so I will try and do it more often! The other problem was, however, that my camera is broken and my laptop with a card reader needs a new power cord, so in order to post pictures I have to borrow a camera and a card reader so things can get a little tricky! We will hopefully be fixing all these things this month though. Anywho, what's new with us you may ask? Not much, life is good, school is good, we are having lots of fun.

I had to paint faces at my school's Halloween festival two days in a row, so for the first one we all dressed up like renaissance people. Unfortunately we didn't get pictures of this but we should take some this month since we got free tickets to the Texas Ren Faire (the biggest one in the country, can we say awesome?!) and we are all dressing up of course.

So for the second day of the festival I was on my own since Kenzie wasn't allowed to go to that one (It was for the bigger kids) so I decided to dress up as a Jedi. The kids thought it was really cool, especially when I charged into the festival and started slaying Juniors and High School teachers! It was a blast.

Then during trick or treating on Saturday we had our car battery die so our candy gathering was cut short since we got our car jumped and figured we better go home. I was going to continue trick-or- treating in our neighborhood but Kenzie had crashed in the car and was snoring loudly, so we decided to call it a night. And it was a good thing we came home because the car didn't start up again once we got it there. So Sunday was spent getting a new car battery instead of church, which stunk but we would have been very early to church since I had forgotten about daylight savings time! Here are some pictures of Halloween and our house.

Our backyard

Our back deck

Kenzie's room , it's messy and usually has a cute rug but it's being washed.

Kitchen cupboards

Kitchen and dining room in back, yes it's messy too!

Entertainment center

Front Door

Living Room

Entryway

Dining room (It still has boxes)

Front yard

Me!

Mommy Jedi

Fairy Princess Kenzie

Mckenzie beating up cousins

Sorting through the loot

A tiring 24 hours...

We had an interesting 24 hours these past two days. Yesturday at school around 10:30am I got a call in my room from Mckenzie's teacher telling me that she fell off the monkey bars on the playground. She scraped her face up but had stopped crying and everything so they thought she was fine. I was still worried, so I went to go check on her at lunch and she seemed happy and doing ok. Well I picked her up after school and took her to my room and she complained that her tummy hurt. She sat on my floor till 4pm when we can leave, and started to cry really bad. When we got out to the car, she threw up in the parking lot 3 times. I figured maybe she had some kind of stomach bug. On the way home she told me to pull over and threw up again. Then when we got home it was 2 more times and she was getting drowsy so we got pretty worried. We ended up taking her to the emergency room where she got a CT scan and the doctor ruled that she was fine accept for a concusion, which was the reason for her vomiting. So she threw up some more at home but seems to be doing better now. She still won't eat today and is sleeping a lot, but she isn't throwing up which is good. She is such a brave little girl, the hospital didn't scare her at all. I was a little upset at the fact that her teacher and the teacher's aid didn't see it happen so no one could tell me exactly what was going on, only the other little kids saw it happen. But Kenzie tends to think she can handle things more than other kids, so we had a talk about no more monkey bars. It was not fun going to school today without her knowing she was home hurt, I just hate it!
But I have to say she is definately my child, she threw up at least 10 times and stayed clean throughout, that's my little girl!

School is awesome, life is good.

Sorry it's been awhile since I updated this thing, we have been busy and I usually post stuff on my Facebook page first. Anyway, did I mention the fact that I have the most amazing job ever? Seriously, who would have thought teaching art and then getting to help people draw and make projects all day could be so wonderful? I have great kids who are so much fun and Mckenzie just loves coming to school with mom and then going to class all day. She is doing very well. Paul is loving his job too. He laughed at me today because we got our insurance cards in the mail for Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is what my parents had growing up, and I about cried and said "Wow, no more student insurance, this is REAL insurance! I feel so grown up!" It's funny how I excited I am to make real money and pay bills and start saving for retirement!

Anywho, we may get to move into our cute house at the end of the month, which is very exciting indeed. Hope all is well with everyone else. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

This is my room all decorated. Those stars on the ceiling light up so when I do power points on the projector I turn them on to give a lovely effect. I have great art prints all around the room and I love that boat bookshelf!

This is Mckenzie on the first day of school.

Quite excited! Yet after the first day when I went to get her after school, she was so exhausted and confused that some of the other preschool kids cried all day long. She fell asleep in my room and wouldn't talk to me for awhile. I was so worried. Luckily, she has been fine every day after that because the kids finally stopped crying. She loves playing and learning new things.

Daddy and Kenzie before school.

Our house and Paul's new job!

Backyard and deck

Ok, most importantly: PAUL HAS A NEW JOB!!! He got the one he wanted too! He is the new SAC instructor at a middle school here in town. The best part is that all three of us have the same schedules, we will all go to school then come home, have evenings and weekends together and summers off! Also, Paul is going back to school. He is going to slowly get his degree through the local colleges by doing night classes, online, and summer classes.

Ok, next good thing is we got an awesome house to rent. It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath and the guy who owns it is giving us a great deal and letting us paint it and everything. We are moving in next month once Paul goes back to Rexburg to get our things out of storage. So we are all pretty ecstatic because everything fell into place! Mckenzie is so excited to go to school and I am so happy I get to keep an eye on her. My classroom is looking great and very "artsy". It turns out I won't be teaching Drama, just Art because so many students signed up for it. Paul and I start our training this week and then school starts in two weeks! Life is good!

Outside of the house. There are two big trees, a 2 car garage to the left of that door, and I'm going to put roses and a fountain under that window.

Mckenzie's room


Master bathroom, I love that floor!

Guest Bathroom

Entry way

Master Bedroom

Living room

Kitchen

Dining room