Christmas Celebration/Craziness!

Wow! It has been a whirlwind of a week. First off, because I just realized that in the craziness of open gyms at Rolly Pollies and getting ready to come home I forgot entirely to mention that Rob officially passed his test last Monday and is now a licensed CFI (certified flight instructor). He has turned in a resume to the flight school and now we are just waiting for instructors to move on so that he can be hired. Rob says that the tourism companies in Vegas and the Grand Canyon (the 2 most popular next steps for instructors with the hours to move on) tend to hire in January/February, so anytime now people should be moving on and a job should open up.

Onto the excitement of Christmas. We had a short visit at home, but packed it with family and friends. Our flight was delayed a bit on Christmas Eve, but the crazy windy day was in our favor and we had a 150 mph tailwind that helped push us along. We had Christmas Eve dinner at Rob's parents' house, met up with my parents for church and spent the night at my house. It was so much fun to have Christmas morning with Rob there! We opened gifts and had brunch, then spent the rest of the day with Rob's family. Both sides of his family live in the area, so we saw a lot of his family! We separated to spend more time with each of our families on Friday and it was a lil strange when Mom and Dad picked me up at the Andrasik's house in the morning...it felt like I was being picked up from a sleepover in middle school! Some parts of this whole married thing are still a lil weird...especially the sleepovers at each other's houses. On Friday night we met up with friends at BW3 and so many people came! People we hadn't seen in years! It was fabulous catching up with everyone.

The play by play continues...Our flight back to Phoenix left at 7:20 Saturday morning, which meant leaving the house at 5:30 after getting home around 1:00. Ewww. But it's not over yet. We had a 10 hour layover in Memphis. We were both thankful to be home for Christmas, but honestly, worst traveling schedule ever. We taxied over to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where there's this crazy tradition of ducks marching into the fountain each day at 11:00am. Weird but entertaining. Here's a picture of the ducks hanging out in the fountain after their lil march.We did a lil more exploring in the area around the Peabody Hotel...walked along Beale Street and had lunch at Rendezvous, a famous bbq restaurant. (Thanks to Dad for all the tourism ideas!) Here is a picture of Beale Street and another of us on the roof of the Peabody with a lil of the city in the background. Good thing we don't look ridiculously exhausted :)

After some more hanging out in the airport, we were finally headed back to Phoenix. It was about 11:00 when I got back to the apartment (Rob still had all night to stay up and work!)...1:00 am Cleveland time. Talk about a long day of travel! In retrospect, the layover was maybe good because we were both so excited to just be back that I wasn't as sad as I was when we left.

We've spent the last couple of days getting re-settled in out here...grocery shopping, back to work for us both and I've been working on getting my teaching stuff in order. I can't believe that in less than a week now I'll be teaching! I'm starting to get really nervous...

We both hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and loved the chance to catch up with everyone we saw. Happy early new year to you all...and watch out for the Andrasik comeback in the bowl pool! :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Exciting GOOD News!

Good news, friends! Rob passed his test yesterday!! Well, almost. Technically there is one part that needs to be finished on Monday because he could only do it with a flight instructor from the school. Yesterday was the big stress though, and he isn't worried about Monday at all. Yesterday's test took most of the day- it started about 8:00 and Rob called me at 4:00 to tell me it wa over. The instructor came from the FAA and he actually told Rob that it was one of the shorter check rides he'd ever done because Rob knew the material so well. I'm quite proud of him and I think we're both excited that the busy week is over and ended well.

In other news, I was dying a lil bit the last couple days, but am just about fully recovered. I was pretty dehydrated, but managed to drink a lot of Pedialite and Powerade and I'm pretty sure I actually consumed 100% of B vitamins from Powerade yesterday. No big deal. I managed to catch up on some important celebrity news and holiday shows. Also, yesterday evening we rented Horton Hears a Who (nothing like a great celebration movie for Rob to watch after his test! He had a few beers and I switched Powerard flavors...super exciting on my half.)

Now that I am feeling better and Rob's test is over, we are going to spend the next few days preparing for the holidays and our trip home! We have a bit of shopping and a lot of wrapping to do. We are planning on celebrating our own lil Christmas here on Tuesday morning when Rob gets home from work...we are going to pull out the waffle maker and make waffles for breakfast and exchange gifts. Expect pictures I bet :) We both are getting really excited about the trip home and seeing everyone again. We both feel like we really appreciate family and togetherness more this Christmas than ever before. Okay, enough mush. We have bills to pay and an apartment to clean. Such fun! Love, Sarah and Rob

We were quite festive this weekend. On Thursday, we drove up to Scottsdale to do a lil Christmas shopping and stopped in at Sprinkles! (Honestly, I think Sprinkles is one of my favorite parts of moving to Arizona so far. It's so much happy goodness in one lil store.) Here is a picture of me displaying our delicious cupcakes (because Rob thinks there are too many pictures of him and food on the blog!) My cupcake was vanilla peppermint (vanilla cake with the peppermint in the frosting) and Rob's was vanilla with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.

The peppermint kind of made me want peppermint in everything, so on Friday we made hot chocolate on the stove top, added some holiday marshmallows (obviously) and I added a candy cane to mine. I even smashed the candy cane up to make it beautiful on top. Rob is weird and doesn't like peppermint anywhere, which I'm fairly alright with because, well, more minty goodness for me. I also took pictures of our hot chocolate (and popcorn because it was movie night) because adding random pictures to this blog amuses me.

Oh! And the best story about the red and green marshmallows is that the chip clip that closes the bag is magnetic so they are actually hanging on the refrigerator door and I laugh at this all the time.

The last part of our festiveness in pictures is the holiday lights festival we went to on Saturday night. It was in Tempe-we actually drove through ASU's campus to get there. There is a lil man-made lake and all of the boats there were decorated with Christmas lights and they made a parade. There were also fireworks at the end, but they made me miss fireworks at Jacobs Field a lot. Ok picture time. This is Rob and I playing in a "snow" machine in the festival. It sort of looked like snow when you were there and right under it, but when I stuck out my tongue, I realized it was most definitely soap suds. This is pretty obvious in the picture, but I still think it's pretty funny.

This week is a busy one for both of us. Rob's test is Friday so he is flying extra and studying all week. Please think smart thoughts for him on Friday! Again, we will keep you all posted as to how things go. I am planning a big chicken parmesean dinner for Friday night and hoping it is a celebratory one! This week (and also Monday and Tuesday next week) Rolly Pollies is holding open gyms for 2 hours each morning and evening, which gives me a lot more hours than usual at work. Figure this in with birthday parties at work next weekend, tutoring, meeting with the Chandler school district before I start student teaching, a few errands and finishing up the Christmas shopping and I should be a busy girl! I am actually looking forward to the hectic week, but am also excited for the end of it, when Rob's test is behind us. (And when we're that much closer to being home for Christmas!)

Again, we hope all is well with you and would like you to order in a lil bit of snow (not too much to mess up flying home, but something more than soap suds please) for our Christmas visit. I bet you never thought you'd hear me say that, but I still know I have the sunshine to come back to :) Love, Sarah and Rob

This Week's Excitement...

...in words this time, no pictures or videos!

1. I met my cooperating teacher after school on Tuesday! She is great. I feel a lot better about student teaching after meeting her, but seeing the school and her classroom started making me nervous as well. She teaches 3 honors English 9 classes (freshman) and is the student council adviser, which is also a class. I will completely take over the English classes and help out some in the student council class. (Planning winter formal, pep rallies and prom!) She gave me access to the district's standards, which are all broken down by grade and quarter, so I know what I will be teaching already. I'll teach the books Anthem and 1984 and the big project for the second semester is a research paper. (100 of those to grade should be fun...) I'm going to spend the next few weeks getting started on reviewing my notes from college teaching classes and re-reading the books.

2. The heat is back on. I am sure you were all very worried about us being cold out here.

3. The lil market I like to go to gave me a free canvas bag when I was shopping yesterday. I think I will iron on my name with the extra letters from my Rolly Pollies shirt creation project. Also, I discovered their inexpensive brand of 2% milk cheese. Small things make me very happy.

4. This weekend is baking Christmas cookies weekend. I am going to this share Christmas cookies and wine event on Monday night with girls in the area. It was from a meet up group online. I feel a lil like I'm online dating for friends, but will hopefully make some regardless.

5. We grilled out last night. Turkey burgers! I think Rob likes hamburgers better still, but I was pleased. Hooray for grilling in mid-December. It's still a lil strange and sometimes I feel like I need snow, but it passes quickly.

6. This is not so much excitement, but a nice way to wrap this list up before it really starts to border on uninteresting. We are extending an invitation to anyone who would like to be in Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl. If you can afford a game and plane ticket, your lodging is on us! :) And we have the most fantastic air mattress....!

Hope all is well with everyone! Thank you again for the comments...I get e-mail notifications when someone leaves a comment and am super excited when I see one :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Holiday Cheer in our Apartment

Unfortunately, Rob's test was pushed back to December 19th...the head flight instructor at the school had a sudden pop up 2 week vacation of some sort and Rob needed to fly with her all last week to finish training before the test. Neither of us were too happy. Fingers crossed everything will go well on the 19th and he will be hired on as an instructor right away. That would be the best Christmas present!

Since Rob didn't have to spend as much time this week as he originally thought studying, we had plenty of time to decorate our apartment for Christmas! Here are a few pictures...

Our Christmas tree! He is a lil 4-foot guy sitting on a box so he is tall enough to be seen through the window, but we like him :)

This is the fireplace Rob created last Christmas when I came out to visit him. It's hanging on the wall with our thermostat...which I'm really only mentioning as a way to point out that our heat is broken and this is a bigger deal in Arizona than I would have thought. It gets chilly in here at night!

We made paper snowflakes to hang from the lamp above our kitchen table and I filled the Kate Spade rose bowl from Cindy and John with extra ball ornaments that didn't fit on our lil tree.

The flash makes it difficult to appreciate these, but we strung lights on our balcony and around our front door. It's been fun coming home to Christmas lights in the evening!

On Friday we went into Glendale for a Gingerbread Nights festival. The newspaper out here claimed that you could make your own gingerbread house to bring home, but we never found the area to do so. I was disappointed! The festival was a lot like Strongsville's home days in the summer, with a giant movie screen to show The Grinch. Even though it wasn't what we expected, it was a fun evening out. And I'm definitely getting my share of Christmas between our decorations and the Kids Bop Christmas cd that plays nonstop at Rolly Pollies.

We hope all is well with everyone and that you had as much fun decorating this year as we did! Merry Christmas :) Love, Sarah and Rob