Unlocked by Karen Kingsbury

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to read and always have a list of books that I want.  My FAVORITE authors are: Nicholas Sparks, Mary Kay Andrews, and Karen Kingsbury.  Any book by those three authors are ALWAYS amazing! 

Well, the book I read this weekend was Unlocked by Karen Kingsbury.  I always love anything she writes, but this book was just awesome.  I think EVERY teacher should read it, and really, any person in general should read it!  It is a story of looking past someone's appearance and really knowing and understanding what is in their heart.  It talks of taking the time to speak to people outside of your "click" and how a smile just might make a person's day or be encouraging to that person when he or she is going through a hard time that noone else may know or understand about.  The book talked of how everyone struggles with something and has their own song if we allow them to "unlock" it and set it free.  This book is a MUST READ and you should go get it this week!!  It was so inspirational!  After you read that and immediately want another KK book, you should get Leaving.  If you can't find them in Starkville and want to start reading them right away, let me know and I will let you borrow mine.  Either way, you MUST read it! :)



WOW, I've been a TERRIBLE blogger!



WOW, I can't believe it's been slightly OVER a month since my last blog!!  Where has the time gone and are we that boring that I haven't had anything to blog about??  Actually, I feel as if a lot has happened over the past month, and I have thought about how that would make a great blog, but just never got around to actually  blogging about it.  So, I apologize to anyone that is reading this, if I do in fact have any "readers".  Let's see, where does the list of past events start?  Is it with:

- the terrible tornadoes that came through the South and we had to stay late at school on a Friday afternoon?
- Saturday school?
- power outage and how Starkville and surrounding areas were pitch black except Lowes and Kroger?
- Memphis the two days before Easter and Chad and I cooking our first Easter meal?
- the pool opening and our fabulously, fantastic lazy weekend spent at the pool, playing tennis, golf, and cooking out?
- trip to Memphis and our yard sale?  AND getting to see Hillary and Jason?
- being a proctor at the middle school and how glad I am that I was called to teach elementary children!
- going to Oxford?
- how cold it was today, the middle of May when it was 90+ degrees, near 100 last week?
- how I am moving classrooms for next school year and have been going through, cleaning, and packing anything and everything that was in my room that belong to me or teachers from the past 30 years that was left in there?

I think that's about all of it in a nutshell... now I very well may have left something out, but I think that's pretty much it!  Our life has been busy, but fun, and we are counting down till SUMMERTIME!  Well, I should say, I am counting down till SUMMERTIME!  Chad is counting down till he doesn't have to make the bed or my lunch each day.  What we BOTH are counting down to is our Florida trip and New York trip this summer.  We are so looking forward to getting away and enjoying our vacations and time away from everything else and out of town! 

Hopefully, my blogging skills will get better once life slows down after school is out for summer.  Did I mention that I only have 4 1/2 days left?  :)  Who's really counting?? HA!  Every teacher in America!

Tupelo on a School Night

My parents, Chad, and I have been talking about meeting in Tupelo for dinner for about a week now.  We thought sometime this week would be a good time to meet.  Monday after school, I called my mom to see what she was doing and my dad answered and said they were starting to head in the direction of Tupelo and wanted to see if we wanted to meet them.  They had been trying to call both Chad and me, but for some reason, neither one of us had a call from them.  Weird.  Anyway, I called Chad about ten times to ask him about it and he never answered.  I called the church then and asked to speak with Chad and ran the idea by him.  The news was saying the weather was going to get bad that night with severe storms starting around 5 and lasting pretty much the entire night.  Chad told me to check it online to see and weather.com said the same thing.  It was getting dark and very windy outside by this point.  But, when Chad got home, we decided to go to Tupelo anyway and headed out a little after 4:30.  We didn't run into much rain at all and am so glad we went!  We met my parents at Outback for dinner and then ran to Old Navy.  My parents left from here to get back home, but Chad and I ran into the mall for what we initially intended to be a few minutes, but didn't leave the mall until around nine.  We got back to Starkville a little after ten and even though we were pretty tired, we both were glad we went.  It was something different for a Monday night and really fun! Between D-Now last weekend and Saturday school this weekend, yes, I said SATURDAY school, we don't have much time to do anything for us in our "free" time so going to Tupelo was a great idea!

D-Now Weekend

This past weekend, Chad and I spent with the youth group for Disciple Now. Yes, we know it was Super Bulldog Weekend, but other than actually living in Starkville, Chad and I have no ties to the school.  I am a Gamecock that grew up and still watch the Memphis Tiger.  Chad is a Mizzou fan, so like I said, we have no ties to the school, other than living in the same town.  So, life went on for the Hammontrees last weekend, and we had D-Now.  The weekend was awesome!  Friday night, we kicked off the weekend playing games and having fun with the youth that came (it was an AWESOME group!!) and then had a Bible study before the girls and boys going to their designated houses or places to sleep.  Chad's seminary roommate, Zach, came in town to be the guest speaker and to preach on Sunday morning so after the youth were all set for the night, the three of us headed to the Grill for dessert and the listen to the great band that was playing.  We drove Zach around a little of Starkville before heading home for the night.  Saturday morning, Chad and Zach got up and got going to pick the girls up their house and get ready for two more sessions of the Bible study.  I stayed in for the morning to finish PD 360 for school and go to the gym.  I met the group at lunchtime at the church and we all piled in to the 13 passenger fan and went to the skating rink.  As luck would have it, really only a few of us knew how to skate and the rest of the group played Spoons.  I decided to take advantage of the extra exercise found in skating and skated a good portion of the time.  I also love to skate!  After skating we went for sno cones and played at the park.  It was such a nice day that we hated to stay inside for all of it.  We picked up the pizzas while we were in town and went back to the church for dinner and Saturday night's service.  Afterwards, the girls went back to their host home and the boys stayed at church for the night.  Chad, Zach, and I went to Local Culture before finishing the Starkville tour (I know what you're thinking, two nights of the tour?!?  We were so tired Friday night that we split it up!) before heading back home to rest for Sunday.  It was a great weekend and we all had so much fun!  After spending more time with the youth group and the girls there this weekend, I cannot wait until camp this summer!

Small Town Saturday Night

Last Saturday, after Chad and I went to Columbus for the Spring Pilgrimage, Chad had to go to church for something.  I stayed in town and ran some errands while he was out.  When he got back it was nearly 7 o'clock, and neither one of us was hungry for dinner.  We get pretty bored down here often and were hoping to find something to do besides eating... especially because neither one of us was hungry!  We decided that we just rode around for a few minutes, a great idea might come to us, we might see something super exciting along Highway 12, or a miniture gold place or something would pop up out of thin air for us to do.  The few minutes came and went and we had zero ideas for our Saturday night plans.  We were in the mood to do anything, so we really weren't too picky; the only restrict was not eating.  We were headed back home to just play tennis or go to the gym, when asked me if I had my camera.  I said, "I am not going around Starkville to take pictures of random things."  Chad said, "Okkk, I was thinking more like taking pictures of things A-Z in order."  This strangely sounded extrememly fun to me and I got a burst of energy and said, "LET"S DO IT!"  We headed home to get my camera and change clothes as the weather was getting cooler.  We were both pretty excited about this adventure and started out strong.  Our pictures began at Autozone.  As it turns out, I was slightly hungry by the time we got to C, but not hungry enough for a big meal, just hungry enough for COLD STONE! 

We took the pictures in order, so are you can imagine, this took us no time at all.  It took three hours.  When we were on "M", I thought I was going to fall asleep going to the next location, but I forced myself to stay awake because you really can't quit in the middle of a game like this.  So, three hours later, I take Chad's picture at Zaxby's and we head home.  Oddly enough, once we got home, I did get another burst of energy and put all of the pictures on facebook for the world to see.  Other than being super tired at the end, it was a really fun "date night" for us and pretty creative!

Six Months

It's been awhile since my last post.  I kept telling myself I was going to post, but one thing lead to another and I just never got around to it!

So, here I go!  I'll start with last Saturday.  Last Saturday was our six month anniversary and the weather was gorgeous.  Chad and I wanted to get outside and do something fun and different.  Well, not too long ago, while flipping through Southern Living, I ran across the "Spring Pilgrimage" ad for Columbus.  After doing some research online, I decided that, weather permitting, this might be something fun for us to do while we live in this area.  Last weekend, being our only partially "free" weekend in awhile and in April, we headed out to Columbus for the Spring Pilgrimage.  We went downtown and signed up for the Double Decker bus tour of "Historic Columbus".  The tour took us by historic houses, not inside the houses, but showed us the houses and around the town.  We are pretty sure our "tour guide" made half of the stuff up as he went, but needless to say, it was a fun time!  The weather was just perfect, so after our tour, we ate lunch downtown and just explored the downtown area.  We went in different stores along the way and visited a couple of antique stores before heading back to Starkville.  It was a really fun outing.  I'm not sure that we will make it back for the 76th Spring Pilgrimage, but we sure had fun at the 75th!