Awesomesauce

Showing posts with label Travis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travis. Show all posts

Saturday, January 21, 2012

A General Update

The large florescent light above our kitchen island has been replace by these little lovelies! Zach installed three pendant lights that we picked out over Christmas break. The pendants are tan and brown with a kind of stoney looking pattern and the fixture is a darker bronze. We like more of a brushed nickel look but none of the other fixtures in the house look like that. :) Trying to keep it simple and neutral around here since it's not technically our house.






Travis' 17th Birthday was January 3rd. Hard to believe he's 17... I still remember his chunky body and spikey, mushroom cut blonde hair as a toddler - hence he got the nickname Spike for awhile. Travis had quite a few nicknames in his life, (Trav, Travie, T-man, T, TJ-My-Buddy, and Bumblebee) the most common being T.J. Since he was the first son to my parents he got my dad's name for a middle name, Travis Jeffrey (T.J.). He got called that for A LONNNNNNG time. Now it's just Travis or Travie. :) Whichever we feel like yelling to him when we see him.



Love it when he really smiles.

We went to an AGR wedding a few weeks ago in Livonia so we made a weekend out of it by staying Friday and Saturday night at a hotel in Novi. We made a quick trip to Twelve Oaks Mall on Saturday morning before the wedding and got a down comforter for our bed. At first I was slightly disappointed at how thin it was, thinking there's no way it was going to keep us warm at night. I was completely wrong. That thing is stinkin' hot! We have to turn the furnace WAYYYY down at night to keep from sweating under it! But is super soft and cozy and it's never going to leave our bed - except maybe in the summer when we can't turn the heat down... I got way off topic. Anyways, Zach got to talk with a lot of former housemates and AGR alum and it was a good catching up time.

Matt, Zach, Dave, & Will

It's been really great getting together with our small group again after a break during the holidays. We've been going through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace series and it's been incredibly helpful, challenging, and encouraging for all of us. The last week, our group's dinner theme was Thanksgiving - main dish was turkey, sides were stuffing, salad, corn, etc. and we signed up to bring dessert. I wanted to make something pumpkin-y but not quite an original pumpkin pie so I made pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I added some white sugar sprinkles and mini chocolate chips on top for decoration.




They were delicious! Fall inspired but not totally typical Thanksgiving dessert. You can find the exact recipe I used by clicking here.

That's all for now. Parent Teacher Conferences are just around the corner again so I'm off to work on report cards. Oh happy day. It'll be okay. Later in the day we're going to hang out with some friends at their family cottage. I see games and cocktails ahead!

Love,
Sarah

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A little bit of life

Hmmm. Where shall I start? We've moved and just got internet installed in our house today. :) We're connected once again! I actually kind of liked NOT having internet access for a bit. It gave me time for other things like organizing a messy new house and reading a book for fun. Anywhoooooo.

School is still crazy. As in, I’m going crazy. That’s all I have to say about that. My voice is still gone and the strain has moved into a sore throat. This should be interesting since I’m singing at church this Sunday and next…

My class

My fingernail is on the brink of ripping off. It’s hanging on by a thread and I keep snagging it on things. I can’t find any band-aids in our house since we moved, so I’ll just keep snagging it until it falls off or I find a band-aid. Oh well.

Oh yeah. Did I mention we moved!? I’m loving the new house! I never realized how much I missed having a carpeted house until I moving in here. It’s so much more cozy. On Saturday, both sets of parents plus some Thorne siblings (my brothers) came and helped us move our things. Thankfully we only moved about 8 miles so we didn’t really pack anything in boxes... We literally threw everything into vehicles and hoped it didn’t break on the ridiculousy bumpy, pot-hole ridden road! Now the unpacking and putting away process begins. Ugh. The master bedroom is mostly set up as well as the living room and kitchen. The decorating will come but for now, it’s livable. I'll try to post a few pictures of the house. It just takes awhile for them to upload....

Zach has already been installing and fixing things around here. He installed new wall sconces in the kitchen, a new ceiling fan in the living room, track lighting in the master closet, and soon a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Eventually we’re going to put drop down lights over the island in the kitchen to replace the huge florescent light. Other than a few lighting changes, not much needs to be done. The house was built only 4ish years ago.

What else is fairly new? Hmmm. We had goose for dinner last week. I had run out of ideas and time one morning so I asked Zach to throw a few goose breasts into the crock pot with potatoes and carrots and it was great! It tasted just like roast beef. I wish I had taken a picture but we were so hungry that it didn’t last very long. We tried making goose once before on the grill, but it was awful ---so tough and gamey. The crock pot did wonders to tenderize it. As long as we have guns and geese, at least we won’t starve. J

In other small town news, we went out to my parents’ property and “shot skeet” (a.ka. shot clay pigeons) with Rachel & Jared and some of their friends. First of all, a clay pigeon is not even shaped like a pigeon. Why they gave it that name, I have no idea. It’s a thin clay disk, kind of like a tiny Frisbee and it’s painted bright orange. You put the clay pigeon into a thrower that releases the clay into the air when you pull a cord. Anyways, I’m getting off track.

Several interesting things happened out there. 1. My parents’ dog caught and killed a rabbit. We took it away from her and put it in the truck bed only to stare in horror as a giant grub/parasite/worm thing burrowed its way out of the rabbit’s body. It was sick. Like, make you gag sick. When it finally wiggled its fat, grubby body out of the rabbit, Zach squished it. Yuck. I don’t want to think about it anymore. 2. I kicked butt at a shooting game called “Annie Oakley.” Five people line up behind the clay pigeon thrower. The first person in line says, “Pull” (that’s the signal to release the clay pigeon) The first person in line gets first shot at the clay. If the 1st person misses, the 2nd gets a shot, then 3rd, etc. If you are shooter #1 and hit the clay, you go to the end of the line and the next person gets first shot. If you miss and the person after you hits it, you’re out. Or, if you hit the clay and then the person after you hits a piece of the one you hit before it hits the ground, you’re out. It’s kind of like the game Lightning in basketball. This is what we do for fun in the sticks

I won. J It was great. Plus it’s a great stress reliever to pull the trigger and watch the clay smash into tiny bits. You really should try it if you ever get the chance.

It's homecoming week at CCA. Justin has a soccer game Friday night at 7pm and Travis has a football game on Saturday at 1pm. Here's a picture from Travis' last home game and Justin's.


To conclude this long and random and boring post, I’ll leave you with a laugh courtesy of the students in my class.

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Me: (talking about past, present, and future) What do you want to do in the future when you are grown up? Some people go to college, some people get jobs, some people go into the military, and some people decide to get married and have a family.

Student: *under his breath* Forget the getting married part…

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Me: D, what do you want to be or do in the future?

D: Ummm. I don’t know. Can you come back to me?

Me: Uh, no. You’re the only person who hasn't answered yet.

D: Okay. Ummmmmmm. Ummmmmmm. I KNOW! In the future, I’ll get a real sword and become a THUNDERCAT! *raises hands into the air emphatically

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Me: J, in the future, what do you want to do or be?

J: A zombie killer! *does an machine gun shooting motion with his hands

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Me: What do you want to do or be in the future?

Student 1: Nothing.

Me: Nothing?

Student 1: Nothing.

Me: You want to sit on the couch and do nothing?

Student 1: And watch TV.

Student 2: So you want to be lazy?!

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Hope you got a laugh out of these guys. It’s hard to keep a straight face when one of these comments come out. :)

Love,

Sarah

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Pizza

Friday night I made pizzas for a bunch of hungry boys ---Zach, Jared, and Travis. They had just got done baling and unloading straw at the farm so I fed them when they were done.

meat lovers' supreme: pepperoni, sausage, ham, green pepper

meat lovers': pepperoni, sausage, ham

veggie: green pepper and mushroom

my favorite -- BBQ chicken!: BBQ sauce, chicken, onion

They enjoyed the pizza, oh yeah, and homemade chocolate chip cookies then went their separate ways. Jared had to drive back to GR and Zach took my brother Travis home. Travis fell asleep before they were halfway there. After a 4-way scrimmage that morning and an evening of farm work, I'd be tuckered out too!

Here's a few shots from Travis' scrimmage:

Travis making a run on the QB keeper

Travis looking for the pass

So school is just around the corner and I am not a morning person. This is an unfortunate dilemma because teaching elementary school requires you to get up early every day. It's my job. Ugh. Oh well. I'm thankful for summers off! Anyways, instead of dragging myself through the first few weeks of school because my body is used to sleeping in, I decided to get myself back into the "wake up early" routine last week by going to bed at 11PM and waking up at 7:30AM. That worked fine. My body can handle that. I got up every day without a problem.

Well, this week I moved the bedtime back to 10PM and wake up time to 6:30AM... 10PM bedtime? Check. Get up at 6:30AM? Ummmm, okay, maybe it's more like the "alarm goes off but Sarah doesn't get up" time... I have failed to wake up at 6:30AM the past two mornings. It doesn't help that Zach doesn't have to be anywhere early this week so he wants to just stay in bed and snuggle, plus our bed is SUPER comfortable, plus the cool morning temperature this time of year is perfect for staying in a cozy warm bed with the covers up to my chin. It's really a wonderful time to sleep! However, I've got to get better at it the rest of the week.

Yesterday I didn't go in to my classroom.... I stayed home and made some sweet pickle relish. Which was quite easy. I'm getting in to this "canning" thing. It's so easy and the food lasts much longer. I can't wait to can some peaches in the next few weeks and then make applesauce in the coming months. Fall in Michigan is a wonderful time of year!

Okay. I'm going in to my classroom. It's still quite a wreck. And back to school night is next week. When I meet my students. And they see the classroom. And their parents see the classroom. I've got some work to do!

Love,
Sarah