What a Week!

We have been having a good time with a lot of fun stuff lately.  David's birthday was just what he wanted.  He didn't want much though!  He enjoyed playing table tennis and he talked to his family and we spent the evening making pizza and having his yummy cookies and cream cake.

The cake turned out pretty good!  It wasn't as moist as the wedding cake, but the "wedding cake lady" probably just poured milk on the cake after it was made or something, because my cake was plenty moist!  It wasn't too tough to make and it looked pretty cool too!  I would say I was a little proud of it.

He liked his cake but he didn't think it was very fair that I got to do all the taste testing along the way and I made him wait.  He caught me when I had him take a picture of me with the cake and I asked him if I had any Oreos in my teeth!

By the looks of this picture, it seems that there was a little extra something special in those candles, but I promise, it had to be all the smoke from those candles:)  We had big candles so I had to use two full boxes of candles to get all 24 of them on there. . . . maybe next year I will just get the two number candles so there isn't so much smoke.  

David finished the tax season off at his little business that he has been doing in the evenings.  It has been pretty slow, but even he was bust and had someone new every night for the last week or more of the tax season.  Some people just wait to the last chance they have.  He was glad to be done though.  We celebrated and took off for the weekend for Kennewick.  It was a good quick trip home.  We stayed at Mom and Dad's but they were gone on their trip to Europe, so we let Maggie in to keep us company.  She is still a cute, big, cuddly puppy!  She wouldn't dare just lay down next to you and hope to get a good scratch behind the ears, but she will move right on in and lay down her big puppy body as much on top of you as she can!  Funny puppy.

If you ask David, there was only one thing on David's mind that weekend.  All day Saturday was the spring Table Tennis Tournament in Richland.  David was very anxious to play.  We left right after he got off work on Friday so we could make it in time for the club practice that night.  He wanted to scope out some of his competition for the next day's tournament.  He was very nervous because the last time he played here in Boise, he had a rough time and couldn't get his rhythm down.  He really liked the practice and was ready to hit the sack once he got home.  He needed to get plenty of rest for the big day!

Saturday he got up early and was very excited.  He didn't play until 11 and once he got playing, he just played all day.  I watched him play and even videoed him so he could see how he played. I think I had a headache from hearing too many ping pong balls bouncing around.   He got beat by one guy that was really good, but all of his other matches were better.  He ended up winning 6 out of his 8 games and got 1st in his group.  He loved every second of it and met some new friends who he was able to talk about all the cool table tennis things that they could spend their money on and the complex strategy of the game.  It was fun to see him so excited about the whole thing.  It was cute to see him get nervous about playing people and to get excited when he knew I saw him smash it!  

I started teaching again and now that we are both working, we have nobody to clean up after us while we are gone!  Our place was a deep mess of everything. . . kitchen was spilling over with dishes, we were on our last pair of clean undies, and a pile of all the shoes and jackets we have worn this week were needing to be put away.  We both come home each day and the last thing we want to do is clean.  We both can't wait until summer time when I will be home again and I will be able to keep up with the messes we make.  Today we had a good hour or so of cleaning and it is so nice to be back in charge of the mess!

We have both been tired too at the end of our day.  Today when we both got home, we were just enjoying our time snuggled up together and it seemed like 30 seconds later we were both out of it and I was probably drooling on him :)  A couple hours later we woke up just in time for our cleaning party!  We had quite the date night!  Snuggles, naps, and cleaning!  We are pretty good!  And that is also why we are up at 1 in the morning too.

I am teaching in each of the grades, K-5 in their reading class.  I teach about an hour in each grade to 5-10 kids and I mostly like it.  I just miss my first grade class and wish I could just teach them for the rest of the year!  They were very excited to see me and they all thought I was gone the last three weeks because I was having my baby.  They didn't quite get it when I told them I wasn't going to have a baby until the summer time and that my belly is getting bigger, not smaller.  The girls were very excited that it is going to be a girl.  One student said, "so you are going to name her Olivia."  I was unaware that my first graders had this whole thing planned out.  If I was having a girl, then she would be named Olivia, and if it was a boy he would be named Alvin.  I'm glad they are so on top of it!  

I love that they are always so excited to see me in the hallway or anywhere around the school.  They call me out and wave ecstatically so I don't miss them.  They like to sneak out of line and give me a hug if I am close enough!  Very cute!  

One boy came up to me the second day I was back and was so sad.  I asked him what was wrong and he asked me, "Why didn't you come and teach us yesterday?"  I felt so bad but I told him I had to teach lots of other classes.  He was pretty bummed and has been hopeful each day as he will ask if I get to teach him that day or not.  I was able to sneak in at the end of the day today and listen to some of them read to me, but I stay pretty busy the rest of the day.  Poor little Adam will probably just keep on hoping that some day I will get to come back.  I don't know if 20 minutes a week is enough for them!  I love teaching the kids and my first grade class was just too perfect!