Balls and Boogers

So I've been busy.  What's new?  LOL

One big thing in the Gorman household recently is basketball.  Max plays for the Polar Bears team in the Upward kindergarten league.  John and I have actually switched roles from football season:  I'm now the assistant coach, and he's a cheerleader/photographer/videographer.  He's good at cheering, not so good with my camera, therefore resulting in the following:

And this:

However, not all the pictures were awful.  Here's one of *some* of our players listening to the gameplan:

And another of Max dealing with a serious defender...

One of Max sans defender:

Here's a pretty good action shot:

So John didn't last very long with the camera - by halftime he was on the sidelines, and the camera was in the car.  I'm really going to have to teach him better, huh?

Coaching is going well, and I'm getting a lot of much-needed exercise chasing basketballs and kids during our hour-long practices.  Speaking of practices, I somehow managed to forget today's practice... we ALL did, actually.  We were just sitting at home, watching Hulk Hogan's Suburban Commando.  LOL  Oh well, I guess that's why I'm only the assistant coach.

One other big deal as of late is conjunctivitis.  That's right - pink eye.  Max came home from school on Wednesday with weepy eyes and yucky eye boogers in not one but TWO eyes.  So he got to stay home from school for the rest of the week, and both John and I were constantly haunted by the threat of catching the stank eye as well.

Here's a picture of my poor, pathetic pink-eyed boy after I basically pried his eyes open on the first morning:

One last thing and I'm outta here...  This morning, as Max and I were getting ready for school, I asked him if he was ready to go back to class and see his friends.  His reply?  "Aww yeah!  I can't wait to tell them that I had pink eye and got to stay at home and play video games with Daddy all day!" LOL

I Come in Peace...

I don't know why it has taken me this long to blog.  Oh, well... Here I am.

I also don't know any way to do this other than to just start in on a summary of what my family has been up to recently.  But, the way I write, a description of our past couple of months could take forever.  And I still have to feed my brood (leftover pizza sounds good) and do some schoolwork (I'm starting a new unit - more about that later).  So, to make things easy, I'll make a list.

1. ACTION.  December was pretty crazy, as Max's birthday is Dec. 16 and our wedding anniversary is Dec. 28.  We Gormans like to stay busy in the month of December! ;)  So, we were movin' and groovin' all month long.
   
   
2. SEMESTER EXAMS.  First time teaching a class means first time testing.  Which to a perfectionist means all-new handouts, worksheets, and tests.  Well, JJ Morley doesn't call me the Form Queen for nothing.  I live for creating school stuff in Word, especially new tests.  However, this means a lot of LATE nights.  Thanks to Facebook, my kids realized that they weren't the only ones up all night cramming.
   
   
3. PUKE.  The day after school was out, John, Max, and I took off for Galveston, Texas, for our cruise.  When we got Max up that morning, he was complaining of his stomach hurting.  However, the unsympathetic parents that we are, we chalked it up to his excitement about the trip.  Boy, were we wrong!  We hadn't made it to K-Mart, and Max had already puked.  But, we decided to keep on keepin' on.  Therefore, we made puke stops at Malvern (complete with a clothes change) and Arkadelphia (with a stop at Walmart for medicine, paper towels, and Lysol wipes).  My favorite part of this vomitous trip was John coming close to becoming a sympathy puker on the Interstate outside of Malvern.  Good times.  LOL.
   
   (Note:  I've already diverted from my original plan of making a list to avoid typing too much.  Crap.  I've gotta stay focused and brief.  Sorry for the departure from this goal, especially when it was a paragraph all about puking.)
   
   
4. CRUISE.  So, we went on a cruise.  Long story short, we did not like it.  For more information on our reasons behind that decision, check out John's status from the day of our drive home.  However, we were very thankful for the getaway and the time spent together - just the three of us.  Max particularly enjoyed swimming - on the boat, at Doctor's Cave Beach in Jamaica, and in Stingray City at Grand Cayman.  Yes, we swam with stingrays.  It was pretty darn cool.  And, John was able to visit his motherland:  Hell, Cayman Islands.  Next time we go somewhere tropical, we will arrive on a plane and stay at a resort.
   
   
5. PUKE.  Why must I return to this topic, you say?  Well, because Max decided to share his virus with John and me.  I was sick on December 22, and John was sick on Christmas Eve.  This had NOTHING to do with our disdain for cruises, but it certainly put a damper on our trip.
   
   
6. ANNIVERSARY.  John and I have been married for seven years, and on our anniversary we sent Max to stay with Nana.  To celebrate, we sat at home and watched movies from Blockbuster.  haha.  Romantic, right?  We talked about going out to eat, but we were so sick of eating out that we decided to just stay at home.  However, John did agree to watch two chick flicks back-to-back:  The Proposal and The Ugly Truth.
   
   
7. MOVIE REVIEW.  In my opinion, The Proposal was pretty funny, and The Ugly Truth was a disappointment.  However, Gerard Butler is still hotter than Ryan Reynolds.  The accent puts him over the top.  Please note that I put this as a separate list item because I didn't feel right judging a guy's hotness in a paragraph about my seven-year wedding anniversary. LOL.
   
   
8. GRANDPARENTS.  In addition to Nana keeping Max for two days after we returned from our cruise, my parents also volunteered to take Max to Gillett for a few days over New Year's.  Yay for grandparents - I don't know what we would do without them.
   
   
9. DOGSITTER.  In addition to awesome grandparents, the Gormans also have a pretty awesome dogsitter named Breta Hauge.  She is the best dog/housesitter in the land because she loves my dogs (Dougie the most, although Betsy and Jackson are growing on her) and takes care of my house so well.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but I seriously don't know what we'd do without her either.
   
   
10. NEW YEAR'S EVE.  NYE was spent in Memphis with our good friends Tammy, Josh, Byron, and Brandi.  The night consisted of free beer in the hotel lobby, a ride in a nitrous-boosted Town and Country courtesy of Mark Cuban, wings and trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings, a heart-stopping/laughter-inducing taxi ride to Beale, three pretty boring hours in a crammed bar with a crappy band, a near-fight with a 65-something white guy, and a taxi drive home with a rather angry black cab driver.  Oh, yeah, and we saw the guitar drop (suddenly), the confetti fall (somewhat), and the fireworks explode (weakly).  Oh, well...  We've been there, done that...  And won't do it again.
    
    
11. LIBERTY BOWL.  We went, we cheered, we froze, we left at the beginning of the fourth quarter to beat traffic.  Go Hogs, RIP Tusk, thank goodness we didn't get hypothermia or frostbite.
    
    
12. SCHOOL.  School started back.  I wasn't ready.  So I didn't give homework during the first week.  Yes, I must be the most awesome teacher alive.
    
    
13. COON SUPPER.  We went home to Gillett to attend another Coon Supper.  Dogsitter extraordinaire Breta rode with us in the trek to our hometown.  Newly employed Yolanda (yay!) beat me to my own house and hung out with my family for a bit, and high school best friend Rachel arrived to a blast from the past - having to come upstairs to tell me to hurry up and finish getting ready.  LOL  Rachel got the BEST rib ever (and I was jealous), Yolanda flirted with a lip-syncher, Breta took pictures with the State Troopers, I piled a bunch of stickers on the back of Rachel's shirt, and we all laughed at Miss Arkansas.  After the Coon Supper, I hung out with my favorite Hauges.  However, the BEST part of the night was when Rachel tracked us down at Breta's house to call us names for plastering her shirt with stickers without her knowing.  As my Granny would say, "A good time was had by all."
    
    
14. CHRISTMAS.  Because we were cruising over the holidays, my family had to wait until after New Year's to have our family Christmas.  So, we gathered together in the afternoon to open presents, which was in my opinion a great thing.  Not only did I have more time to get presents together for everyone, but I was able to buy some things at the half-price after-Christmas sales.  Max got a lot of cool stuff, including a camo jacket from my parents.  I got a Snuggie (finally!), some old books, and a pair of awesome pajama pants (story below).  John got a Razorback drink cooler for the deck that my parents are custom-making (it's still in the works).  All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas-after-Christmas.
    
    
15. PAJAMA PANTS.  So, when John and I shopped at Gordman's (the first and only time), John picked out a pair of fuzzy pj pants with frogs all over them.  I love frogs, so they were perfect.  However, they were an XL.  So we went back to the rack, only to find that those were the ONLY pair of that style left.  I carried them around the store for at least thirty minutes, only to set them down at the last minute because I decided I really didn't need them (what woman comes to that realization when she's shopping, anyway?).  So, which pajama pants did my parents buy me for Christmas?  You guessed it:  the XL froggy pants.  Awesomeness.  I guess that means I was DESTINED to own these pants.  Yes, I said these, as I am wearing them as I speak type.
    
    
16. WWF.  World Wrestling Federation?  No, they are now the WWE.  World Wildlife Fund?  Nope, guess again.  Words With Friends?  BINGO.  And, not surprisingly, I'm hooked on this WWF, the most wonderful iPhone app of all time.  Over the last week or so, my friend Meg and I have logged almost five games.  I had one fantabulous game against her, but otherwise she dominates me.  However, her margin of victory over me hasn't been near the amount that I beat John in our first game:  416 to 228.  He resigned at the tail-end of the game and vowed never to play me again, but in checking the score I saw that he just made a move in our rematch.  So, game on, Johnny-boy...  And, Meg, if you EVER start another game with a word like latrine, I may resort to cheating. ;)
    
    
17. WWII.  I am starting a new unit that I'm tentatively calling "Children at War."  It encapsulates the study of WWII/Holocaust as well as more contemporary wars.  We'll be reading such works as "The Diary of Anne Frank" (the play, not the actual diary), Zlata's Diary, and The Little Prince, as well as various primary sources from kids who experienced the horrors of war firsthand.  I'm SUPER excited about it and am working very hard to make it an excellent learning experience for my kiddos.  Actually, I've even started a blog for them so that we can discuss different readings, topics, and assignments.  Any way that we can be cool dorks is good with me.  I sure hope the kids like it.
    
    
18. SORRY SLIDERS.  So, Max got this game for Christmas that he's wanted for two years - thanks to the shameless attacks on the simple minds of children that we call commercials during early-morning cartoons.  Overjoyed, he has asked us every night to play it with him.  Is it bad that I'm too busy?  Is it horrible that I just don't want to clean off the junk on the kitchen table?  Is it terrible that I make promises to play another night, and then rescind my promises?  Is it bad parenting that I JUST DON'T WANT TO PLAY SORRY SLIDERS?  LOL.  We'll play it this weekend, Max...  I promise.

And, that's it.  My list items quickly became tomes, and for that all I can say is that if you really, truly know me, you're not at all surprised.  Heck, you probably don't have to know me that well at all to know that I'm a rambler.  Oh well, to know me is to love me.  Right?  Or, just let me believe that so I can go to sleep peacefully each night.

Maybe, just maybe, if I keep up with my blog on a more regular basis, I won't have posts of 1,873 words.  Yes, my inner dork copied and pasted this entry into Word to do a word count. *sheesh*