Merry Texas Bowl Eve...

Tomorrow's the big day! After 16 years Baylor will play in a bowl game again! To say that I'm excited is definitely an understatement. Houston, here we come...again! :)

Random Christmas Tidbits

Here a just a few random things I've learned/realized/or thought about the last couple days...

#1) Last Friday (the 17th), I realized that what I wanted the most for Christmas was 2 weeks off of school! I have had a great first week off of work and am looking forward to many more fun-filled days ahead.

#2) I love, love, love giving gifts. I don't love, love, love wrapping gifts. It has taken me a really long time to find the motivation to do a mediocre job. Maybe my amazing, cool, smart, funny, wonderful sister will help me with my last three gifts??

#3) I have a Christmas addiction to "Snowball" cookies.

My Mom makes them every year and she usually has to hide them so I don't eat them all. I stopped by my parents house last night and nobody was home, I found the snowballs and left a note that maybe next time she could find a better hiding space. :) The other day I declared that snowballs were like crack to me, unfortunately I didn't think about the fact that my 4-year-old niece and 5-year-old nephew were in the room. Luckily, they didn't ask what that meant! Although, that same afternoon Allie asked, "How do I get high?" She was trying to figure out how to make her stool a little higher. :)

#4) I heard this song on the radio and love the Christmas message...

For All The World

by Philips, Craig, and Dean

Rejoice! In a manger lay

The promise of Gods love for us

For everyone

Rejoice! Here upon this day

Our immanuel has come

Blessed hope for all the world.

This Christmas feels kind of different for some reason, in a good way! I'm definitely more aware and in awe of God's love for me and His sovereignty. When you stop and think about what Christmas means and how something so small could come to do something so HUGE it gives an incredible dose of perspective that I definitely needed! It is a very Merry Christmas indeed!

The Showcase

Two of my favorite boys are celebrating birthdays this week and our favorite thing to do seems to be going to sporting events so that is exactly what we did! It worked out perfectly that the American Airlines Center was hosting a little doubleheader featuring Texas A&M vs. Arkansas and Baylor vs. Gonzaga.


When all was said and done, A&M took care of business in an intense overtime game and Baylor didn't! I believe I was the only one disappointed in that outcome!


We had pretty decent seats and watched the entire first game from there. However, I still stand by my March 2010 statement that if there is a half-empty stadium/arena there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to move to a better, unoccupied seat. So, in between games we "upgraded" our seats to 10 rows behind the Gonzaga bench. Much better!



We upgraded our seats again with just a few minutes left to play which made a little picture from the floor easy to get...


When I looked at this picture the thing that stuck out the most was how tall these boys have gotten!! Check out this picture from our first Baylor/Aggie experience almost four years ago...


They're still wearing the Aggie gear (my attempts to convert Alex have totally failed) and they have both passed me up in the height department! Despite Baylor losing and realizing that I'm the short one, it was still a really fun day!

Happy Birthday Alex and Reagan!!

It seemed like an emergency...

I had to make an "emergency" trip to Walmart tonight on my way home and because I hadn't been home since I left at 7 this morning I tried to talk myself out of it. However, when I thought about what I needed to buy it was just too important to wait until tomorrow...


As I unloaded my items it struck me as kind of funny that these three things constitute an emergency at my house! Gotta keep B-dog happy!

Thank goodness...

...there is more to life than football!

I have loved being a Baylor Football fan this season, there have been some very high highs (beating UT...in Austin/that week in 1st place of Big 12 South/Ranked in top 25 for consecutive weeks/being Bowl-eligible) and I have tried hard not to blog about them because I didn't want to jinx my Bears! The magical season came to a screeching halt this past weekend.

I have had this game, Baylor vs. A&M, on my calendar for months. Since the start of the season I pretty much had this one down as a definite W. Then the Aggies had to go and change their quarterback and get a little momentum going. I was really nervous after they were able to take down OU!

I guess I was so nervous about this game that I gave absolutely no thought to the trash-talking/vandalism/pranking my good friend Deneise might do prior to this game. Seriously, never even crossed my mind. And, we're right across the hall from each other this year so she had very easy access to my room. Anyway, Deneise posts this picture on her blog Thursday night so I knew I was in for something once I arrived at school the next morning. Honestly, it's about time somebody put some words up there...


I must admit, she did a good job.




I especially appreciated that she took care of that day's morning work for me...


I had a little bit of a hard time explaining this one to my class...


Fortunately for me, our principal is a Baylor grad so she doesn't stand for this kind of stuff. She was sure to tell the whole school on the announcements Friday morning how much Mrs. Rothenberger LOVES the Baylor Bears! I wish I had a picture of Deneise's face...priceless!

Anyway, Deneise did a great job Aggie-fying my room ...it's been kind of like getting home from a week at the beach. No matter how many times you shower, you still find sand in weird places. It seems like I take one picture down only to discover a new one...usually up very high!

As for the actual game...I headed to Waco Saturday afternoon with some of my favorite people...half of us in green and gold, half of us in maroon, and one in blue?? The green and gold people really enjoyed the first half of the game and maroon people really enjoyed the second half! In the end, Baylor came up short. Fortunately, we all ended up happy by playing a little football on the field afterwards. And, here's the only picture from the night (my new favorite picture)...

Chicago...in pictures

Here are a few pictures from my trip to Chicago with Alex...

Our first stop, Navy Pier...





Alex really enjoyed this "statue" and I was impressed with the huge Lego statues:



We did a little driving, and a little sleeping...


We watched some basketball...



We did some exploring...



We tried to get a good picture of all of us...we failed!




We played a little football...


We did a little studying...


We hit every McDonald's we could find...


Our trusty car, affectionately referred to as Jimmy?!?!...


All in all, it was an amazing weekend spent with great people! Thanks to the Williams crew for taking such good care of us and allowing us to spend the weekend with you!

Whirlwind weekend...

I just arrived home from a crazy, fun, and all-around great weekend visiting some of my favorite peeps in Chicago! To truly appreciate the crazy parts of my little adventure we must start at the very beginning!

First of all, my good friend (cousin to Meagan and Lexie/nephew to Ryan) Alex joined me on this trip. We thought we'd take advantage of way lower airfares and fly to Milwaukee instead of Chicago. The money part was perfect, the only problem was that the optimal time to depart DFW was 6 AM Friday morning! Yikes! So, the plan was to leave the house at 4, park the car in remote parking, and still have plenty of time to make it to the gate. Here's how it went down...I set my alarm for 3. My alarm went off at 3. I snoozed the alarm one time. It went off again at 3:09. I turned the alarm off and somehow made my way back to the bed. Somehow, by the grace of the good Lord above, I woke up at 4:44!! 4:44?? We were supposed to leave at 4!! I threw on my clothes, woke up Alex, and started packing my last minute items, knowing in my gut that there was no way we were going to make it. By 4:51, we were pulling out of the driveway and headed to the airport. We had to ditch the remote parking option and began to have hope that we might make it when we pulled into a parking spot at 5:23. We ran to the ticketing counter where we had a little trouble with the self check-in option, waited in line at the counter and just as we realized the security line was insanely long we heard the final boarding call for our flight to Milwaukee! I asked the nice security lady if there was anyway we could "cut" in line since we were in serious danger of missing our flight, her response was a stern look as she pointed to the back of the line. Maybe she's not a morning person!! I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that the there were easily a hundred people in front of us in the security line. We did the "Six Flags" style maze of a line for approximately 15 minutes. We finally got the opportunity to undress and lay everything we own on the x-ray machine at 5:49. Two minutes later, with shoes, belt, toiletries in hand we RAN to the gate. The nice airline people saw us running and asked if we were headed to Milwaukee. We said yes and once again, by the grace of the good Lord above, we boarded our plane! The crazy thing was, three more people got on the plane after us!! When we made it to our seats Alex and I gave each other a high five and let out a very big sigh of relief!!

By the time we landed, we'd both spent some time sleeping and were ready for the real fun to begin. Getting from the plane to the rental car continued our little comedy of errors and I was starting to wonder if something might really go wrong before too long. We eventually made it out of the airport and stopped at McDonald's down the road for breakfast. We paused and acknowledged that the only reason we were sitting at McDonald's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 9:04 was because there was a God above who loved us and took very good care of us! Fortunately, things really calmed down after that! This stop at McDonald's inspired Alex to collect as many Monopoly pieces as he could and we made a total of 9 trips to McDonald's over the next two and half days! Don't worry, despite not winning anything, Alex still believes the Boardwalk piece (and a million dollars) is destined to be his!

After a short drive south to downtown Chicago we were able to park the car and really see a lot of the city. We started at Navy Pier and you couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. We rode the ferris wheel, did the crazy maze, and walked all the way to the end of the pier. We decided to leave the car and walk to Michigan Avenue where all the really cool stores are. We checked out Niketown, Eddie Baurer (my favorite store ever), and Playstation Headquarters. I thought it would be super fun for Alex to have lunch at the ESPN Zone Restaurant, but when we arrived we discovered it was no longer in business. Bummer! No worries though, we were in downtown Chicago, surely we'd find some place cool to eat. And boy did we, we had lunch at Subway! :)

Our plan was to be in Beecher about the time that Meagan and Lexie got home from school so after our amazing lunch and a little more sightseeing we made our way back to the car and headed south once again. About an hour later, we pulled up at the exact same time as everyone else! We had a nice little reunion in the driveway and then made our way inside. Friday night we did what all good Texans did, we watched the Ranger game! It was pretty exciting to watch as the Rangers clinched the American League Championship!!

Saturday morning we got up early to watch Meagan play basketball. I've always thought Meagan has a lot of natural basketball talent and she's a fun player to watch. Her team easily handled their opponents and we all had a great time cheering her on. After basketball and a little lunch we headed to the movies! We saw Secretariat and it was really good. I may or may not have taken a little nap at one point, but it really was a good movie. :)

We spent most of our time on Sunday enjoying the beautiful day in Beecher by Geocaching. If you're unfamiliar, you should google it. Meagan, Alex, and I have some pretty crazy geocaching memories from back in the day so it was fun to revisit that little activity. And, of course, it did not disappoint. We had some success and some trouble but all in all we had tons of fun!

By the time we got back to the house it was time for Alex and I to head north. We stopped back in the city for a couple more stops and then we were on our way back to Milwaukee. We really enjoyed the experience of being at the airport well before our flight and not having to run shoe-less to the plane!

That's the story...I'll write another post with pictures!

A sports fan's ultimate weekend!

Over the last three days I have attended four different sporting events and unfortunately witnessed 4 losses! Despite all the losing, it was still a ton of fun...

The weekend began on Friday night with the Brewer game. I wouldn't normally count this as blog-worthy but I got to enjoy the game from the VIP seats in the press box. The great food, drinks, and view make this a very fun experience. My good friend, Luke, was my guest...


I got up early on Saturday morning to head to Dallas with Kristy, Alex, and Parker. We were about to enjoy the much anticipated game between Baylor and Texas Tech. This game was extra fun because it took place at the Cotton Bowl during the State Fair. The game started at 11 and we made it in plenty of time, we even got to see the masked rider run the Tech horse across the field...it was pretty cool. Perhaps the best part of this experience, it was totally free! Thanks again to all my friends who helped to make that happen!

We watched the game until half-time and then experienced the fair during the third quarter. By the time we made it back in the 4th quarter, the game was really close and the Bears were still hanging tough. I'm thinking there was some questionable business going on that may or may not have had an impact on the final outcome of the game. Either way, the Bears fought hard but fell short and lost by a touchdown.


When the last second ticked off the clock we walked quickly back to the car and started the trek to Arlington where the Texas Rangers were one win away from a sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS. We left the Cotton Bowl at 3 and the Ranger game began at 4:07! My friends, Stacey & Kevin, got me a ticket to this game and because of the Baylor game I had to meet them there. Thankfully, Kristy was so kind to drop me off at the ballpark and deal with all the crazy traffic.


The game was going so well until the eighth inning and it all kind of fell apart. The record crowd was literally in shock! Our little group was so shocked and sad to have missed what was supposed to be history in the making that we just had to go back to the game today! So, while we sat in traffic getting out of the parking lot, Stacey bought tickets on her iPhone. We met up this morning after church and sat in the sun all day, hoping and believing that the Rangers would pull it together and get the job done at home. Unfortunately, they did not! At least I had fun with Sutton!


We left the game again very sad and disappointed. And hungry! So, we headed to Saltgrass to eat dinner. We had kind of a strange waiter who kept telling us random Ranger stories, then he came over to tell us Nellie Cruz (Ranger's outfielder) was sitting a couple tables away. We were a little skeptical about it really being him, but sure enough it was! As he got up to leave the restaurant we asked him if he'd take a picture with us and he was so kind to do it.


It was pretty sad to witness all the losing but it was a great weekend and being able to be at every game was super cool. And getting to hang out with so many great people was the best part of all!

I work with the BEST people!! - updated

About a week ago I got word of a Twitter contest that Baylor was putting on. The contest was simple, the person who "tweets" a picture with the most people giving a "Bear Claw" by 5pm today would win 4 tickets to this weekend's Baylor vs. Texas Tech football game at the Cotton Bowl.

Now, I don't twitter. I have an account so occasionally when I hear something I can look at it. I didn't even know how to "tweet" anything, much less a picture. So, while I was intrigued I didn't give it much thought. Then I had a great idea! What if I got my class and a couple others to take a picture. Surely, a hundred kids or so would be enough to win! Fast forward to this week and I asked several of my amazing co-workers to help make the picture happen, and then they asked some other people. I'm sure it wasn't easy for them, they are all very loyal to their own colleges! We made a plan to meet on the playground and snap a quick picture...we may or may not have used the valuable time we were supposed to be spending teaching our kids about being safe in the restroom!

Anyway, the picture turned out great and the kids all looked like they love Baylor like I do...even those die-hard Horned Frogs, Longhorns, and Aggies put up a "Bear Claw" for me! When it was all said and done we had 251 claws! Way more than I had imagined. I went home Monday night "tweeted" my picture and crossed my fingers. Up until that point, Baylor had been giving updates on the current leader. The leader for the next two days was a wedding photo with 34 claws. I was feeling confident but was getting worried that my picture didn't go through for some reason. Then, this afternoon there were all kinds of updates, first 43 claws, then 66 claws, then 68, then 166. I was really nervous now, why didn't they post my picture? Five o'clock rolled around and I updated twitter and there it was! Our picture totally won the contest! When the Baylor guy emailed me he told me he was trying to build suspense by waiting until the last second to post my picture, I was sure to tell him thanks for that!

I'm so excited, but I'm even more grateful for all my teacher friends that went way out of their way to help me do something kind of silly! I mean, I know they would have rather been teaching about the restroom so it was so incredibly kind for them to make such a sacrifice! :)

I NEED TO ESPECIALLY THANK MRS. CHARLENE DENEISE ROTHENBERGER BECAUSE WITHOUT HER, THIS MASSIVE UNDERTAKING CERTAINLY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE. NOT ONLY DO HER SUPERB PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS SHINE BRIGHTLY IN THE PICTURE, HER AMAZING ABILITY TO COMMAND THE ATTENTION OF OVER 250 PEOPLE AT ONE TIME IS SIMPLY, REMARKABLE. I OWE THIS WIN TO HER AND HOPE THAT SOMEDAY I MAY BE ABLE TO ADEQUATELY THANK HER FOR BEING SUCH AN INCREDIBLE EXAMPLE OF WHAT AN EDUCATOR SHOULD BE. THANK YOU SO MUCH DENEISE!

Here are the comments the picture has gotten:

-okay did these people call a fire drill or something? :) congrats!
-Love it!
- I bet these kids are all future Baylor Bears now.
-One never knows when the seed planted will bear fruit! But those kids now know about Baylor in a positive way!
-kudos to the person who counted all 251 of these sic 'ems!

Isn't it amazing how I can write so many words about a silly little contest! :)

Go Rangers!!

I'm super pumped about the Rangers being in the playoffs! I've not been as big a fan in the last couple years, but the Rangers and I go way back. I celebrated their first trip to the playoffs in 11 years by buying a new t-shirt. I'm going to need it because I'm totally going to the game on Saturday!!

Everyone cross your fingers that it's a night game because I'm also hoping to win tickets to see Baylor play Tech at the Cotton Bowl in the morning! It will be quite a day!!

I LOVE FALL!!

That is all.

From the schoolhouse...

Here's a couple things that made me laugh out-loud today...

I went to visit some of my kindergarten friends during lunch today and the kid sitting across from me blew so many bubbles in his milk that they came out over the top of the carton. This is our conversation...

Me: Wow! Be careful, you've got a lot of bubbles there.
Kid: It's ok. I'm just pretenden' to be drinkin' a beer.

At dismissal today we were discussing our weekend plans...

Me: So, what are you doing this weekend?
Kid: I'm supposed to have a pepper rally (Pep Rally) but if it rains I don't think we'll be able to have it.
Me: You have what??
Kid: You know, a cheerleader pepper rally!
Me: Oh yeah! :)

The younger kids are WAY funnier than the older ones! :)

Learning curve...

The new school year is in full-swing and it has brought one very major change for me! For the first time in my short teaching career I changed grades. After 5 amazing years (ok 2 amazing years and 3 pretty good years) in 4th grade I made the switch to 2nd grade. We're about 2 weeks in and it is definitely a different world. It's usually when I'm down on my knees tying shoes that I realize just how different it is. It is lots of fun though and 2nd grade definitely has it's bonuses, including the fact that kids do and say way funnier stuff! I'm still waiting on something blog-worthy but I'll share as soon as it happens. Since I basically have a brand-new job this year I've been feeling a little bit like a first-year teacher all over again. It's not really the greatest feeling in the world! You basically do the best you can and learn from your mistakes!

I saw this quote on facebook or twitter or something that really got me thinking...

"We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble." ~ Charles Spurgeon

I'm trying hard to not write these early mistakes on marble, and instead choosing to find the goodness and graciousness of God in them. And, hopefully, that will be the major theme of this school year!

The culture

Somehow I got distracted from finishing up my Peru blogging! I'll do my best to get back on track!

Besides only speaking Spanish, the Peruvian culture was very different than the United States! In a word, it was RANDOM! The overall atmosphere was much more relaxed. People kind of came and went whenever they felt like, there was no such thing as "being on-time." Whenever we were making plans to go somewhere we always had to ask if that was going to be Peruvian time or American time! For someone who likes structure and routine, this would be very hard to get used to!

We were able to see Chavin culture at it's finest because we were there for the beginning of the Fiesta del Carmen. This is a week-long celebration of the Virgen de Carmen where the people basically worship this idol with lots and lots of partying and cerveza! Lots of cerveza! It was very cool to see an entire town gather together to celebrate something, but SO sad to see that they were putting their hopes, dreams, and worship in something that wasn't real.

Besides the police patrolling the town on foot with giant machine guns, one of the hardest things to get used to was the random rockets shooting into the sky at all hours of the day and night. At first we thought we had found ourselves in the middle of a war-zone. We soon learned that everyone who claims Chavin as their hometown comes back at some point during this week-long celebration to pay their respects to Carmen. To celebrate the home-coming, the family shoots off a rocket for every person who comes home WHEN they come home...even if it's the middle of the night!

One morning we were awoken very early by this little band with a big sound! They marched around town ALL DAY playing the same song! Being a former band-nerd myself, I have absolutely no idea how they did this!



Merchants took advantage of the festival by setting up "shops" all along the streets and then lived in them for the week. They also included some of the craziest looking mannequins I've ever seen!


Another big part of the festival was a bull-fight! This happened to be the inaugural bull-fight in Chavin's new bull-ring.





I really didn't know that much about bull-fighting before this experience, but I can confidently say that I will probably never attend another one! It was so sad! Here's a little video of the festivities, it does get a little graphic just to warn you!



We learned later that this was definitely a bull fight gone bad...the matador missed a couple times and the bull probably suffered way more than it should have. So sad! This little girl's face pretty much sums up how I felt after the bull died:


Here are some more pictures taken around Chavin that kind of tell their own story about the culture...






Getting to experience another culture that was so incredibly different than America was definitely eye-opening! It not only made me very thankful for what I have and all that God has blessed me with, but it gave me the burden to pray for these people and others like them all around the world who desperately need to hear about Jesus.