In the months before we found out we were pregnant, I daydreamed about how we would tell certain people once we finally saw that positive sign.  There were specific ideas that I had for specific people, but there is one idea that I tentatively decided on years ago.  (Yes, years…)

Before David and I started dating, Tony and Bobby had already started bugging him about asking me out.  They very sneakily put together a picture and sent it to David via e-mail.  They tricked him by saying that “Bobby didn’t make it and Tony didn’t send it.”  Before this excuse, he was convinced that they were behind it all, but this statement changed his mind.  lol

A little explanation is needed here: our dorm was the Honor’s dorm, and we made jokes that it was actually our college’s own personal eugenics experiment.  Throw a bunch of high-achieving people into a small space, and let’s see how many of them pair up.  It seems to have worked a number of times.  :-)

Back to the story – Tony photoshopped a picture of David and me from the church camping trip so that it looked like I was resting my head on his shoulder.  (David isn’t particularly fond of this picture of himself, unfortunately.)  He put us in a church with a weird little Cupid, which is hidden in the new picture, added a poem in one corner, and then the experiment number for this particular “Conner Hall Eugenics Experiment,” expected to be completed in Fall 2005 (which was when they expected us to start dating).  Bobby created an e-mail address along the lines of “connerhalleugenics at yahoo dot com” and sent it on to the unsuspecting, naive man who would eventually become my boyfriend.  The two of them then waited for the reaction.  [Any insights into his reaction would be great!  I either don't remember it or never heard what happened.]

This had David stumped for a while, but maybe it gave him the final push to finally ask me to date him.  Either way, once we finally started dating, he e-mailed me the photo to show me what they had done.  I kept it simply because I thought it was funny and because the guys really did have an impact on David’s decision to ask me to date him.

Through several e-mail changes, I have always e-mailed this picture to myself at the new addresses.  I never saved it to my computer alone because I was afraid I might lose it with computer changes.  When we got married, I thought that this picture could possibly be used for future announcements to Bobby and Tony.  Enter my (possibly) favorite idea for announcing our pregnancy.

Bobby and Tony's Announcement

It was pretty simple.  I used an available, free, and allowed photo of a baby, photoshopped it in over the funky pink Cupid, then changed the date from 2005 to 2012.  It was just perfect that it was still Fall.  I changed the experiment number from a “1″ at the end to a “2,” and then I called it good!  I almost created a new e-mail address along the sames lines of the one Bobby did, but I decided to just stick with mine.  Maybe I should have created another one?  :-)

I love this announcement because of the background story!  We received a phone call from Tony within 30 seconds of sending it off to him.  He was so excited!  We accidentally woke poor Bobby up because I couldn’t wait any longer to hear from him.  He went to bed a little earlier that night than we expected…

Patience definitely paid off, and I am SO glad I kept this photo.

Week Number Twelve

Dear Sweet Little One,

Welcome to our family!  Your Daddy and I have prayed and prepared for you for a long time now, and we are so excited that you are growing inside  of me.  This trimester has been an interesting one.  I’ve been pretty sick, and we are looking forward to hopefully being out of the sick portion in the next couple of weeks.  (Hello second trimester!)

We are so excited to see the progress you are making.  This week, you are the size of a plum.  I have already seen you twice at the doctor’s office, and the most exciting portion of this whole pregnancy so far was watching you move on the screen.  It’s amazing that you are already moving inside of me!  I can’t wait to actually feel your first little flutters of movement.

You already have cute little arms and legs, and I was even able to see your fingers and toes on the ultrasound!  How cool!  Your organs are all “done,” and you will mostly be working on the details now.  Your body has already started creating white blood cells and hormones.

I pray for you all the time and am so excited to find out what kind of person you become.  We already love you so much!

Love,

Mommy

*I borrowed the calendar shirt idea from One Little Minute. It was fun to make, and I love how it turned out! – She has a great crafting blog.*

Well, this post has been a long time coming.  I finally feel well enough to post again!

Let’s begin at the beginning.  David and I have been planning on having kids for a little while now.  It took us about a year to finally get pregnant, which was definitely frustrating after a few months; it’s hard not to think that something is medically wrong, even though David and I are both healthy and young.  A lot of prayer went into being patient, and it’s amazing how God’s timing ALWAYS works out for the best.

A few months ago, I had to choose between working at two events in January: running sound for a Tim Hawkins concert at our church (he’s hilarious) and being a leader at Disciple Now.  They were both happening on the exact same weekend on different sides of the state, and both were things I really wanted to do.  However, I knew that working at Disciple Now in the future would be a whole lot harder once we had kids, so I chose that one.  I’m so glad I did!

My Sweet D-Now Girls

Rachel and Her Awesome Flag

The Other Side

I got to work with a senior girls group this year, and they were a seriously sweet group.  I have to point out that Rachel (the girl with the flag) drew the horse and rider from scratch without an example picture in less than five minutes.  She’s so good!  (The weekend’s theme was Medieval Times.)

There is a point to this.

Anyone who has worked Disciple Now knows that a lack of sleep is to be expected.  A leader bonds with her girls during late-night chats, and everyone goes non-stop with the various events.  It’s a blast, but you are definitely tired all weekend.  This particular weekend was a little different for me because I felt way more tired than I normally would, even given the lack of sleep.  I had also felt “off” for several days, but I refused to think of it as anything but exhaustion from teaching a particularly challenging and frustrating Statistics class.  (I never let myself think I was pregnant because of the many months of ‘rejection’ I had experienced.)  I stayed an extra day in Frisco with my old youth leader and his family: Chris, Shanda, and their kiddos.

When I got back home that Monday, I finally decided to figure out whether my odd feelings were a result of something a little more exciting that frustrating classes.  I took a pregnancy test, saw the positive, and spent the next hour pacing between the living room and the test in the bathroom, convincing myself that the test wasn’t lying to me.  Yes, it took an hour.  I only had Cooper to talk to, and I’m sure she was very confused.  I kept muttering, “I think I’m being lied to, Cooper.  There’s no way.  This can’t be true.”  I would then walk back into the bathroom to look at the test.  She just looked at me with her endearing head tilt.

I realized David was coming home soon, so I quickly decided how I was going to tell him.  He and I had discussed it for months and knew that his office would eventually become the nursery.  So I created this:

The Way David Found Out

In case you can’t read it, I created a banner that says, “Ready to Redecorate?” and hung it in his office.  When he got home and found me cooking dinner, I asked him to go pull us up a show to watch on his computer.  This is our thing during dinner.  He didn’t even make it all the way into his office before he came back in exclaiming “NO WAY!!!!”  Needless to say, he was excited!  He came into the kitchen with me, and we prayed for our expanding family and the sweet new little one.

Our Expanding Family

We spent the next couple of hours totally flabbergasted and SOOO excited.  Since we had experienced so many months of non-pregnancy, I actually didn’t believe the pregnancy test, so I convinced him that we should take another test just in case.

Double Tests

Pretty sure those are both positive…

The next step was to decide how to tell our family.  We spent the majority of the next few days deciding how to do it.  We finally came up with this for the majority of our announcements:

Pregnancy Announcement

The fun thing is that the majority of people got it, even if it was from a process of elimination instead of the actual statistics themselves.  :-)  The one major exception was Daddy, who thought it was something along the lines of the Autumnal Equinox.  I laughed at that one.

We also took pregnancy photos to document the “before expanding” process of my stomach.  Cooper got in on the action a little bit, too.

Week Number Five

Yes, I am a huge fan of this picture of Cooper and me.  It’s one of the sweetest I have of her!

Now, these were photos taken pre-torture.  lol  This first trimester has been a little more challenging than I expected it would be.  I’ve debated whether to put the negative portions of pregnancy on here or not, but I finally decided that since this is one of the things I am experiencing, it was worth remembering along with everything else.

I have definitely dealt with nausea.  Saltines have become very close friends of mine, and I also had to get nausea medicine from my doctor.  This has not been a fun experience.  I’ve gotten better about finding ways to deal with it, though.  I have kept food on my stomach and have remembered that rest is VERY important, and I have heeded to that warning.  I always have crackers by my bed in the morning, and I eat a few before even moving in the morning.  There are other remedies I have used, and I am so grateful for the sweet people who have given me advice.  I have tried almost all of the advice!  (Note: SeaBands are useless, other than for making your wrists itchy…)  Remember I said that God’s timing is always perfect?  The nausea has been a big part of this.  If I had gotten pregnant in the month before, I would have had a huge problem finishing last semester’s classes.  The worst week was during the break between semesters.  Perfect, right?

The thing I was most worried about pre-pregnancy were the migraines that I’ve had forever.  I finally found migraine medicine that worked well for me, but I knew that I couldn’t use this while pregnant.  I had read that a good portion of women with migraines find that they go away during pregnancy.  Some women, however, find that their number of migraines increases.  This, unfortunately, has turned out to be the case for me.  I’m hoping that once the raging hormones die down in the next couple weeks, my migraines will go away.  After suffering through a particularly horrible migraine that I couldn’t take anything for, I asked my doctor about it, and she prescribed me medicine that is safe to use during pregnancy.  The only downside is that it does not cure migraines; it just covers up the pain and knocks me out.  This means that I usually wake up four hours later with the same migraine.  I’m still grateful for the pain relief, though.

The other side-effect to my pregnancy has been fatigue.  The only other time I have been this exhausted was in graduate school, and there was an easy-to-see reason for it.  Like I said previously, though, I have heeded my body’s warnings and have actually taken naps.  I’m pretty proud of this because I’ve been anti-nap forever.  There’s always so much to be done that it is hard for me to relax.  I have not had this problem the last few weeks.  I have slowed down, rested, and let my body do some pretty awesome work.

After these negative side effects, I do want to point out the awesomeness of this whole process.  I can’t tell you how exciting it is learning about the changes our baby is going through.  David and I have been reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and there’s a week-by-week breakdown of what the baby is growing.  It also gives a fruit or vegetable example of how big the baby is.  For example, during week 5, the baby was the length of an orange seed.  This week (week 12), the baby is the length of a fresh plum.  Cool, right!?  It’s incredible to know from one week to the next that the baby’s heart is “done” and beating, or that the fingernails are growing, or that the baby has started kicking.  This is something he and I both love learning about.  It makes the nausea a little more bearable.  :-)

I’m growing a human being!

Just so cool…

Well, hello there!  Yes, it’s been a while.  Yes, there is a reason.

But that’s not for this post.  And all of you already know the reason anyway.

This post is all about teaching.  Complaints.  Encouragement.  Etc.

All About Teaching

Disclaimer: I still enjoy teaching.  However, I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of semesters.

I guess I should start by saying that in some ways, I really dislike Wayland’s quarters system.  The first, and biggest, reason is that to fit all of the information into a semester, they must have four hours of class time per week.  Only one more than a “normal” college, right?  However, due to the fact that Wayland so graciously caters to military and working adults, this means that these four hours are crammed into one day’s worth of instruction instead of two or three to better fit a “working person’s needs.”

That’s right.  Four hours straight of Statistics.  Just what every student in the world has written on the top of their Christmas list.

To be fair, they have about eight classes per semester (in total) that are held on Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday mornings, which means two hours blocks of time.  That is WAAAAAAY more manageable than the four-hour class in one day.  I know it’s the same amount of information per week, but think of the night classes this way: you have forty hungry adults who have just gotten off of work, and they arrive at your classroom at 6 p.m. to learn about a subject that they aren’t that excited about to begin with.  Then, as the instructor, you proceed to answer a student’s question that, yes, you WILL be teaching until 10:10 p.m. because that’s just how much information you have to cover.

I have heard less whining and crying from the two-year olds I used to teach in Sunday School.  Seriously.  I should have videotaped it for proof.

Another reason this is difficult is due to the fact that if you have a class of students with one, two, or more students that are, let’s just say, “difficult to reason with,” you must stay in a room with them for four hours and maintain some semblance of control, both over yourself and the classroom as a whole.  Yes, this classroom was filled with adults.  They were harder to control than the 18- and 19-year olds at Texas Tech.

This was a learning experience.

Last semester was one that I was more than happy to end.  My Intermediate Algebra class was wonderful.  There were a total of three students enrolled, and two showed up regularly.  They both loved learning the material and were happy to see me every day.  One of them has gone on to my College Algebra class this semester!  That’s one of the highest compliments I could have received.  :-)  My Statistics class was a different story.  It was my first time to formally teach Statistics, and the first time to teach anything is always harder, no matter the subject.  It was also a packed classroom of forty, and the class ran from 6 to 10:10 on Thursday nights.  This makes for difficulty #2.  The third problem was that one problem student who decided, since he was pushing 50 and I was a “young woman with no sense about the real world,” there was no way I could have any clue what I was talking about.  This is one of the first times I have really had to deal with a problem like this in a professional setting.

Yes, I’m a woman.  Yes, I was 25 (now 26).  And I already have my Master’s in mathematics while you are still working on your first degree.

Oh boy.  There were so many times I wanted to say that out loud.  I’m not denying the fact that someone older than me definitely has more life experience than I do, and a good portion of those people have plenty in their heads that I could (and should) learn from.  I’m not saying anything against that.  I understand and respect that.  I’m definitely not trying to say that my degree is necessarily better than others or that everyone needs a degree.  What I am saying is that I have the ability to teach this student mathematics, regardless of the fact that I am half his age and female.  Ugh.  [I guarantee you that the fact that I'm female was a bigger obstacle for him than the fact that I'm young.]

This is also the first semester ever that I haven’t looked forward to getting teaching evaluations.  That has always been something I have looked forward to.  Of the nine students that filled out the online evaluation in my Statistics class, all of them said something nice, but several of them had some type of negative comment in addition to the nice one.  (Usually this involved the amount of homework I give.)  Of them, the one I most disliked, was the person that kept saying I had “youthful zeal.”  You can interpret for yourself what they meant.  It wasn’t a compliment in the context of the evaluation.

This made for a tough semester overall.  I learned a lot about myself and, unfortunately, learned some not-so-nice things about the way people treat others.  Due to all of this, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when their final exam was over and everyone left the room.

One benefit of Wayland’s quarters system: you get rid of problem students after 11 weeks instead of 16!

The entire semester was not a waste.  I did have many students who got a lot out of the class, and several that actually enjoyed it.  I have a great story from last semester, to make this post a lot less depressing.  Due to my Statistics class, of all things, one of my students decided to change her major from Nursing to Business Statistics.  Woohoo!  This absolutely made my day.  She came into the class hating mathematics, and she loved it by the end of the semester.  This made my heart soar, and showed me that the whole semester was not a waste.  Thank you, Lord, for at least showing me one ray of sunshine in the darkness of a horribly rough semester.

This new semester could not be more different from last semester.  First of all, I managed to get TWO of those morning classes!!  WOOHOO!  Teaching Statistics two days a week in the morning is so very much easier than teaching one day a week at night.  Secondly (and most importantly), I have a College Algebra class of twelve students that are doing a great job, and I have a Statistics class with nine students that are enjoying every minute of class, or at least pretending to!  It is a joy to walk into class every morning.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about this.  I also managed to get a very compassionate group of students.  I’ll explain more in a later post, but let’s just say that I haven’t felt my best the last few weeks.  Waking up after an entire night with a migraine and nausea does not make for a good and happy morning, and these students have been so sweet and understanding on those particular mornings.

I know God is teaching me lessons along the way with every student that crosses my path, but there are semesters that I’m more than happy to do without.  Actually, there’s only been a single semester (out of nine) that I have wanted to do without.  I guess that’s not a bad track record!

I broke three sewing needles making Kara’s birthday present.  Three.  Feel special, Kara.  Very special.  :-)

I can’t wait to post pictures about this project.  I have to wait until she opens it, though!!

My old youth pastor, Chris, called me a couple months ago to ask if I wanted to be a teacher for his church’s Disciple Now.  I was SO excited that he called, and I happily agreed to do it.

The overall theme for this year is medieval, and we will be discussing chivalry, relationships, love, dating, etc.  I am teaching the senior girls group, and our color is blue, so I made shirts for myself for the weekend!

The first shirt is just for fun.  I found an example of a shirt that I liked, and I edited it to my liking.  This is the dragon shirt for the first night:

Front of the Dragon Shirt

Back of the Dragon Shirt

Dragon Detail

Isn’t the dragon cute!?  I love how it turned out!  I used freezer-paper stenciling for both of these shirts.  You draw or trace a design on to freezer (butcher) paper, cut that out with an exacto-knife, and then you can iron the wax side on to the shirt.  After painting on to the stencil and letting it dry for a little bit, you can peel the freezer paper off.  I added all of the detail with a little paintbrush. I think the hardest part was cutting out the medieval font for the dragon shirt.  The detail was a pain, but it was worth it for how it turned out!  :-)

The other shirt goes more with the actual theme of the weekend.  This one I came up with totally on my own.  It’s the Shining Armor shirt:

Front of Shining Armor Shirt

Back of Shining Armor Shirt

Detail on the Shining Armor Picture

I am most happy with the way the knight’s helmet turned out on this particular shirt.  I also love the color change in the plume (is that the right word?) on the top of the helmet.  I like the details on it.  David likes the shine around “Shining” on the front of the shirt.

What do you think??

Yes, this post is coming almost a month late, but better late than never, right?

David and I agree that it absolutely does NOT seem like five years ago when we were here:

Our Wedding Day

And now we are here:

Our Fifth Anniversary Date

Though I prefer these pictures of “here”:

One Big Happy Family - (Other than a cold Cooper!)

Fifth Married Christmas

We had a much better photographer in these pictures.  :-)  If only Cooper had been happier in the snow!  lol

Our fifth anniversary was a lot of fun!  The only thing I requested was that I wanted to be surprised for dinner.  I didn’t want to go through the, “So what do YOU want for dinner?  I don’t care.  What do YOU want for dinner?” routine.  David was awesome!  He planned it all out himself and wouldn’t say anything about it until we pulled into the parking lot except “make sure you’re hungry tonight!”  He took me to an amazing Brazilian steakhouse that cooked more meat than you could ever try.  Then we went to an Italian gelato place for dessert, which was (as always) divine.

Afterwards, we loaded up on as much caffeine as we could manage and drove ourselves to the youth lock-in at church.  The parents in charge of the youth group told David, “Oh come on – it’s just an anniversary!  You’ll have another one next year!” in an attempt to convince him he should come.  Good thing they were joking.  :-)  In all reality, we both enjoyed serving together, and I LOVED playing games with all of the students.  We have an awesome group of people at our church.

In honor of five years together, I thought I would list at least one major event per year of our marriage:

• Year 1 – We got married!!  :-)  (duh)
• Year 2 – I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, we made the (what was for me) HUGE move to Lubbock, we started graduate school, and I changed churches for basically the first time ever.  That was a life-changing year.
• Year 3 – We made an addition to our family by getting Cooper.  I just love our dog.
• Year 4 – We graduated and stopped torturing ourselves with grad school!  lol  We also made the even larger move to San Antonio, and David found a great job.
• Year 5 – We found our new church home that we both love, made amazing friends in our new home, and have really settled in here.  I started my own business and then found a teaching position where I am blessed with a great administration that backs me up 100%.

It’s amazing how many things have happened in just five years.  I love that I have a husband who I can count on every minute of every day.  I love that we support each other, love each other, and continue to learn from one another on a daily basis.  He’s one of the funniest, smartest, and funnest people I know, and I am so blessed to be his wife.

I can’t wait for the decades we have in front of us.  I love you, Honey-Bunch.  :-)

He's Amusing

Niiiiiice

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty!"

Asking for a kiss?

It looks like I'm in pain...

We have a blast together!

Rejected!

He's my best friend in the world.