Worth It

I haven't posted in almost a month.  I know, it's despicable.  The reason is because I've been moving 2000+ miles across the country, so hopefully you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

I hate moving.  I HATE it.  I have to pack up everything I own, carry it out to a trailer, carry it out of the trailer again once I get to my new place, then unpack it and see how many things broke.  Oh, and then I inevitably have to spend a bunch of money to replace the stuff that I couldn't bring with me and/or the things that didn't make it.  Then I have to figure out a way to decorate my new place and make it look nice on a budget because everyone looks at me as the hostess girl who should have a nice house.  :-/

Today, however, it was worth it.  It was worth the hours I spent wrapping and boxing literally thousands of items.  It was worth the headache of unpacking them again.  It was even worth the bath salts that spilled all over my copies of The Elsie Files and ruined some of them.  It was worth the money I spent to make our new house feel like a home.  Do you want to know why?

Because I am home.  I didn't really realize it until today.  I've been a little (okay, a lot) sad to leave Las Vegas and the friends and job I love there.  I have been dreading the blizzards and ice that will arrive here in a few short months.  Today, though, I realized that I don't really belong anywhere else.

Rex's aunt had the family over for a Sunday night dessert party.  This is the kind of thing his family does all the time, but I've been missing out because I've been gone.  All of the aunts and uncles and cousins came over to eat ice cream and treats (my cookie-brownies were a hit!), and then we played a family game of softball.

The family has a make-shift softball field in their back yard, and they even renovated a tree house to be a score board.  We picked teams and started playing.  It was like one of those two-page spread ads in Good Housekeeping where the family is all laughing and enjoying a nice summer evening. You don't think those people actually exist in the world, but they do.  They're my in-laws. People were making jokes like "move in - this one's going nowhere!" (that was for me, lol) or "How can she run in that June Cleaver dress?"  (That was for Aunt Sarah, whose dress was very June Cleaver.  I loved it).  My brother-in-law was on the other team and ran by second (where I was fielding), gave me a hug and said "Love ya, sis!" before he kept running.  Everyone was joking and laughing and having a great time.  I suddenly came to the realization that this was worth coming back for.  I'm not going to miss any more of these family events.  Family isn't about flying into town for a wedding or funeral and then flying back out to our everyday lives.  It's about being there for each other's everyday lives.  It's being able to play a goofy softball game on a Sunday night.  It's having people to call when you're trying a new recipe and you want someone to try it.  It's telling your little cousin that "Sure, you can come sleepover at my house and do nails!"  It's asking your brother-in-law what kind of birthday cake he wants, since you're finally here to make one for him.  It's being able to shop with your sister when she needs a new outfit to look nice for a date.  I'm not going to miss that stuff anymore, because I'm here, and it was worth every headache it took to get here.  It feels good to be back.

Rich for a Day

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be fabulously wealthy?  I know I have. Well, I got a little taste of it this week, and I want to tell you about it.

Rex and I planned an extravagant overnight date to celebrate our third wedding anniversary.  It was a combination of an anniversary celebration as well as a final "hurrah" before we move to Michigan next week. (I don't know whether to write "boo" or "yay" after that statement).  Since we live in Las Vegas, we decided to have a fun night out on the strip.  We reserved a suite at Mandalay Bay Hotel, and we got ready to have a fun night out.  Because we reserved the suite for a Wednesday night, it was only $112.  The same suite on the weekend is well over three times that expensive.  Vegas is a very "weekend" city, so weekdays are super affordable.

We got to the hotel, and I was blown away.  For my friends in the Kalamazoo area - you know the Radisson Hotel?  Well, this hotel made the Radisson look like a Motel 6.  I couldn't believe the extravagance.  There is no way that people should have spent that much money on building a hotel.  I bet the chandeliers alone were $50,000 or more each.  We went to ride the elevator up to our hotel, and a security guard checked our room keys and showed us to the right elevator.  They have multiple elevators to go to different floors - cool!  When we got in the elevator, there was a television screen showing video clips for us to watch on our ascent to our floor (we were on floor 30).  We finally got to our floor, and we went into our room.

The room was jaw-droppingly gorgeous.  I wish I would have thought to take pictures, but I didn't.  The entire side wall was floor to ceiling windows with a beautiful view of the strip.  An entire wall of glass - how awesome.  There was a dining room (which we had no use for...but it was still cool), a bedroom, a living area, and the most ultimately cool bathroom that you ever saw in your life.  It had a huge jacuzzi next to a window that overlooked another part of the room, and across from the jacuzzi was a flat screen TV.

Wait, you don't look completely shocked.  Perhaps you didn't read that slowly enough.  I will repeat: ACROSS FROM THE JACUZZI WAS A FLAT SCREEN TV.  IN THE BATHROOM.  Whaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?  I couldn't believe it.  I tried telling Rex that watching Duck Dynasty from the five star hotel jacuzzi was a bit contradictory, but he didn't care.  That's what he wanted to watch.  Ha ha.

After we checked in to the hotel and looked around our room, it was time to go out for dinner.  A parent in my classroom had given me a gift card to "brio," a fancy Italian restaurant downtown.  We figured this would be a good time to use it.  I had never been there, but I heard it was fancy so Rex and I got dressed up.  It's a good thing we did, because this was the fanciest restaurant I had ever been to in my life.  We walked in and Rex said, "Umm...I don't think I belong here.  They're going to sense that I'm not sophisticated enough and kick me out."  He looked sophisticated, though (he left his cowboy hat at home - THANK GOODNESS), so we got a table.  We tried to read the menu, but I didn't understand anything on it.  It was all fancy Italian sounding words that I didn't know.  Where were normal items like "spaghetti"?  I went out on a limb and ordered "campanelle diavolo."  Do you have any clue what that is?  I didn't either.  It was described as spicy, so I figured it might be good.  Ummm...it was.  It was an absolute explosion of flavor with every bite.  It ended up being a trumpet shaped pasta in a spicy tomato cream sauce with smoked chicken and green onions.  Mmmmmm...  it makes me hungry just remembering it.  Rex got some sort of seafood thing, so I didn't try it.  He said it was good though.  

You know how waiters come around while you're eating and refill your water?  Our waiter did that, but he also did other stuff too.  For example, Rex ate some bread and accidentally dropped some crumbs on the table, so our waiter came and said, "Let me get those crumbs out of your way, sir."  He then proceeded to use a special crumb-removing brush to wipe the crumbs from the table.  My eyes just about popped out of my head.  He wiped the crumbs off of our table with a special brush?  Did he mistake us for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge or something?!  I've never had anyone do that!  And he kept calling us "sir" and "ma'am," even though Rex was right - we are sooooo not sophisticated enough for that.  We're more "Howdy y'all" kind of people, but let me tell you - brio is not a "Howdy y'all" kind of place.  It was fun to experience a candle-lit romantic fancy schmanz gourmet dinner, but I don't think we're going to make it our go-to date spot or anything.  Even with the gift card, it ended up being pretty expensive.  

Back at the hotel, we had fun night in our luxury accommodations.  The next morning, I was kind of sad to be checking out.  We'd had so much fun acting like we belonged in a five-star world.  As we got in line to check out, I was disappointed to see that there was a line.  I don't like waiting in lines (who does?), but I figured it wouldn't take too long because the line was moving pretty quickly.  As soon as I got into line, a man in a tuxedo came up to me and held out a silver tray with Mandalay Bay water bottles on it.  He said, "So sorry for the wait; can I interest you in a water bottle?"  Yes, please!  The wait was only about five minutes, but I got offered three water bottles during that time.  Fancy!  Where are those guys when I'm at Cedar Point?

After check-out, Rex and I spent the day at the pool.  "Mandalay Bay Beach" is 11 acres of sandy "beach" with tons of pools.  Rex and I particularly liked the wave pool and the lazy river.  What kind of crazy hotel has that as their hotel pool??  Vegas hotels, apparently.

All in all, it was a really fun "staycation" to celebrate our anniversary as well as our last few days of being Vegas locals.  I'm really going to miss living here, but I'm sure new adventures await in Michigan.

Hooray for Me!

I know it's not polite to ask a lady about her weight, but is it polite for a lady to tell you about it anyway?

Well, I don't care if it's polite or not, because I'm telling you about it and that's that.

This March, I stepped on our scale and almost cried.  I weighed 145 lbs.  Now, let me preface this by saying that I KNOW 145 is not "fat," and it still falls within normal BMI range for someone of my height (5'8"). Technically I was still healthy.  The discouraging part about the situation was that I had never weighed this much in my life.  My clothes were starting to be too small, and I bulged out of them.  I hated trying to squeeze myself into my favorite outfits.  My self-esteem was plummeting.

Compounding this issue was that my sister Cara is going to be a supermodel someday (you watch - she totally is).  She is a junior in high school and looks FABULOUS.  How would you like to have this girl as your sister?  (she's the one in blue).  I hate being compared to her because I don't look like that, and in March I weighed significantly more than her.  I felt like a fatty.

I knew I had to do something about my weight, not only for my confidence levels but for the fact that I couldn't afford new clothes to fit my larger self.  I started working out a couple times a week.  I never really "dieted" per se, but I just started looking at portion sizes of food and following them.  Did you know that a box of pasta is supposed to have eight servings in it?  Well, I used to eat an entire box of pasta in one sitting. Also, a slice of pizza is one serving, which means that splitting a large pizza between my husband and I was probably not very healthy.  Suffice it to say, I can eat a lot of food.  A LOT.  It just doesn't mean I should.  I started cutting my portions to smaller sizes and working out more.  I began weighing myself frequently, shooting for a weight under 130.  I had good weeks and bad weeks, but I wasn't losing as much weight as I wanted.  I was getting discouraged.  I decided that since I was working to live a healthy lifestyle and was at a technically healthy weight anyway, I should probably stop weighing myself obsessively.  Yesterday my husband and I went to the pool, though, and I noticed that my swimsuit bottoms felt really loose.  Strange...  I came home and weighed myself, and GUESS WHAT?!  Here's what the scale said:

Hooray for me!!  I lost fifteen pounds in a little over two months!  Now I'm sexy!  Ha ha...  Maybe not really, but I look better than I did.  I feel healthier, too.  This morning I took the ultimate test:  I tried on a size 2 pair of capris that I haven't been able to wiggle into for a long time.  Not only could I wiggle into them, but they fit well.  :-D  My old clothes fit well, and my "fat clothes" are too big.  Life is good.  I think I might celebrate by going out and buying a new swimsuit, since my old one is too stretched out for my new and improved self.  Either that or I'm going to eat a whole box of pasta (just kidding!).

The Monkey and the Tampon

The weirdest stuff happens to me.

Case in point:  today a monkey tried to steal a tampon out of my purse.  I challenge you to find one other person who has had that happen to them.

Rex and I were spending a fun Sunday afternoon at the zoo.  There is a really cool zoo about 45 minutes from Las Vegas that was started by two veterinarians who wanted to show off their exotic pets collection.  It grew into an awesome zoo where visitors are allowed to play with almost all of the animals.  Today I held a baby kangaroo, had a toucan perch on my shoulder, let a tarantula crawl up my arm, and had a lemur jump onto me, just to name a few things that happened. 

The funniest, however, was the monkey.

There was a little Capuchin monkey who was out playing with the visitors, so I dutifully waited in line for my turn to play with him.  When it was my turn, the little guy came and sat in my lap.  He looked up at me with his cute baby monkey eyes, and I think I fell in love.  I must have a monkey someday.  Anyway,  he crawled up to my shoulder and looked down at my purse - lots of fun stuff in there!  He jumped down to rifle through my things.  I didn't really mind, but I kept an eye on him because I wasn't sure what was in there and didn't want him to pull out anything embarrassing in front of all of the zoo people. 

Good thing I was watching, because it turns out that a tampon has a shiny wrapper to grab a monkey's attention, and it happens to be the perfect size to fit in a little monkey hand.  He grabbed my tampon and was about to pull it out to show the zoo people his prize, but I grabbed it out of his hand while it was still in my purse and shoved it down to the bottom under some other stuff as if to say "choose something else, monkey!"  

Apparently the monkey thought that meant, "Let's play hide the tampon!" since he started digging through my stuff to find it again (which he did).  I grabbed it again and put it back in my purse again, but I was getting a little desperate.  I needed to find a diversion.  I grabbed the first thing I saw, a pack of Ice Breakers breath mints, and shook them like a rattle.  Babies like rattles, so I figured monkeys probably did too.

I was right.  The monkey abandoned the tampon and grabbed the mints out of my hand.  If it had been a baby, the baby would have contentedly shook the mint box and maybe gnawed on it a little.  I wasn't dealing with a baby, though, remember?  Do you know what a monkey does with a box of mints?  He opens it and dumps all of the mints on his head.  Then he runs around picking them up and eating them.

The people standing around started cracking up, and I looked guiltily at the zookeeper.  I wasn't sure whether or not monkeys are allowed to eat mints. I guess they are, because the zookeeper didn't freak out or anything.  He even ran up to her and put one in her mouth as if to say, "Here!  Try this!"  It was really funny.  

All's well that ends well.  I wasn't too horribly embarrassed, and the next guest will thank me because the monkey has really fresh breath now.

Field Trip Day!

Yesterday was our fifth grade field trip day.  My favorite part of the entire day was our special guest......REX!!!

My students have heard a lot about Rex and Rex has heard a lot about them, but Rex has never come to my classroom.  Today he came in to chaperone our field trip, and my kids were very excited to meet him.  They only know him from my stories and the two pictures of him on my desk.  One girl has a huge crush on him (she wrote an entire essay about how awesome he is...which was kinda creepy), and she came to school with her hair in an updo more fancy than I've seen at a lot of weddings.  This girl never does anything with her hair, but the day Rex came she was ready for prom.  As Rex and I walked down the hall, she turned excitedly to her friend and said, "Look, there he is! It's him!" as if Rex was Justin Bieber or something.  It was really funny.

We had a great time at the Bodies Exhibit in Las Vegas.  Students learned a lot about the human body, and they asked Rex lots of questions since he's in medical school and knows a lot about anatomy.  I may or may not have bragged about his vast biological knowledge to my students on multiple occasions, but he came through and totally impressed everyone (including me).  One of the mom chaperones said, "Is that the new fifth grade teacher?  Because he is CUTE!"  Ha ha...nope, not the new teacher, but yes he is cute.

We got back to school, and my students went out for recess.  Rex played some basketball with them, and they had a great time.  The girl who has a crush on him started a small cheer squad next to the court to cheer for Rex.  GO REX GO!  When we got back to the classroom, one of the boys said, "I'm going to be good for the rest of the day because I really want Mr. Webb to think I'm cool."  Sweet - can Rex come back every day?

After dismissal, our large African-American math teacher came up to me and said, "Dang, Webb.  That man you got is a LOOKER!  He is FIIIIIINE."  Oh heavens.  I mean, it's true, but really - I think that there is a severe lack of testosterone in our school.  A man walks in and everyone goes crazy!  Ha ha.  I was pretty smitten myself, though, when Rex went with me to tutoring.   There is something incredibly attractive about a man who is great with little kids.  My tutorees loved him.  A boy who hardly ever says anything to me loved Rex and wanted to read to him.  It was so cute.  I wish that we lived closer to the school so that Rex could come in more often, but I think Rex is relieved that we don't.  :-)

Husband Shout-Out

Everyone likes to brag about their spouse once in a while.  Well, today's my day.  I want to brag about what my husband Rex did for me last night.

I've had a pretty stressful week.  My students were taking CRT's (Nevada's standardized tests), one of my team members got fired so I've had to cover her duties, I had some job interviews, and I was trying to make some important decisions about next year.  I was happy to get to the weekend, but I still couldn't quite relax.  Rex decided to help me relax by creating the "ultimate relaxation experience."

Do you want to know what he did??  DO YOU??  Well, I will tell you.  I walked into the bathroom to see that he had drawn a bath for me, complete with rose-scented stress relieving bath salts (I didn't even know we had those!).  He had a glass of iced cran-apple juice (my favorite) on the side of the bathtub next to this month's issue of Good Housekeeping.  My laptop was sitting on the counter playing some Britney Spears (my fave - don't judge).  And then - the coolest part ever - he had a TRAY OF SNACKS floating in the bath!!! We have a really big bathtub, so there was room.  Anyway, there was a floating tray of my favorite comfort foods: cheez-its, jelly beans, and sour patch kids.  What?!  A relaxing bath complete with SNACKS?!  It was the best.  Rex went to go study for his finals and left me to enjoy all of my treats.  What a great guy! I think I will keep him around for a while.  :-)

Wal-Mart Randoms

Last night my husband and I decided to go out for burgers at about 11:00 PM.  We weren't incredibly hungry, but it was one of those things where we went because it's cool that we CAN go out for burgers at 11:00 PM.  We're too old for curfews and too young for kids/other responsibilities that would make us stay home.

We had a great time at In-N-Out burger (the most delicious burger in the West), and we decided to kill some more time by going to the Wal-Mart across the street.  Nothing like midnight in a Vegas Wal-Mart, ha ha.  

We had fun looking around, but we bought the most RANDOM stuff.  I looked at it all this morning and thought, "Oh my...what were we thinking?!  Were we drunk when we bought this?!"  Unless you can get drunk off of a hamburger and strawberry shake, the answer to that is "no."  So anyway, I decided to share our really intelligent purchases with the blog world before I decide which ones I should take back.  You can tell me what you think.

First, we got this Angry Birds Space cup.  Ummmm.....?!?!?  I was thinking that I'm going to give it away as a prize in my classroom, but are kids really going to be like, "WOW!  AN ANGRY BIRDS CUP!"?  Probably not.  Oh, well.  It was only 87 cents.

Bath confetti.  Yep, we bought bath confetti.  You're supposed to sprinkle it in the bathtub, and it dissolves and makes your bath smell like watermelon. (Huh?) The kind we got was in the shape of Minnie Mouse, but there wasn't a picture of that on Google.  Why did someone invent Minnie Mouse bath confetti?  More importantly, why did we buy it?!

I got this cupcake apron.  I love aprons.  They make me feel really domestic.  I argued with Rex that although I already have ten aprons, I don't have one specifically for BAKING, therefore I needed this cupcake one.  Now I have an excuse to make cupcakes.  I really don't need any more aprons...I don't cook often enough to use all of the aprons I already have.  I just love them, though! They make me smile!  Isn't my smile worth $7.98??  Rex thought yes.  :-)

Noise cancelling headphones.  Rex claims that he needs these for when he goes shooting at the gun range.  I told him that in the three years we've been married, he's gone to the gun range ONCE.  I hardly think that constitutes buying $19.99 headphones.  He claims that he's going to start going all the time when we move back to Michigan in June, so he needs the headphones.  MMMMMMM HMMMMMMM.  Whatever.  He finally admitted that he also wants them to he can block out the Hanson music that I listen to while I clean.  Why's he being a hater??  Who doesn't love to blast a little "Mmmbop?!"  I can't believe I married someone who doesn't love "Mmmbop."

Potato Peeler.  Definitely our most legitimate purchase.  I've broken our last two potato peelers.  Apparently I peel too "aggressively."  Ha ha.  So we finally forked out the $3.49 for a sturdy one instead of the 88 cent ones I had been buying.

This Cambell's Soup thermos.  I have no clue why we need a thermos.  We never use thermoses.  Rex claims that's because we've never had a thermos to use, but I said that's dumb.  He really wanted it, and it was on clearance (BECAUSE NO ONE NEEDS A CAMBELL'S SOUP THERMOS!), so we got it.  He drank his coffee out of it this morning, but I think that was mostly to prove that he would use it.  Silly Rex.

So anyway, we have learned our lesson, and you can learn from us: don't take late night trips to Wal-Mart.  Your seemingly "cheap date" will end up costing you $38.00.  Booooooo!