Monday, October 8, 2012

School and Vacation Plans

I've been trying to fight off a cold for almost three weeks now. At the same time I've been working, getting ready for a garage sale, and finalizing plans for our vacation.

We had our garage sale on Saturday. It was only moderately successful. We made $75 which will be added to our spending money for our trip.

As Saturday went on, I felt worse and worse. I could not stop coughing. By 3 o'clock I was coughing nonstop and my head was pounding. I made my first ever trip to the minor emergency clinic. I was expecting it to be an awful experience with hours of waiting, but it wasn't bad at all. In fact, I was there less than an hour and I really liked the physician's assistant that I saw. He started me on an antibiotic and gave me a combination cough suppressant and decongestant. I'm already feeling better, but I still wake up coughing every four hours or so. Hopefully, I'll be completely well before time to leave for vacation next Wednesday.

Several weeks ago, we spent the weekend at our Aggie Engineers' house. Katy, Travis and our Princesses came too. On Saturday, while the men played golf in the annual Valenta family tournament, the girls went to the Texas Antique Weekend in Round Top.

As usual, it was hot. The first tent we went to had a lot of vintage furniture and some of the biggest mirrors I have ever seen. Princess E was quite taken with herself in the mirrors.


Towards the end of the afternoon, we ran across a little, gray concrete donkey that Katy wanted for her front porch. Princess J was taken with it immediately. She thought it was a puppy and climbed on it while repeating, "Puppy, puppy, puppy," over and over again.


As I said, it was really hot. So on the way home, we treated the girls to their first stop at Dairy Queen for Blizzards. Needless to say, it was a big hit.

When we got back to the house, the whole family jumped into the new swimming pool. It was so much fun to have the whole family enjoying it together. It is beautiful and just perfect for kids. When you first step into it, there is a deck about two feet wide that is shallow enough for them to stand on. We all really enjoyed it. It led to one of those moments in life when I just looked around, soaked it all in, and thought about how good our life is. We have much to be thankful for.


I'm teaching kindergarten this week. I had a great group of kids today. They were very well behaved and enthusiastic. But there was one little girl who never stopped talking for one single minute all day long. She was exhausting. But I really enjoyed the rest of them.

I wore a pair of my close-toed shoes today for the first time since last Spring. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me. I've been wearing flip-flops or sandals every day since March. We'll be vacationing in New Hampshire next week where the temperature was 37 degrees this morning. I think I'll need warm shoes. I'm afraid that even my tennis shoes are going to present a challenge.

We've booked a train ride through the White Mountains and are planning some driving tours around New England.I'm also hoping to hike The Flume. We're excited about seeing covered bridges and brilliantly colored fall leaves. I'll be blogging along the way. I'm really hoping for some good photographs.