Are we traitors?

This past weekend was fantastic! While I had *every* intention of cleaning the house and actually get some scrapbooking in (sorry SG ladies!!!), my plans turned out a little differently. Todd called me from work Friday night while I was organizing my new scrapbook table and asked me if I wanted to go to the MU football game tomorrow. My initial thought was okayyyy... considering we aren't really MU fans to begin with. However, when he told me the tickets were free and were 10 rows up from the 20 yard line, I reconsidered. His boss has season tickets and was unable to use his seats on Saturday. So, Todd, two of his buddies from work, and me set off for Columbia early Saturday morning. Since neither Todd nor I had anything MU to wear, Todd ended up wearing a plain black shirt over his Nebraska shirt (of course), while I just wore a Kickapoo shirt with my gold KHS pullover. We blended in quite nicely I must say!

The football game was totally cool, and I took like 80 pictures that day. I couldn't help it! We were just so close and I knew I had to get some good shots every now and then. Turns out, I have 22 from that 80 that turned out very cool. I know that does not sound like alot, and I could print more than that, but Todd doesn't want the MU game scrapbook pages to be bigger and better than our Nebraska pages. Go figure!! Below are some of the better pics that turned out. I couldn't get any pictures of MU actually scoring because by the time the player got into the endzone, everyone was standing and waving their towels. In two pics, all I ended up with was a woman's arm or a white towel! By the way, MU beat Iowa State 42-28--a great way to end the day!

What's new?

The Christmas season has "officially" began for me. Mom and I went shopping down in Branson, and while she bought several things for family members, I only ended up with one thing for Todd. He is so hard to buy for because most of his Christmas wishes must be bought online! I did tell Mom that I wanted a new scrapbook table and chair--Kodi, did you and Jennifer get yours at Sam's? We are going on Friday after school to look and see what they have.

Last weekend was the first speech tournament of the season for us at school. In fact, it was the first tournament in our area, plus it was held at our school! I ran around on both Friday and Saturday, trying to help out the kids as much as possible. The traveling season begins the first weekend of November, so I am free until then. After that, I am gone most weekends until March. I think we are going to 9 or 10 tournaments this year before district and state competition in March and April. What I am REALLY looking forward to is Nationals. I truly hope we have enough kids qualify because that means I would get a FREE trip to VEGAS!!! Vegas, baby!! Can you imagine me and one other adult taking 6-7 high school kids to Vegas? If it is the same as two years ago in Dallas, I would just be the chauffeur. Drop off the kids, have the days free to sightsee, then pick up the kids in the evening. Fun for me!! Let's keep our fingers crossed some of the kids make it--I may have to bribe them to do well!!

Scrapbooking weekend

It seems since school has begun I don't have the 1) time or 2) energy to keep up with my blogging. I don't have the energy to keep up with anything at home much less spend time on my blog. However, I did find time on Sunday to straighten and organize my scrapbooking area. I really want a room that I can just dedicate to my scrapping, but that's a dream in another world right now. In the meantime, I have a space set up in our small office--card table, bookshelf, and closet. I organized all of my paper in their carriers, but I really want some stacking shelves I can keep my paper in. It would seem so much easier to find that way! I organized my pens and anything else that had just been sitting on the table since the last time I scrapped a few months ago. I even organized our Disney pictures from this summer! I am going to try to make an ABC album, so instead of organizing by chronology, which every other album I have ever created is like, I made categories. I have an "Are we there yet?" theme to a "Zipping around the world" theme, plus MANY MANY more in between. I do have more than one page for each letter. In fact I have several Ms and Ts. I think I may try my first hand at chipboard for the beginning page of each letter, then let the other same letter pages fall behind that main page. Does that make sense? I definitely want to get started soon, but I may wait until the speech tourney is over this weekend. My next two weekends are busy, so it may get pushed back to the end of this month. On a positive scrapbooking side, Todd and I did get his racing album journaled in this weekend. He went to the races back in June!

Two weekends ago I took some senior pictures of a former student and his friend. We went out to Sequiota Park and took more "natural" shots there, then headed over to the Maple Park (??) Cemetary on the corner of Grand and Campbell. We ended up downtown and shot some nice urban pictures. I think that most of the pics turned out really nice and the boys liked what I did with Photoshop. I told them to tell all of their friends and advertise for me!! Maybe I can drum up some business for next summer. I think it is a little late for this year!! Here are some of my favorite shots from that weekend--their faces are blurred because they are students at my school and I don't want to run the risk of putting them on the internet!

The joys of heartache

Why can't I ever blog about happy news?? Why does everything have to be so negative? Todd and I just need to come to the conclusion that medical woes will always follow us no matter how hard we try! Tonight has been a bad night at the Nord residence. We just received two forms from our insurance company saying they are no longer paying for my gynocological visits because they are under the "fertility" umbrella. According to the insurance company, I owe $625 for two Dr. visits in August. I haven't even received anything for September yet, and I saw him two or three times for ultrasounds for my cysts. It's not so much the money issue because we'll just send the Dr. a monthly payment, but in order to keep up the fertility treatments, I have to pay in full each month--that's probably over $1000 without insurance coverage. We just can't keep that up. I guess we'll go back to trying ourselves, but we know where that has led us in the past. It breaks my heart to think that young girls get pregnant every day (we have a few at school that I see on a regular basis!), yet there are women like myself who want a baby more than anything, and after years of trying to get pregnant, and we all hit is a brick wall. I don't understand it, and while I'm sure I'm not meant to understand it, I wish for once that something would go our way.

Okay, enough of that...Tomorrow is Friday! Most of my kids at school have earned the privilege of having Starbucks (they are paying half) and watching a movie. Luckily for them, I'm so nice!!

Just an update

Not much new to report here, but this will at least give you something new to look at when you pull up my blog. I went back to the doctor on Friday and I still have one of the three cysts still hanging around. I am supposed to stay on the pill for at least another week and a half, then go back for another ultrasound. Maybe I will have some better news then!


On another medical note, my allergies have been really bad this past week! Of course, it doesn't help that we have our house wide open and the attic fan blowing in all the pollen around us. Todd thinks that we can save a bunch of money on our electric bill this way, but I have tried reasoning with him by saying that I would rather be able to breathe and sleep at night than have a cheaper bill. I always lose that argument! Needless to say, I am ready for some much cooler weather to come our way. Not snow or ice by any means, but how about some temps in the upper 60s, lower 70s for a change? Cooler weather also means wearing thicker and longer clothes to work, which means I may need to go shopping! It seems I don't have as much to wear in the colder months like I do in the warmer ones.


I know there is a new scrapbook challenge, one that I would really like to do, but I don't know if I will make it or not. I haven't scrapped in so long--I definitely need a weekend getaway. I don't see one coming this fall, but maybe sometime this winter! I just need to get my stuff together and do it! This is one of the pics I know I want to scrap, but I don't know when!


TTFN!

Bad baby news

I'm sure all of you know that Todd and I have been trying to have a baby for some time now. I have been off the pill since March 2000, but we have only really just been "actively" trying since March 2006. That's when I had surgery to remove several cysts from both ovaries and my uterus. Well, since then, I have been taking daily medication, seeing my GYN about 3-5 times each month for ultrasounds, checkups, get more meds, get my monthly shot, etc. I have been doing all of this in the hopes that someday a baby would come.

Todd and I have had a little setback. I actually don't know how major or minor this setback will be, but it is one nonetheless. Monday night around 1:07 am (I remember the time distinctly!!), I woke up to go to the bathroom. As soon as I stepped out of bed, I doubled over in the most severe pain I have ever felt. I just felt like my ovaries/uterus had just exploded inside! I couldn't walk, lay down, sit, recline, anything. Todd wanted to take me to the emergency room, but I wanted to wait it out. I am tired of paying for all these medical bills--I didn't want to add an ER trip to the total! I did call the Dr.'s office and talked to the on-call nurse. She basically told me to either come into the ER or wait until morning to call the Dr. Thanks lady--I could have figured that out by myself!!

Todd gave me some aleve and it helped the pain go away after 45 min-1 hour. The next morning, I woke up okay, no real cramping, just slightly "like any other time of the month" cramping. I called the Dr. and talked to his nurse. Long story short--I went in today for a check-up and another ultrasound. As soon as he looked at the ultrasound screen, he knew what the problem was. I had 3 "sizeable" cysts on my right ovary. I'm not sure what the numbers really are, but I know they like my follicles to be between 17-20 for ovulation. These cysts were around 44. They were huge!! One took up almost the entire screen! He wants me to take it very easy over the next week or so, then go back on birth control pills until the cysts are back down to a normal size. When he said that, I about cried!! I haven't been on BC in so long.

I just feel like Todd and I back to square one--even worse that square one! Even thinking about it just makes me want to give up, but I am not a quitter. I may quit other things--diets, for one, but I will not quit on this! Just keep your fingers crossed (and if you want to say a little prayer) that these will come back down and not get any worse. Sorry for rambling--once I started, I couldn't stop.

I've Been Tagged!

I have been tagged by Kodi (of course!)! She tagged a while back, but I just haven't had time to get online to do anything *fun* since school started. I am sure all you teachers out there can sympathize! Since I have been tagged, I will try my best.

Here are the rules:
1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. ***IF you have already done your middle name than do the State that you live in with new adjectives!*****
3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts. ***Or state if you have already been tagged before!***
4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here is mine:
K--Kind--I try to be nice to everyone I meet. Usually I am too nice and it ends up biting me in the rear. I have this one student this year that I am trying to kill with kindness. He is so angry and depressed all the time. I know he had a horrible middle school experience, so I am trying to make up for that. We'll see how far my kindness will go with him!
R--Robin--I miss my dear friend Robin probably more than she knows. She moved to California not too long after she got married back in 1998. I have only seen her 2-3 times since then. Every time we talk on the phone, we both just end up bawling like babies! I hope to see her soon--maybe this Christmas!
I--Ignorance--Todd always tells me that for someone with lots of "book smarts", I don't have any "street smarts" or common sense. I guess that's true! I have horrible observation skills. I will drive by something a hundred times before noticing that it's there. My mother is the exact same way! I guess that's where I get it from!
S--Sassy--I would love to be more sassy in my everyday life. I wish I could be more aggressive and assertive, but again, it all goes back to my K word--Kind. I am too nice to be sassy!
T--Travel--I love to travel! Although I enjoy staying home on the weekends during the school year, I love to travel during the summer! One of my goals is to see all 50 states before I die. I would also love to go to London, Paris, Rome and Moscow. Todd and I are hoping to go on a cruise next summer for our 10-year anniversary. We have also talked about going back to Hawaii instead. I have a feeling we will go to whichever place is cheaper!
I--(another I?) Inventive--At school I have to be inventive with my curriculum. I didn't even have a Reading curriculum until just about a week before school started. Because these kids usually hate to read, and they are in my class to learn how to be better readers, I have to invent ways of making reading fun. I try my best, and sometimes things I think are fun don't turn out that way at all in the classroom, but other times, my kids surprise me! We'll see how their textbook presentations go this week!
N--No--I am slowly learning to say "No" to people when they ask if I would do something. For example, when asked if I would continue to sponsor Key Club this year, I politely said, "No." It's not that I don't like the Key Club kids, but I would have to be at every after school meeting, before school meeting, conventions, etc. When asked if I would teach an English III class on my Conference hour, I politely said, "Oh Dear God, No!" Yes, I would be paid for it, but my conference time is the only time I have to work on SRI (reading test across grades 9-11) stuff. If I gave that up, I would be at school until 8-9 pm most nights! No way!! Uh-uh! Not going to happen!

Well, that's my tagged post. I am supposed people with the letters of my middle name, but I'm not sure I know people who read my blog with those letters, so here ya go:
You've been tagged--Mom, Robin, Haley
If you don't have blog, you can do your list as a comment on my blog.

Have fun!