Oh the joys of the morning...

So yesterday was my first day back at Walmart as my full-time job. With my childcare job I had been getting to work at 6:30 in the morning. Granted, I did get off at 2:30, but getting up at 4:45 was getting really old. So far today I have been able to sweep the kitchen, put some laundry in the wash, finish a movie, make breakfast (including enjoy a cup of coffee!) and tend to my cat's daily needs all before going to work! It's wonderful :)

California Trip

We (Mommy, Jason, and I) had a wonderful time in California. We had some interesting adventures at the airport, both coming and going we managed to get on earlier flights!

Here are some of the things we did:

-toured Warner Bros. studios in Burbank
---saw where soooo many TV shows and movies were filmed (totally cool!)
-ate at In & Out Burger (while I proved to Jason that Whataburger sells salads as well. Thank goodness for iPhones)
-saw so many more palm trees than I expected
-went to the "best spot to view the Hollywood sign." Corner of Sunset and sketchy! (Wish we hadn't listened to Frommer's on that one!)
-drove through some cute neighborhoods in the Hollywood Hills
-went "shopping" on Rodeo Drive
-visited Griffith Park and the observatory
-hiked at Griffith Park
-walked around on Hollywood Blvd taking in the freak show (too many people selling Michael Jackson stuff!)
-found movie star feet and hand prints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
-attempted to look at stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (too many people to stop and look!)
-shopped Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade (found some good deals too!)
-loved the weather! Hardly above 70 degrees the whole weekend :)
-ate at a great Italian restaurant in Santa Monica run by, get this, Italians! Also had the best canoli I've ever eaten, yum!
-walked the Santa Monica beach
-climbed up every single set of stairs at the Hollywood Bowl
-walked the Santa Monica Pier
-found the original "Muscle Beach"
-sat outside on the hotel's restaurant patio just to enjoy the beautiful weather
-watched Jason surf
-sat on the beach and got the worst sunburn of my life!

All in all, so much fun. I would love to go back to Santa Monica again!
Movie sets at Warner Bros. Studio
The infamous Warner Bros. water tower and one of those beautiful palm trees.
The Hollywood Bowl. Yep, Jason and I walked up all those stairs!My favorite find at Grauman's: Jimmy Stewart!



Our hotel on the beach!
Enjoying the beach on our last day...Little did I know I was getting burned!
Here's some video of Jason's surfing lesson:





Okay, he did have some longer runs on the board, but I didn't get any video of that. Here's a picture:
We had a great time...Wouldn't be surprised if my brother graduates from college and moves to Santa Monica.

Busy, Busy

Well, it's been a whole month now since my last post. Ever since my California vacation, things have been pretty crazy buys around here. My mom, Jason, and I had a wonderful time in California (I will post some pictures soon.) Sometime soon after that, Children's Courtyard asked if I was interested in a lead teaching position in a toddler room. It would mean a raise and a chance to get away from the Pre-K room which was causing me so much anguish. However, the next day at WalMart my manager informed me that one of the ladies was transferring to another store and told me she could get me more hours. As it turns out, She could offer me exactly the hours I need to make as much money as I do working 40 hours at Children's Courtyard and 7 hours at WalMart. This was the perfect opportunity to have a little more time in the week and have a more flexible work schedule for those interviews that I'm sure I'm going to be going on some time soon (fingers crossed.)

So, I gave them my notice and yesterday was my last day. I'll start Monday back at WalMart working only 30 hours a week, not every weekend (yay!) and having flexibility to do what I need to do to get a teaching job (something I did not have at Children's Courtyard.) So, looks like the Lord has answered my prayers and I know He's got something even better heading my way! Even if I don't get a teaching job in the next month or so, I'll still be able to work at WalMart and substitute teach. It's hard to make any plans right now because I don't know what I'm going to be doing a month from now. I feel like I'm in limbo, but all I know is that God is faithful. Somehow, and I don't know how, but He keeps us paying our bills! I think he's padding my paychecks!

Last weekend Landon and I became official members of our church. We are so excited because this is the first time that we have been church members in our married life. We love GracePointe and feel so at home there!

I'll try to keep more updated. Hopefully I'll have some good job news to tell soon!

Blueberries!

Here is the first fruit of my blueberry spoils. I made blueberry pie for dessert tonight, and as you can see, Landon enjoyed it!

Great week!

Landon and I enjoyed our very long trip this weekend to my grandma's in Mississippi for the annual Reeves family reunion. Along the way we stopped in Bossier City and spent the evening with Meme and Pappy. It was so good to see them and actually get to spend a little more time with them than usual because we got away from Denton a little early.

Friday morning we got up, ate breakfast with Meme and Pappy and made our way to McComb, MS. We enjoyed our time that weekend with Memaw, my dad and Uncle Ken. Saturday after the family reunion, I picked about 2 1/2 gallons of blueberries! No joke, see the picture of my freezer below. This is about half of what I picked! Sunday we HAD to eat lunch at The Dinner Bell. I wish now that I had taken a picture of what it is like to eat there, but I didn't! You can check it out yourself at www.thedinnerbell.net. Let me assure you, that eating there once a year is not quite often enough! Unfortunately, after eating a very full meal (which included fried eggplant, cream corn, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, purple hull peas, butter beans, bread pudding, etc.) making an 8-hour drive back home was far from what I wanted to do!

So far this week at work has been pleasant...at least it hasn't been as bad as it has before! I've gotten off work early 3 out of 4 days so far this week which is good for the mind and body, but not so good for the paycheck. I'll take it though!

No real plans for the weekend. I'm going to my mom's to meet with her and Jason to plan our trip to Los Angeles the next weekend. Landon doesn't have his truck right now because it is in the shop (finally!) from the accident he had a couple of months ago, so I will have to leave him at home all by himself! Poor baby. Then on Sunday after church we have a new members meeting. We are finally going to be members of a church for the first time since we have been married. We finally found a church we both love! After that I will be heading out to a pool party for a girl I graduated college with. She is getting married 4th of July weekend, so time to celebrate!

Have a wonderful evening! Check out the blueberries:
Each of those is a two-cup container, plus the extra in the bag on top. :) Yum!

Job application after job application

Today I have spent about 6 hours on the computer filling out job applications for school districts. Some of them are districts that I have already applied to, but I have to recheck to see if any additional openings have been posted. I try to do this once a week. This week however, I extended my job search. I've started applying for positions in districts that are a looong drive from Denton.

I counted and I have now put in 40 job applications! That's right, 40! This has been one of the most frustrating and difficult things that I have ever done. When I was graduating 6 months ago, I would have never thought that I would still be struggling to find a job. I was so confident that I would get a job in Lewisville ISD (where I did my student teaching) that I never even considered not being interviewed for a position there and here it is the middle of June! I've got 2 months left before teachers start reporting to work for the next school year.

Please, please, please, keep praying for us. I have got to continue to trust in the Lord to bring me through this. I need the hope that my current job situation will not last forever, and I will be successful in finding a job. I know that someday soon (if it is His will) that the right job opportunity will jump out at me! I need the strength to get through everyday. I have never had a job that I disliked so much than the one I have now. I guess I have been so lucky the last several years to work with people that I enjoy in a fairly positive working environment. This new job has been such a challenge, so I hope I will take from it whatever it is the Lord is trying to teach me, but it is a hard lesson to learn!

Worst pain ever!

So, on Monday night I had finally had enough of the pain in my throat and decided I'd stop by Care Now on my way home from work on Tuesday night. Somebody recommended the Minute Clinic inside CVS to me instead which has a much lower cost than Care Now, so I decided to go there instead. They opened at 8:30 Tuesday morning and I had to be at work at 9:30, so I thought I'd go by that morning instead of waiting until the evening...and boy am I glad I did! I saw a nurse practitioner there instead of a doctor, which was fine with me because that's about all they have at the UNT student health center where I had been going all through college. Anyway, she took all my symptoms and suggested a strep test. I thought that would be good, just to be on the safe side, since I work with kids and all, I would have to let them know at work if I had strep. So when she started examining my throat she said "Wow, yes, you have 2 large ulcers on your tonsils." No wonder I was in so much pain! I had been battling this for 9 days before I went to see anybody about it. She said I was one tough lady for waiting so long to come in. Anyway, she said she did not see any signs of infection, just looked like a virus. The "quick" strep test came back negative, but we sent one off to the lab just to be safe. (Ended up being negative too.) Needless to say, she suggested I take a couple days off to rest and wrote me a note for work. I hated calling in sick, especially since I'm still in my first month of employment there, but I'm so glad I did. I needed those 2 days of rest. I'll tell you what though, the pain I had on Thursday was even worse than the previous 10 days of pain. Next time I have something wrong with my tonsils (when I have better insurance) I want to have them removed. I have tonsilitis and problems with my tonsils biannually (like clockwork.)

Today, I'm feeling much better and have hardly any feeling of discomfort in my tonsils. Yay!

Today has been pretty productive. I think I finally spent the last of my graduation money on a few new things at The Limited. Love their clearance section! I made a late lunch-early dinner of Italian subs and homemade fries. Yum! and the apartment is even clean (except for vacuuming--that will come tomorrow probaby!)

In other news, I did not get the job I interview for in Aubrey. I'm pretty bummed about it, but I wasn't hanging all my hopes on that job. I'm hoping I'll get another interview soon, but I really need to get the next job I interview for because I'm not sure how I'm going to get some more scheduled time off of work...They are not flexible in the least. Ugh. Soon, things will be different! I have faith.