an exciting announcement!!!

well - we wanted to let everyone know some exciting news that we have. we are having a baby. we just had our second appointment. i'm 15 weeks along with a due date of june 4. we are very excited. we don't know what it is yet, but we were able to listen to the heartbeat on wednesday which definitely made it real. :) anyway - we just wanted to let the bloggers know our special news. sorry no pics again. i really need to get my act together. :)

merry christmas!!!

long time no write!!!!

i know its been forever. i'm sorry - i'm sure no one checks this anymore, but just in case i'll post a few words. we've been having trouble with our computer so i have to get all our pics off and bring them to school to upload. i'll get around to it sometime.

so...what's new? well - this weekend is our last weekend of volleyball - praise the Lord!!! i have never felt so horribly about a sport in my life. this season was just way too long. our conference is set up really weird (mark is trying to change it). our sports overlap - they were still having volleyball games and we had to start bball practice our first game is on monday!!! ahhh!!! mark is coaching the boys and guess what i am coaching the girls. :) yes - i know everyone is shocked. so far its going well - although i do have some funny stories about girls that i am sure have never even see a basketball before let alone shoot or dribble one. yeah its slightly frustrating. anyway - that just gets me worked up so lets move on.

we fixed up the outside of our house although the one side is still all sand. yuck! we painted the outside and landscaped - a little - i'll be sure to post some pics later.

besides sports nothing else is happening really - we are really looking forward to thanksgiving break - not only are we going to get to see our family but we also get some vacation time. something that we really need. although i'm sure we will still be tired afterwards that just seems to be the way that it works. :)

well - i should go - my class computer time is almost up. have a fantastic day!

pictures finally!!!

well i know that some of you have been eagerly waiting to see what our house looks like now. i had taken some pics when it was clean but lost them so i had to take some more spur of the moment. :) so pardon the messyness. this is the living room - well part of it. the front door is behind the striped couch. and i was a little worried about the brown, but i love it. the floors look like wood but they are actually kindof like linolium. makes it perfect for the dog. i was a little worried about wood floors and him ;)
here is the kitchen. this room we haven't done much to because of finances, but we are planning on changing the ugly green countertops and painting the cabinets as well as putting hardware on them. but the one thing that i love about this is the amount of storage space. its fantastic.
here is a picture of the living room - all of it. we will probably be putting in a coffee table. but we still need to work on refinishing it.
this is our bedroom - inspired by pottery barn. we really liked the dark blue with the dark wood and the white accents so we made it our own.
here is our dining room - we might actually be getting a new table and chairs from my gma levis and the "buffet" i found at a flea market and we'll be putting floating shelves to display our china, but that hasn't been done yet either so now its a place for my purse and dead plant (i should get rid of that) ;) we do have two other bedrooms - one is going to be the office. we finally finished painting the desk, but we still have to paint the room - red. yes we do like our colors. and the guest room doesn't have any furniture - we're still waiting on that. and no painting in that room - we'll wait to really decorate it. most of our money now will be going into putting a fence around our backyard mainly for the dog, but also to give us a little privacy since we do have any elderly neighbor that likes to be in the know about what's going on. this way he might not be able to tell just by looking out his back door. yeah he's a little creepy. :)

so those are the pics. update on betsy - she went to the oncologist and the lump was gone and the doctor gave her a clean bill of health!!! praise the lord!!!

and mark and i just got back from celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary. i can't believe how time flies. its so much fun. we went to madeira beach its just south of clearwater florida. we had a lot of fun and came away with sunburn. and yes we did put on sunscreen but obviously not powerful enough. or we had just been out of the sun for a little too long. :)

so we hope that everyone is doing well - enjoy the rest of your summer!!!!

Sorry about the wait!!

i have been putting off blogging cause i wanted to post some pics. but i forgot that we don't have access to the internet yet so i'll post anyway and offset the confusion. yes - we did get the house everything went perfectly fine. it didn't even take that long to sign the papers. so yes we are living in the house and we unpacked and painted and moved most things in. we're still working on some minor details and spending lots of money :). but its fun. and i promise to post some pics as soon as i get internet which should be this week sometime.

while i post let me write a prayer request. my sister betsy went to the doctors for a routine physical and they found a lump in her breast. she is only 20 years old. so they went to get an ultrasound done and the doctor's found nothing. but they are still concerned cause if they felt something they should have seen something. so they want her to go to the oncologist. the only appointment for her to go is while my parents are in alaska visiting steph and jonathan. so if you could be praying for her and my family that would be great. she is very nervous as would be expected.

thanks so much for your prayers and your birthday wishes.

the move!!

we left pennsylvania on wednesday and took two days to drive down to florida - stopping in greenville, sc to see some friends on the way. tomorrow is the big day - we close on our house. so if you think about us be praying for us that it goes smoothly without any problems. we will let you know more details soon!!!

More Wedding Pics

well some of you asked for more pics of the wedding party. so here they are. mark tried to take more but they didn't come out quite right. if you would like more you can check out www.stylishimages.com and look under hamilton wedding. enjoy!!!

Steph's Wedding!!!

so the wedding is over and steph and jonathan have been married for a whole week. its definitely a little weird, but i guess that i'll get used to it. :) so i wanted to post some pics of the wedding. it was really pretty and went very well.
so my mom made the dresses again just like she did for my wedding.
here's the fam with gma...
so this is steph and me at the rehearsal. it was a pretty emotional night. steph gave us started scrapbooks. and of course i started to cry. its hard thinking that she'll be living in alaska from here until God moves them. but we're okay. we'll keep in touch. :) so it was a good time and i'm looking forward to seeing them when they get back (from the cayman islands) :).

the busy month of may!!!

well - may has been pretty busy for us. it started off with steph graduating from clearwater christian college. we were all able to make it. it was really neat to see how God worked out all the details. we had a lot of fun celebrating this milestone in her life. and as many of you know steph is getting married on saturday (may 19) to jonathon hamilton, and they are moving to alaska after they get married. so we enjoyed this one last family event before steph "falls off the face of the world" (or alaska in other words).

part of our being able to go to steph's graduation was that we became the chaperones for the senior trip. we flew down to clearwater and met up with them and headed off to the wild's christian camp. they didn't seem to excited about it, but i think that if you asked them now they would say that it was so much more fun than they expected. they really did have a blast. and of course so did we. it was really neat to see God work in the kids lives as well as ours. :) i did really enjoy being a chaperone. while the kids suffer without there cell phones - we were still able to use ours!!! :)
if you've ever been to the wilds you know that they are famous for their giant swing. now i've been on it twice and didn't feel like being on it again. but mark decided that he would go on it with one of the boys. this is "THE DROP". it was so funny!!! we really did have a good time. so much laughing!!!:)
well - these are the kids - that's right only 4 (actually there are 6 but 2 of them weren't allowed to come). and this is the van...our faithful companion. with all of our stuff crammed in it it seems that they still enjoyed themselves. :)
here they are again. so that's may so far and its far from over... i'm sure that i will have plenty to write about after the upcoming nuptuals(sp?). i hope that all of my faithful readers are doing well!!! ;)

PICTURES!!!!

this is mark and me at the junior/senior. that is the delaware river in the background.

much better than those self taken pics. :)

this is the delaware at sunset...definitely not that bad! :)
this was over spring break - we were in ft lauderdale visiting some friends from our previous school - the three kids on the left are students of mark's. (christina, chris, and kirstie and then matt and jodi)
we took a pit stop in greenville. we went to this park and saw these waterfalls - it was really beautiful. although we had to look at them from this suspension bridge which i didn't enjoy too much!
and this is us on that horrible bridge. once again - a little bit better than those self taken pics.

have a great tuesday...2 days down - 3 to go!!! (until friday of course!)

a long weekend.

well i was going to post some pictures of our junior/senior, but i forgot the camera hook up at home. we went to this nice place just over the bridge into new jersey. it was right off the delaware river (i know if you've seen the delaware its not that much to be impressed with) but it was really pretty at sunset - we got some pretty nice pictures - well i guess anything is better than a close up taken by us - you know the hold out the camera type. so we did that friday.

i was so excited to get to sleep in on saturday that i almost killed the dog when he decided to start barking incessently at 6:30 in the morning. so i got up and fed him and walked a mile and a half then put him back to bed. and guess what he decided to keep it up. i was going to shoot him. i told mark that if it continues we would take him to the spca - i don't love him enough to endure the barking. so mark and i did shifts of playing and sleeping. needless to say it was horrible. he was out of his crate a very good part of the day and he seemed pretty worn out. i think that total he probably walked 6 or 7 miles. :) so we put him to bed thinking that he was just mad that we were out late on friday night, but then at 6:30 sunday morning the dog goes off again like an alarm clock. so i did the same thing as before and of course it didn't work. so after church we went to petsmart to look at those zapper dog collars - like on fun with dick and jane. they are ridiculously expensive.

so my question for the few viewers that i have is this: how do you keep your dogs from waking you up at the crack of dawn? how do you keep them quiet? we are open to all techniques - humane or not. :)

well - i hope that your weekend was much better than mine. and of course the work week has arrived all too soon!

ps - i must say that mark is fabulous. i was so tired on sunday that he played with the dog for 2 hours while i took a much needed nap. and then before church he put my desks back in the correct arrangement in my classroom!!! he's is definitely without question my most favorite person! thanks babe!

HAVE A GREAT MONDAY!!!

I HATE INCOME TAXES!!! :)

well - i must say that pride does go before a fall. i was so proud of myself this year cause i didn't wait until the last minute to file our taxes. the last couple of years i have waited until right before to get them in the mail. but this year - i did them in february. and i was so proud of myself. sunday i was even chuckling about how my sister in law was still doing hers. then yesterday i was talking with some of my fellow teachers and realized that i had not done delaware state taxes. ugh!!! so yesterday was panic. i also had no time to do them because we had the first time home buyers class from 7-9. so i raced to target after school to get a tax program and them raced around finally after the class i was able to get started at around 10:45. then it wouldn't let me finish cause it had to update. stupid program. so this morning we got up at the crack of dawn to come to school to use the internet. then i had all kinds of problems thinking that we owed 1200 dollars. but it all worked out and hopefully i did it right. and they should be in the mail today. lucky! anyway - so this morning i'm all a mess of nerves and yet still have to teach my class. thank goodness its over.
well- we had a fabulous spring break. it was so relaxing and warm. i'll have to post the few pics that we have. but that might take awhile. anyway - i hope that all of you are doing well.
have a great day!

WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!

thank you so much for your prayers. this is just the cherry on top. we knew before that God wanted us to move, but this house pulling through really helps to solidify the decision. we are so excited about what God has for us in this new place. so here are some pics of our new house. this is the front of it. it is located on a very quiet cul de sac
this is the living room with my very favorite hard wood floors.
this is the master bedroom (yeah the people were still living there so you have to use your imaginations). nice and big with a walk in closet!!!
this is the kitchen. i would rather that the cupboards didn't have this weird pink tinge to it, but oh well - it will be fun things to change
this is the backyard - it goes a bit the other way to and the deeper way.

so anyway - thank you again for praying!!! it is so cool when God answers prayer!!! :)

Florida or Bust - AGAIN!!! :)

well - some of you have heard the news, but for those of you that haven't - we're moving to florida once again. but this time not to a thriving metropolis - this time its a small town in northern florida about an hour from orlando and tampa. we weren't looking to move, but our former administrator called us and offered us both positions. so we went down to look and loved it. its a perfect small town to raise a family in and settle down. we're really hoping that this is our niche. :) the school is inverness christian academy (that's the town its in) and the church is fort cooper baptist church. the school is small but growing and so is the church. the other benefit is that we could buy a house and afford it. the houses that we were looking at up here were 200,000 and the ones down there we were looking at were 140,000 to give you some perspective. anyway we're really excited about it. and it looks like we're moving right after school is out at the beginning of june. (yes - before my birthday which i'm not too happy about.) we have to get down there so that we can start working for the summer. so i thought that i would post some pics of the school and church and our favorite house that we looked at.

this is inverness christian academy - the facilities are really nice!!!
this is the entrance to the church - fort cooper baptist church
and this is our favorite house - its on a cul de sac with no other houses around it. its got hard wood floors and 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. and its only 141,000. so if you think of it you could be praying for us as we go about telling the people here at concord and as we make plans to move down there this summer. also be praying that the Lord works out our housing situation so that we have a place to move into when we get down there!

so that's our exciting news - florida or bust! once again (and this time with an overactive hyperenergetic dog. if you have suggestions please feel free to share :) )

Long Time No Write!!!

Well - here i am...its been awhile and i wanted to post some new pics, but i just keep forgetting.

so here is our christmas pic with our ridiculous small tree in the background.

well some interesting news is that mark and i have been offered a new job in florida - our administrator from our old school moved to a different school and is offering us a position there. mark and i had decided that if God brought something to us we would be open to it and look into it. so that's what we're doing. tomorrow we fly down to orlando, florida - to take a look at the church and school. we would definitely appreciate your prayers as we look into this new place of employment.

i hope that all of you are having a fabulous day. today in pennsylvania it is going to be a whopping 72 degrees and i am going to enjoy it to the fullest!!! :) i hope that you get to enjoy your day as much as i am going to enjoy mine. (what also helps is that my troublemaker student is on vacation and i'm taking the dog to my parents tonight which means - FREEDOM!!!) :)

open house :(

well - these are most of my angels. the one all the way in the front is isaiah. this was taken on his last day of school. which i thought would make my life a whole lot easier, but i got walter. he's all the way on the right with the bunny ears. walter doesn't know his times tables, can't divide, spell, or read really. so i'm slightly confused as to why he's in my class. anyway - i have been tutoring but it is definitely like pulling teeth. if you think of it pray for walter. the other kids in the class don't really like him so they make fun of him. its sad - we're working on it.


well the reason that i'm posting so late is we have an open house at school - so i'm sitting here doing nothing. pretty much no one cares about 6th grade. :) so i'm bored!!! so i thought that i would update!! pretty much that's all that's new. no houses recently. hopefully some will come up soon!

thanks so much for your comments - i do appreciate them!! have a fabulous night!

the ups and downs of home buying!!!

well - we didn't get the house. my mom said that that is the way it works. sometimes you put in a lot of offers and you still don't get the house. it takes awhile. well for someone like me who lacks patience it makes the situation difficult. especially since i got so stressed out about putting in the offer in the first place. oh well - there is another house like it that the realtor sent to us so we'll see. its disappointing but we know that God can provide.

anyway - another freezing cold week in southern pa. we can't seem to get a snow day if our lives depended on it. the stupid weather people will even say that we are getting snow and then we will get little or none. ugh!!! we could really use the rest found on a snow day. but once again we know that God can provide. :)

well - i hope that you all have a wonderful week. hey feel free to leave a comment. i do like responses - its like getting mail. :) (which if you would like to send would be great too. :))

Taking the BIG step!!!

well - mark and i are taking the big step today. we are going to make an offer on the house. we'll see what happens. part of the reason that we are doing it so soon is that we found out that there is another offer on the house so we wanted to get ours in. anyway - we're not sure what will happen so if you could be praying for us and the offer that would be wonderful. we do know that if we don't get the house it is God's will - He knows our needs and He will provide for us. This is another lesson in faith.

this is a picture of mark and i after our date night. we have to set these aside especially during basketball season. we went out to dinner and saw a movie (the first one in a very long time!!!). all of it was paid for with gift cards - gotta love it! anyway it was a lot of fun - so we took a picture!!! :)

we hope that you all have a fabulous day whether you're in the about to get rain/snowed on northeast or elsewhere!!! :)

The possibly new house????

well - even though we've been living in the apartment we've been looking to get out and our realtor has been sending us houses since the summer. most of them are too far away and too expensive. then we got this one a little while ago - this one is 10 minutes away and almost perfectly priced. there is even a little yard for charlie - so we were so excited about it that i wanted to post some pictures to let you know what it looks like. we're not positively sure that we're going to buy it. but we are definitely thinking seriously about it. :)



this is the kitchen - we would get to keep everything that is in here. its not wonderful, but its do-able.

this is the master bedroom - not anything spectacular, but again it is something that we can live with and fix up if we like. the plus about this house is that the master bedroom has 2 closets!!!:)
this is a picture of the garage from the outside. there would be a lot of room for storage even besides a car which will be helpful.
this is the outside - #28 is the one. yeah that's our realtor locking up. :)
and this is our porch with our little backyard that we can fence in for the pooch. behind us is a cemetary - i guess we won't have to worry about it being too noisy.

well - i hope you enjoyed please let us know what you think!!! and we'll let you all know what we decide. :)

What Teachers Make!!!

someone sent me this e-mail and i thought that it was really good.

What Teachers Make

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. one man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from soneone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." To stress his point he said to another guest, "You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?" Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what i make? (she paused for a second, then began...) "Well, i make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. i make a c+ feel like the congressional medal of honor. i make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 minutes without an IPOD, Game Cube, or a movie rental. You want to know what i make?" (she paused again and looked at each and every person at the table.) i make kids wonder. i make them question. i make them criticize. i make the apologize and mean it. i make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions. i teach them to write and then i make them write. i make the read, read, read. i make them show all their work in math. i make my students from other countries learn everything that they need to know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity. i make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe. i make my students stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, because we live in the United States of America. Finally, i make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life. (Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.) "Then, when people judge me by what i make, i can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant...You want to know what i make? I MAKE A DIFFERENCE. What do you make?

THERE IS MUCH TRUTH IN THIS STATEMENT: Teachers make every other profession!!!

this is jen speaking now. at first i was offended by what the business man said. but then i read all of it. and it definitely is true - and actually all of the things that she said that she had to make her students do - i am going through right now with my class. and my hope is that they will turn out the right way and become great because of the things that i have taught them. that last statement is part of the reason that i am a teacher.

so teachers keep pressing on. it may seem hard now (believe me - i understand) but look towards the future - try to see the end product!!!

Snow Camp!!!

Well we are finally back from snow camp and we have one year under our belts. this church does things a little differently than other churches that we've been to. they actually go skiing, snowboarding, and tubing. we waited a little too long to go to another camp so we did the same thing that they did. we went to camelback mountain in the poconos. it was a lot of fun. on friday night we went ice skating and then saturday we went to the mountain to ski etc. i got the fun job of playing policeman in the lodge. :) ugh!!! every night we stayed in a hotel - and of course mark and i were chaperones along with some of the other parents. it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. mark was the keynote speaker. (that's funny to say). he did a really good job. its neat to see him a position like this. its something that he hasn't really done before, but it is something that he is pretty good at. :) anyway here are some pictures of the mountain and my favorite place - the lodge!!! :)

camelback mountain - this was the skiing and snowboarding trails - the tubing was at a different hill.
this is a picture that mark and i took at the ice skating rink. that actually was a lot of fun, because i did better than i thought that i would. and while we were there we saw a girl fall and dislocate her shoulder. mark got to play doctor and help her out until the police and the ambulance people came. luckily it wasn't one of our own!!!
this is the lodge - the nice of the two. the tubing lodge is the one that i spent most of my time in and it was pretty much horrible. :) but then again i survived so it wasn't that bad. :)

Happy Thoughts

well - as we speak we are getting our first snow. of course it isn't sticking so that means school will go the whole day today, but it did a good job of getting the kids all excited. so mark and i get to experience our first winter weather since moving up here from florida - lots of fun!!! :)

well last night during youth group while mark was speaking, i found this verse in one of the corinthians and of course now i'm having trouble finding it. ahh - found it. although it was in a different version - i only have my school kjv with me.

I Corinthians 15:10

But by the grace of God i am what i am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Anyway - i thought that it was a neat verse. i am only what i am because of God's grace. it definitely encouraged me. i've been kinda questioning teaching next year, but we turn in our intent form saying that i am. and this just encouraged me that i can do what i do with God's strength.

also in my bible class God taught me along with the kids - its kinda unnerving when that happens. we were talking about God's mercy and how much he has done for us. then we in turn should show the same mercy and forgiveness to others. its easy to say - oh its different for me cause i'm the teacher and i can be mean cause i have to deal with you. but that isn't what God wants us to do. he wants us to forgive as much as he forgives us. he wants us to merciful just as he was and is merciful to us. just a thought to remember.



anyway - this is the picture that mark and i sent in our christmas cards. it was about the 15th pic that we took - the dog was not cooperating. but we finally got it settled. we have also decided that the dog doesn't like the cold weather. he gets all mopey and depressed and then when it warms up he is energetic and annoying - so tempermental!!! :)

have a great day!!! only 1 day till the weekend.

PICTURES FINALLY!!!

well i know that it has been a really long time since i have posted any pictures. i have been having some problems with my camera and getting them to a postable site. in fact there were other pictures that i wanted to post but they didn't seem to get with the others. oh well - we're back at school, but thankfully we have monday off for martin luther king jr day. :) it will be nice to have a break. mark has been going to more away games now than before christmas so ia have been spending a lot of time with the pooch. he was very well behaved for awhile and during christmas, but now that he is spending a lot of time in the crate again, he is back to his old self. during christmas, charlie would play tug of war with my parents dog and it would wear him out nicely. but no kisha here so ugh. i have to do it. :)

nothing exciting has happened since christmas, just back to school and work. so here are some pictures from over the holidays and a little before.


mark and i had sharon and derek over during christmas break it was nice to spend time with them (we just watched a movie and played FRIENDS scene it that mark got me for christmas!!! it was a lot of fun.) but no clues as to when the big proposal will be!!! :) we tried to get it out of him but with no luck!! :) ( oh - notice our very small christmas tree in the background. we couldn't put up our big one because of the lack of space and our annoying dog would have treated it like a toy. :) )
this is my sisters and me with our stockings that we begged and pleaded for - even mark gets one - lucky!!!! he's one of the girls now. :) and very soon jonathon will be joining the very exciting club.
by the way - the stockings were really great this year!!! and we got them for my parents too so that they would see how fabulous they are. i think that they enjoyed it!!! yes we finally did have a youth group activity - it was nice we played lasertag and arcades and then came over to our apartment and played cranium. it was a lot of fun. and we all got to experience mark's amazing talents for dance dance revolution.
and this is the corbin family. minus the most exciting parts (me, Jeff (Cheryl's husband), and the boys.) we had a really good time there - it was nice to see everyone again. and if you think of it pray for mark's dad as he looks for another teaching position in the fall.

hopefully there will be more pictures to follow!!! :)

MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

well - we finally made it to christmas break thankfully!!! we spent some time with family and friends and of course relaxed (something that was definitely needed). and we were supposed to go back to school tomorrow but they cancelled school so we don't go back until wednesday!! so looking back on the pas t year, it has been neat to see how God has provided for us. we are enjoying being close to family and friends. and we are excited to see what God will do for us in the coming year. we hope that you all have had a wonderful christmas holiday and a blessed new year!!!