Going Greener

This was the sight on our kitchen table Friday afternoon after I came home from the grocery store.

The night before we were at Walmart and Evan pointed out that they had re-usable shopping bags for only $1.00. I had told him that I was thinking about getting some but didn't know how much they would cost. Since they were so cheap, I bought four of them to try out. 

Evan wanted to take a picture of them as we put them in the car since the checkout lady put the reusable shopping bags...in a plastic bag.  I guess that's what we get for shopping at Walmart.

When I went to the grocery store today, H.E.B. had them for $0.99 each and a coupon for buy two and get one free! Their bags were a little bigger than the Walmart ones so I got three of them to bring the grand total of re-usable shopping bags I now own up to 7! I didn't even use all of them on this grocery trip but I think that I have the perfect number when I will need to make a full trip next time.

I have to be honest that it felt really good to use them instead of the plastic bags. Not only am I helping out the environment, but it was easier to carry in all the groceries because I could put the bags over my shoulders using the straps. I am looking forward to using them at all kinds of places.

Recycling

Please know ahead of time this post is not an attempt to convince you that you should start recycling, analyze your carbon foot-print, or hug a tree. BUT if it does, I'd love to know!

I decided last week that we were going to start recycling when I was going through all my old papers from teaching. I have wanted to recycle for some time now but we haven't because of the inconvenience factor. Our neighborhood doesn't provide recycling pickup along with trash pickup. Even so, every time I would go to the grocery store and see their huge dumpsters for recycling I would think "I could bring our stuff to H.E.B. when I come to the grocery store." While I was teaching, it never became more than an idea because I didn't have time to get organized so that I could make it all happen. However, last week when I went to H.E.B. I stopped by the dumpsters to see what all you could recycle. They have dumpsters so that you can recycle paper, plastic, and metal! Yes, the exclamation mark appropriately implies that this variety made me very excited.

I started just putting things in bags because we didn't have any receptacles to put stuff.

However, today I got three bins to put in our kitchen for us to collect the recycling.

A special thanks goes to our small group who helped us move the kitchen table on Tuesday night when we had 10 people over for dinner. We wouldn't have had room along the wall in the kitchen with the way the table was originally set up but we had to move it so that we could fit a card table at the end of it to accommodate all 10 people. This morning when I was taking the card table down, I thought to just leave the table as it was and put the bins in their new location.

Theoretically, now that we have these bins, we will officially start recycling. Evan has been really funny about it all so far. I think at first he thought I wasn't going to really do it because I have been talking about it for almost two years now and haven't done anything. On Monday he saw my bags for metal, paper, and plastic and said "You are really into this recycling thing aren't you?" Honestly, part of getting the three bins is to motivate him to recycle too. He jokes about how he "hates the earth" and that he would recycle if he didn't have to sort anything and we could just put it out with the trash. Like I said earlier, it is the convenience factor that has kept us from doing it. I think the convenience is what keeps most people from doing it. I just figured, now I have the time, I should do what I can to help out. I know that I am not going to single-handily stop landfills from filling up, but every little bit helps.

The Last Six Months....

As of this month, I will be taking over the blog....it's me Amy :) Evan has been so wonderful to keep up with the blog up until this point but since I am the one with all the free time now, I am taking over.

Some of you might be saying to yourselves "Evan didn't do such a great job of keeping up with the posts!" but in his defense he was spending most of his time either working or helping me do school work or housework because I was always doing school work. The other thing you must know about my husband that will help you understand the long spances of time between posts, is that he is an excellent writer but also kind of a perfectionist when it comes to his writing. Those of you who have kept up with our blog have realized the excellent writer part. So in all honesty, while the blog will be updated more frequently with me taking over posting, you may have to lower your expectations for quality. I love to write but there is a reason that Evan proofed all of the recommendation letters and speeches I wrote while I was teaching. Don't worry, I will have him proof most of my posts so there will be some level of quality control.

Now you may be wondering why all of a sudden I have all this free time. While yes, it is summer time so school is out, the biggest reason is that I am not going back to teach in the fall. What will I be doing you may ask; I will be a housewife! This may or may not be the long-term plan but it is definitely the plan for the next year. I will post later about this whole subject for the sake of trying to keep this post brief. All I will say now is that while I will miss teaching and I hope that I will have opportunities to do so in the future, I have a peace about our decision and am loving my new life :)

You Got Talent

I am one of those white dudes that absolutely refuses to dance. I've been called everything from a party pooper to a wet blanket, to whatever else you can think of for someone who will go to a party and not dance. I just don't do it. Can I dance? Yes. I was Mr. Counterpoint in 5th grade. (For those of you who care, Counterpoint was the dancing group at my Elementary School. It wasn't like a dance team, think more the Aggie Wranglers, only not so cool). It's not that I can't dance, I'm just always afraid that I'm going to look like a Chihuahua that just got tossed in the deep end.

On the other hand, my wife is quite the dancer. She will dance to anything, anytime, anywhere. She doesn't care if there isn't any music because there is always something playing in her head. So, for those of you who haven't seen my wife dance, I present to you the Munchie (what I call her school) Academy Talent Show featuring....My Wife.

For the rest of you, the regularly scheduled blogging will resume shortly (e.g. I'll tell you all about our San Fran trip, and other things that have happened since Christmas...Even though it's already almost May).

And no, I wasn't drunk when I took the video. If only I had that as an excuse....

Christmas

Some of you (OK, I know that there is only one person whom reads this thing) have wondered why it is February (now March) and I still have a post up about Thanksgiving. Well, since we're moving into March, I figured it was time for a Christmas update. We, as usual, went to SA for Christmas. Since both of our parents live there, it's not too much of a surprise to find us there. First, in early December we had my company Christmas party. They always fly us up to Dallas and put us up in a nice hotel in downtown Ft. Worth. As usual, it was very nice and it’s always fun to play dress up (especially since I normally don’t put on a shirt until halfway through the day). Here’s a pic of the Christmas tree in downtown Ft. Worth. They do a really good job of decorating down there.

Click on the pictures for full size images

Of course, we know how to decorate as well. Here’s our awesome tree (without any of the actual decorations on it).

As usual, we spent time with both families. Here are the decorations at my wife’s Grandfather’s house.

Why yes we do live in Texas. How did you guess?

And here’s a picture of the decorations at my sister’s house

No, A&M football is not “above” Jesus, but it is a close second. (OK, not THAT close). Actually, the helmet is what we gave our nephew for Christmas. Neither my sister nor brother in law are very big, but our nephew is HUGE (at 9 months) so we all know he’s going to play football for the best school in the country.

We had a great time in SA, as always. We love seeing our family and spending time with them and the joy of Christmas and the birth of our Savior is always a favorite time of year. Here’s hoping (in March) that you and yours had a joyous, blessed Christmas.

Thanksgiving

What did we do for Thanksgiving this year? Well, we went swimming. My parents just put a pool in at their house and we tried it out for the first time over Thanksgiving. Both of our parents live in San Antonio, so it’s not really a question about where we’re going, more of a question about who’s house we’re staying at. Last year for Thanksgiving, we went from Houston to San Antonio to Lake Travis to Austin (for the game) to San Antonio back to Houston. It was not a whole lot of fun, so we decided that we would spend the actual holiday with one family or the other. This year we spent actual turkey day with the Patenaudes. But the day before we were in an outdoor pool. That’s right. That’s why we live in Texas, thank you very much. It was rather strange because when we got in at 4 on Wednesday (I ducked out of work an hour early since there wasn’t anyone calling) it was like 75. By the time we got out it was in the 50s because of a cold front. The pool is heated so in the pool it was almost 90 the whole time. It was very nice. T-day was spent eating lots of food and spending time with the Patenaude family (immediate and extended) and giving thanks for every way that we’ve been blessed and they have been many.

Bathroom Redo

 

So I decided that we needed to have a big birthday bash for my wife. She's been wanting to redo our guest bathroom for a while so I decided having a set date (the party) would give me the motivation I needed to actually get the job done.

 

Here’s what we started with. Those “tiles” on the floor are actually vinyl tiles that have been glued down. We ripped those up and replaced them with ceramic tiles. It took quite a bit longer than I originally planned. Between the extra drying time that was needed (I had to do the tiling in two batches) and the extras that had to be done (taking out the baseboards, the toilet, repairing the cabinets, repairing drywall, etc) it didn’t go exactly as planned. We had planned to have the cabinet painted, walls painted, and baseboards painted, but we only got the tile in, the toilet back in and part of the cabinet painted (the part we repaired). We also had to repair some drywall holes (one caused by someone ripping out the towel bar, one caused by me because it was rotted). So this is what it looks like mid project (almost done).

And here it is, as it stands today:

Left to do? Sand and paint the cabinet. Paint the walls and baseboards. Caulk.

A big thank you to a certain friend (who shall remain nameless unless he wants the credit) for coming over to help with the toilet and the baseboards.

Now, who wants to come over and paint?