My Last Day...

Yesterday was my last day at the center... very bittersweet. While I'm very excited about my new job, I'm sad to go. My staff and the Martha O'Bryan staff and the CWA staff came for a potluck lunch in my honor at the center yesterday. Here are some pictures of that!

The CWA Apartments staff... Billy, one of our off-duty police officers is the one giving me bunny ears!

Me and Sharon... my Nashville mom who takes care of me, partly because her daughter lives a plane ride away and hopes someone takes care of her.

And me with Misty Moody, my partner in crime and supplier of tires the last several years.

Then once the kids arrived after school, we had another party! They made a slide show for me with pictures from my last eight years. Of course I had taken the majority of the pictures so they had trouble finding any with me in them! Some of my girls that are in college now came, as did one of my students that moved out of the apartments. I got lots and lots of cards! When I can get them all in one spot I'll take a picture of all my gifts. I really wasn't expecting it! Even one of my volunteers showed up with a gift. Very generous people! Probably one of my favorite gifts is a framed picture of my students (or most of them!) that was given specifically for me to hang in my new office. They all signed the mat around the picture. Here are a few of the pictures from last night. I think I might try to do a slide show on blogger later today with all of them.

This is Jalisa, one of my graduates!

These are the Eli sisters... Yasmine, Ilham, and Jihan. I've had them in my program for at least seven years! Ilham is at Belmont this year, Yasmine is a junior in high school and Jihan is in the 7th grade! I've known them since they were teeny tiny! In fact, Jihan was in Kindergarten I think!

My yummy, yummy cake!

This is Kenithia, our Education Assistant and one of my all-time favorite people! She's rescued me a countless amount of times since she came in August of 2006!

Catching Up!

So I haven't been the best blogger lately, so here's my attempt at catching you up on the few things that we've done lately.

It seems like most of our posts are about the garden or our niece... so here you go!

The last weekend in September, we traveled to Birmingham to spend a weekend with all the Taylors. Here are a few pictures!

Abby loves the camera... and more importantly, seeing herself on the back after you take the picture!

Abby playing with "Maddie", Jeff's mom

Then this weekend, my parents were here for a visit and to celebrate Kelly's 29th birthday. They ran errands with me on Friday and then Saturday we went to The Avenue, the new mall in Murfreesboro. I'm not that great at entertaining! Apparently, not so great at taking pictures either. They were here three days and the only picture I took was of the apple pie Mom made for Kelly's birthday. If you look close, you can see it says, "Kelly- 29" on the top! Mom's a nifty baker!

This Sunday we'll get to see Jeff's parents again. They'll be staying with us a few days on their way back from Tazewell to see Don's sister.

In other news, now that I'm having to do some research for my new job (air quality info), I've put a link on the right side of ways to help our air quality this fall. No political statement really... just trying to figure out if I could paste the info into a website. Thanks for being my lab rats! I'm also going to add links to the two agencies I'll be working for!

A New Job!

This morning I accepted a new job as the Program Administrator for the Clean Air Partnerships of Williamson County and Middle Tennessee. Yes, technically I'll be working for two different agencies with the same mission. I'm starting on October 20th. Although I'll be traveling around the area meeting with people, I'll be working out of an office in downtown Franklin (actually almost right behind the church we got married in!).

While this is very exciting, its also very scary to start a new job after almost nine years here at the community center. So keep the prayers coming! I'm not going to tell any of my students until we get much closer to my last day... little kids don't have much of a concept of time and it would just confuse them. I officially turned in my notice here last night and everyone has been a little shocked, but very supportive. So I have three weeks to get nine years of work out of my head and onto a piece of paper for the next person! Good thing I've already started! And please join me in prayer for them as they search for my replacement!

Mystery Solved!

So I did accidently plant the butternut squash instead of the yellow squash, but it seems to be doing well despite the heat! In my defense, the seed packet had no picture and the word SQUASH really big at the top... "butternut" was typed quite small below it in the middle of the variety name!


So does anyone have any good recipes that include butternut squash? I have a good casserole one, but that's it! And we have three on the vine already! This one is about ready to be picked!

The Garden Is In...

Shortly after we got our fence, we began putting in our vegetable garden! We lost count (after about 50) of how many bags of top soil we went through to fill it, but we've got enough to finish out the summer and maybe even the fall. Right now its about 25 feet long, but Jeff's hoping to take it all the way across the back and down the left side!

Here's the view from a distance. Notice how lovely our grass is (or lack there of!). We'll be working on that in the fall!!!

This is what it looked like when we first got it planted. The rounded part in the corner is the herb garden. The herbs aren't really doing that great, but we're holding out hope!

This is what the plants look like today. We started them in cups in the house and they have REALLY taken off since we put them in the ground to stretch out! We've got (from left to right), tomatoes, cucumbers, squash (maybe yellow, but I think I accidently planted butternut), and watermelon!

Right now we have broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and butternut squash (again?) started in our kitchen for the fall garden. We'll also plant snap peas, spinach, lettuce, and carrots depending on how much room we have!

Yum, yum.

A New Fence!

Two posts in one week!! Can you believe it???

After a year (plus!) of talking about getting a fence put in, we finally saved enough and did it! Okay we didn't do it, but we hired someone to!!

The new fence! Now our neighbors won't have to look at our dead grass!... at least not in the back yard. We'll spend some time this weekend getting our garden built along the back (at least part of it). Our vegetables are growing in cups and would like to stretch out a bit!

The geniuses who built our fence dragged our hose into the backyard to mix concrete and then built the fence on top of it! We have some digging to do to get it out!

Girls Weekend!

Becky B, Missy, Elizabeth and I headed to Blue Ridge, Georgia this weekend for our annual girls weekend. We had a tagalong... Caroline... Elizabeth couldn't help but bring her along! =) Next time she'll get to experience it outside the womb!

Friday we did some shopping in downtown Blue Ridge and then headed to the pool with the lunches we had packed. This is what happened next...

Saturday we took a train ride to McCaysville, GA/Cooperhill, TN... the state line ran right through the middle of downtown!

We also just chilled out at the cabin, ate some good local food, and of course... played cards!!

For all of our pictures, you can see Becky's Blog. She posted a slideshow on hers! The link is on the left hand side of the page.