Mason's New Picture

Mason has grown so much and has really become a huge part of our family. Justin and I take turns getting up early each morning to walk him and it's become a family routine to walk him every night. He has house trained really well (knock on wood) and Justin and I are so thankful we've added him to the Dellinger household. He has already mastered the commands of sit, down, and come. We're working on lay and I would like to do "shake" just because it's cute. Justin says that's not really necessary. When we got sweet Mason he was only 8 lbs and now at 4 months today, he's at 26 lbs! Good think I don't gain almost 20 lbs in 2 months! We love "our boy" so much!

Yard Work

This is at our back door, which is what most people use to come in. We have since added some stones and brick to finalize it!

Coming around the corner...I can't wait to see birds in the spring.

My favorite part, our beautiful magnolia tree. I love this!

Our new flower garden by the kitchen door. We are going to add brick around this as well, but we've got to wait until Thanksgiving to get brick from Mamaw Mart's. Notice sweet Mason in the back ground. :)

We had a wonderful weekend with Justin's grandparents. We were able to get so much done in our yard and it looks really great! I really love this time of year and I am so excited to see how our new fall flowers brighten up our yard! Enjoy!

All teachers enjoy...

This was an email sent to me by my good friend Beth. If you teach, you will surely enjoy it...

After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said: 'Let me see if I've got this right.'You want me to go into that room with all those kids,correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dresshabits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning. 'You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride. 'You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how toregister to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job. 'You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of antisocial behavior, and make sure that they all pass the final exams.'You also want me to provide them with an equal education regardlessof their disabilities, and communicate regularly with their parents in English, Spanish or any other language, by letter, telephone, newsletter, and report card. 'You want me to do all this with a dry erase board and marker, a bulletin board, a few books, a big smile, and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps. 'You want me to do all this and then you tell me. . . I CAN'T PRAY?

Brownie Points

Since Justin and I got married, we have learned quite a bit from one another. We each have our own quirks and we are continuing to learn what makes it each tick. One of my personal pet peeves is dirty clothes in the floor. I believe there is a place for everything and dirty clothes go in the dirty clothes basket. Justin, however, does not have this deep desire to place things in the appropriate place, especially his dirty clothes. It is a daily routine to find Justin's dirty clothes literally in the middle of our bedroom or bathroom floor. Yesterday morning, annoyed but not mad, I couldn't help myself from asking Justin why his boxers and t-shirt were in the floor. However, he was quite quick and scored some good brownie points. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: "Justin Sweetie, if you can give me one good reason why your clothes should be in the floor instead of the basket, I will never ask you again."

Justin: "Honestly, I just like to see your fine tail bend over."

I laughed so hard I almost peed my self.

Yellow Jackets

Ok, so on Sunday Justin and I woke up to a GORGEOUS Sunday morning and we were going to take Mason on a job before going to church. While sitting in the floor putting on my shoes with Mason, I heard a buzzing noise. I looked up and saw 2 yellow jackets. I went ahead and swatted them with my shoe. I opened to blinds to see a few more. I felt that this was strange and called Justin into the sunroom/Mason's room. We opened the blinds on both windows and there were over 30 yellow jackets at the top of the windows, inside the house! Though they were strangely calm and not trying to sting/bite us, we went ahead and "Raid"'ed the room. This entailed having to mop the floors and clean the windows since Raid can poison dogs and that's where Mason sleeps. Needless to say, we missed preaching and only made it to Sunday School since we were dealing with this invasion of yellow jackets.

Since then, we have found a few buzzing here and there. Justin sealed the windows extra tight and we can not figure out where these things are coming from! Does anyone have any suggestions? Fortunately, we are able to close all doors from the sunroom to the rest of the house so they're only in that one room, but it's still strange and quite a nuisance....

Playing with Mason

We are loving our sweet boy! He is very playful and loves hanging out with Justin. He is a great runner and doesn't even need a leash for him to run along with him. I am so thankful we have added him to our family!

One week down...

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the summer went and now the first week of school is already over. It's crazy how things zoom by! I am so excited about the school year! I have a wonderful group of students and I'm eager to try new things with them. I'm also really looking forward to being the assistant volleyball coach! Jan, Mindi, and Abby (the other coaches) have welcomed me to their staff to be each of their assistants as needed (each of them is head coach of varsity, middle, and JV) and I am loving it. Though I do get home later than I'm used to and I have to get up at 5:00 am to work out because I can't go to the gym after practice each day, it's totally worth it!

Justin and I were just talking about how this is our favorite time of year. Since Justin has been in school since he was 5 and so have I, since I started teaching right out of college, our years are defined from August-May and the summers of _____ (fill in the blank with the year). So, Justin's 2nd year in his master's program and my 2nd year teaching has begun! We both love the fall because of the excitement it brings with starting a new school year, the weather cools down, football begins, the leaves begin to change, and everything about fall is simply lovely. The smell of burning leaves, pumpkins, seeing school buses stopping...I love it!

So, now, with one week down, we have 174 more days until the summer of 2010 is here...I'm kidding, I'm really not counting down!