recap: life last month

i know i haven't posted in forever and that is just because i have been so busy with work and this new big girl life i am living :)

i really need to try and get better at writing more often!  since i haven't written in over a month, i am just going to do a quick recap of the past month to catch me up.  hope you enjoy :)

kindergarten has been fabulous and i have actually gotten to know 83 precious little kindergarteners and their many different personalities.  it is so fun to think that i am actually playing a role in shaping these 5 year olds into the learners that they are becoming.  i should start writing down some of the things that they do and say because i will want to remember them for years to come.

besides kindergarten...

 i have been enjoying a lot of gamecock football

we went to the south carolina state fair

i decorated the front door for fall

gair and i spent a wonderful weekend in the mountains with his family.  we visited sky top orchard and picked apples.

taylor on curtis' shoulders reaching all the good apples in the tree.

little elliot helping put the apples in the bucket

triple stacked on top of curtis to reach the apples that were so high :)

gair and i picking apples and having so much fun with everyone!

after picking apples we headed back to the mountain house to watch some football and hang around the house!  carolina was playing florida so we were hoping for a [win] but had to suffer with another loss :(

since carolina wasn't playing too great and the weather was so wonderful we all went outside to play for a bit while gair and big g were working on the new bridge!

this is the view from the top of the mountains. i know i have posted this view before, but i can't get over how beautiful it is.

on the way home from the mountains we stopped in chapin to visit with mummy and dada.  

(more on that in the next blog post)

halloween is always a great time, and this year we had some friends over to the house for dinner and to carve pumpkins.

travis carved the angry bird, gair traced his hand like sign language for "i love you," of course mine is just random shapes (so kindergarten), and carly did the awesome fish bone pumpkin!  i think we did pretty good :)

gair and i decided last minute that we were gonna go downtown with yates to meet up with ashley, mike and brandi.  i found this indian costume, from when i was in the 3rd grade, in my "costume box" that i have in the attic for when i get my own kindergarten classroom.  and yates had this indian costume at his house for gair to wear.  we sure were a cute little indian couple for putting this together so last minute :)

yates went to halloween express and picked out an entire costume get up for ash when she got off work.  what a great surprise.  we had so much fun all dressed up :)

the past month and some has been too wonderful with the beautiful weather, my new job, and having fun with friends :)  looking forward to an even more amazing holiday season!

will post again tomorrow (aren't you surprised?!?!)

long week {+ some} in kindergarten

as some of you may already know. . . this girl got a j.o.b.

in this day and time you gotta take those small stepping stones that are put in front of you and build steps toward your dream.

that is exactly what i am doing.

that little stepping stone that was put in front of me was a job opportunity as a kindergarten assistant that could potentially turn into a full time teaching position if more students register at our school.  as of right now there are 27-29 kindergartners in each of the 3 kindergarten classes already at our school. yep, that's right, 27-29 kindergartners.  there is already one kindergarten teacher and one assistant in each of the 3 classes, so i was hired to be a floater, to help out each of the 3 classes where and when i am needed.

  fortunately, there is an open classroom on their hallway which i have been given permission to set up as "my classroom" so i can pull out small group of children to work with.  just saying this makes my heart so happy.  i feel so blessed that i am given the opportunity to not only teach one class of kindergarteners, but i get to love and teach 83 precious 5 year olds.

none of this would have been possible if one special person hadn't believed in me and trusted in me, so a big thank you to mrs. dowling for not only letting me know about this position, but also for putting in a good word :)

florida keys

now to tell the story of the florida keys.

longest road trip ever with such wonderful friend. 

the end.

ha.

the trip began, for gair and i, just a day earlier when we left for disney world.  then we left early saturday morning from orlando and drove south bound on the florida turnpike.  the trip was lengthy, but i got to spend lots of quality time with gair :)

fun times in the car. ha.

look what we found in isla morada.  one of daddy's boats. 

finally on the 7 mile bridge towards key west.

we were the first ones to arrive at our house for the week, and gair didn't waste anytime before laying out by the pool.  i walked out back and heard gair yell "holy sh** bray, look." 

this is what we saw.

totally unexpected. apparently this is completely normal around the keys.

once everyone arrived we picked out our bedrooms for the week. unpacked. and hopped in the pool. we were all pretty tired from the l.o.n.g drive so we just ordered some pizzas for dinner and chilled around the house. we planned on doing a lot of chilling around the house because it really was the coolest house ever.  we had a huge, 5 bedroom house on the water (with a dock), and a pool.  it had a screened in back porch, and under the back porch was a covered patio with a big tv where we spent a lot of time watching tv, playing cards, playing corn hole, and relaxing pool side.

here are some fun pictures from our trip. in no particular order (basically because i don't feel like putting them in order) ha.

drove to key west for the night!

the girls before dinner.

these guys were "practicing for st. patty's day" ha.

little instagram love with my girls :)

gair and i :)

irish kevin's in key west

me and the girls again :) love them!

me snorkeling and gair scuba diving!

as you can tell by the pictures, we had a fabulous time in the keys and we are already looking forward to going again next year :)

disney world

a little over a month ago gair and i were headed to the keys with some of our best friends.  if you remember back in march, he and i went to disney world with his whole family for elliot's 2nd birthday.  when we were there we bought a 2 day hopper pass that didn't expire and we only used 1 of those days while we were there in march.  since we had a 1 day hopper pass left we decided to leave a day early for orlando and spend a day at the most magical place on earth, disney world!

the weather wasn't the best on our way down.  it actually was horrible, it poured the entire way!

just being silly on our l.o.n.g. car ride!

my turn to just ride. phewww. tired of driving.

we arrived in orlando on thursday night and got up early on friday morning to head to animal kingdom (that was our favorite park when we were there in march, so we wanted to see what all we didn't get to see the first time).

he really can be sweet :)

going on the kilimanjaro safari ride in the rain to see all the cool animals

keep in mind there aren't any fences or boundaries between us and these animals on the safari tour.

this lioness wasn't looking to happy.  and again, there wasn't any fence or boundary between her and us. ahh!

after the safari we walked around the park for a little while looking at all the neat things and of course people watching, because that is one of the best things to do in disney world.  although it was raining on and off we had so much fun and were able to ride a few rides.  we even rode the Kali River Rapids (and i got soaked) of course gair barely got wet!

after the river rapids ride we decided to head back to our hotel, grab some dinner, and then head to magic kingdom for the evening.  we went to buffalo wild wings which was right near our hotel and had a little dinner before heading back to the magic kingdom.

when we got to magic kingdom, one of the first things you pass when you enter is the theatre where you can meet the princess'...well, the princess' that were there at that time to meet were Belle, Aurora, and Cinderella.  the wait time was only 25 minutes so gair agreed that we could get our picture taken with Belle and send it to elliot because that is her favorite princess.  well needless to say, that wait time was completely incorrect and we ended up waiting in line for over an hour.  i literally thought gair was going to die.  ha.  it was totally worth the torture of standing in line to watch all of these moms putting makeup on their toddlers and school age little girls just to get their picture taken with a princess.  i couldn't believe how these moms were taking this so seriously.  talk about living vicariously through your children.  

any who. it was all totally worth it because i got this picture.

and this sweet video from Belle herself, to our sweet little Elliot.

and we also got to see the real reason why disney world is such a magical place!

the fireworks at magic kingdom.

after the fireworks we walked around magic kingdom for a little bit and then headed back to our hotel for a good nights sleep for our l.o.n.g. drive the next day to the keys with all of our friends.

i will post about our trip in the keys here in the next few days.

off to watch gair's team kick some church softball booty.