Here We go!

This is our first blog entry! I'm still trying to figure out how all this works...
WE are doing well in Hooks, Texas, enjoying small-town life. Our weekdays consist of the normal craziness you would assume comes from a family of 5, actually 6 this year with Marianna, our Italian exchange student with us. We ALL head off for school each morning, the boys and I to Texarkana, and Dan and Marianna to Hooks High School. We are busy in the evenings with our various activities. The weekends are full of football games, playing in the backyard, and church, and laundry, lots of laundry! Then it all starts back up on Monday again!

Tammy- teaching at Dunbar Elementary in Texarkana, 5th grade, 98% economically disadvantaged, around 70% of the kids actually live below the poverty line. This is the very challenging professional opportunity I was looking for, and it is stretching me to my limits, but I do feel I am where I am supposed to be. It is very challenging but I am growing personally and professionally everyday as I try to reach out the kids and families. Besides that, I am head-chef, head-laundress, head homework-helper, head-chauffer, head-photographer, and loving it.

Dan- teaching PE and coaching Cross Country and Girls' Varsity basketball at Hooks High School. He is really enjoying the small town life and is enjoying backyard fun with the boys. He seems to be back to his roots a little bit out here in the country with his riding lawn mower and backyard bonfires. He is counting down the days until basketball season starts and can't wait to officially start coaching the team and have their first scrimmages.

Bryce - attending Nash Elementary school, part of the Texarkana ISD. This is much smaller school than he is used to with 3 third grade classrooms. He is doing well, excelling academically and is very "into" the presidential election, watching all the debates and wanting to discuss it all the time! He is playing Pee Wee football for the Hooks Hornets, practicing 3 nights a week and having weekend games in the high school stadiums!

Jayden- started Kindergarten this year at Nash Elementary school. He seems to really LOVE school and talks about his friends all the time! He is learning to read, and brings home little math games for us to play together. It's such a fun age when school is so new and fun! After watching the summer olympics, JJ is planning to be an olympic runner, but keeps asking to start soccer, so I'm sure he'll be starting up soon!

Rylan- is our little man, knee-deep in his wonderfully terrible threes! He is cuddly and loving, and headstrong and stubborn all at once! He goes to preschool at First Baptist Church in Texarkana, and feels very big, going to school like his brothers. Since he starts Kindergarten the year after next, he tells anyone who asks that he is pre, pre K! He also talks to anyone and everyone, everywhere we go, and if they ask him his name, he usually tells them, Diego, since Go, Diego, Go! is his favorite tv show.

Marianna - very quiet and intelligent, she is picking up English very quickly and has become accustomed to our very different American lifestyle (or is at least faking it very well). Things are so different here - her family sits down to long meals lasting over an hour, they hang dry all their clothes, go to school 6 days a week, no extra-curriculur school activities, so Friday night football games, Homecoming, hot dogs, pancakes, peanut butter, Southern Baptist Church, tivo, are just a few of things we have quickly introduced into her life!

Well, there ya go... our life in a nutshell! Thanks for visiting our blog. Blessings!