AWESOME DAY

It was an Big Day for Missy Rachel!! She got her Learner’s Permit today so she can officially start learning how to operate a motor vehicle!! Amazing isn’t it. She was just a baby a few short years back and here she is driving a car. My car. When did I become my mother??

She was so happy today and the smiles could not be contained. She scored a 88 on the driver’s test today only missing 3 out of 30 questions. Pretty good. Of course, I quizzed her on which ones she missed so we could make sure to review them :-). I’m certain she needed to know them to be let loose out on the roads - the HOUSTON roads to be exact.

So what do you do the minute you get your permit? Your mom lets you drive to school. Well, this mom did. I wasn’t even too terribly scared and I actually amazed myself at how calm I’ve been today with my instructions to her while in the car AND how easily she’s taken those instructions without arguing or getting upset. I think the fact that I told her any arguing with me in the vehicle about driving would cause us to cease and desist with the “parent taught driver’s education” and force her to wait until she had 3 weeks in a row with no other activities to take a private driver’s ed course. :-) Amazing what a little motivation will do for ya!

She drove from the DPS office to school. I picked her up from school and she drove home. She drove from home to the baseball fields for Stephen’s practice. She drove from baseball fields to home to mall. She did very well for the most part. Only really scared me once ... as she was making a left at the high school out of the parking lot, she was going a wee bit to fast and I was a little afraid we might run into the poor policeman directing the traffic and the nearest mailbox! However, she recovered and narrowly missed them both! Whew!

That’s our big news around here!!

TAKS for Stephen is over with Math yesterday and Reading today! YAY!! Rachel has Math TAKS tomorrow.

Surgery for Rachel is set for Friday morning early. We report to the hospital at 6:00 am for surgery scheduled at 7:30 am. She’s already planning her 11:30 pm meal tomorrow night since she can’t eat or drink after midnight tomorrow. Her friend Kayla is being allowed to skip school on Friday to come hang out with Rachel. Not sure why she wants to, but they are BFFs and so she wanted to be here.

Right Now

• Trying to come up with the perfect photo organization in albums technique
• Behind in printing my pictures that I will need to take with me to scrap at the end of May for Scrap Weekend
• Caught between traditional paper scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking
• Love all the scrapbooking stuff - both traditional and digital
• Enjoying the blog world
• Have lots to say... just not enough time to say it.
• Trying to keep up at work
• Navigating change at work is stressful sometimes
• Wishing I could spend more time with the kids but...
• Very tired listening to Rachel and Stephen fight every time they are in the same room together
• Tired of being ignored by them as well
• Wishing for more time with my husband alone
• Wanting to spend more time on my investments
• Enjoying my photography class...
• Considering starting a photography part time business and wondering if I could manage it and if so, how?
• Need to go through the tutorial on Lightroom before the 30 day trial runs out in 10 days
• Wanting to do more bible studies by Beth Moore
• Getting organized to teach Rachel how to drive
• Scared that very shortly she’ll be out there driving
• Sad that our time we spend each Weds night just as girls when we travel to/from flute lessons is short lived until she can drive herself
• Supporting my husband as he gets through the stressful TAKS time at school
• Hoping Rachel’s surgery goes without a hitch
• Wishing I could survive on less than 7 hours of sleep consistently
• I need more time in my days for everything I want to do
• Excited about my vegetable garden this year
• Still have to put up fencing and trellis’s in the garden
• Need some time to catch up on my tv shows that are Tivo’d and waiting....
• Have a date with my Kindle2 and a good book every night at 10 pm or so - have a list of books a mile long
• Wishing I could retire (win lottery) so I could spend more time on the things on this list...
• Tired

There you go.

Monday Notes

It’s Monday AGAIN.... we keep doing it the same each week.

TAKS
This is TAKS week here in Texas. All the kids have lots of testing this week going on this week. The schools are serious about this stuff and the kids sometimes get stressed out about it. As do the teachers! The results are basically the teacher’s grade on their performance. For some reason, our state believes they can grade the teacher’s abilities to teach children solely based on the outcome of these tests. No consideration (or very little) is given to parental involvement, children’s willingness and motivation to learn, and children’s test taking skills and environment. All of these things drive children’s academic results, not simply the teacher’s abilities to teach. Important yes.. no doubt. But without parent’s motivating their children, holding them accountable, and encouraging them to succeed, you are quite likely to have children who are unmotivated and therefore, don’t see a reason to learn. Makes teaching them difficult at times. Can you tell I’m married to a teacher!!

Rachel and Stephen usually do just fine on these tests and other than making sure they get a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast in the morning, they don’t stress too much about it.

Baseball Update
Saturday’s game that was cancelled due to the abundance of rain we received on Friday night was rescheduled and played yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, the Knight’s lost this really hard fought game to the Scrappers 7 - 3. It was a lot closer for most of the game at 4 - 3, but in the last inning, the Scrappers extended their lead by 3 more. Stephen had several balls come his way out in the field to which he fielded well and got back infield. Scrappers had some big bats going on with some big kids. The Knights were hitting but luck was not on their side as the Scrappers fielded them very well. Next game on Friday.

Rachel’s Surgery
Today was the Pre-Op Doctor’s appointment in preparation for Surgery Day which is Friday, May 1. The doctor told us the risks and of course, I had to sign that I understand them risks. What are they, you may ask? Two that he told me - First - risk of infection, etc. as with any surgery and Second - she will have to keep her left hand pretty much resting on her checks for 4 weeks. If she moves it away from the body straight out, the shoulder could end up just like it is again. She can lift hand/elbow up slightly to allow for bathing, etc. but not outward/away from the body. This should be interesting. We’re told the whole process should be about 4 - 5 hours on Friday. We will get a call from the hospital telling us what time to be there Friday morning, but likely to be about 6 or 7 am for all the pre-surgical stuff. The surgery itself should be about 1 hour long and then recovery time before going home in the afternoon. I’ll probably send things to the blog or twitter on Friday.

Rain, Rain - Again....
Here we go again with rain tonight. Maybe I need to start building that ark now. We’re about to get whacked with another strong storm coming through and lots of rain again - we just love April/May in Houston. Lots or rain.

Later!

MA

Saturday Thoughts

Rain, Rain, Rain.... Lots of Rain
Boy... did we have some rain last night! It was supposed to have been a 20% chance of rain yesterday. Little ‘ol percentage which in Texas just means you might see a sprinkle or you might see a gully washer.

Well... we got the gully washer last night. A strong storm generated strong rain and some small hail and sat over us for about 4 hours. I truly have no idea how much rain we had, but it was coming hard and fast. We had gone out about 7 pm for our normal Mexican food Friday dinner and had picked up one of Rachel’s friends, Bridget, to come with us. When we were going into the restaurant, it had started sprinkling and soon after, full rain. We were purposely being slow at dinner because it kept raining - hard. Rather stay in the restaurant and wait for it to stop then get out in it, but by 9:00 p, it hadn’t stopped. So... we had to get out in it. By the time we got back into Friendswood, some of the main streets were were flooding. Have to say, one really nice thing about the Jeep is it is built to handle water pretty high up, so we were able to navigate through the higher water places that some other cars may not have been. The Jeep and trucks!! :-) Rachel was spending the night with her friend so we got them there and got back to the house at 10 pm and it was still pouring. Continued raining until about 11:30 pm. We’re supposed to have more today I think. I hate to look at my garden because the cilantro here near the house in pots was beat down from the rain and hail. Makes me a little nervous about the tomatoes out in the garden. Hopefully, they are ok.

Baseball games were rained out today .... just means the season lasts longer with makeup games to come.

Driver’s Permit - did not obtain it yesterday (much to Rachel’s dismay). Too many people there by the time we got there to get it done. We’ll head over there one morning next week.

Chili Cookoff Results - benefitting March of Dimes

March of Dimes ....

El Fiasco Chili Team

Our Team, El Fiasco (Me, Ashley, Gina & Kristi and honorary member & chili cook, John) placed 2nd in the Ultimate Chili Cookoff competition yesterday. Officially anyway. I beg to differ and have deemed our team to have placed first place. Why? Here’s why. The name of the contest was Ulitimate . Chili. COOKOFF ....... some of the teams forgot the cookoff part and substituted bought chili instead. The First place winner was chili bought from Goode Company BBQ and the third place winner was bought from James Coney Island!!! The rules did not clearly state that each submission should be an original self-cooked recipe of said team, so I suppose their entries were legit (although not in the spirit of a cookoff ). We do take our chili cooking seriously here. Regardless of the competition (yes, I’m competitive), all the chilis were good and we raised money yesterday with lots of donations to March of Dimes to give a 7 of the chilis a try! (7 teams).

The El Fiasco team came in second on the creativity/name. First place deservedly went to our international group who came up with the classic name of the times- Bowl of TARP. That’s a good one.....

Here’s a link to all the pictures from this event... it was a fun lunch. http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryaustincox/sets/72157617205947043/

A few pics below:

Judges Tastings

One Team....

The chili line.... :-)

Friday & Chili

You may be wondering what does Friday and Chili have in common?? Well, today is Friday and today is our March for Babies Chili Cookoff at work!! :-) See how I made that connection all on my own. I’m smart like that.

All kidding aside, Wells is a supporter of the March of Dimes through various ways and a lot of it comes through team member volunteering and donations. We have over 700 people participating in the March for Babies walk on Sunday which means they have collected personal donations (or are making them directly). The four members of my family who live in the house will all be walking the 5k on Sunday morning together which will be interesting!! It’s not really a 5K apparently, but rather 4 miles. Not sure why .....

Anyhoo... for the last two months, various groups in our bank have been holding random fundraisers (i.e. bake sales, ice cream sunday parties, beanie baby sales donated to Tx Children’s, pizza parties) in an effort to raise money (from Team Members) to go straight to March of Dimes.

Our groups efforts are also coinciding with a meeting we happen to hold in our group every month that is simply a Team building exercise with a little low key (low budget) fun.

So... what are we doing? We are having a Chili Cookoff - 6 Teams, 3 judges and $5 donations from everyone to eat.

Now... this is where the competitive side of me pops out its head.... you see I have a history here and a legend to continue.

My Teams and I are 2 - 0 right now.

First competition was WII Mario Cart Racing - which I had never played before. We were in pairs and I was paired with grandpa (he is so I can say that) and we WON!! I carried him right on through all the heats and by about the last race, I finally got him going which was good he caught on because we were gonna lose if he didn’t!!

Second competition - Easter Egg Hunt around the office followed by Riddle Solving. My Team was victorious because I can run and know where all the hiding spots are. We found the most eggs.... these eggs had riddles in them. We (as a Team) then solved all the riddles and won again!!

So.. you see... this is the Third competition!! Chili Judging & Name Creativity ..... all for the benefit of March of Dimes...... :-) I’ve enlisted professional assistance (and no, not for me silly, but I know this is what you were thinking!). FOR. THE. CHILI.!! I happen to be married to the guy who makes the best chili, albeit, usually too hot to eat chili, but he can tone it down a bit when he wants. So.. he’s helping me (translation: I get to watch and stir) make the Award Winning Chili for our TEAM!!! TEAM NAME: EL FIASCO (which we stole from John but loved). John pretty much said our team name should be Poco Fuerte (John’s translation - wimpy) because he’s not making it nearly as spicy as he usually does and we’re all wimps because we can’t eat fire-breathing chili!! However, again knowing who are judges are, I know at least 2 of the 3 are not terribly fond of spicy foods. So.... I’m in sales... I’m playing to my audience (hopefully).

Of course, I’m taking pictures..... they will come later!! Wish us LUCK!!! oh.. and that we raise a good bit of money for the March of Dimes today. Cause that’s really why we’re doing it... :-)

Baseball Update
Weds game was another good game. The Knights won!! I only was able to see Stephen’s first At Bat and out in the field. He made some good plays from the field (this other team had some strong bats) and struck out on his first at bat. However, after I left, apparently, he hit a ball through the short stop and back towards the fence which brought in a runner and got him to 2nd base. He scored on that one. I believe he got on base again, but was left out there at end of the inning. Proud of him. He’s starting to show he really can play ball!! Another game on Saturday!

Off to work now... and to serve Chili!!! Just for the record (because who knows who is reading my blog), all the supplies were bought by Team Members at Team Member expense as well as other Team Members purchasing with personal funds. No TARP funds were harmed during these exercises! In fact, we’re just helping out the economy!!

MA

Monday April 20, 2009

It’s Monday again... they keep coming every week!!

After a very wet weekend here in Houston (we got somewhere around 9 inches of rain here), Sunday was beautifully sunny and cool in the 70’s. Windy. The rest of the week is supposed to be cool at night, warm in the days but not too warm. Upper 70’s/Low 80’s - low humidity. These are the few weeks we get to sort of act like we have perfect weather. Not too far from now, our highs will approach 90’s and the humidity will creep in for the summer. But, for now, we’re enjoying these few really nice days we get!!

MS150 Update -
I don’t have any pictures yet. Supposed to get some. Rachel went about half way on Sunday and her knee started hurting. She’s been struggling with a little tendonitis in one of her knees from running in soccer, and by about half way on Sunday with the 15 mph headwinds, she couldn’t go any more on it. Proud she got that far!!

Baseball Update -
Stephen had a game tonight and had two hits, and two scores. YAY! The Knights won the game too!! Nothing came to him in the field.

Rachel had a Soccer Banquet tonight and John took her since Stephen had a game and I had a work commitment dinner in town for a fundraiser for a client. I hear it was ok - but not great.

Heading to bed... has been a busy day!!

MA

MS150 - Day 1 Cancelled

For the first time in 25 years, the organizers of the MS150 cancelled the first day. Yesterday, over 11 inches of rain fell in and near LaGrange, Texas which is the spot of the overnight location and camping for the 13,000 riders. The place was just too wet to put everyone. That, coupled with the threat of more severe rain expected today, caused the organizers to cancel Day 1 and start up on Sunday morning in LaGrange and finish Day 2. Not sure how they are going to do it, I don’t think they know either yet. Rachel, Stephen and their Dad are going up Saturday afternoon to the ranch they were going to stay overnight at with the Frost Bank team and Rachel and Rob are planning to ride tomorrow’s leg into Austin. Stephen’s camping trip with Boy Scouts was cancelled as well (which is a good thing) late yesterday, so he’ll be with them as well.

Here’s the current weather and as a Mama, I’m glad they cancelled it. I’m glad my baby girl isn’t out in those storms between Houston- Bellville- LaGrange right now. Very wet and stormy!


Lazy day here in Houston with rain. Gotta love em!!

MA