Pictures from the big day! Enjoy!

The bride...


The groom...


The happy couple...


The ceremony...


The rings...

Over two months since the last post. Really?

I took my students on a field trip to the local grocery store Friday. These trips are always exciting for the students, and a lot of work for the teachers. My class is composed of a vast majority of regular education students, but also a handful of children with special needs. Think, wild animals in a china shop, if you will.

The first thing the children learned about at the store was cake decorating. Of course, a nice woman stood by with a piping tube full of icing and gave each student a taste. Are they not aware what sugar does to five-year-olds?

No less than thirty seconds after the icing was distributed, one of my wonderful students managed to knock over an end cap display full of muffins. He pulled a package of muffins out of the middle, end of story.

Then there was the produce incident. Apparently, you can check the ripeness of watermelons by head butting them. Or so claimed one of my students... who knew?

I also now have a purse full of coupons because children were pulling them out of the automatic dispensers. Why is there no disable feature on those things?

All in all it was a great experience for the children, and that's what school is all about!

Until next time......which may be 3 more months....

I said yes.

The carving...



The completion....



The Coheed and Cambria Keywork


Run now, hide your feathers.

And along came Rian. This picture was taken at the hospital this afternoon. Thank heaven for little girls.

Daddy, Lillie, and Rian.

September 25, 2008

RE: Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death

To Whom It May Concern:

We must confess we have an unnatural sort of love for our Xbox 360. It has seen us through many a difficult day.

Unfortunately, we’ve been noticing the last few weeks that games are having a tendency to freeze a bit more than normal while playing for even short periods of time.

The freezing became more and more frequent this past weekend, and finally during one reset the dreaded and most feared red ring appeared. We turned off the console, unplugged everything, removed the hard drive and let ‘Ole Green sit untouched for two days.

Upon plugging everything back in tonight we thought perhaps we’d escaped the doom of having to return our beloved friend! The glowing green orb pulsed for almost a full minute!

Alas, after attempting to put in a game, we made it as far as the opening screen that taunted us with “press start to begin” and the game froze once more. The red ring returned as did our broken hearts.

We return our faithful Xbox 360 into your knowledgeable hands in hopes of a safe and speedy return, reincarnation, replacement, etc.

Your steadfast friends,
Amy and Alex
Eustis, FL

Noah and I have been talking. It may be time to start gathering up the animals. If this storm hits Florida, I'm anticipating a very soggy 29th birthday. It's no hurricane yet, but give it time. We still have standing water from Fay.

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We made it through the first full week of school. Let's see if I can name all of the children. DeAndre, DeJuan, Omarious, Orlando, Boston, China, Charles, Ansom, Joshua, Jarius, Jaren, Oran, Christina, Katrina, Kadrayah, Angleshia, Shaniah, Summer, Brandon, and Billy.

It amazes me that so many of the names are very similar. It happens every year, though.

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Completely unrelated.

At the beginning of the month, Alex took me to see my most favorite band in all the world, Coheed and Cambria. It was my second time seeing them live at the House of Blues, and they never disappoint.

The band writes their songs based on a comic book (The Amory Wars) that the lead singer has been writing the past few years. I cannot get enough of the music and Alex can't get enough of the comic books, so it works out nicely.

For those who aren't familiar with downtown Disney, there's a Virgin Megastore just a few feet from the House of Blues. We always wander around the store before the shows begin, because it's the biggest CD store we have around here. You never know what you may find.

While approaching the store, I noticed a group of teenagers sitting on the bench outside. As we walked in front of them, I saw the look on one of the kid's faces transform from boredom to astonishment. I turned around to see what he was looking at, and sure enough, there was Claudio, the lead singer/guitarist of the band!

We walked into the store and he came in right behind us. My first famous person! I must admit my heart skipped a beat. We didn't say anything to him, though. If I were famous, I'd like to think a trip to the local music store wouldn't have to end in a riot. I'll leave that to the teenagers. (Although I DO have dragonfly decals on the back window of my Scion Tc.. shh!)

But that's not all! As we were leaving the store, we ran into Travis, the guitar player. And finally, while waiting in line to enter the House of Blues, Mic (bass player) came out and signed autographs.

It was a fantastic way to end the summer.