T-5 Days Till Florida



Yes, that's right... in 5, FIVE, cinco days Chad and I will finally be on our way to Florida!!  It seems like we have been counting down for this forever!!  We are heading out early Thursday morning for our exciting 13 hour drive to Port St. Lucie for Chad's cousin's wedding Saturday.  We are going to stay in Jensen Beach and enjoy a little time on the beach with Chad's side of the family before the wedding weekend festivities begin.  We have not seen Chad's parents since January and haven't seen his sister and her family since Christmas so we are pretty excited to see everyone!  Saturday we will head to Disney World and spend the next few days there.  If you know me well, you know how much I LOOOVE Disney World!! Main Street USA is one of my favorite streets in the world, along with 5th Ave and Michigan Ave. :)

I am so ready to start packing.  At first I thought it was a little early to start packing and then I thought, why not start??  I don't have to actually put my clothes in a suitcase yet, just put everything I want to take in the spare bedroom.  So, that's exactly what I started doing!  I haven't finished because I love packing and deciding what to wear when, but I plan on finishing later tonight.  Then, I get to help Chad with his packing!  I've already started a list for him.  This just helps take a load off for the first of the week when I'm getting everything else ready to go and cleaning the car, right?  I've printed our hotel and dinner reservations for the week and have those ready too, which I made in January...  

I know this week I will be like the children in that old Disney World commercial when the kids can't sleep and the little boy whispers to his sister that he "is too excited" to sleep and then the dad whispers to the mom that he "is too excited to sleep".  That'll be Chad and me the next few days. 

The picture for this post was taken right after Chad and I got engaged at... Cinderella's Castle at The Magic Kingdom!  Can't wait until we are there again and this time we are MARRIED!  YaY!

Life is Good Today

I know, I know, many of you are wondering if I did indeed make it through the end of the school year because I have not yet blogged about it being... SUMMERTIME!  The truth is, I've been enjoying summer SO much that I just haven't had time to blog!  My days are spent working out, lying by the pool, relaxing with Chad, grilling out, going to the ballpark for Chad's softball games, and working some throughout the week at Vacation Bible School.  I've even managed to squeeze a day of fun shopping with my parents in there too!  My first OFFICIAL, full week off from school has been FANTASTIC!  This is one way I know how bad I am at blogging:  Today at the pool, I asked Chad what we did last weekend because I couldn't remember.  He told me he couldn't remember either and if I was a better blogger, we could just got back and read about our weekend!  That's sad for us at 26.  A little while later we remembered that last Friday we went to the Veranda for dinner and Saturday, was spent at the pool of course and then we grilled out and went to see Pirates of the Caribbean.  The thing about summer is, my days all run together!

I'm so ready for Florida this coming week, but after that I am hoping time will just stand still or atleast slow down some so that summer can somehow manage to last longer than two months.  Wouldn't that be nice?!  Summer goes by way too quickly, and this summer, Chad and I will be out of town almost every other week between vacations and camps so I know the time will fly by even faster!  For now though, I am just loving the fact that when I wake up (most mornings) I have nothing that I HAVE to get done right away!  That is one of my most favorite feelings, after the feeling of an upcoming vacation.  I hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far too and this incredibly HOT weather!

Happy Summer!

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!