New Loves

So my new obsession is Pinterest. If you haven't used it, basically it's a place where you can make virtual pinboards where you can save any ideas you see online. Instead of putting recipes or craft ideas in favorites folders, you can put everything in one place on Pinterest and browse through pictures of other peoples ideas and pin them to your own boards. Here are some of the fall things I've made...

My other new love is my iphone. We got the iphone 4 when the 4S came out and we're both addicted. I actually didn't think I'd like it as much as I do. One of my favorite features is that all the pictures I take on my phone automatically show up on my computer without having to plug anything in to upload them. It works as a perfect compliment to my pinterest obsession...and my cat picture taking obsession. Malachy and I follow them around trying to take their picture so often now that they automatically look at the ground when we pull out our phones because they don't like the flash. Luckily they don't notice me when they're fixated on the birds.

Happy Halloween!

Ohio Trip

Fall is here! Even in Arizona kind of. At least the temperatures are back to double digits. September is birthday month for my mom and I. My new obsession is http://pintrest.com/ and I saw this scottie dog cake that I had to make for my mom. Not quite as cute as the one I found online, but still fun.

We both had good days. It was only my second birthday on a school day, so it was fun to have the kids sing to me all day. One class wanted to know how old I was so I told them they could guess and I'd tell them if it was higher or lower. They started at 43 and it took them like five minutes to get to 25. Haha.

We've had this past week off of school for fall break. I love fall break. I have definitely decided that it's worth going back to school one week earlier to have this week off now. It's been great. On Saturday I flew to Ohio. I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but then I started reading articles about how there were cheap flights this fall, so I just started looking a little and I found a great deal, so I had to go. On Saturday night Val, Emily, and I went to Little Italy for the world's best spaghetti: Then we went to the Cleveland Orchestra. Ah how I've missed that. It was Tchaik 4 which was great. They played an encore for the first time any of us could remember.

On Sunday Val, Rog, and I just layed around and watched football all day. The 1pm start threw me off all day. The AZ time zone really is kind of nice.

On Monday, Rog dropped me off at BW and I just hung out there the whole day. The new Con is beautiful. I got to see it when we were up for the wedding, but really getting a chance to explore it and see it all finished with people in it was great. I got to see and talk with lots of my favorite professors. That evening Val and I went out to dinner with Joss and Dr. Marshall too. It was fun to catch up with them. It was really interesting to be with them after having been outside the program for awhile. There were so many emotions between our class and Joss, but really when I think back on it now I loved my time at BW, we had a very strong program, and we all ended up in the right places I think and I'm grateful for that. It was a really nice day.

On Tuesday, I was with Emily and Doug. We went to Melt in the morning. They have all different types of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Mine is called the Kindergartner which is just bread and cheese and it's amazing. In the afternoon we decorated their apartment for Halloween, then spent the evening singing along to Emily's guitar. The summer Malachy and I started dating, Emily lived in the Newman house at BW and we spent many nights sitting on the front porch doing that, so that was a lot of fun too.
On Wednesday, I went to visit my old school. It was great to see lots of my old kids. They're getting so grown up! My first class of Kindergartners is in 3rd grade already! After that it was time to head back to Arizona. The great thing is is that I still have three more days off...

Back to School

School started for teachers on August 2nd, so these last few weeks have flown by with all the back to school things. My classroom looks pretty similar to last year, but with a few added touches:

(yes, I realize treble is spelled wrong in the picture. It's all fixed now.)

another teacher had these ruffle boarders, so I had to steal the idea and make them too. The 5th graders have dubbed me Mrs. HenRod. I kind of like it.

Aside from that, Malachy's birthday was this weekend.

We went out for dinner on Friday and went over to my parents to swim and play games on Saturday. I'm usually super excited about birthdays, but I had the hardest time coming up with a gift idea. After having just gotten so many things from the wedding and having done a lot on the honeymoon, I just couldn't think of much to get or do. Hopefully he had fun though.
Beginning band starts tomorrow so I'm back to my 5am mornings. My grad class starts tomorrow night too, so I am off to bed. Night!

Back As a Married Woman

Hello! After we moved to Arizona I got away from blogging because I felt like many of the people that read my blog would again be living nearby and didn't need to read about my life since they'd be seeing me more, but I've been missing writing and having my own blog, so I thought I might start it up again. We'll see how it goes...
Of course this past year has been dominated by wedding planning. We did a lot of the major planning in Ohio before we moved, so I had a lot of time to work on little details throughout the year. I had fun sewing and putting together things like the ring bearer pillow, a photo display, table runners, mr and mrs signs for our chairs, etc. I really did have fun planning and I thought I would have kind of a let down when it was over, but I really haven't. The day was fun, it was great to have all our favorite people in one place, nothing major really went wrong, and now we're married and I'm excited to get on with that. Here are a few pictures from the day. When I get the professional ones then I'll post a bunch...




We went to Disney World for our honeymoon which was fun too. Everyone tells you that you're going to be tired after the wedding, but I guess I didn't really believe it. I was though. Wow. Anyway, during our first day or two in Florida we were kind of thinking "why didn't we go to an island and lay around all day?" but after we got a little sleep, we had a really good time. The lines at the parks were not bad at all. We got on pretty much everything by 1 or 2pm each day, then went back to the hotel and relaxed and got ready for dinner. We did the Disney Meal plan which was awesome! We had some great food at some really neat places. We totally got spoiled! Since we've been home, I still find myself looking for that chocolate martini at dinner. It had been quite awhile since I'd been on a real vacation and it was great, so now I'm keeping my eye out for a good deal to make plans for another one!
We've been back for about a week and a half now and I've just had some time to hang out before school starts which has been great. We've had fun using all our new gifts, I've had some time to read (LOVED "The Help"), swim, and relax. I go back to school on Tuesday, so I'm storing up all my energy for year number four!

From Another Time Zone

Well hello two months later from Arizona! We left Ohio on July 25th and drove across the country through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and had a pretty good time doing it. We were planning to stop the first night in St. Louis, but we weren't really tired, so we just traded shifts of driving and drove straight through from Ohio to New Mexico. The cats were awesome! They even got along pretty well, and we could have probably gone straight through, but Malachy's dad was driving behind us in the moving van and he was stopping in Albuquerque so we did too.

We got to Arizona on July 27th and got everything out of the van pretty quickly because we had so much help. I started school a few days later and was insistent on getting everything organized before that. I like the apartment a lot. There's more space, a dishwasher and laundry in unit, and it's in a good location.

Here's the living room...

the other side of the living room...

the office...

dining room...

one side of the kitchen...


School has started off well. I'm teaching Kindergarten-6th grade general music, 5th grade band, and 6th grade band. The days are busy; I have nine general music classes and two bands each day which is a lot more than I had a Puritas, but the kids have been so well behaved that it's been good.



Aside from that we've been going to my parent's a lot which has been pretty funny. It's weird to be like "see you soon..." and have that be in a couple days. We've also seen some of my high school friends, and I've already made one trip back to Ohio for Val's wedding too.



Things turned out well. I had a great time being the maid of honor. I was the protector of the dress and I did a reading at mass and gave a toast at the reception.
Aside from that, we're just settling into life in Arizona. I can't believe we've been here for more than a month already! Hopefully I'll remember to update again soon!

To Do List

Oh my goodness, it's been a long time. I haven't been this busy in along time, but it's been a fun busy. We have been doing a ton of wedding planning. I'm trying to get a lot done before we move and we're doing pretty well. Our ceremony is going to be at St. Christopher's in Rocky River. We've been in the choir there this past year and it's a beautiful church. The reception is going to be at the Cleveland Zoo. We looked at a lot of places and we weren't really expecting to like the zoo, but we did and we're really excited about it! We've also got the cake and flowers just about set and our photographer is booked too. We did an engagement session yesterday. We had a good time and we're really looking forward to seeing the pictures!
Aside from that, I've been busy hosting Val's shower

and bachelorette parties. Both went well.

We also went to Emily's parent's house on the Ohio/West Virginia boarder for the 4th of July. It's so rural out there. It would be totally different to grow up in a place like that. We saw some great fireworks in the Ohio Valley though.

Oh yeah, this guy left too...

I went down and took pictures before they started erasing him from the city.
In about an hour I'm headed to New York for the rest of the week and then it's back to pack and hit the road...

Do-Re-Me-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do

Hi! It's been a busy few weeks. The day after school ended I left for Arizona. My new school paid for me to take my Kodaly Level I training. Kodaly was a composer who collected folk songs and created the basis for a pedagogy for teaching general music. The class was from 8:30am-4:30pm for two weeks, so the days were long, but good overall. Many of the other students were master and doctorate students at ASU, so it was interesting to hear about their program and to spend some time in the ASU music building. We covered quite a bit of material in the class, but Dr. Loong prepared us well and most things were familiar.



In between rush hour and homework, I also spent a lot of time looking for apartments. We toured quite a few, but I like the one I picked. It definitely makes it seem more like we're moving now!
I head back to Ohio tomorrow for about a month before we leave on July 25th. I've made lots of reception and photographer appointments, so it will be fun to really get started on the wedding planning. Happy Father's Day!