The Blog Migration

The time has come when my desire for cute backgrounds and the ability change it on a whim has overwhelmed me.  Since Blogger has this ability, I’ve decided to make the switch.  I really do love WordPress, and this will still be here as a chronicle of our wedding and the first six months of our marriage.  When I can finally afford to make us a self-hosted WordPress (and get all the really cool functions that come with it!), we’ll move back over here.

The new blog can be found here:

http://jarrodandsherry.blogspot.com/

See ya there!

In which I feel very domestic…

It was another action-packed weekend in the McElhannon household!  And I got to really use my new camera for the first time, which was lots of fun!

On Saturday, I hosted a shower for my dear friend Katie, who will be getting married in less than two weeks!  I’ve known Katie since we first moved here in ‘98, and in fact, she was my first Waco friend.  She was a bridesmaid in my wedding, and now I’m honored to be involved in hers.  Matt is a wonderful guy, and I’m so happy for them both as they start their own life together.

I discovered that I very much enjoy hosting parties – I have all these really great serving dishes that I hardly get to use…so I used them!

I think its safe to say that a good time was had by all!

The fun continued on Sunday with the annual Harvest Praise Dinner at church.  The theme was down home cooking, and we were asked to bring things that made us think of home – things that mama used to make.  So, naturally I thought of pumpkin pie!  Unfortunately, when I went to make the pie, I didn’t have all the ingredients I thought I did.  I only had enough to make half a pie, which I didn’t think would go over well at the dinner.  Instead, I made mini pumpkin pies!  They were so cute!

(notice the whipped cream in the background )

All in all, a very successful weekend!  I’m very much looking forward to the holiday season!!

Little Victories

In the remote chance that there are actually any devoted readers of our blog, my profound apologies for our hiatus.  Life has really picked up pace this fall for both of us, leaving little time for extracurricular activities like blogging.

Here’s an update:

Jarrod is deep into one of his favorite classes so far – Negotiation Strategies.  Though reading is not one of his favorite thing to do, he has been pouring though the textbook for this class with interest.  He enjoys the case studies and assignments, and as the president of a large scientific corporation, recently led his management team to success in negotiations with the scientific research team.  Jarrod’s hard work has not gone unnoticed by his professor, who asked if he could use one of Jarrod’s case studies as an example for another student.

LeTourneau recently made a decision to move to five-week online courses, instead of eight-week online courses.    If eight-week courses were tough, five-week courses are just crazy.  There isn’t much room to breath, or even to take a step back and digest information.  This change has been hard on us.  Jarrod spends most of his time outside of work doing school work.  But I’ve been so impressed with the dedication and enthusiasm Jarrod has shown, especially for this course.  His determination to finish school, and move forward in his career makes me very proud.

Region 12 has kept me busy, and it’s not uncommon for Jarrod and me to be sitting side-by-side on the couch, working on our laptops in the evening after work – Jarrod on school, me on more work.  I love a challenge and the opportunities I have, and I certainly prefer being busy to being bored, but its there often isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done.   My most recent accomplishment at work is becoming SMART certified.  I’m officially SMART!  SMART Technologies donated several of their interactive whiteboards to the service center, and I spent three days last week learning the ins and outs of the boards.  I am really excited about these boards – they’re SO much fun to use and the possibilities for use in the classroom is limited only by imagination!  The Vision 2020 Virtual Learning Grant is the other hot ticket item I’ve been working on.  Through the grant, I’ve become certified as an online teacher (through a 5-week online course), and I’ve become the proud user of Chester, the cutest little Dell mini computer ever.  We are providing resources for students to take online courses, for teachers to teach online courses, and the equipment to help make it all possible (that’s where the Dell mini comes from – there was an extra one for me ).  There are about 4 other things that I’m responsible for, and it all adds up to lots of stress for our two-person department.

This weekend, however, has been incredible.  With all the things Jarrod and I have going on, we were getting run down.  We didn’t have much spare time, and it was taking a bit of a toll on us.  We realized that we needed a break.  So this weekend, we did just that.  We went out for dessert and dancing on Friday, spent a lovely relaxing day together watching movies and working around the house on Saturday, and today was the icing on the cake.

Today, Jarrod learned a new trick.  He learned to pick the lock on our sprinkler system so that it stops watering our already-soggy lawn.  I’ve been arguing with the realty company, and consequently the owners of our duplex, that we really don’t need our sprinkler system to be watering at the moment, considering that we’ve had rain almost every day this month and its about to be winter.  Oddly enough, they don’t seem to see things the same way, so we decided to take matters into our own hands.  Our sprinkler system will no longer be watering.  Let’s just say that you really can find anything on the internet

We followed this victory with a peaceful walk along the Waco dam, which neither one of us had ever been to, a trip to the grocery store, yummy homemade hamburgers and Blizzards (I definitely recommend the pumpkin pie Blizzard…it comes with whipped cream!!).

We didn’t do anything particularly exciting this weekend.  I learned that, while it really is the little things in life that make it worthwhile, what makes life even better is sharing these little things with someone amazing.  From the whipped cream on a Blizzard to a lazy Saturday afternoon watching movies to a trip to the grocery store – it’s all better with Jarrod.  The craziness of work and school will continue, but we’ve realized the importance of making time to be married, to enjoy just being together, and to grow closer together as a family.  It’s going to be a good week!

My Weekend Project – Take Two

Let’s see if this works better…

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3w_6FwK1T01cJDqcvCYduQ?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2AlMr_25iA8gE&feat=directlink

My Weekend Project

This weekend, I learned to use a Flip video camera.  SO much fun

This link apparently doesn’t want to work…look at the next post for a link to see our fun video!

Mystery Date

Yesterday, around lunchtime, Jarrod announced a Mystery Date.  I love it when he does that!  I also hate it when he does that.  It’s fun to be surprised, but I hate the suspense.   When I got home, I was given the following criteria:

1.  I had to wear jeans, which I don’t usually like to do unless I’m going to be cold.

2.  I had to wear tennis shoes, which I also don’t usually like to do.

3.  The thing we were going to started at 7 and closed at 9, but we could get there whenever we wanted.

Where in the world we were going that I had to wear jeans and tennis shoes, that closed at 9 but that we didn’t need to be there “on time”??  On a Thursday night?  I had no idea.  We ate dinner, and Jarrod staunchly gave nothing away.  We got in the truck, and I still didn’t know where we were going. 10 minutes later, we arrived at Skate World!  Thursday nights are Christian Music nights, and admission is cheap.  As you can imagine, it was not very crowded at all.  It was  a perfect date   Jarrod is a magnificent skater, even with slightly defective rental skates.  I was very proud.  He even helped me skate backwards a little bit!

There are no pictures of this magnificent date because my camera has recently passed on.  It died the last day of our honeymoon.  But we will be going again soon (Jarrod is excited for Tuesdays – Retro Night!)!

While we were there, we saw an older couple also enjoying the calmness of a Thursday night at the skating rink.  He was amazing, performing all kinds of spins and fancy moves.  She was graceful and charming.  During several songs, they were skating side-by-side in a promenade position, and once or twice, we saw them skate-dancing.  He skated backwards and they were obviously still very much in love.  They had probably gone on skating dates many years ago, and it was fun to watch them, so many years later, still enjoying the activity together.

I want to be just like that when I grow up – still having fun with the love of my life.

Friday Night Pizza

Friday  night, Jarrod and I were able to participate in a time-honored Van Treuren tradition known as Friday Night Pizza.  It’s nothing elaborate, but it involves the best homemade pizza I have ever tasted and some great family time.  Becuase Tim and Jeff will be headed back to school (Tim actually started today!), we wanted to have a chance to hang out with them before they left.  I’d also had a hankering (yes, I said hankering) for some Guitar Hero.  And Friday Night Pizza was the perfect way to accomplish all of the above!  Ellen even drove in for the event! (Dad was out of town and we missed him )

However, Mom had forgotten that Dad had volunteer the house to host 20-something brand new Baylor students for Welcome Week.  But she still wanted to have all her kids over.  Her solution?  Two dinners!  The cool thing about the Welcome Week dinner is that Baylor provides most of the food.  So, she entertained with industrial sized vats of lasagna early in the evening, and then at about 7:30, we all showed up as the Baylor kids were walking out the door.  Then, Mom proceeded to make pizza!  How amazing is that?!  It was marvelous, as usual!

Unfortunately for Jeff, the students had consumed all the sweet tea, leaving him with only unsweet.  Mom had a solution!  I’ll bet that’s how Bush’s does it!

I got my fix of Guitar Hero.  Its always a boost for the self-esteem, because no matter how awful you play (especially if its been a while since you’ve pushed those colorful buttons), it always reminds you that:

The two awesomest Heroes deign to stand and rock.

We got side-tracked from rocking, however, by an interesting show on the Discovery Science channel: Catch It, Keep It.  The premise is that a group of people have to save something that they really want from a MOD (Method of Destruction) engineered by a guy who has the specific job of coming up with methods of destruction.  This particular episode featured a year’s supply of steaks from the Chicago Steak Company, and the three guys had to save them from being drowned by huge drums of boiling water and then smushed by a huge steamroller thing.  And as they proceed, the hosts of the show come in and tell them where they might need to rethink their design.  It was quite amusing.  But, I think the most amusing thing was Jeff – the engineering genius.  He got really mad at the people for being stupid, and not winning even though they were getting all the help they needed.  The people on our show actually won, but it was still funny to watch Jeff yell at the screen.

I love my family

Playing Catch-up…

To celebrate Tim’s birthday, we took a huge family road-trip down to New Bruanfels.  He wasn’t feeling good, but we still had lots of fun!  We had fun before we even got there!  Pit stops at Cabela’s are almost as fun as pit stops at Bass Pro Shop!

The gang’s all here!

The first thing we saw were these really fun lighters!  Of course, we had to pick them up.  Dad got a rifle, Mom got a fishing pole, Ellen got the fish, and Jarrod (giving his best serious face) got the AK-47.  Oh yes, fire and fun shapes…count me in!

It was really warm in there!

Catfish bait – yum yum.

You’ll notice that Jeff isn’t in any of these pictures.  That’s because the real reason we stopped (besides the all-important bathroom) is that Jeff was going to be leaving for his wild backpacking trip to Colorado in a few days, so he needed some supplies.  The rest of us were thoroughly amused while we waited for him to debate the merits of titanium versus stainless steel for his cooking pots.

But alas, we had to bit a fond farewell to Cabela’s and get on to the actually point of our trip – visiting Tim at T Bar M.  Jarrod had been a counselor here a few years ago, and was very happy to be able to show me around.  It was fun to see where my wonderful husband spent one of the best summers of his life.

We did have to wait a little bit for Tim to get done with his leaders’ meeting, but never fear!  We are ever-so-resourceful and made our own fun.  It didn’t hurt that Mom was running on very little sleep and was entering the giddy stage.  She laughed at anything!  Still, I think this might be one of my new favorite pictures of my parents.

Then we found Tim, and gave him his present:  Ellen!  (That’s why she has a bow on her head).

We had a lovely picnic, and then proceeded to the Comal River for an afternoon of toobing.  It was certainly an experience.  It was super-crowded with some very interesting people, including some who thought it might be a fun idea to throw water balloons out of a 3rd story window from some condos by the river.  Let me just tell you – when a water balloon hits you from that far up, it really really stings.  But we had the sympathy of most of the other river-goers who yelled at them, and Tim jumped into high gear and scavenged some ice and a plastic bag for me, and Jarrod had the most important job of holding my hand while I tried really hard not to cry.

However, we had a lot of fun as a family.  Luckily, we had brought Jeff.  It turns out that Jeff isn’t very good at sitting still, which is unfortunate considering that’s what toobing is.  He occupied himself with being our motor.  He would propel himself with his arms, or sometime he’d just get out of the toob and swim, and we’d all hook on in a line and tag along.  Towards the end, we actually had Jeff, Jarrod, and Tim being our motors.  We had quite the train going!  And we all managed to incur minimal sunburn!  Success!

For dinner, we went to The Gristmill in Gruene.  They have some big trucks in Gruene!

Dinner was yummy.  That might have been because we had to wait for about an hour and a half, but The Gristmill does not usually disappoint.  Tim didn’t feel so good over dinner, though, and we had to get him back to camp so he could go sleep.  A three-hour trip back seeming slightly daunting when we left at about 10 pm, but Jarrod and I camped out in the back of the van, and woke up when we were pulling into Robinson!  Thanks to Dad for being such a great driver!  Thanks to all who made it a fun day!

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Today is Tim’s birthday!  My baby brother is 19!!  We went down to visit him in New Braunfels this past weekend, and had a jolly old time (pictures to follow).  Happy Birthday, kiddo.

Just the facts…

We’re back in the states, and have hit the ground running.  Things are crazy busy for me, so here’s the quick run-down:

• Legally Blonde, the musical, was wonderful!  Such a great start to the honeymoon.
• Jamaica was AMAZING!  We had a fantastic time, the countryside was beautiful, and we had such a great time being together, learning more about each other, and falling deeper in love.  Pictures and more details to come when I get some time.
  • We are now official Scuba Divers (yes, with capital letters, we’re pretty proud).
  • I jumped off a cliff.
  • We swung through the treetops.
  • We managed to avoid serious sunburn and are only experiencing minimal peeling.
• Jarrod still has a 4.0!  It was tough, but he’s now enjoying a much deserved school-holiday during the month of August.  I’m so proud of him!