Hey Y’all,
Just wanted to post an update for anyone who might still be checking here. I have been trying to post something, but I couldn’t login. But now that I can, I will try to update here at least once a month. Here is what’s been going on:
We have been in Abilene for 6 months now. Time really flies when you have a countdown and keep busy. Our countdown is to the Boonville Beer Festival. It will probably be one of the few times we are in California. We have been keeping pretty busy though.
I finally got a job in late September. I am a school bus driver for Wylie ISD in south Abilene. Their Mascot is the Bulldogs, and their colors are purple and gold. I am only a substitute bus driver, so I am just filling in when a driver is out. But I get to ride the buses everyday. The pay isn’t the best, but it is a job. I get some field trips since this is a very sports centered state. The High School football team is currently in State Championships right now. The last game is on Saturday, so we’ll see how things go. It’s been keeping me busy, but I really don’t like the mornings. To early.. 🙂
Darrell has been busy at his job as well. He keeps being moved between different departments and the different departments are fighting over where he is suppose to go. They all want him with them. His boss has guaranteed him another raise in January, so things are definitely looking good for him.
Darrell’s evening’s are still pretty full, but so are mine. We played softball with his company team, and we won only 1 of the 7 games we played (we missed the 8th game since we were in Belize). That was fun and kept us occupied. Still trying to find some other type of exercise since there aren’t many sidewalks, and it’s not really a safe area to ride the bike around in. We’ll find something.
Yes I did mention that we were in Belize. Darrell and I headed to Belize on October 31 till November 7. We went to the little island of Caye Caulker. It was a total blast to hang out with friends and chill on an island. One of our friends got married there, so that was the main reason to go, but we tied it into a long vacation as well. The whole time there was fun, and not even Tropical Storm Ida ruined it. She made it so we didn’t do a lot of things that we would have liked to have done, but it was still a blast. (Lot’s of time spent in bars).
We also headed to Idaho for Thanksgiving. We spent the time with Darrell’s family in Sandpoint. It was so much fun. It was on the cold side, but we went prepared for snow, and there was only like 1/4” of snow on one day. (If even that much). We had fun with everyone. We spent the flight back realizing that we only spent about 14 days of November in Texas.
The funny part about getting back to Texas, was that the day after we arrived back from Idaho, we got about 2” of snow here in Abilene. It wasn’t icy, just a fluffy snow and it stuck everywhere but roadways. It made for a very cold day. It hasn’t really warmed up since we got back. The weather has been consistantly under 40 degrees. Just the other day, our high temperature happened at midnight, and our low was at 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s been really icy lately, so we are being very careful when we go out. Our stairs for our apartment froze over, so we were having to really watch our step and ice-skate down the stairs. Fun, fun!!!!
The apartment complex is working on renovations, so a lot of things have been redone. They replaced a lot of the wood, the back patio railing is fixed (now that it is to cold to really spend time out there.), the front stairs are fixed, and the patio is repaved. It was funny since I fell asleep one day, and woke up to go to work that afternoon, and they had just finished paving the front patio, so I had to call into work and let them know that I wasn’t going to make it to work. What a “dog ate my homework” kind of story. :D.
Well, it’s getting closer to the Christmas holidays, and it is very prevalent here. A good chunk of people had their Christmas decorations up around here a week before Thanksgiving. And boy are there a lot of decorations. Some are kind of overdone in my opinion. But to each their own. We have our small amount of stuff up. Just enough to make it feel like the holidays.
Darrell’s company has a huge Christmas party every year, so we are going to be going that next Friday. It is a big formal event, so I think it will be fun. It will be our first big party together here. Darrell went to a friends Halloween party on the friday before we left for Belize, but I had to work and drive the High school band to the football game in Graham. So I was gone until really early the next morning. We really miss having the dinner parties we use to and play games, chat, and hang out with glasses of wine and drinks. Ahhh. the good ol’ days!!!
Hope that everyone is doing great.
Happy Holidays!
~Darrell & Sharyn Ross