SO HE WOULDN’T BE LATE FOR SWIM PRACTICE!!!
This chicken was hanging out by the stop sign as we were leaving the Natatorium this evening. Weird place for a Rooster!! Thanks, Diane, for snapping the shot with my cell phone.
After lots of discussion and debate, Ryan and I decided that we DID need the chair I mentioned in my last post. We went back today and bought it. Doesn’t it go so well with the pillow Ryan bought me for Christmas?
I overheard some friends last night talking about the great deal they had gotten on a dining table and chairs recently. I was only half listening to the conversation, but as we are planning on buying new furniture when we move, I had to ask where they were talking about. They had gone to World Market.
Today, as Ryan and I were having lunch, I suggested that we go by and check them out. After about five minutes in the store, we found a table marked down 75% from about $450. Even though we don’t need furniture until later this summer, we decided this was too good of an offer to pass up. By the time we paid for it, they had taken another $10 off, and we ended up paying $110.95 for a good quality, beautiful, sturdy table that will last us a long time.
We spent the rest of the day driving to other furniture stores and two other World Markets to try to find chairs to go with it, as the first store was out of the matching chairs. When we found the matching ones, they weren’t quite what we wanted. I think we’ve decided to go with some leather chairs from Ikea that we found a few weeks ago. However, we did find this this tweed accent chair that we might have to go back and get tomorrow…It’s marked down $100 from regular price!!! We’ve broken into the furniture buying thing, and I hope we can control the temptation to jump on every good deal we see. Oh well.
(Oh, and another comical note … It turns out we bought the same table as our friends who gave me the idea to go there in the first place!! Turns out they are the ones who bought the last of the chairs!)
Here’s our new table:
Here’s our new table next to the old one:
Last week I noticed that my car was beginning to wobble. My car has been VERY good to me over the years, but it is 13 years old, and I live in constant fear that it will break down at any time. So, I wasn’t surprised when this wobbling started on Wednesday. I walked around my car several times over the next couple of days and checked the tires. One looked a little low, but not enough to explain the wobbling. I tried letting go of the steering wheel, but the car kept going straight, so it certainly wasn’t the alignment. We decided over the weekend to take it in, but we don’t do Monday mornings well around here, so we opted to wait another day.
So, Monday morning when I backed up, I heard a horrible grinding sound. I pulled back up into my space and got out of the car. I walked around several times, but couldn’t see anything under the car that I could have run over and nothing seemed to be dragging the ground. I was perplexed. As I was getting back into the car, I glanced at my back tire. It looked as though something were caught in the rim. Turned out to be part if my tire! Part of the tread had gotten caught on the rim, and, as I was backing up, it had just begun to peel off like a banana! Needless to say, I did not drive myself to work. I called my precious friend, Diane, instead, and she rescued me.
We plan to take off the bad tire tonight and replace it with the spare so we can drive the car in to get new tires tomorrow. I hate that we will have to spend money on this car, as we are hoping to replace it before the end of the year. However, this cannot be put off any longer.
As many of you know, Ryan and I are planning to move into a rental house at the end of the summer. We’ll hit our six year anniversary in June, and we’ve spent our entire marriage living with hand-me-down furniture from our parents, other family, and friends. We’ve only purchased one new piece of furniture, and that’s the TV stand we bought this passed year (thanks Darren and Lindsey for helping haul it!). We’ve decided that, after 6 years, we’re going to actually commit to a STYLE when we move.
Our decision to find a style has resulted in three weekends spent window shopping all over the place. We’ve been to Ikea in Round Rock and Frisco, three different room stores, two different Crate & Barrels, and plenty of other places in search of our perfect style. After looking at high end, middle of the road, and cheap stuff, we seem to have decided on our favorite store. What’s out favorite? Why, it’s Crate&Barrell, the same place we got our TV stand from!! They are not the cheapest place, but we think they will give us style, comfort, and quality for a pretty reasonable price.
Here’s are pictures of some of the things we’ve fallen in love with.
A sleeper sofa.
A cool, comfy chair that reclines.
A table that converts to a desk.
An extension table that will serve lots of guests and well as potential tutoring students.
A cabinet to store party stuff, dishes, etc., that folds out on top to create a larger surface for a buffet.
More cool storage for dishes.
It’s been too long since my last post. You’d think that with three days off of work last week due to the Swine flu that I would have had time to post. Here’s a few interesting items from the three weeks since my last post.
This is the Ethiopian restaurant Ryan and I went to with some friends last weekend. We decided almost two years ago that we were going to get together with these two other couples and eat foreign cuisine once a month. We went out for Indian, had a great time, and didn’t every schedule another food date until now. This time we scheduled the next location and date while we were still sitting at the table at Queen of Sheba. Next month is Texas de Brazil for “beef on a sword” according to the men!
We ordered sort of a sampler of a few different items and they brought it all out on a large tray for us to share. The food is served with a crepe-like bread and you tear it off in small pieces and use it to pick up the food. The entrees were pretty good, but, unfortunately, most of us didn’t care for the flavor of the bread. I think I would eat here again, but use a more traditional fork so as to enjoy the flavors of the meats and vegetables without the acidic flavor of the bread.
The week following our food adventure will most likely go down as one of the biggest over-reactions in public school history. In the wake of the Swine flu scare, just as reports are coming out that it’s not as bad as they thought, my school district decided to close for a week. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have time off work as much as anyone, but this seemed a bit extreme. We’re worried about the kids getting sick, so we’re going to close schools so that the kids go hang out at the malls and movie theaters instead? It only got worse when our district decided mid-week to RE-open, but excuse the absences of students who couldn’t make it since many families had to take their kids out of town to find child care. At the high school level, this simply meant two more days off. I had to go to work, but less than a third of my kids showed up. So how much instruction do YOU think happened?
At any rate, I did get three days at home. I spent two days with my friend Bethany (check out her blog on my side bar). On Wednesday, I made wash clothes and burp clothes to post on my Etsy site. (Which I will do as soon as we have a sunny day on which I can take better pictures).
Here’s an up-close shot of my crafts. The burp clothes are made from a large pre-fold cotton diaper that I ordered from here. I washed them hot to shrink them up and then stitched a band of flannel down the center. The wash cloth/baby wipe is flannel and terry cloth. I stitched the two right sides together, turned it right side out and then top stitched around the edge to give it a nice shape.
Here’s the STACK I made of each.
On May 9th, I graduated from the BTCL program at Denton Bible. According to Pastor Tom Nelson, I now have the right to be entrusted with leadership in the church. WOW! I am starting to feel the burden of responsibility. I hope to comment more on this experience in a later post, but, for now, here’s a picture of the women in my small group whom I have come to know and love dearly over the past two years.
