Nerf Guns & Yahtzee

Well week 2 of school is coming to a close.  Cody is extremely excited for the 3 day weekend!  (I am too; I feel like I haven't seen him all week.)  I think so far (granted this is me judging from how he acts and what he says... not actually being in his head and truly knowing) school is going well for Cody.  There were a couple stressful points this week, but they were dealt with and the small situations improved.  Definitely compared to last year, these two weeks have been good! I know that at least.  It's amazing what just having that first year under your belt does I guess.  While yes he's still working a crazy amount, he's not as constantly stressed or overwhelmed as last year.  He's more confident going into each lesson and each day.  I'm so proud of my husband!  He's doing a wonderful job! -and some of his students have even been telling him that he's a good teacher.  I guess we'll see what week three brings, but for now, it's all going well, and we're both very thankful.

As you can probably guess since I'm writing this new post mid-morning today, I did not get a sub job as I was hoping.  I really hoped that I would today... now that two weeks of school are almost done, and it's a Friday, I thought something would come up. Nope. I did get a call for an afternoon job -but it was bilingual and I had to speak Spanish... and well, I don't.  However, I was slightly encouraged yesterday.  This week a couple days I went out to some schools and put my sub card in lots of teacher mailboxes and then yesterday I compiled lists of teachers from other schools and sent them a brief email introducing myself and saying I'm available as a sub and telling them my qualifications/certifications and such.  I got a call yesterday evening for a sub job next Wednesday from a teacher who read my email; one of the schools is having an in-service day then.  And I got a call later last night, and a call at 6:30 this morning from teachers from the same school asking about the same in-service day.  If only I could sub multiple jobs on the same day!  Oh well.  I was encouraged that I know at least 3 teachers read my email and were willing to use me!  ...I am hoping more than just those three will call eventually lol.  Anyways.  I don't know if that really counts as an update... nothing really new, but that's what's going on with subbing.

Oh, very briefly, a while ago I mentioned I had started working out (haha) and said I hoped sharing it on our blog would keep me motivated to continue... well, it did for about 2 weeks.  And I haven't since.  My 2 week kick was ended during our South Padre trip, and for the sake of honesty and since I did mention it before, I thought I'd just share that, well, it didn't last.  I'm not broken up about it.

-Cooking Experiment: Success or Failure-
While I'm sure this isn't anything new to most people, it was new to me.  This week I made chicken with an Italian Dressing flavoring (thank you to Kari for that idea a while back!).  And it was amazing! -If I do say so myself, actually, Cody said so too!  I didn't cook the chicken in any different way than usual, I just smothered it in Italian Dressing as it cooked, and it turned out awesome. I will absolutely use that to flavor chicken a lot more often.  (I do tend to make chicken a lot.)  This was hands down a success.

I also within the last week made my first double layered round cake (actually I made two back-to-back, but I'm only gonna talk about one, cause the second one didn't get icing).  I know that's probably nothing new or special to most other people as well, but again, it was the first time I'd tried it.  The double layered and round parts were easy enough, however the icing was another story.  First off, I hardly ever make cakes because Cody doesn't really like cake.  Secondly, whenever I do make cake, I don't ice it because he also doesn't like icing.  So.  Needless to say, I'm far from an expert as icing even a regular sheet cake.  This double layered round cake was unexpectedly quite difficult!  Seriously.  I felt ridiculous getting icing everywhere and all over me... I couldn't figure out why it wasn't spreading smoothly as I wanted it to.  I ran out of icing; there were bare patches all over lol.  It was probably the funniest/worst looking cake you'd ever see!  I will say it tasted wonderful though!  Not a show cake by any means, but still delicious.  Unfortunately I'm claiming that as a failure, because I've made cakes before, that was no big deal.  My goal was a pretty and perfect iced double layered round cake... and I failed at making it pretty like I wanted!  That was my main goal with that attempt, and I definitely failed.  I will try again at some point.  I need another birthday for someone who appreciates cake!

Now... to the title of this post.  Recently Cody and I have been on a game kick again.  We go through phases of finding a game we like, playing it every chance we get, and then burning ourselves out on it and not wanting to play that again for a year.  But for now we're still in the 'play every chance we get' phase.  And yes, believe it or not, we're playing Yahtzee!  Also Ultimate Yahtzee, which I'd never heard of before.  It does make the game much more strategic and exciting.  I will also say, the dice absolutely like me better than Cody.  I posted on Facebook a while back that I finally found something I'm better at than him! Sadly it's just a non-skill board game!  We're having lots of fun with it though.  It was a random purchase one day that I forced Cody to go with me to HEB.  Of course it was him, not me, that saw it and grabbed it to add to our mass game collection.  But we are enjoying it a lot, so I'm not really complaining about the impulse buy.

And now to the Nerf guns, which is probably way more exciting to read about than Yahtzee!  This was something we did A LOT last summer, and played again for the first time in a long time this week.  Hopefully (I have a feeling we will) we will start to play this again more often.  So, last summer we bought two Nerf guns at Target, and we said it was the best buy all summer that we made!  Anyways.  Our Nerf gun fights have several varieties of style that we go through.  We do duals, ranging from a full barrel of bullets to just one.  We do minimal forts... where we have only a chair and toss pillow as protection.  And we do fortified forts, which includes the basic chair and pillow, but then adds a bar stool, more pillows, possibly the bench and some couch cushions, and various other things we find and add to our barricades.  Let me tell you, we highly recommend this activity if you your spouse (or just friend I guess) are bored and either happen to have Nerf guns, or have like $10 to go buy some.  After building our forts we proceed to count off and start our fight.  The first person to successfully shoot and hit the other one 5 times wins.  A head (we don't aim for the face though it still accidentally happens) shot counts as 2 hits.  Our rules are that you don't have to stay behind your fort, if you want to charge the other person's fort you can... it's just very risky.  Unless they happen to be out of bullets, and you know it, which then makes it an easy and swift victory.  Anyways!  That's something we really enjoy and have recently rediscovered!  Again, we highly recommend it to other couples who find themselves bored mid-afternoon or are just looking for something fun to do together.  Seriously.  It's way fun.  You should go buy Nerf guns and try it out.

I guess that's it!  I'm off to go eat breakfast/lunch and start being productive for the day.  Thanks for reading!