time flies...

wow! what a crazy month i have had! traveling to florida twice to cheer on the deacsand to dallas once for a wonderful wedding, spending the week before Christmas working on wedding plans with mom and ferf, and starting a new term at school! almost everything seems bright, sparkly, and new. i am finally home for a while after all that travel- which i might add was not the smoothest air travel i've encountered, but i now have credit with both expedia and american airlines for my next destination!- and i'm glad to have time to hang out and relax some before i start student teaching in the spring. here are a few pictures from the past few weeks!

Jennie is excited about being in Miami for the Orange Bowl!

Jennie, Carrie, and me- welcoming Deacon fans at the front gate!

Deacon fans filled up our alloted sections- it was a magnificant sight!

Amanda, Susan, and Lucy let me break up their all black group!

Lucy and Potty posing for their close-up

our little family- now Megg-o and Trav-o are the official parents!

nothin' but net...

tonight was a momentous occasion marked by the sharing of chocolate chip cookies in a blue and white striped box. my sweet high school girls church basketball team won their first game! we played the other girls team from our church and i was very glad that we came out on top. hopefully this will turn the tide and we can win out (i'm not holding my breath on that one, but hey stranger things have happened!) the other coach and i have decided to embarce the absolute prissiness of our sweet team and are now on the hunt to find pink tennis socks to match our oh-so-fashinable pink jerseys to give as christmas presents. let me know if you know where these can be found!

in other news, the trip is set and the gang's all here... we are headed to miami to cheer on the deacs in the orange bowl! i can't believe it! after one of the best weekends in my life in jacksonville at the ACC Championship, going to a BCS bowl to cheer on my alma mater is just icing on the cake! hope to see lots of familiar deacon faces on the beach for new years!

Orange in 2007

tailgating before the game (and the rain)

can i just go on record as saying this past weekend in Jacksonville was the best and biggest party I have ever attended? Because it was! Three days later, I'm still hoarse from the multiple hours of standing in the rain and cheering loudly for the Deacs. My favorite part (besides winning the ACC Championship) was being in the stands after the game cheering, "It's great to be a Demon Deacon!" The whole trip was amazing- great friends, wonderful tailgate, AMAZING VICTORY, and a ridiculous "going to the orange bowl" celebration. While many details will not be told to protect the innocent and guilty, I will say a hearty thanks to the wait staff at the American Cafe at Jacksonville Landing for enduring multiple rounds of the Wake Forest fight song that involved every patron in the restaurant singing at the top of our lungs and cheering voraciously every time a fellow Deac passed our table! And as a little sidenote to all Georgia Tech fans who spike Wake fans into grassy hills, I'll just say- ORANGE BOWL BOUND, WOOHOO!!!! Hope to see many of you in Miami in the New Year!

i had a ferf sighting at the game!!

the beautiful scoreboard when time expired!

oh my holy wow!

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons are going to play for the ACC Football Championship on Saturday, December 2! Can you believe it? What a great season! What a great day to be a deacon fan- really every day is a great day to be a deacon fan, but today is just exceptionally great! Wow! I can't wait to see this team play in Jacksonville!

In true Wake Forest fashion, the quad has been white with toilet paper all season, which is unusual to those of us who attended Wake when it was a basketball school as opposed to the football powerhouse that it is now! Here is a picture of our beautiful quad!

All I can say is-- GO DEACS!!!

don't give up...

i am well aware of the fact that my tiny blog has been dying a quick death as of late. i'm sorry for my lack of bloggage- i am slightly drowning in schoolwork while trying to leave just enough time for a little bit of fun too! the fall has been too speedy for my liking. i have so enjoyed being back in high school- although being on the other side of the desk has been an adjustment. my time observing has made me desire my own classroom so that things can be done MY way-- the RIGHT way! it is hard for me to believe that Thanksgiving is next week and that my semester is almost over.

in other news- have you heard about the football powerhouse that is Wake Forest University?!? can i tell you how excited i am about the success the team is having this year-- incredible to say the least. i am already making plans to be in Jacksonville on Dec 2 to watch the deacs play for the ACC crown-- oh what fun it will be! daddy and I went up to Winston for the annual family rivalry game- Clemson vs Wake. i enjoyed the first three quarters of the game despite the rainy, windy conditions. he found the fourth quarter much more to his liking. a bonus was that i got to visit with my sweet friend Jennie during halftime (when we were in good moods- not the case after the game!) Thanks to Lindsay (who had a vision for this picture) for the terrific photography skills!

Jennie and i are headed to Atlanta this weekend with Carrie, Gayle, and Charlotte for a fun girls weekend. i can't wait to spend time with my dear friends who live far away! i will certainly take pictures and post them when we return!

one last thing- and this is added purely for the comic value- i am now coach cara! i am coaching a high school girls basketball team at my church! how hysterical is that? anyone who had the misfortune of seeing me play in high school knows how badly they must have needed coaches!! i'll keep you posted on how the season progresses.

new jewelry and new additions....

The past week has been one big long celebration for many reasons.

First and foremost, my favorite sister in the entire universe (my only sister but that's beside the point) got engaged!!! My little Ferf is going to marry Michael in July of next year and everybody in my family is very excited for them. Hopefully, one day soon I will be given a picture of them with Ferf wearing "The Ring" and I will include it with this post. So, YAY for Ferf and Michael!

Another big thing that happened is that Anne, Tedd, Maceyfacey, and Buggie added a member to their family! They got a puppy dog!! Her name is Sally and everybody thinks she is great (even Tedd, though he put up a valiant fight and almost had us believing that he didn't want a puppy!) Sally is 3 months old and is black all over with just a smidge of white on her chest and paws. The vet thinks she is a mix of black lab and beagle with maybe some other hound thrown in for good measure. I think the best two things about Sally are: 1. she smells like a puppy- not doggy yet, just very puppyish, 2. she has very large, very soft ears that I could rub all day long. I have also heard reports that she is a good singer but I will have to confirm and repot back. Again, hopefully I will get a picture of Sally soon and post it.

Other celebratory happenings- I started my clinical hours with Ms. Old High School Teacher on Monday- my time with her will be interesting to say the least but I am already learning a lot and picking up great ideas. Gayle, one of my best friends who I am lucky enough to have known for what seems like forever was in town for the weekend and despite our crazy schedules we got to hang out and catch up- isn't it nice to have comfortable old friends? My good friend Lindsay found out on Tuesday that he passed the NC Bar so he is officially allowed to practice law in North Carolina! I am so proud for him and excited for both he and his wife (another one of those comfortable old friends!)

When so much in the world is dismal and heart breaking, it is nice to be able to celebrate others' love, joy, and accomplishments.

karma's a... well you know

It has been brought to my attention that it has been three weeks since my last post, which should give you some indication that my life is pretty boring. however, lucky for you, just this morning I had quite the "My Name is Earle" moment, minus the dumb redneck best friend and ex-wife.

To catch you up- my fall term classes started about three weeks ago (also co-inciding with the drop-off in blog posts). I am taking 3 classes but am carrying a full 12 credit hours because along with my classes, I have to do a 75 hour clinical in a public high school. For this clinical, I am assigned to a specific teacher in a specific high school and must observe her teaching and teach a few lessons myself. This assignment was supposed to be posted on the Converse website the first week of classes so that we could get started as soon as possible. Of course, my assignment was not posted and only after weeks of being what my mom calls "being the squeeky wheel" (basicly annoying the tar out of the professor responsible for making my assingment and complaining loudly to anyone else who would listen), I was given my clinical placement today.

And this is where karma comes in. I was assigned to my Old 11th grade English Teacher at my alma mater- Go Pats! My Old 11th grade English Teacher did not exactly claim me as her favorite pupil. Every student in the school knows that she favors boys over girls and since I had the good fortune of sitting next to a particularly cute yet chatty boy, I was constantly called down for talking during class. There is also the matter of the research paper I wrote for her class in which I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Shoeless Joe Jackson did not throw the 1919 World Series and should in fact be reinstated in baseball and his name should hang in The Hall of Fame. It was the first real research paper I ever wrote and I have never been more proud of a paper since. Well, Ms. Old 11th Grade English Teacher stole my paper! I have yet to see it again since I turned it in over 10 years ago(yikes! i'm old!). I asked for it repeatedly my Senior year when I found that she had given my classmates papers back to them- but my paper was inexplicably not returned. My theory on this scandal is that she used my paper as the basis for her doctoral thesis when she went for her Ph.D. a few years after I graduated! All this to say, I have spent many years remembering Old 11th grade English Teacher in not the most kind ways, laughing at her obvious bias against girls, and always sympathizing with students in her classes.

So now, fittingly, I will be spending 75 hours in her classroom, watching her teach and trying to learn how to become the very best high school English teacher I can be! It's funny how things turn out isn't it?