I have a funny story from my later class. A friend of mine, who is in the school psychology program, is in the class with me. I took a seat and saved the one next to me for her. Well, class started and she wasn't there. At least eight people tried to sit in that spot, and I kept saying that the seat was saved. Well, about twenty minutes into the class, she hadn't come, so I let the next person who asked about the empty chair sit down. Well, don't you know, she walked in not two minutes later! Oh well. At least my classmates know I wasn't making it up about having a friend in the class. Last semester, she and I would go get dinner between classes, and sometimes we would get a Butterfinger. Last night, in honor of that, I bought a Butterfinger for each of us. During the break we had during class, we had a nice chat and caught up on each other's lives since May. I came home last night and crashed.

I did receive some shocking news today. A very close friend of the family broke his leg about a month ago, and he was on the road to recovery. Well, they found a blood clot in his leg, and he is in the hospital for three to eight days. Please pray for our friend.

After the pantry, I went up to school to fill out paperwork for my TA position. I also found out how much I would get for the semester, which is more than I thought. Yay! Even better, the department is going to pay for my health insurance. Woohoo! On the way up to school, I saw that I-35 was a parking lot on the other side, so I took the back roads home. We used to drive that way out to my piano lessons when we lived out in The Colony. I was amazed at how much the road and the scenery around it had changed! I was also amazed at how much of it was exactly the same.

I am getting excited about school starting next week. Mondays are going to be somewhat of a pain, as I have class from nine in the morning until eight-thirty at night. Yuck! I have a lab for three hours, then I grab lunch, then I have my Intro Psych class that I TA for, then two more classes. Then I will come home and CRASH!!! Tuesdays and Thursdays I have my practicum out at the Health Science Center. I am excited about it, too. I will have three rotations out there, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, and choose between Geriatrics and Rehabilitation. During the year, I will get to hear lectures and seminars about different topics related to whatever rotation I am assigned to. At the end of the year (well, May), I will give a presentation, which will be a review of one of my cases, to which everyone will be invited to attend. I'm not looking forward to THAT, but am looking forward to the other stuff! Wednesdays, I will have class out in Ft. Worth in the morning, then I'll go to Denton for the Intro Psych class, Finally, I'll have Intro Psych class on Fridays as well. That'll be how my schedule will look for the semester.

Sunday, we went to church with David's mom. I got tickled during children's time, when one of the little girls kept trying to grab the microphone out of the speaker's hand. Kids are so funny sometimes! They were giving a gift to a young woman who had helped out in the nursery for several years and was going away to college. The speaker asked the kids if they could guess where she was going to school. One of the kids guessed Texas A&M, and the speaker said,"No, she did not make that good choice." We thought that was really funny, too. After church and a quick lunch, we were on the road home. At youth last night, the kids had ice cream sundaes, and I was excited to get one, too! I sat in on David's group of six junior high boys. They played one game where a person would go around the room and try to name everyone else. I was not in the room when they were introducing themselves, so when the first kid stopped at me, he didn't know my name. Instead he said my name was Dave's Girlfriend. (Hmmm, I don't remember my birth certificate saying Dave's Girlfriend Muse.) All in all, I had an enjoyable weekend.

This weekend was a good one, although I am still sore! Some friends of David's have a yacht out on Lake Texoma. I'd been up to that lake before, once on a retreat with church, and a couple times for band camp. (This one time, at band camp....) Anywho, they invited the youth counselors out there for a little shindig on the boat. It rained almost the whole way up there. We sat on the dock (which was covered) and visited until the rain stopped. We then went out onto the boat and cast off. It was quite windy and somewhat chilly, so I did not last too long outside. I went into the boat and laid down on one of the beds down there. I was almost asleep when the boat lurched. We were at our destination. We basically just hung out all day, swimming, eating and talking.

David and I went out on the Sea-Doo a couple of times. We had to have life jackets to ride it, so we found some and hopped on. Well, it was hard for me to find one that was small enough for me, and I grabbed the smallest adult one I could find. I jumped into the water to swim out to the Sea-Doo, and the life jacket floated up, and I kind of slipped out of it, even though I had it on as tight as I could. My arms were still in it, though, and I made my way to the Sea-Doo. The first time we rode it, David said to hold on tight, because he was a little afraid of me falling off, and also not too sure about his driving abilities on it. The second time we rode it, I think he aimed for every rough spot on the lake! Every time we hit a bump, I came off the seat, which was a little scary. Fun, but scary. By the time we got back to the boat, I felt like I had been beat to death and was incredibly sore. I could barely paddle back over to the boat! It was fun though, and I told David next time that we did this, I wanted to try driving it. After the Sea-Doo adventure, we hung out some more until it was time to go. Once we all got back to the dock, we decided to go eat some dinner. We ate at this place out there called La Finca. We were all trying to decide what that meant. When I finally got home that night, I crashed so hard!

Sunday night, I went to church with David. It was missions night at his church, which meant that there were different activities the kids could do, to help raise money for these different groups. I was happy to see that CCA was one of the groups. Anywho, I got dragged by one of the kids to participate in some of the games. I played Twister twice, (won once) and then played a game called Poop Deck, which is kind of like Simon Says. I won that game, but since I was playing against a bunch of kids, didn't feel that excited about winning. Oh well, I got a Tootsie Pop, so that was okay. David donated blood, but they won't let me do it, however, he did give me his t-shirt that he got when he donated. A free shirt is always good.

Yesterday I was helping out in the store again, and this time I also got to do the register! That was fun, a lot like the pantry checkout, so it was a piece of cake to learn. When I was leaving, the volunteer coordinator asked if I could be at the tree. I told her no, but then one of my students cancelled, so I was able to do it for a couple hours, until my next student came. I was glad I was there, because I saw two people I knew, one from the band, and someone else who works in the pantry with me on Thursdays. After my students left, I had a pleasant evening at home, and rewarded myself for the TA position, by going to Starbucks. Mmmm, there's nothing like a caramel frappuccino!

Yesterday, I was working at the Back to School store again. Afterwards, I went shopping for last night's festivities. Yesterday was David's birthday, and I wanted it to be special. I decided that a picnic would be fun, and since it was hot out, to make it an indoor picnic. So I made some sandwiches, grabbed Cokes, Pringles, Tricuits and some squirty cheese. I decided to bake something for dessert, and made brownies. That was interesting. I am not a great cook, however, those brownies were very good. Anywho, I had the cooler packed when David came over, and he said he wanted to go home and change, which was fine with me. While he was changing, I spread out the blanket in the living room, and we had a good time. We had a great picnic, and didn't have to worry about bugs or getting too hot. After dinner, we decided to celebrate his birthday by going to Andy Brown park in Coppell. We played on the playground there, then took a walk around the duck pond. There was some game going on at the baseball fields, David thought it was lacrosse, but we were getting chewed by mosquitos, so we didn't explore. We finished up the night by going to Starbucks and running by Target for the essentials. And a great time was had by all.

Friday, I had my piano slumber party. Six of my students were able to attend. They had a blast playing on the pinball machine and the other games we have, while we waited for the pizza. After dinner, we had the performance portion of the evening, where each student played two songs for the others. After they were finished, they all wanted me to play something, so I did. Movies followed the performances, as well as hair-braiding time. I thought it was funny that most of them wanted their hair in two French braids. We watched two movies, at that point, it was one-thirty a.m. Half of the girls were asleep, but the others were restless, so I put in another movie. When it was finished, they were all asleep and I was wide awake. Oh well. A good time was had by all, and I took pictures, which are now in my photo gallery.

Saturday afternoon, I was at the CCA Back-to-School tree at Vista Ridge mall. This meant that I sat at a table next to the tree and answered questions about CCA, as well as accepting people's donations. There were some people there that really tugged at my heart. A little girl came up to my table and was asking about the tree. She went back over to her mother, and then hollered over to me, asking if we took money donations. I said yes, and she grabbed her purse, and was about to march on over to the table, when her mom stopped her. She was arguing with her mom, and kept trying to walk over to the table. Her mom finally dragged her off to another part of the mall. I did think it was a sweet gesture for the little girl to want to give her money so badly to argue with her mom.

After finishing at the mall, I went over to David's. He had planned on going to eat at BDs and then going over to Cowboys Red River. However, we were both so zonked, we wound up going to eat, then coming back to his place and dancing there. On Sunday, I had my first Sunday working in the church library. I really enjoyed it, and look forward to working there in the future. Sunday also marked an important day for another reason! David and I had our first date a year ago Sunday. So it was a day to celebrate! David had to do some stuff at work, then afterwards, he came to my house. He brought me a dozen red roses and some chocolate! After a little bit of relax time, we made our way to his church, for the outdoor worship service, which was done by the youth. We brought a couple of David's water guns, which were a hit. I had the bigger one, which made it hard to be sneaky about it. One of the kids managed to wrestle it away from me (like that's hard to do) and proceeded to squirt me with it! So he and I had an ongoing battle the whole evening, as I got it back, and he got the other one from David. I also got to play with the power point presentation during the service, as David was off fixing the lighting, and no one was jumping up to do the power point. It was a fun night, and Happy Anniversary, David! I can't believe that it has been a whole year!

Yesterday, I was working at the CCA Back-to-School store. First, I was stocking the shelves, then they asked me to help with customers shop for stuff. Each child gets two outfits, a pair of shoes, and can pick four from the following: socks, undies, hair accessories, belts, purses and lingerie. They also get a bag of school supplies according to their grade, and a gift certificate for a free haircut. I helped the kids pick out their sizes and the styles that they liked. It is a really neat program! (The volunteers all got a free lunch, which I did not know about, but certainly enjoyed.) Tonight I finally finished going through all the file cabinets of music for the Carrollton Community Band. I was very glad to be finished, as this was a cumbersome job, but will be a great refence tool for the band.