Still recovering from the Breakfast Buffet....

Most of our weekends pass us by with Caleb studying and me either doing photography or watching 12 episodes of some type of marathon on the USA channel.

Not this weekend.

We start with Friday night: Test Block party for 2nd years at Orleans Poboy with Live music. When was the last time we were somewhere together and there was live music? I guess church, actually. Anyway, the point is I didn't fall asleep on the couch at 8:30 pm! Hip Hip!

Saturday: We checked in at The Grand Hotel in Point Clear (Resort and Spa, people!) for a physician recruitment conference. We got a free night at the hotel, and free lunch. And also a ton of free candy and other "swag" because we had to go around and visit booths for three hours. And Caleb won a door prize! Two boxes of free golf balls! So maybe he can play golf in his free time, which I'm thinking won't be until retirement.

Saturday night was also the yearly Med School Prom and it was super fun this year. Although you do NOT want to watch a future doctor of America party at Med School Prom.
Here is a pic of a group of the 2nd years (and Angela Prater). Caleb is in the back left corner not looking at the camera. I love this picture the most because of Andrew Vincent in the right corner. It shows off his cane, hat and cape pretty good. Too bad he's not holding his monocle up to his eye. Andrew is like a toned down Lady Gaga- you go to events just to see what he's wearing.

Although you cannot see in this beautiful glamour shot (haha) is that 1. I AM wearing a dress and 2. it is the same one from last year. I'm wearing the gorgeous bridesmaid dress I wore in MBB's wedding every prom for a total of 4 years which will give me 5 wears out of it! Spectacular!

All in all, prom was awesome and Caleb was a Dance Machine. We then drove back to The Grand for our free stay and went to the famous $20 breakfast buffet. Yes, we paid big bucks for that breakfast... worth it!

I had: an omelet with fresh crabmeat among other things in it, a belgium waffle with an assortment of toppings, a plate of random breakfasty items, two cheese danishes, and a yogurt shooter. I absolutely got sick an hour later and hibernated for four hours when we got home, but I'm feeling better now, and frankly, it was worth any heartache in the end it was so good.

I leave you with pics from The Grand. I miss it already!

Short Story Fair

Here's pictures from my Creative Writing class' Short Story Fair. It's like a Science Fair but with short stories instead of experiments and stuff. Basically, they have to pick a published short story, then put certain things on their board to share the story with viewers. The goal is to expose readers to a diverse realm of short stories. It was a success!
My students are so wonderful and I'm very proud of them!

Twins

Good grief they're so cute! To see more from our photo shoot, click here. And thanks so much to those of you who always click on the link. I think the more clicks I get through google blogger, the higher my listing goes on google business center. So thanks for clicking! Usually after I put a post on this blog with the link, I get roughly 2-4 new clients... so I am so thankful for you clickers! :)

Also, I'm doing image discs a little different these days. Clients get every picture in black and white, vintage, and color. What do ya'll think? Is vintage worth the extra work? Please give me your advice.

Black and White

Color

Vintage

And thanks for helping make my little dream business a reality!

Why am I just now discovering such goodness!

As a Protestant raised in the North (northern part of Mississippi), I was never introduced to the culture of Mardi Gras. So naturally, when we moved to Mobile (the true home of Mardi Gras), I didn't really get into it, didn't understand it. Which is so sad because IT ROCKS!

Not only are all schools closed for this "holiday" but apparently you come home from parades with buckets of free goodies. See below.

Caleb and I attended our first parade last night. It was the parade of the Infinite Mystics... whatever that means. Who cares. It was awesome.

This is one of the ten floats. They are all pretty majestic. Sorry the picture is blurry but there was a lot of commotion. I will say that one thing I didn't realize was how HARD they throw stuff at you! They don't whimsically toss beads and whatnot into the air. They HURL it at your face. Yes, that is right: masked men on parade floats hurl entire boxes of Little Debbie snacks at your face.

You come home with the oddest assortment of goodies. Like this Elmo coloring book, for instance. That coloring book was hurled at us from on high and Caleb caught it. Good thing.
I thought they only threw beads. Before the parade, our friends in our group were like, "no they throw moonpies too!" So I got really excited about that. But then apparently they throw the entire box of goodies at you, which is terrific! I love free food! Look at all that!
More than once, a masked man would just dump his bag's entire contents on us. We're talking HUNDREDS of moonpies or HUNDREDS of pieces of candy. It is so awesome! Kids actually bring these little rakes and they RAKE all this candy into duffel bags. You can bring home some major loot while toting a rake. I will have a rake next year no doubt.

I love Mardis Gras!

Calories don't count on Valentine's Day!

This is what I awoke to this morning: a vase full of gerbers and a plate of delightfully sprinkled donuts.
Happy Valentine's Day to all!

Snow Flurries + No Accumulation = No School in Mobile County

So Thursay during 4th block, it started SLEETING! Since I teach in a portable classroom (some could call it a double-wide), my cute little students were in a frenzy to stand out in the freezing weather to experience their first sleet/snow in person. At about 2:00, we got the announcement that school had been cancelled for Friday. Hip Hip!

"Snow Day" rolls around and it pretty much just rains all morning. Then there was a 20 minute period of heavy flurries! I bundled up and got PJ Joey outside for her first snow.
All she did was go #2. I was a little disappointed. I had great visuals of her bounding crazy happily all over the yard. Nope.
If you look closely, you can see about two little granules of ice stuck to her fur. That is about it from Winter Storm Warning 2010.
But we got out of school! Hurricane Ida got us out in November and she didn't amount to much either. Oh well, I always enjoy a spontaneous break from work. I didn't do ANYTHING. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I was still in my bathrobe when Caleb got home from lecture at about 3:00pm. I'm so lazy!

But guess what's even better! I don't go back to school until Wednesday! We have Monday and Tuesday off for Mardis Gras! I will probably not get out of my bathrobe for 5 whole days!

Me gusta Ecuador!

First of all, I would like to give a shout-out to Seniora Butler from Starkville Academy. Apparently, I DID pick up a tidbit of Spanish in her class despite all the time spent making up weird pet names with Dallas Massey and making fun of Jay Cook's huge smile. It was strange/amazing how so many Spanish words popped into my head after all these years (almost 10, gag!)

Anyway, Ecuador was terrific! We will begin this blog journey with a picture of me straddling the Equator!

Please excuse what appear to be mom-jeans.

At any rate, in this picture, I am in both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere at one time, gasp! They can do a lot of cool tricks on the Equator line. Your resistance is different, you can balance an egg on a nail, and they do a really nifty demonstration of how the toilet flushes clockwise in the North Hemi, counter-clockwise in the South Hemi, and if the toilet is ON THE Equator Line, it just goes straight down!

This is one view of the city, from atop a hill. I don't know that woman.
Go to NYC and you can buy a hotdog from a street vendor. Go to Ecuador and you can buy an entire fried pig OR the ever popular Guinnea Pig!
This picture is taken from inside the Quito Baptist Association Center. It is a map of the church plants they are working on inside the province of Pichincha. I thought it was pretty impressive!
A toilet, you're thinking? You can't flush tissue paper in Ecuador, you just have to throw it away. Ew. Also, there is no TP in the individual stall. Not even in the bathroom itself. The TP is outside, on the wall between the Men and Women's bathroom doors. You just get it BEFORE you go into the bathroom, thus you need to do a careful estimation process in front of EVERYONE. Awkward!

This was my view from the room I stayed in. Quito is a modern city of about 3 million people. There is little violent crime, just a lot of petty theft. They primarily eat chicken, rice, and french fries everyday for lunch. Another guy, Kyle, and I are the Coordinators for an International World Changers project here this summer. We are tailoring the ministry to the broader strategies of the Ecuador Missionary (Ron) that we're working with. I am in charge of all the ministry that will take place during the project, as well as teaching church planting strategies to the participants. What is interesting about this project specifically is that there is a large group of nationals (Ecuadorians) who are wanting to form a Latina Mission Board (similar to our North American Mission Board). Their primary focus is to mobilize youth in missions. To get this started, they are going to attend our project to get an idea of the strategies we use. So, I'm teaching church planting strategies to people trying to start their own mission board! Pretty amazing!

And this lovely and delicious treat is what was waiting for me back home! I am so glad to be back home! I missed the hubby and crazy dog so bad!

I hope you found this blogpost both educational and entertaining. I also learned how to shrink a head, but I didn't want to gross you out.