Alex and Becca's Reception

div>Alex and Becca had a small family wedding over the summer. Their parents threw them a wedding reception yesterday afternoon at the Gwinnett Historic Courthouse in Lawrenceville. It was absolutely beautiful!!!! I had the honor of photographing the event for them! I was very pleased with how well the pictures turned out! I took over 650 pictures, so narrowing them down to my favorite few is a very hard task!!! Here they are!!

Labor Day Weekend

For the past few years we have always had our "Family Campout" over Labor Day weekend and have sweated to death!!! Everyone was so busy this year, that no one had the time to plan it this year. So of course the weather was ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL and FALL LIKE! Early in the week, Matt asked me what our plans were since we weren't camping. I told him that we were going to do absolutely nothing Saturday and Sunday, then enjoy a family cookout on Monday. He suggested that we take a drive to Helen since he had never been there before. Saturday morning we headed to Helen and had a great time! Then we headed home to watch the DAWGS play. Today, we had a cookout with my mom's side of the family at Henderson Falls Park in Toccoa. We had a great holiday weekend! I hope you and your family did as well!

Of course we had to check out the Christmas Cottage in Helen!

Lunch at Cafe International on the River....I experienced my first Ruben Sandwich EVER!

SOOO YUMMY!

Where's Kamden??

So much has been going on....

The Dorminy house has been INCREDIBLY busy this past month! It always seems like fall is the busiest time of the year for us and this year has been no different. I started back to school 4 weeks ago! Hard to believe that this week is our "mid-term"!!!! It is crazy how fast time goes by! Matt is still enjoying his training down at the Fire Academy. He is counting down the days until graduation though (there is 40 something left right now)! He has sustained a few injuries these past few weeks from the intense training. I am mad at myself for not taking a picture on his first injury, but it is almost healed now. Their recruit class was "working" the training course for a new group of people that were trying to get hired. He was standing on the 4th floor at the station where the hopeful recruits had to pull a rope that had 70 pounds of fire hose tied to it. Matt's job was to slowly lower the rope and hose back down to the ground once they pulled it up. There was a guy from Matt's class standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting to catch the rope and set it back up. One of the people decided to just quit and let the rope and hose fall back to the ground. Matt knew that someone was standing below it and that he had to stop it before it hit them. He grabbed the rope, which wrapped around his wrist (just above his glove). He said that he knew it was a bad rope burn when he saw smoke coming off of his arm. The guy from his class that was standing with him said he could smell the flesh burning! NASTY!!! He will have a very nice scar from that injury! I have been incredibly busy at Sugar Hill as well as with my graduate class. As I said in my earlier post, I go to class in Tennessee 1 Saturday a month for the next year. This month, my homework was to read 3 1/2 books! I have been spending a lot of my evenings with my nose stuck inside a book!!! In other exciting news......I was voted Sugar Hill Elementary's Teacher of The Year!! The announced it last Friday morning at our staff breakfast. I was so excited and honored!! I could not do my job without all of the wonderful regular education teachers that I do inclusion with, so they are the ones that deserve the recognition!!!

A random picture of Harley's "Junk in the trunk"

My "Teacher of the Year" flowers!




I will try to do better and post more often! Things are just so busy that I don't have time to do anything!!!!

Don't worry!!

Don't worry, we are still alive!!! Things have been insanely busy since school started back. Matt is still excelling in the fire academy and I am trying to keep my head above water at school. I will update with a better post soon!

I hate to be a "Debbie Downer"

I really hate to be a "Debbie Downer" but ......summer officially ends this week!! I can't believe how fast it flew by once again. I am sad that we didn't get to see the ocean this summer, but once Matt gets out of the Fire Academy, we will be planning a vacation FOR SURE!!! The 2010-2011 school year going to be a super busy one for me!!

I have started back to school to work on my Educational Specialist (EdS) degree. This is the degree that will get me one step closer to earning my Doctorate Degree. I am really hoping that I can keep the motivation to get my Doctorate.....because I really like the sound of "Dr. Dorminy!" I am enrolled at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, where I will attend classes one Saturday a month until next August. It is about a 2 hour drive, so I am going to be getting up SUPER early on class days to make it to Ducktown, TN by 7:45, but I think it will be well worth it! My degree will be in Curriculum and Instruction and is not special ed specific. I think it is going to be kind of fun to study something other than "special ed" for once!!

In the world of teaching, I am going to have 12 4th and 5th grade students in my class this school year. I am really excited to have 3 girls!! I am typically over run with boys! This is the lowest number of students that I have had in my class in several years, so I am super pumped about this too! I had 15 kids last year and 18 the year before! I have also been named a "Mentor Teacher" for the Gwinnett County Special Ed Department, which ultimately means that I have a lot more meetings to attend. I will be mentoring new teachers and helping them get their classes up and running this school year!

Between my job, going back to school, and Matt finishing up his "school" at the Fire Academy, I think it is safe to say that this year is going to FLY by as fast as the summer did!!!

Weekend in Gatlinburg

As an end of the school year gift, one of my student's gave me a weekend in a cabin in Gatlinburg. What an awesome gift!!! We took advantage of it this weekend and took some friends with us. Matt invited a group of people from the fire department, but only 3 of them ended up being able to come. We didn't make it in to Gatlinburg until around 9:30 Friday night, so we just hung out at the cabin and had some really good laughs! Saturday morning we got up and headed out to eat some breakfast. If you have ever been to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, you know that there is not a shortage of "Pancake Houses" up there. We decided on Log Cabin Pancake House for breakfast and were not disappointed! We had made plans to go to an indoor waterpark during the day Saturday. So after breakfast, we headed back to the cabin to get our bathing suits. When we pulled up to the indoor waterpark, we realized that it was geared towards the "under 10" age group and that Reese (the baby) was about the only one of us that would have enjoyed it. We called another park, but their waterpark was only for guests at their resort, so we asked around and ended up at the outdoor waterpark at Dollywood! It cost us an arm and a leg to get in, but we had a great time! After the waterpark, we showered and headed out to a Japanese Hibachi Steakhouse for dinner. Newton and Crystal had spotted a "Firefigther" putt-putt course in Pigeon Forge on their way to the cabin on Friday night, so we headed there to play after our Japanese dinner. The course was a little childish, so we changed our plans and went to WonderWorks. It reminded me a lot of Sci-Trek that used to be in Atlanta. There were a lot of science related exhibits and many other things that you may "wonder" about. It was very cool, but again, cost a pretty penny to get in! We had a great trip and I will DEFINITELY be going back to Gatlinburg again!

At the Waterpark!

The Boys....Brian, Matt, Scott, and Drew

They are NEVER serious!

The boys decided to change Scotts nickname to "Photogenic Scottie" Like I said, NEVER SERIOUS! (and yes, they really do match!)



Me and Matt

Part of the girls...me and Crystal. Stacey was busy with Reese.

Poor Reese, with all of those stinky boys! What a cutie she is though!

The Edwards Family

The "Backseat Boys".....okay, I know that was lame, but it made me laugh!

This was outside of the Firehouse Putt-Putt course. Of course, they wanted to get their picture made in the firetruck!

Outside of WONDERWORKS

No, I did not have my camera upside down. The building is upside down. I am still trying to figure out why it is upside down, but it was pretty cool!

Matt and Bates (Drew) racing to the top of the rock wall.

STRIKE!

On the MOON!

Matt's first flight into outer space!

In one section of WONDERWORKS, there were all of these screens that transfer your image into different things on the screen. Here are Crystal and Brian getting down!

The weekend fun wiped the youngster out!!