Heeelllllloooo Laaadies!

I absolutely loved reading all of your blogs. I love seeing all of your personalities shine through. I know I sound goofy, but instead of reading, it is like I am listening to you all speak. And I miss you! Terribly. Desperate Housewives started up... I wish we could all sit around and watch it again (I wish that I had cable so I could even watch it alone...) Also, OSU had it's first football game on friday. I missed you all again... You didn't miss out though. It was raining and miserable and I left before the 2nd half. My life has been absolutely crazy the past few weeks. I am still trying to see all of Katie and Gavin's games. I got to see the Crew play LA Galaxy on Friday and the Bengals play the Steelers on Sunday. So I have been doing some fun things, but I feel like my life is still in a whirlwind. I am excited for things to calm down. 

School has me especially nervous. This clinical will be like the one in the winter. Naturally, my stomach is in knots. I am just praying that everything will be okay. I only have class Tuesday nights and Wednesday mornings, so feel free to visit anytime! Amy and Erin you all can def spend the night while you are in town. Also, maybe LP and LC could too! ME could you drive in for the weekend?! That would be fun huh!?!? I have plenty of space for 2 blow up mattresses and 2 foutons and a bed. I can pick up some wine, champagne, coke and sex and the city dvds... wow... that actually sounds like heaven right now... : ) 

P.S. when engagements come, I want FULLL details! 

P.S.S. I can't wait to see everyone! ME January sounds awesome! 

I love you all,

MJ

Amy, I died when I read the comment about your mom and the snake and the "plager" letter... you truly are hilarious. 

How about for this month we pick a song that describes where we are all personally at right now and share it with each other?

hi!

Amy your blog made me laugh hysterically, I think you should be our Carrie Bradshaw and write for a newspaper. I am so happy you had a chance to be a part of Brie's classroom! I think you would make an absolutely wonderful teacher, I would love if my children had a teacher as caring as you.

Lauren reading your blog is like reading an adventure story. I feel like you and Alex are always doing something fun and creative. I am so happy that he is close, and that he like his location. As I was reading your blog out loud I have to admit I got a little choked up! I miss you all of you and I wish I could be at pancakes too. Can we have a post-Christmas get together in January? That's when I can start taking time off. I may actually just make the rounds and end up on each of your door steps for my mid-Winter-mid-West tour.

Life here is good. It's been fairly simple: work and football. Kev lost his first two games but came back from like a 16 point lead to beat the University of Maine, who are a pretty large opponent for UAlbany. The game was so exciting and pretty much our whole family was there cheering him on! It was great to see everyone. Seth is so huge! He looks like a man!

Work is good. There's always something to talk about and always a kid to be giving extra attention to, but really I don't mind that. To be honest, I really love working with teenagers. All my kids have great personalities, and many of them are struggling with some pretty concrete things that I can remember as being challenging; boyfriends, self-image, female bullying, ect. Some days are harder than others to be there, but I think that just means this isn't my dream job, which is fine by me.

Sorry my post is kind of lame... Wow I am definitely the married woman here, just writing about my routine. Hopefully next time my Mom will viciously murder a reptile or my husband will take me on a wonderfully romantic outing, to make this a more enjoyable read.

Ohh I keep forgetting to write this... Kev and I went on our picnic with some store bought New York subs (mmmmm) a while ago. We sat on a bench dedicated to a NY Giants player, overlooking the Albany athletic fields. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it was a beautiful day and the subs were delicious!

I miss everyone so much. Feel free to call if you're ever bored, I'm always around!

Maria R

Your Life is a Movie

Amy, I love your stories about your scary, scary mom killing rodents. I think it's more hilarious because your mom is the last person who I picture doing that. ALSO...That story about Ryland is AWESOME!!! Your life is a movie.

Lauren, I'm so happy that Alex likes Kentucky....I knew he would. That sounds like a great place to live. I'm looking forward to hearing about your engagement when it happens : )

I'm pumped about going to Columbus for Pancakes. I think I might take off work from Friday to Monday so I can go to the Renaissance Festival on Sunday like Lauren suggested. I just want to make sure that I can stay with either Lauren or Maria for those days. Is that ok with you guys if I stay Fri, Sat, and Sun night? What are your plans Amy?

LC, I'm not sure if you are able to read this blog, but I am thinking about you. I hope yogi camp is treating you well.

Erin

:)

This blog looks beautiful, Laur! I love those pictures. And, I laughed out loud for about 10 minutes after I read your analysis of my dreams.

Amy

Dream

Amy those dreams are right up there with the type I normally have! I think your dreams are telling you that you want to come visit Columbus and that Mr. Fecker has rabies. Just kidding lol.

I definitely agree with doing yoga this month! I finally just had a picnic this past weekend. It was a little late, but definitely worth the wait. I went down to Louisville for my birthday. Alex and I bought some food and a cooler and went downtown to Waterfront Park. (I just recently found out that it is the Ohio River that is right there.. I think a refresher course on geography is needed) It was an absolutely perfect day. It was warm and sunny but there was a nice breeze because of the water. The park was luciously green with a view of the river and downtown. The weather was so perfect I fell asleep haha. Within a week Alex has already made a lifetime friend in his neighbor, become close with his coworkers (on this first day of work he already knew that they were all catholic. How? I have no idea), and gotten a blackberry phone for work that he can use for personal calls (that means the guy no longer has a cell phone bill). Of course there is more, but I won't bore you with the details. Basically everything is going extremely well and Alex has decided that he thinks he would like to stay down there after this year.

It seems like a great place to be (easier winters wohoo!) and it's only an 1 1/2 drive from Cincinnati. That's only 15 minutes shorter than from Columbus, but still. Everyday he tells me he wishes I could be there with him. I am still not moving just yet-but my guess is that there will be a proposal sometime around Christmas, give or take a few months. It's been really hard to see his life changing so much and mine standing still so to speak, but I am still waiting to hear back from the Limited about my interview. I have a couple more weeks at my current job and then I'll have a lot more freetime to search for other jobs if the Limited one doesn't come through. I am trying not to think about it too much because I think it's perfect and I don't want to be super disappointed when I do get a phone call..

Anyways, for those of you that will be around Columbus on October 10th I am promoting the idea of going apple picking or to a pumpkin patch (too early for pumpkin carving??), to Pancakes, and also to the Renassiance Festival! I think I am definitely ready for fall to come around. Sorry for blabbing on and on about myself-I felt like it had been a while since I posted. Love you all!

LP

So the last few nights my dreams have been about us being in our house. Usually I recognize in my dreams that we are not supposed to be there but for some reason we are. One of the dreams we actually broke in through one of the creepy basement windows. Once lizards invaded the house, which is funny because it's not too far of a stretch and it was probably caused by my mom disturbingly murdering a snake yesterday (I'll expand later). Another time the girls from next year came in and were like what the hell are you doing here? I don't remember what we said. How pathetic right? But, it's not like I'm going around crying about how I miss being in the house either (I do though, clearly). These dreams are random (and also mixed in with a dream about how Mr. Fecker made me go fishing with him in the middle of the night and a raccoon and a skunk both bit me and he wouldn't take me to get a rabies shot- so I'm not sure what that means hahaha). Anyway, the point is my subconscious is telling me something so I figured I should write on the blog!

Nothing too exciting here... other than my mom, beating the crap out of a snake yesterday. Sadie and I were sitting on the front porch and she came out to talk to us then very calmly goes "there's a snake right there" (which was to my direct left, by the way). I screamed, of course, and ran inside. She then proceeds to get garden sheers from the garage and beat the crap out of it, as well as chop it up. Sorry, this is graphic haha. But, I'm going to be disturbed by this for a long time. She is nuts. I told her what she did was pretty messed up and she just said she only does it to snakes... well let's hope so! I was appreciative though because I really am terrified of snakes. Oh by the way, this snake was about as skinny as a pencil and not that long haha.

We went to the Ryland Closing Dinner the other night. I'll tell you about it because it's pretty funny and gives you an idea of what this place is like (and Lauren said I should). So my family gets into our golf cart looking a little nicer than usual but not much and we start to drive to the clubhouse (for those of you that have seen it, it's nothing fancy... at all). We start to notice that everyone else is really dressed up. The men have jackets on, which never happens down here. Immediately it reminded me of the last scene in Dirty Dancing so I started singing "I've had the time of my life". (Poor Patrick Swayze :(, by the way ). To make a long story short, I was not all that off. They gave out awards for golf, tennis and shuffleboard and gave ridiculous speeches. They talked about "our Ryland home" for 3 hours and it all culminated with (this is the best part) everyone singing their hearts out to the Ryland song. I can't remember what it was called or too much about it because I was giggling too much. These people are funny down here. I hope you all can come down here next summer!

Next point is that LC forgot to tell us what to do this month before she left for yoga school. So I was thinking we should all do yoga in honor of her this month haha. Or, we could just skip this month too.

I also wanted to tell you guys that I was "a special reader" for Brie's 2nd grade class last week. I basically went in and helped for awhile then read them 2 stories at the end of the day and gave them cookies. It was so much fun though. They were really cute and Brie is totally in her element. I got a packet of thank you notes (to Miss Amy haha) in the mail from them yesterday, which totally made my day. They were all adorable but one of them melted my heart. She wrote that was I was really nice and it was a "plager" (pleasure, I think) having me and that Miss Grogan is lucky to have me as a friend! How freaking cute and impressive for a 2nd grader is that! I'm actually kind of considering becoming a teacher- who knows though.

I hope all is well with you guys. I miss you!

Amy