Job Excitement!

Just a quick lil post to let you all know that I have been offered a teaching job! I interviewed about two weeks ago for a position teaching 7th and 8th grade in a district about an hour from our apartment and heard back from the principal today! I still have applications out in four other districts in the area and actually have an interview at a high school in the same district tomorrow (seriously I scheduled an interview, then 10 minutes later was offered a job!). The way everything works in Arizona education (and maybe everywhere, I'm not even positive) is that I have 30 days to sign a contract once it is given to me, so I have a little bit of time to get a clearer idea of what all my options are. Even if this is my only option, I think it is a great opportunity and is such a relief to know that no matter what, I will be teaching come July/August :)

Okay, Rob and I are headed to the work-out room/gym in our apartment complex (it's too hot to be running outside)...some celebration, I know :) I tutor tonight and we have a delicious lemon pepper turkey thing to grill. Also, Wipeout premiers tonight. Finally a tv show we both are interested in watching! Just wanted to share the good news with you all real quick. Miss and love you, Sarah and Rob

Last weekend Rob flew over to California to pick up Logan (a friend who used to work at Cutter, but moved to San Diego). Lil small world fact...he flew into the Carlsbad airport! It was a really cloudy day (so much so that he was worried he wouldn't get clearance to fly in), so Rob didn't do much sight-seeing from the sky, but Logan claims that the Aviara golf course is close to the airport! We went out for drinks with Logan on Monday and had a nice lil chat about the Carlsbad area...I felt very cool to know a lil bit about it. Hooray for California family! I am hoping to make the trip out there sometime soon too...but realistically it probably won't happen until I am no longer spending my weekends at Rolly Pollies. 

the Colorado river from the sky

Surprisingly enough, it cooled off a good bit at the end of last week. We were able to turn off the air, open the windows and enjoy a few overcast days. It even rained on Thursday! Delightful! We made a trip to the grocery for mac&cheese (because we discovered we were out after the water was boiling!) and I wore jeans, which was wonderful, but forgot my rain boots!! So sad. Rob had to give me a piggy back ride into the store so I could avoid the puddles. Lack of rain boots=critical error. Supposedly there is a mysterious monsoon season everyone out here speaks of in the really hot July/August summer and so hopefully the rain boot opportunity will pop back up. 

Too much information about the boots...moving on. I was a lil susie homemaker in the cool weather because I could turn on the oven without the apartment becoming unbearably hot! I baked coffee cake, lasagna and watermelon muffins (because I didn't realize until after I bought a big, big watermelon on sale that Rob doesn't like watermelon and needed creative recipes that would mask the flavor a baby bit). We have tupperware containers (yes, plural) of watermelon chopped up into nice lil pieces in the fridge if anyone would like to stop by and eat some! Also not so susie homemaker, but a nice lil update on what we've been eating all week...I ate a hamburger earlier in the week...a real beef one! Also I had a few bites of pickle and probably consumed my body weight of rice krispies. 

chowing down!/proof of the burger eating incident

On Friday evening, Rob and I grilled pizza. It seemed like a crazy lil endeavor but went surprisingly well! We just olive oiled up the dough and slapped it right on the grill...I thought it would slip between the grates and be ruined but nope, it grilled up deliciously. We topped it with tomato and garlic and basil and it was wonderful. (Usually we pile on the toppings when we make pizza in the oven, but it's much better with fewer toppings on the grill.) We enjoyed our pizza, Rob's new favorite beer, Fat Tire, and watched the Cavs game.

the dough grilling up!

Rob cutting the pizza/you can kind of see the finished product here.

Tomorrow I am getting together with Cara, my new friend from Rolly Pollies to lay out in the afternoon and then daycamp officially starts. I'm subbing classes at Rolly Pollies this week too, so it should be plenty of time with the pre-schoolers! Rob's instructing is going well...and we are both still counting down to coming home in June :) Miss and love you all, Sarah and Rob

Ridiculous Desert Heat (and also Other Bits of Excitement)

This picture seemed like the best way to start off the blog. Rob took it at work yesterday afternoon...he is planning on working from 2:00-10:00 on Sundays just to keep on at Cutter for access to their plane. It gives him plenty of time to s

leep and get ready to start back up as an instructor on Monday, but also leaves him workin

g in the heat of the day--something he never had to do during his time on third shift. Just in case it's tough to read...it was 109 yesterday! There was an article in the paper about how we are about to break the record for consecutive days over 100 degrees in May. Today will be number 13. Ewwww. When it's this warm out, we can't get cold water through the faucets because everything in the pipes is warm. Brushing your teeth with warm water is not so delicious. Crazy desert.

Rob's first week instructing went well. It was a lil hectic finishing out night shifts and still working during the day, but this week he is just working days and will

 be home every night. I love it! He has two students meeting full-time, so he is working about 40-45 hours a week now, which he seems to love too :) Here are a few

 pictures of his grown-up, instructor's office.

The excitement in my world of summer break is revolving primarily around preschoolers' birthday parties and daycamp at Rolly Pollies, which I'm surprisingly alright with. I have been working some more on the wedding scrapbook I started over spring break and am looking forward to heading home for a bit in June. Last Friday, I bought a new MacBook! My old Dell laptop was dying quickly...at last count it had 11 lines down the screen/monitor...and so my new Mac is an early birthday gift from my grandparents :) I love it! I am just working on adjusting from a PC to a Mac. I'm hoping though, that with all of the new publications software I have now, I will be able to make some cool additions to the blog. We'll see what the blog website is capable of...and what I can figure out!

We hope everything is well (and a bit cooler!) by you all. Still looking forward to June :) Love, Sarah and Rob

Happy Belated Mother's Day from Winslow, Arizona

Happy Belated Mother's Day from Winslow, Arizona (even though we are back in Chandler and clearly not super on top of the blog right now!). Before I get into the most fantastic story about our adventures in Winslow, a few things to mention before I forget them:
1. Happy Mother's Day (better late than never) to our moms, grandmas, aunts, cousins...the list goes on...Rob and I both were thinking of you all yesterday and send our love.
2. An exciting addition to the Quantum Helicopters website...Rob is listed on the staff page (picture and all!) Check it out: http://www.quantumhelicopters.com/our-staff.asp
3. Rob is nearly a full-time instructor now! He started last Friday with a student who is planning on about 10 hours of ground and 10 of flight each week and found out today that he will begin working on Wednesday with a student who wants 12 of ground and 12 of flight each week. It is a lil stressful balancing out the two weeks notice he gave Cutter, but luckily he has been able to cut back on hours and head home early lately to get enough sleep, while still working as much as possible. We are planning on crossing paths a lot this week, and it will be nice when his schedule becomes regular, but despite the craziness, he is very happy to be instructing!
4. We celebrated Rob's new job/the completion of my student teaching at Cheesecake Factory on Friday night. Snickers cheesecake=heaven. Enough said here. :)

Okay, on to our Winslow adventure. Originally, Rob wanted to fly out to San Diego for the Red Bull Air Races, but it seemed like we just wouldn't have enough time to cram in the flight, getting to the bay where the races were and making it back to Arizona before he needed to be at work. We decided to head up north for a picnic instead and chose Winslow because Rob was intrigued by the city name being in the old Eagles (I really hope that's the group) song. We flew into this bootleg lil airport where there was no one around, but I was fairly content because they had the most comfortable patio furniture ever and so we relaxed and enjoyed our pb&j picnic :)

Things got a lil more exciting when the random worker man came back from lunch and I had the ingenuous idea of asking him if the airport had a crew car. (Basically, it's just this random car that the airport lets the crew borrow so they aren't sitting around the airport while they are waiting for the people they flew to do whatever it is they were planning on doing.) Anyway, they had one. It was a fantastic 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon disaster!! Seriously, this picture does not do the hunk of junk justice. It was super old and rusty and gross, but we laughed a lot and went exploring.

The town was about as bootleg as the car. It sits right on Route 66, so at some point it was probably the place to be, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. At any rate, here are a few random pictures, including one of Rob and I "standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona." It's really not the best picture ever, but I don't think we'll be going back anytime soon and so it will have to do. :)


This last picture is the one of us on the corner. The picture before it is Rob standing on the side of the road!!

Okay, enough here. I am going to try and print out some of the documents I need for my job interview tomorrow before heading to bed. Hope all is well by you. Lots of love, Sarah and Rob

I don't think I've ever posted on consecutive days, but apparently good news comes in bunches, making it necessary to do so. I have a job interview next week for a position teaching 7th grade at a junior high in Coolidge (a district about an hour from our apartment)!! Technically, the interview isn't scheduled yet, but will be as soon as I return the voice mail tomorrow. Yay for breaks in the teaching job situation :)

The only baby bit of bad news is that I have another sinus infection. Apparently, they are more prevalent in the desert. I don't fully understand why still, but its not super enjoyable. I just finished grading the in-class essay tests my kids took today and am heading to bed. Because of the block schedule at Hamilton on Thursday/Friday, tomorrow is my last day with two of my classes. Some of the kids I will miss...some, not so much! The next few days will be bittersweet I am sure. There is cheesecake at the end of it all though! Yum! Hope all is well with you all still. Good night. Love, Sarah (and Rob too, from work!)

Excitement from the Desert!

Hello family and friends from more places than just Ohio. Hooray for confirmation of readers in additional states! AND...for new jobs!!!! Rob was just offered a position as an instructor at Quantum :) He starts this Friday!! Training is in the morning and instructing in the afternoon!! We are planning to celebrate his first day of work and my last day of school at Cheesecake Factory on Friday night. Delicious. Okay, apparently there are logistical elements to be worked out, such as, oh you know, accepting it officially, so he is going to take care of that and I am going to return to writing questions for my lil Jeopardy game. Sorry for the short post, but this seemed the fastest way to pass along news. Hope all is well! Lots of love and happiness, Sarah and Rob (the hired helicopter instructor man)! :)

Hello! I know this blog post is long overdue. I have actually been saying all week that I needed to update, but somehow wound up grading or planning or watching Grey's, or realistically, sleeping instead. My allergies are back apparently and I don't react well to medicine not clearly marked non-drowsy. Also, sleep seems like a safe option to keep the swine flu away, so I just keep on snoozing.

In other news, it got warm here. We finally turned on the a/c and have hit 100 I'm pretty sure already. We switched out the down comforter I brought for a light and airy quilt...my Grandma Irene gave it to us as a wedding gift and it is fantastic. Here's a picture!

Last week, I finished grading research papers and Rob helped me carry the boxes into school. We celebrated their completion with Dunkin Donuts and entered all the grades into the gradebook. Next week is my final week of student teaching. It's hard to believe I am nearly done already. I am looking forward to the break and to having my own classroom (hopefully!) next year. We are making a list of things to do this summer and are planning a camping trip for my first week of break, before daycamp starts at Rolly Pollies. I think we will head up north, where it is a bit cooler now for a one night trip (I am being eased into this whole outdoor living thing! Smores are involved though, so I'm alright with it all so far.) We are also hoping to get to San Diego sometime and I really want to go to the zoo. Somehow, through the library, we can get into the Phoenix zoo for free, but I'm afraid the animals will be all sluggy in the heat and I really want to see them active. I like giraffes a lot lately.

Tonight, we made our infamous pizza again and Rob bought beer called Sunshine Wheat! Such happiness. I thought orange slices would make it extra delicious and convinced him to slice up some fruit in his too :)

Right, really I can't think of too much new. Same old, same old is sometimes a good thing though. We will probably shake things up a bit over summer and get some excitement back into the blog. For now though...I've got nothing.

Hope all is well and summery in Ohio (I don't think anyone outside of Ohio really reads this??) and can't wait to be back to see you all (hopefully a good amount of you at least) in June. Love, Rob and Sarah