Baby Boy Hofer Waves

So I totally forgot to post this video, but here is the precious boy waving at the world! Ok I know he's not really waving, rather practicing movements, but I like to think he's saying, "Hi world! I'll be here soon!"

Baby Boy Hofer!

It's a boy :) Dustin likes this pic! It shows my manly man :)

Baby's face on right.

Baby's heart beat.

Video of baby moving

House renovation pics

As we have been coming to reality that we are to become parents, we are totally renovating the house. We spent the second week of my intercession cleaning my office/den out and organizing the storage room at the side of the house. The third week of my vacation through now we've been working on the living room and hallways. We ripped up the carpet, the padding, and pulled up all the padding staples. We then sealed the floor (the white color on the subflooring). It was A LOT of work and a ton of strain on Dustin since he had to do all the lifting himself. Bless his heart he took it on like it was the only job of his life. So here are some shots before and after. We don't have the furniture yet, but hopefully it'll be here within the next few weeks and I can post that as well.










Tonight since we still can't get too far into the kitchen to cook, we went out to Applebee's in Greenwood. It was supposed to be a purposeful trip to find some kind of audio/visual cabinet for our stereo/dvd player etc. Well, wouldn't you know it Best Buy didn't carry one that was a stand alone. Everything they carried was for those tvs that you set on top of. So we decided to go to Value City to see what they had--SAME THING! So no cabinet for us tonight. Maybe we'll get something this weekend after checking out Fry's.

Preparing

In preparation for our new addition to the family we have been hard at work making some drastic changes to the house! Eric and Dad came down two weeks ago to get the spare queen bed out of the spare room. It was a good deal for Eric because he now has a bed for his room at his own house. We bought some new carpet and furniture for the living room. Our carpet now is Peptobismol pink and we have never had new furniture. So here's what the new furniture looks like before we get it!

More pics to come as we are installed! We will def do a before and after pic :)

Catch up

I cannot believe I haven't blogged since October! I guess that means we've been terribly busy since then. Christmas was great and went by too fast. New years came and went. We've been back in school since the 4th of January and I can see spring intercession in sight. But there have been a few things on my mind lately:

1. ISTEP- please can take the pressure off of this test? Middle school students could take the exact same test the next day with completely different results.

2. Budget cut- Why should a teacher have to worry about his or her job? Aren't we creating the future in our classrooms? Wouldn't we want the best for our children? It seems as though the US is heading toward privatizing schools making parents pay for it. Doesn't sound so competitive does it? What happened to honest and frugal spending?

3. School start date- I am a huge advocate for year round schools. The climate in the schools are so much more calm and there is always hope of a break soon. We get 3 weeks off in the fall and the spring and around 6 weeks off in the summer. The breaks are necessary to keep the mind from becoming dull and numb. The students actually remember things we have talked about from July. How many traditional calendar teachers can say that? I have seen it and experienced it with my own eyes, otherwise I wouldn't have believed it.

4. Future- I don't know what I want to do with my future. It seems that education is going by the way side and now I'm just not so positive about my career choice if there is no support. Too many hands are in the public education systems and it doesn't seem to make sense to me that a businessman can tell me how to run a school and how to teach?
- Also along with the future we have some things changing in our lives, positive and exciting things, and again it throws up some questions as to what we want to do with our future! Dustin retires in 5 years and we can move to a new house hopefully in the country but close enough to a city to have a day out.

5. Brother- I'm thankful for my brother. I'm so very excited he is coming to hang out today with his fiance, Dora. I cannot wait for their wedding in October! She definitely makes a good match in our family.

6. Dustin- Last but not least I'm so very thankful for Dustin. He's an amazing man and puts up with me no matter what. He helps me out and makes life so much easier. I don't know what I'd do without him.


I will try to keep this updated better as the spring progresses! We are going to San Antonio :)

Date Night--Dinner, Drinks, Rocky Horror

This weekend was a great finish to a crappy first week back at work. Friday night Dustin made me his soon-to-be famous homemade chicken tenders and some waffle fries. We went to the Rathskeller for drinks and dessert. Afterward we went to the musical Rocky Horror Picture Show. Now Dustin is absolutely in love with the movie. When I first saw the movie I hated it! So I was a bit skeptical at first, but I know I love plays. Dustin was a bit worried that it wouldn't be like the movie and wouldn't be good acting at all.

So we get there and the green phantom is staring at us and sitting on the banister by us. He asks us if we are going to do the Time Warp dance. We say yes, me knowing full well I don't know it. Dustin warned me that they aren't kind to virgins there so I just went with it. It was quite creepy how he sat there staring at all of us too.

So the play starts and here are some pictures that we could get:









Halloween is Uncle Mike's birthday so we threw him a party. Butch & Taunya, Dennis & Becky, Scott & Masha, and Mike & Sherry came for the festivities. Dustin fried some catfish, fresh cod, I made a roast, cheese balls, and made home made peach cobbler. Sherry brought the salad. We all dug in, listened to music, told stories, laughed beyond breathing and had a blast.

Here I am highlighting Sherry's hair. Like mother like daughter--guess it's almost destined that I should know something about hair care?! I mean come on Eric was even the "barber" at Vincennes haha.

New England Trip--Wed Oct 14th--Cape Cod

Wednesday is Cape Cod day! We drove the 2 hours and 10 minutes to the very end of the cape to a town named Provincetown or P-Town.

Here is a "school bus." This was the 2nd one we saw. The first one was in the neighborhood in which we are staying. This one was on our way to Cape Cod!
Here is one of only two bridges that allow you into Cape Cod.

This is a picture of the scenery in Provincetown.
We decided to stop and take pictures.
Unbeknown to us, there was a light house out here...
Here's a pic of us on the rocks that lead to the light house. I got a bit chicken going too far! Not to mention I did hurt my foot by getting it caught in one of the rocks! haha. To the left you can see the light house in the distance.
Wouldn't you know it... this was the first landing spot of the Pilgrims!!! Not Plymouth!!

So we drive on into Provincetown. At first we don't understand the town because the main roads don't have anything on them. As we're driving through we realize the town is gay and lesbian "friendly" or so they say. Many houses had these flags flying out front with the word "PEACE" on it. What really got my goat was that they'd fly them right next to Old Glory.
So moving on, we find a place to park for free and it has this awesome First Landing Monument.
As we walk the streets I see this...
and I felt a bit out of place. My conservative values started to get a pushed aside and I actually began to not look at the homosexuals holding hands as much as I did at first. For lunch we stopped into an Irish pup and had clam chowda and lobster bisque. As we walked on, the liberalism just started to fuse into me (sarcastic) and I bought some art! Whoa, I know! I bought two pictures from a man that actually took the pictures and had them matted. The pic is of the light house from above and the rocks from above that lead out to that light house.

Below you see a winery we went to. In Indiana and all the way up and down I-65 the wineries allow tours for free and free tasting. Well, not here! It was $7 a piece for 5 tastes and a nice wine glass. Then we got to thinking... how are we going to get this glass home on an airplane? Then we thought, well maybe we can just ship a bottle of wine home, right? Wrong! Indiana won't allow Massachusetts to ship wine to us. Oh well, guess it saved us some money, right? Considering a bottle of chardonnay cost $20 or more plus tax! Guess they are proud of their product.
On the way back toward mainland we decided to pull off and go to the Cape Cod Chip Company! We took the self-guided tour, bought some chips, and Dustin got a t-shirt. This place was in Hyannis. We didn't think much of it, but were definitely hungry since it had been about 4 hours since our bowls of soup at the Irish pub in liberal city. We drive on into town in Hyannis. Wouldn't you know it, it's where Kennedy enjoyed his summers and was raised out here. Thinking it was too late (around 4:15) we tried to go into the museum quickly and the ladies were very kind to let us in and enjoy. The museum was small, but very informing, interesting, and generally melancholy.
So after the museum we NOW get to get something to eat. We got a 20% coupon from the museum to go to this place called Tommy Doyle's. Amazingly it was ANOTHER Irish pub! Anyway it was amazing! I had a club and Dustin had a NY Strip, stuffed shrimp, mashed taters, and green beans. His meal was only $15!! AND delicious! So we stayed there for awhile, talked to the bar tenders and the waiter. It was a blast.

We moved on to see what was left of Hyannis. Here's some scenery.
Here I am figuring out the timed option on my camera!
Yay! I did it!! The camera is sitting on top of the car haha.
Here is a Korean War monument.
JFK...
Look at me and the timer again!!