Softball Champions!

Saturday Chad and I got up and drove to Nixon (a town close to Springfield, MO) for a softball tournament. I was pretty excited to get to play in this tournament....especially

because the winning team was supposed to be awarded $500. This was pretty big motivation, especially since we're trying not to spend money. All day while we played I kept dreaming about what we could do with the money if we won. Our team wasn't that incredible, but I knew we had a fair chance of winning because there weren't many teams competing. When I saw the first baseman of the opposing team light up a cigarette and start smoking while she was playing, I thought surly we have a good shot at this. I won't bore you with all the details, but we ended up playing 5 games and winning the tournament. I was so excited and even more excited about the prize money....until they explained that they changed their minds and decided to give us t-shirts instead. What a let down! I still had a great time though and I'm glad we got to play. This is a picture from the last tournament. I know it's not great, but I sorta felt like a dork taking pictures, so this is all I got. Chad hit 8 over the fence home runs in this tournament!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

These aren't like knock you out of your chair good, but for an easy healthy snack...they aren't too bad.

Pumpkin Spice Muffins
1 Boxed Spice Cake Mix
1 Can of Pure Pumpkin
Mix together, pour in a muffin tin, and bake at 350 for about 17 min.

Just an Update

I know it's been a while since I've added to my blog...sorry. My excuse is that I really don't like to post with out adding pictures. My camera has been in Chad's truck for a week or so and I keep forgetting to take it out and take pictures. Anyway...here's some brief updates:

1. We went to a church in Grove last Sunday and really liked it! Yea!!! This has been a big struggle. The church we went to had a guest speaker, so we're going to check it out again this Sunday. It's just exciting to find a place that we both like.

2. I got to see High School Musical today at the Coleman Theater. I'll have to take pictures of it sometime. It's really old-timey and elaborate. The high school students performed in it and it was really pretty good. I love field trip days!!!

3. I'm looking for a new hobby. Those of you who know me, know that I love to shop...really I love to bargain hunt. I usually don't buy anything, but I love looking around and seeing what's out and how much things cost. I love getting a good deal on things. Well, since moving to Miami, that has pretty much stopped. There's not really anywhere to shop around here. That leaves me looking for something fun to do in my spare time after school. So this week I've been reading. I rarely read anything except for a devotional in the morning. However, Nicholas Spark's new book just came out...I'm on chapter 3 and it's pretty good. If you want to borrow it when I'm finished, let me know.

4. Chad's sister, Rachel, got engaged last Saturday! I'm so excited for her!!! I would give you more details, but Chad didn't get all the good details when he talked to her.

5. Since there aren't many restaurants in Miami, I'm always excited when I see things at Walmart that are from restaurants. For example, I love the TGIFriday's meals that you make in the skillet. I also like most of the Macaroni Grill pasta kits. I say most because I made one last night, Chicken Marsala with linguine, and it was pretty disgusting. Anyway, I was pretty exited when I saw Tony Roma's Ribs the other day. I fixed them tonight and they were delicious! I highly recommend them.

I hope you all are having a great week. I'll try to take some pics this weekend. We're headed to another softball tourn!

A Few Honeymoon Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our honeymoon. I can't wait to go back to this place. It was so incredible! I highly recommend this place! It's an all inclusive resort. The food was sooo good, and the service was great. We had such a fun relaxing time. I wish I could post all of my pictures so you could get a better glimpse of where we were. If you have the opportunity, you must go!!!

This was our resort. Everything was very clean and modern. There were wrought iron chandeliers and railing everywhere. The rooms were unbelievable with a balcony and a huge jacuzzi in each room. On the beach there were tons of cabanas...a perfect place to hide out in the shade.

Here we are having dinner on the beach one night...the best grilled shrimp I've ever had in my life. I think this dinner lasted about 3 hours. It was so fun. We got to see a beautiful sunset. When it started getting dark, they made us a candlelit path in the sand and lit a few tiki torches. We had a balcony outside our room with a hammock. I loved sitting out here. It was so beautiful and the weather was perfect.

One morning we went for a bike ride around town. We stopped at this beach for a few minutes. Everywhere we went was completely breathtaking...

This was after dinner one night. I think there were like 6 restaurants at our resort that we could choose from. They were all so good....not to mention the room service! There is also a resort called The Grand that was next door. These resorts are both under the same ownership. If you stayed at The Royal (which is adults only) you were able to use all of the amenities and restaurants at The Grand (which is also super nice, but is for families). If you stayed at The Grand, you were limited to only your resort. This night we ate at an Italian restaurant at The Grand.

Tough Days for Students

One of the high school students was killed this last weekend in an accident. Please keep his family and friends in your prayers. The funeral is this Wednesday (tomorrow). It's a pretty tough thing to go through and it's a lot for the students to handle. A lot of people are hurting right now; please pray that God will use this tragedy to bring people closer to Him.

My first call to 911

First of all, I'm sorry I don't have pictures to go along with this one. I wish you could have witnessed this one go down... So last night, Chad decided he was going to fix our kitchen sink. It's been leaky for a while now. Our water out here smells pretty bad and stale stinky water smells even worse. Anyway, our house is pretty old and things aren't set up like they would be in a typical house. Normally there would be a shut off valve to turn the water off under the sink, but not at our house. There wasn't a place to shut it off, but Chad was determined to fix the sink anyway. He was carefully working on loosening the faucet when all of the sudden it came off of the hose...(or something like that...thankfully I wasn't the one with my head under the sink, so I didn't really know what was going on.) So hot water is starting to spew out everywhere really fast...our conversation continued something like this...
Amanda: Oh crap! What do we do?
Chad: Go grab some towels or something.
Chad: This is getting really hot. I don't know how long I can hold it.
Amanda: What do we do?
Chad: I don't know but we gotta do something. I'm going to need you to hold this (the water hose) while I figure out how do shut this off.
Amanda: Chad, but I just washed my hair....(I really shouldn't have said that. I didn't realize how bad it was. I thought he was just going to have me hold the hose while he turned a knob and I didn't want to get all gross.)
Amanda: Do you want me to call Bill or something.
Chad: No. I guess call 911.
Amanda: 911!?! Really? (I always associated 911 with life or death emergencies)
Chad: I don't know who else to call.
So then I called 911.
911: 911, What's your emergency?
Amanda: Um, our house is flooding really bad and I need someone to shut off the water.
911: Ok, is the water leaking on the inside or outside?
Amanda: Inside, but we need someone to shut off the water thing on the outside. It's by the curb.
911: Ok, I'll try to send someone over.
So then we waited and waited. Chad had been holding the hose that was full of scalding hot water for quite a while.
Chad: We gotta think of something.
Amanda: Like what?
Chad: I don't know just pray.
So then I prayed
Chad had a great idea to turn on all the other water faucets and the washing machine. This was a great idea. Our water pressure is pretty weak whenever we have water flowing out of more than one place. Then he told me how to adjust the hot water tank/heater thing to where it would only run cold water. These things made a huge difference. I was able to then hold the hose while Chad worked on things. We were still waiting on the firemen or whoever comes out for those calls. It seemed like it was taking forever. Chad made another call and was able to figure out how to shut the water off. About an hour and a half later, a city worker came by to help. Chad had already fixed the problem and we were cleaning up by then...I don't think they were in much of a hurry. Thanks to Chad's quick thinking, we were able to keep the water under control. It didn't flood anything and it didn't even get to the carpet. All of the water stayed on the linoleum floor in the kitchen and was pretty easy to wipe up. It was a pretty comical night.

Another Great Weekend

Chad's dad called Saturday morning to invite us to meet up with them at the Tulsa Fair after the OU game. We were excited to go! When we got there early in the evening the parking was a mess. We decided to park down the street in Reasor's parking lot. Since we needed to stop there to get some steak seasoning anyway, we thought this would be the best option. However, when we arrived, we saw that there were security people all over the place. One of the cops stopped me to ask me if I was planning on going to the fair (he was ready to kick me out)...I told him I needed to go in Reasor's and after answering about 15 questions he let me park. It was a huge ordeal. Then some man chased us down in the parking lot and told us if we didn't buy a $5 parking pass, they would tow my car. I found this to be really irritating. I was a customer, didn't I have a right to park my car there for free? Can you only park your car in a lot for a certain amount of time? How are they going to know if we go to the fair? I was getting frustrated because I didn't know what we should do. On one hand, I thought it was completely ridiculous to have to pay to park there...but on the other hand, I was going to be really mad if we came back and my car was gone. We decided to take our chances and forgo the parking pass. Thankfully, when we came back, my car was still there. I'm glad we went, and I'm glad we got to spend some time with his family while we were there.

Sunday, we decided to watch lifechurch online. I know..it's important to meet with other Christians and build those relationships. That's something that we both desire, but we just haven't found a place here that we're really excited about yet. This was the first week we stayed at home and watched lifechurch. I really miss it. Hopefully we'll find our church home here soon.

I think this was probably the best Sunday afternoon I've had here. Chad grilled us some steak and it was sooooo good! I think he's mastered grilling steak! I can't even explain how good it was! It was so nice of him to cook for me too. I loved it. Later that afternoon, we watched the Cowboy's game and then went outside and played corn hole...aka bean bag toss. It was such a great day! If only the weekends could be a little longer.

A Couple of Days in OKC

Thanks to a math conference, I got to spend a couple of days in OKC last week. I had a great visit that was full of little bonus surprises. The math conference was kinda boring....not as good as I had hoped, but I did learn a thing or two while I was there. I saw several teachers that I had taught with before. They all shared their stories about what their students are like and it just made me really thankful to be where I am now. The students I teach here are really pretty good students. I also ran into Susan DeMoss while I was at the conference. For those of you who don't know who she is, she spent a lot of time really investing in my life while I was in the youth group. She also happens to be a math teacher. I'm so glad she was at the conference. We got to talk for a while and catch up on life. It was a huge blessing to get to see her. Another unexpected bonus...I walked to the downtown Quizno's for lunch and it just so happened that my friend Amy was on her lunch break. She came over and sat with me while I ate. It was great to see her and catch up with her as well. I can't tell you how much it means to me to see people I know these days.

Thursday night we had Hattie's birthday party at Brent and Keely's. I can't believe she's already 4 years old! She is so precious. Here are a few of the pictures I took.

Brent and Keely also invited Craig and Danielle over for Hattie's birthday party. I had so much fun with everyone. Danielle just dyed her hair a darker color and it looks fabulous! I love it. I don't think I've ever seen her with brown hair, but it looks great!

I don't have any pictures of the rest of my family...but it was really good to spend time with all of them.

Happy Birthday Hattie!!!

Today is my niece's birthday! Happy Birthday Hattie! I am so excited because I get to come to OKC tomorrow and I'll get to be there for her birthday party! I can't wait to see Hattie and the rest of my family and Danielle. By the way Hattie, thank you so much for your letter you sent me. I loved it. You made my day!