On the road again...

Once upon a time, there was a husband and wife who were on Spring Break.  They decided they were tired of sitting around their apartment and needed some more adventure in their lives, so they packed up their car and headed into the wild blue yonder.  And they lived happily ever after.

I'd like to end my post there, but after the week Haley and I had, there needs to be some clarification:

• We left from school last Friday headed north.  The route we took through Texas, you might have thought we were headed to Choctaw Casino, but we were merely passing through.  We were making our way to Fayetteville, AR to visit Haley's best friend who just recently moved there.  Our drive was rather uneventful, we arrived safely, and we proceeded to spend the next couple of days sightseeing, hiking in the Devil's Den, and playing Settlers of Catan (our favorite board game).  On Monday, we refueled the car and headed off south.  We weren't headed home though.
• Haley got me a brand new tent for my wedding present and we'd been looking for a reason to test it out.  We decided to go camping on the way home from Arkansas and had made reservations at Caddo Lake State Park in Northeast Texas.  Our plan was to stay there for two nights and depart on Wednesday, but little did we know the disaster that awaited.  We went to bed Monday night with a slight chill in the air...we awoke at three in the morning to an arctic chill unlike any we'd ever seen.  We froze our tails off (as in shivering and huddling for warmth) until daybreak when we cooked a hasty breakfast, packed up camp, and headed to Haley's parent's house a day early.
• We arrived to a surprised (but ecstatic) mother-in-law.  We spent the next two days on a whirlwind tour of Tyler and Henderson, TX's furniture stores.  Oddly enough, furniture prices are much more reasonable in small town east Texas compared to Dallas.  We outfitted our entire house (that we close on at the end of the month) for less than I thought we'd spend on a couch.  

Thursday we returned home to the same apartment we'd left less than a week earlier, but we were changed people.  I realize this doesn't seem this odd to you as it does to me, but it was a Spring Break we'll never forget (for good and bad reasons).

Cold as a winter's morning...

If there's one word that can sum up the last week and a half in north Texas, it's 'ice.'  In the past two weeks, school has been cancelled five days.  I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just the way things go in Texas.  It's just crazy to me that yesterday the high was in the single digits and tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the fifties!  

All that being said, I'm ready for the weather to start warming up.  I'm a big fan of spring time when it's cool enough that I'm not sweating at all times, but it's warm enough that I can feel comfortable wearing short sleeve shirts and shorts.  This also means that track season is about to start in the coaching world.  Endless days of offseason and after school track practice followed by a month of nothing before spring football.  I love football as much as an other of the coaches in the district, but I'm looking forward to the down time that is track season.

Too much time?

I've lived in the Dallas area for the vast majority of my life and never have I seen so much snow and ice in my life.  This is the third day in a row that most of the school districts in the area are completely closed for the day.  Because Coppell ISD is one of these, I've had a lot of time to sit on the couch and think about the world for way too long, and here are some thoughts, ideas, and things I've gotten done these past few days:

1. Time off shows how much you love something.  When you read any number of social networking sites, you can see which teachers and students really do love school.  I can't count how many people keep talking about how much they miss school and really wish the weather would clear up quicker.  There are also a fair number of people spouting how much they are happy there isn't any school and how they wish the snow and ice would stay for a long time.  It's just funny to me how an abundance of time will show you people's true feelings about life.
2. The irony of this blog.  This blog, in case you haven't noticed already, is called "The Horner House".  If you don't know Haley and me, we don't currently own a "home"...we rent an apartment. We took steps during the break to move from apartment to home living.  We've been waiting for approval from the seller's bank to move forward and that came during the past couple of days.  Hopefully the rest of the home buying process will move along as quickly.
3. Bills, bills, bills.  I hate paying the bills.  I really hate the fact that after a long day at work I have to come home and calculate out how much I owe some company for the amenities of living.  We've done a good job of limiting our spending, but it's a pain that will never really go away.  I've taken a little bit of time to get current on some of our bigger bills and make sure we're budgeting for them.  The best part is that there's no headache!
4. I'm not a tech-savvy as I like to think I am.  One of the major uses of my time this week has been discovering new websites and new blogs to read about.  There are some people on this earth that are way more knowledgeable about technology and the internet.  I've sat at their feet the past few days and have come up with a few minor changes that I'm making to make my life a little bit easier on the whole.  

That's how I've spent my last few days at home, trapped by the snow.  It may sound boring, but this list combined with good programming on cable TV has made this enjoyable as can be.

2 Days...No School!

Today has been a lot of firsts for the Horners.  We both were notified at 4:45 AM that we didn't have school today.  That was a blessing, since we have both been feeling somewhat overworked the past weeks (since we got back from Christmas break).  We slept in, watched endless weather reports, and cleaned up the apartment in the morning and then my dad came and picked us up and took us back to their house.  We would have driven ourselves except neither Haley or I have a four wheel drive car and the roads were solid ice.  The rest of the day was spent lounging, watching TV, and cooking.  Haley and I baked a cake we saw made on TV actually, so it was a lot of fun.  The best part of it all is that at about 5:30 PM we were told that school was cancelled for tomorrow as well!  I know I'm going to hate giving up future snow days, but I'm glad right now.