February 3...hurry please!!!!

February 3 is signing day. For the wives of college football coaches, that is music to our ears. It means that we will finally have our husbands back...sort of! To me, recruiting season is worse than football season b/c Billy is gone ALL the time. Thus creating a one woman show at our house. That's been especially exciting this week/weekend w/ our foot of snow on the ground. Thankfully we didn't have any frozen pipes, I have 4-wheel drive in the Jeep, and a large portion of the mess melted off yesterday. (Just as a side note, after this winter, Billy is very thankful that I was insistent that we have 4-wheel drive in both vehicles. He told me yesterday that we wouldn't ever buy a vehicle that doesn't have 4-wheel drive after this winter weather experience.) However, this one woman show is quickly coming to an end...THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!!!! He left this morning at 5:45 to go to meetings and then has to take the last load of recruits back to central Texas. He will be back on Tuesday and then on Friday, all the full-times and their wives are headed to Ruidoso/El Paso for a weekend away! I'm super excited.

All the snow has been lots of fun and has made me wish that we had kids even more so that I would have had someone to play in all of it with. The boys have loved getting to run around in it, but they don't tolerate it very well for any amount of time. Hopefully it will melt off quickly so that we don't have remnants of this snow left over when it starts to snow again on Thursday. As usual my camera is being retarded, so I can't upload my pictures of them playing in the snow, but soon hopefully.

I start working weekends today officially. I'm excited b/c the increase in pay will be nice, however, it's not quite as easy to plan things now...I definitely have to be much more prepared and have to plan ahead of time for stuff on the weekends. Thankfully this is only a season in my life and not a permanent thing. I'm hoping in May or June to be able to go back to something closer to what I was working.

As usual, I have been a slacker and waited until the last possible moment to clean house, do laundry, go grocery shopping etc. Hopefully today is a very productive day and I will be able to get it all done and still manage to fit in a nap before I have to go to work tonight.

Crazy story for the weekend. Two of our players got hit by a train...they are okay, but the car...not so much! There are several places in Canyon where we have double sets of railroad tracks. Needless to say, they had pulled up to one and had slid up onto one of the sets of tracks. They were sitting waiting on the train on the other set of track to pass, when all of the sudden they got hit by a train coming in the other direction. Sam said the train only hit like a foot of the front end of the car, but that there is nothing left but an engine and tires on the front end! I thought Billy was kidding when he said that they got hit until I saw Sam and talked to him about it yesterday. Thank goodness they are okay. Not many people can say I've been hit by a train and lived to tell about it!

SNOW!!!! Part 2

Well, not only is it still snowing, but there is a good 2 inches of ice/sleet underneath! Needless to say I am very thankful for a friend who graciously let me stay at her house today since I have to go back to work tonight. It was quite the fiasco to get across town to her house this morning, but I made it. There is probably a good six inches if not more outside and it's not supposed to quit until midnight. We got an e-mail today that we have to ration linens at work. Kind of makes me laugh!!! I am going to try and get home in the morning, but we'll see. I may be stuck at Carissa's for awhile.

Billy and Coach Carthel survived a tornado at Stephenville HS today. I called to check on the boys when I got up and he was telling me about their adventure. He also told me that the guy that was supposed to be letting our dogs out hadn't been over there today because he couldn't get out of his apartment so I had to call the neighbor to go let them out. Hopefully my house isn't wrecked!!! Good times!! Only in Texas is there a blizzard and a tornado in the same day.

Guess I should get off of here and get ready for work. Thank goodness Carissa was a sweetheart and washed my clothes so that I didn't have to wear dirty clothes to work tonight...I have to wear the same clothes again, but they are at least clean.

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I think we are finally going to get the "BIG" snow that we have all been waiting for this weekend...which means that I quite possibly will be getting a workout in hiking up the hills at the stadium after we sled down them!!!!!! I cannot express how absolutely excited just the thought of this wonderful adventure makes me.

In other not so exciting news, Billy is once again gone for the week. This time with Coach Carthel, which for some reason makes me worry less about him...I guess it's because he's not having to do all the driving by himself, although he usually does all the driving, he just has someone to talk to this week instead of riding in silence, or being on his phone the whole time.

I am ready for the weekend to be here. I already need a break from work and I have only been there once so far this week. PT was exhausting as usual this morning, however, my therapist and I did laugh quite a bit b/c the more she challenges me, the more she realizes that I'm not lying when I say I'm uncoordinated!!! :) And hopefully by the end of this week/beginning of next week my neurologist will have some answers for me and some of this anxiety will go away. I think for the most part I will be fine whatever they find, I just want to know what it is good ro bad.

On that note, I should probably go to bed since I have to go back to work tonight, and being tired doesn't help my anxiety at all...

Oh--funny story for the day...I ran by the chiropractor this morning to pay him for the rest of the week. When I walked in he was talking to this sweet little old lady who has to be well into her 80's. She left before me and as I walked around the corner of the building she was backing out of her parking spot. As I was getting ready to back out, I look up to see her pulling into a parking spot on the other side of the parking lot...mind you, this parking lot has A row of parking on each side of the lot w/ an aisle down the middle, so it's not even as wide as your typical neighborhood street. So anyway, she pulls into a spot on the other side of the parking lot and gets out and goes into the insurance office that is next door. I immediately had to call the secretary in the chiropractors office and tell her what happened and we laughed for a good ten minutes over the situation. God Bless little old ladies...I hope I'm that entertaining to someone when I'm in my 80's!!!

Girls Week--WARNING: LOTS of pictures on this post...

So minus the fact that Billy and I haven't seen each other in a week, it's been a great week for me. It started last Friday when I headed to Abilene for my sister's senior art show and then to stay the night w/ Whitney. Saturday morning Erin picked us up and we headed to Dallas for a weekend of shopping and lots and lots of talking!! We met Shanan for lunch and Channa and Valerie also joined up with us.

This is the salad that Shanan got at Cheesecake Factory. Needless to say, along w/ consuming the appetizer sampler pictured below, we helped her with her salad and then split a piece of Dulche de Leche cheesecake. It was all wonderful.
It was a wonderful weekend and we had so much fun. I can't wait for us to do it again. It was so nice to hang out with women who like me are trucking through recruiting season as a single woman. Saturday night Whitney, Erin, Shanan and myself stayed at the Westin. We laughed a lot and of course talked a little football. (All of our husbands coach division 2 football in the same conference so we're supposed to be enemies, but I couldn't ask for four better friends!) We ate lots of good food from The Kona Grill, The Cheesecake Factory, a cute little bakery and a random pizza place where the owner made pizza for the buffet especially for us. We also had some chicken fried steak w/ mashed potatoes and gravy at the pizza place. Very random, but very good!


I was sad to leave Abilene on Sunday, but know that we will be getting together again soon. As you can tell from the following pictures I got rather bored on my way home. It's amazing how much entertainment self portraits can provide!


Work was so much fun on Monday night because for the first time in what seems like forever it was our normal crew! There's something comforting about the familiar. RSV season is in full swing (FINALLY!!!) so we are busy and all but full at work. The game of musical patients has started...enjoyable as always.
Wednesday night one of my co-workers was nice enough to come in so that I could go to dinner w/ the WT coaches wives since I was in trouble for having missed dinner on Friday to fraternize with the enemy. We ate downtown at Napoli's and of course I made myself sick eating the bread because it is SOOOOOOOOOO good. And then tonight was girlfriends night at my favorite pottery shop Brush with Art. We made really fun plates and I got to see Carissa for the first time in what seems like FOREVER! Our schedules seem to be going 700 different directions all the time, so it's nice to know that barring any catastrophes, we get to see each other at least on the third Thursday of every month for girlfriends night! We are known as the trouble makers because no matter who else sits with us, our table always ends up a little on the rowdy side!!! :)
These are the plates that we made tonight. Mine is on the L and Carissa's on the R. We were supposed to pick New Year's Resolutions to put on there, but I put my verse for the year on there instead. I can't wait to see if after it comes out of the kiln to see what the colors really look like!!
I painted this frame last week in anticipation of our girls weekend. I can't wait to print the picture below in black and white and put it in my frame. I picked it up tonight when I went to girlfriends night and LOVE the way that it turned out. The hard thing about painting pottery is that you don't ever really know what it's going to look like until after it's fired so it feels like an ongoing science experiment everytime I go paint. I have been in there enough since November that I filled up my frequent fire card and get $10 off my next project!!! So excited.

Girls Weekend!!!!

Yeah!!! It's finally here. I've been waiting for this weekend for FOREVER it seems like. We are going to be headed to Dallas to hang out. Can't wait to see these girls and have some good shopping and talking up a storm take place.

40 years old...seriously!!!

What a week it has been...really I guess I should say what a crazy few months it has been. Since my wreck back in October, life has just gone crazy it seems. In the last week I have gone from wondering if I was going to have to have surgery on my neck to now knowing that I don't need surgery now, but most likely will within the next 5 years, and in this time I also discovered that on xray and MRI, my neck looks like it belongs to a 40 year old. Guess I should have been nicer to it in high school and college. While it's a relief I don't have to have surgery, it's frustrating that there's not an immediate fix for the numbness/tingling in my R arm/hand. My ring finger and pinky on my R hand have now been numb/tingling for almost 24 hours straight. Up until last night it was something that seemed to come and go, but this time it came and decided not to go I guess! Between all the doctors, I am now going to physical therapy 3 times a week, the chiropractor 2-3 times a week and then whatever doctors appointments I manage to squeeze in there inbetween all those appointments. Needless to say, I am excited for the first of February when my work schedule changes from Mon-Tues-Wed to Sat-Sun-Mon, and I will have less juggling of schedules to do in order to fit everything in. Thankfully the change in schedule is not going to be a permanent one, but it will be nice to have the extra money from working weekends consistently again!

We have been on a roller coaster as far as jobs for Billy goes. I guess that's the way it goes with all football coaches this time of the year. We are hoping for something that will pay better, but will be content with where we are if that's what the Lord has for us. I'm hoping that there will be some change for Billy's sake simply because I know he struggles with the fact that he doesn't feel appreciated at his job b/c they have made no effort to pay him better even though we've been really successful the last 5 years or so.

I must admit I am very sad that for the most part the college football season is over. We are going to watch the Cactus Bowl tonight and then the first weekend in February, all the coaching staff are going to Ruidoso/El Paso for the Texas vs. The Nation game to watch some of our guys play. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching a TON of football over the last couple of days/week or two...so much so that my husband began begging to watch something besides football!!! What can I say, I LOVE me some college football.

It has been bitterly cold here the last couple of days. The wind chill in the mornings has hovered between -6 and 0 the last couple of days. It was 1 when Billy left for Lubbock this morning. Needless to say, we have experienced our first set of frozen pipes as home owners. Our cold water in the kitchen is frozen. Hopefully by now it has thawed out a little and we can use it again. Lesson learned...leave the cabinets open and the faucet dripping at night when it's this cold!!!! I wish it would just go ahead and snow though. I don't mind the cold as long as there is a reason for it, but without snow, I don't really see the reason for the cold weather!

Well, I guess I have to quit procrastinating and finish paying bills...bleh!