Classroom and Other Bits of Desert Excitement :)

Hello from the desert heat! We have been living in excessive heat warnings lately and finally had a few monsoons! I was expecting them to be really good, big thunderstorms...turns out the wind and lightening are definitely there, but the rain is pretty scarce. I suppose it is the desert after all!

I spent a good bit of time in my classroom this morning getting things set up. I kind of cut the organization/decorating time short because a few cockroaches seem to have made it their home over the summer. And in case you're new to the blog, cockroaches terrify me. I may have been throwing three-ring binders at them. Just maybe. Really, it should be no big surprise that they are there...the school is definitely in the middle of nowhere desert where all the bugs and scary things are. It's been closed for a few months and hasn't been sprayed for bugs like everything else out here. But I really hope they are gone soon. I'm fairly certain I will be walked all over by teenagers if I spend my first days of school scanning the floor for bugs. Uggggh. I did manage to take a few pictures of the room before I called it quits to share with you here. Minus the cockroaches, I love my classroom and am excited for school to start. This Wednesday there is an English department meeting and next week school officially starts for teachers. (The kids start August 3rd.) I will hopefully continue posting pictures as my room comes together :)

These first three are pictures from last week, before I did any decorating/set-up.

After tomorrow, this lil saying on the wall will end with "think." My n was all messed up so that's where it's at today! There's also a lil fabulous 5 ft. poster of editing symbols on the wall.

White board with all my lil labels for 10th and 11th grade and my name!

In other exciting job news...Rob is picking up hours and responsibilities at work. He had a meeting with his chief flight instructor on Saturday and will be starting to teach students how to be a CFI (the instructor's course) in the middle of this week. Normally, this job goes to instructors who have more hours and time instructing, but most of these instructors have moved on, leaving Rob near the top. He is excited, but very nervous too I think. He has also started to do stage checks, which are progress checks with the school before the FAA test. All in all, it means he is more established at the school.

More excitement...can you handle it!?!?! We have been hanging out with other instructors and their wives/husbands for the past few weekends! A few weeks back, we had friends over for pizza on the grill and this weekend we went to a pool party at another instructor's house. Really, it was a lot of time watching the lightening from the deck, but there was a short game of pool volleyball. Of course, I displayed my mad volleyball/hand-eye coordination skills. Luckily, my soccer throw in technique was an acceptable serve. It is nice to be making friends and starting to feel a bit more settled in out here.

Okay, we saved the best for last. This is really a secret I have been waiting for a few weeks to spill. It's a good one, trust me. (Rob says to say here, no, I'm not pregnant! ha) We are house searching!!!!!! ahhhhhhhh!!!! Yay for being grown-ups! Okay, now to prove I'm mature enough to be a home owner, I won't just leave it at that :) We have been spending a good bit of time researching bank owned properties out here and actually really like the area out by where my new school is. There is a lot of grass there...a good selling point for us. Sometimes when I drive to school, they are mowing it and I roll down the window just for a lil smell. Mmmm like home...the midwest home that is. Don't worry (mostly you female family members like to do this). We are still planning on moving back when we are more established in our careers. However, it'd be pretty sweet to stop throwing money into rent and maybe stand a chance to earn some back in a few years when we would sell (making this a wise investment...and not just something we are doing for the grass scent). We calculated out mortgage rates, down payments, taxes, hoa fees, etc. and would still be spending less than we would be on rent at our apartment (which goes up after we lose the pro-rated deal for the first year we signed). At any rate, we are very excited to start officially home searching. We have a real estate agent and have spoken with a mortgage consultant. Our plan is to start looking at homes on Wednesday evening this week. We both are very excited about the possibility of a house :)

I think that's probably enough excitement for one post. Probably I should post more often and spread this all out, but for today, this is how it worked out. We hope all is well with you and that you are enjoying the summer :)

Miss and love you,

Sarah and Rob

San Diego Road Trip

As soon as Rob got home from work on Friday afternoon, we headed out to San Diego to celebrate the Fourth of July, spend some time with my cousin, Brian, and enjoy a break from the desert heat. I spent some time on Friday morning baking festive treats to bring with us...and I definitely would not say I have mastered the art of cookie cutter cookies. I am going to blame my difficulties on the heat...even though I had refrigerated the dough, it didn't stay cool for long and i couldn't transfer the dough from the counter to the baking sheet without losing the star shape. I ended up rolling the dough out right on the cookie sheet itself! Bootleg, but the end product tasted pretty good...and even looked halfway decent!

(Also there were star shaped brownies that weren't so difficult to make.)

In addition to baking that morning, I had packed lil car snacks for the trip...and of course road trip fuel:

The drive ended up being a bit longer than we expected. It was a solid 11:30pm when we arrived at Brian's house. We caught up for a bit, then headed to bed. I managed to not escape the hot dog eating contest, even on west coast time, the next morning, but luckily left to shower before Rob and Brian started yelling about the "chew cam." People dunking hot dog buns in water and shoving inordinate amounts of soggy bread and sketchy meat into their mouth=my least favorite Fourth of July tradition.

Late morning/early afternoon on Saturday we met up with Logan, who Rob knew from working at the airport before he started instructing. (Logan lives in San Diego now.) He took us to a local microbrewery that had delicious beer and pizza and over to the Pacific Ocean/pier.

We also were very tourist-y and visited the house from Top Gun, which Logan says will be torn down soon to build a hotel. We could see why...it's pretty much a boarded up piece of junk now.

After dropping Logan off at work, we met back up with Brian and headed up to the outlet malls. Believe it or not, it was not that difficult to get two guys to go to a mall...it was all under the pretense of sunglasses/running shoes at the Adidas outlet where Brian gets a discount. We ended up striking out at Adidas, however at Banana Republic I bought a pair of $15 jeans! The shopping was a fantastic group effort...Rob looked for jeans sizes, I looked through shirts also on sale and Brian stood in line for the fitting room. So good :)

We grilled out for dinner, I changed into my new jeans (clearly if I didn't wear them to fireworks, I wouldn't be wearing them until October in Phoenix) and we headed to see La Costa's fireworks. Unfortunately, we weren't important enough club members to sit at the golf course/resort for the fireworks, but they looked just as good from the grocery store parking lot next door :)

We went out to breakfast this morning, and headed back toward Phoenix (with significantly less coffee this time...sad). We saw a few big fires in the California desert along the way. Here is a picture of one that was relatively close to the highway:

It seems like I haven't done much today but drive/passenger (okay, mostly passenger), but I am exhausted. Rob headed into work at the airport pretty much right after we got home and will be up early for 10 hours of instructing tomorrow. I don't think he is super pleased with the busy schedule on lil sleep and I am definitely glad it is not my schedule! I am planning on waking up early as well and heading out to the high school to pick up the teachers editions of the tenth and eleventh grade literature books. Those should keep me busy for the week! I only have three weeks of summer vacation left and am starting to get nervous about school. It will be good to have the first few days over with and start feeling settled into a routine.

I'm going to head out and finish the lil bit of unpacking left from our quick trip. Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! Love, Sarah and Rob