Murphy Christmas Party

This picture was taken in the barn at the second annual Murphy Christmas party.

Merry and Bright

This picture was used for our Christmas card this year!

Christmas 2011

This picture was taken at Grandmama's house on Christmas night.

Christmas Eve

These two pictures were taken on Christmas Eve at the Rorebecks house! I ate blue cheese salad, turkey tetrazinni, apricot cobbler, and Kentucky Derby pie :) DELICIOUS!!!

Christmas Eve Service

We passed out programs and candles for the Christmas Eve service at First Pres.

Ice Skating

We took the Middle School ice skating downtown in Curtis Hixon Park for the last HUB of 2011. Even though we had some bumps and bruises, it was a lot of fun!

Murphys 2011

All the Murphys gathered at Andrew and Lindsey's house this past summer. This was Mom and Dad's Christmas card picture this year.

First Semester Concert Band Performance 2011

The concert band performed last week with five songs on instruments, and five songs on drums. Here is the set list: 1."Four Chords" 2."Twinkle, Twinkle" 3."Jingle Bells" 4."Jolly Old St. Nick" 5."Ode to Joy" 6."Drumbeats 8" 7."Go Saints" 8."Hey Song" 9."We are the Drumline" 10."Battle"

Go Bucs!

The Dunkels let the HUB guys use their box at the Bucs game against the Panthers. The Bucs played terrible, but the box was awesome! We ate tons of food, and I gave a talk at halftime about Tim Tebow. Tebow says that Christ is the most important thing in his life, and he compares it to a marriage. You don't just tell your wife you love her only on your wedding day. You take every opportunity to tell her, and that is the same way he views his relationship with Christ. I like that, and I think that's a very good analogy.

Old Shoes

Old shoes tell their own story.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Nashville this past week. Isaiah was able to say "Uncle Matt" and "Aunt McWane"! Isaiah was very active, and Evie was scooting on the ground and being held most of the time. We took a trip to the ER on Black Friday to get McLean's foot checked out, but everything was okay. Between that and the kids staying up most of the night, it was a very low key week, and we did not get out of the house much. This Thanksgiving, I'm just thankful for everyone being healthy.

Spirit Day!

Drumline Assembly Nov. 4th

Peter Pan

McLean and I went to see Peter Pan at the Tampa Performing Arts Theater on Friday. I won the tickets from St. Mary's so we got to go for free! McLean has a boot on her right foot, and she goes in this Thursday to get her left foot operated. Double boot here we come!

Website for Grad School

Here is a website that I created for an assignment in Grad School.

http://chinesemexicanculturesinamerica.weebly.com/

Are YOU a Mathematician?

Happy 2nd Anniversary!

Two years! We took this picture right before we went out to dinner at Bella's. I ordered veal, and McLean had a shrimp and scallop pasta. We each tried a bite of our wedding cake, but we decided to throw it away. Two years is a long time for a cake in the freezer. Even though we had to work on our anniversary, it was still special!

Charleston

McLean and I went to Charleston, South Carolina last weekend for Sally and Taylor's wedding, and these are some pictures that I took. This was my attempt at taking an "artsy" shot with McLean's camera. It usually doesn't focus very well, but I thought this one looked pretty cool!

Here we are on King Street. There were tons of cool shops, and the weather was perfect this day!

I liked this one too! Everything was old and antique looking in Charleston. I thought this gate probably had a lot of history to it.



Prime Number Song

My 6th grade math class performed this song on the first 14 prime numbers!

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

I wrote a simple two-part arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for concert band on Tuesday. The saxophones played the melody, and the clarinets played the harmony. Somehow everyone was in tune and playing all the right notes. At the end, I told them all to stand up and relish that moment for a second. It was the best we had ever sounded! :) 

Rock the Universe 2011

 This is the picture of the whole group at Rock the Universe 2011 in Orlando, Florida. We went to Universal Studios on Friday and Islands of Adventure on Saturday. We rode the Mummy, Jaws, Simpsons, E.T., Shrek 4D, Dueling Dragons, Spiderman, Log Flume, the Hulk, and the Harry Potter ride, which was the best roller coaster I have ever been on!!!

 This is a picture of my group posing with Wolverine. Scotty was wearing his Furman University shirt proudly, and everybody else is holding their wands that they bought in Harry Potter land. The butter beer was pretty good stuff, actually! Very sweet, and very filling.

This is a picture of both my group and McLean's group. We hung out all day together at Islands of Adventure. That night we got to see Third Day and Casting Crowns play live. The middle schoolers did not care much for the music, but I did get to hear Third Day play "God of Wonders" and Casting Crowns play "I Can Only Imagine" and "Who Am I"! The whole weekend was a blast!!

High School LDOS Party 2011

This picture was taken at the end of Davis Island right after we finished playing "Produce Baseball"! Patrick Wright is about to dump a liquid ice pop on McLean's head. This was a great way to end the summer!

Middle School LDOS Party 2011

This picture was taken at the end of the craziest scavenger hunt ever. My group of boys are in the back holding up the dead palm branch that should have represented our victory. We were somehow beaten by the group of girls next to us holding up the large tree branch.

The Beach

We took this picture in front of Frenchy's Rockaway Grill during our trip to the beach this summer. One of our favorite parts of going on any vacation is always planning out each day where we are going to eat. Below are the four other restaurants that we went to on this trip. I guess you could say, WE LOVE FOOD!!! :)

The Beach.egg on Aviary.

Memphis

Memphis.egg on Aviary.

 We took this picture standing on Beale Street in downtown Memphis. We had to "walk with our feet ten feet off of Beale" :) Behind us is B.B. King Blues Cafe where live musicians play jazz all the time. Even though we look happy in the picture, we were kind of scared walking down Beale Street because there were stray dogs and some rough looking people staring at us. I guess the Vineyard Vines polo probably didn't help the situation.

Frontier Ranch

The first day our cabin went rappelling down this cliff. You can barely see the wooden structure on the edge of the mountain, but its right in the center of this picture. We rappelled off the left side of the cliff, and it was one of the craziest things I've ever done!

This is my cabin from top left to right: Grant Fraley, Alex DiGiore, Skylar Welch, Michael Murray, Nick Brandes, Blake Munch, Tucker Curtis, Avram Rago, Me, Watson Ransom, Charlie Ragsdale, and BJ Foster.

This picture of McLean and me was taken right before the volleyball tournament. Yes, that is area code 813 sharpied on my tshirt.

On "Western Night," McLean and I both got pied in the face by our cabins. There was also square dancing and line dancing later on that evening, which was a lot of fun.

This picture was taken of us on the last night of camp. Everyone gets dressed up for the final dinner. McLean was rockin' the straight hair, and I was getting a pretty good beard that I'd been working on the whole week.

High School Summer Nights 2011

This was the night we went "Tacky Bowling"! The four of us all came in Bucs attire, so we got a picture together.

 Watson, Avram, Henry, and I bowled as a group in the same lane. Let's just say our scores weren't the greatest.

Middle School Summer Nights

This is the first Summer Night. We played produce baseball, but it turned into an all out food fight. I got the last laugh though when I dumped this ice cooler on everyone at the end.








 This was the group that went bowling!

We took another group to Boing! This is a huge warehouse that is covered with trampolines. The area behind us is the dodgeball court.

July 4th...26!!!

McLean and I both wore the same outfit for July 4th. I turned 26 this year! Man, that sounds old...I guess you can go ahead and say I'm 30 now :)

Happy Father's Day!

Thanks for always being there, Dad. I hope this video let's you know how special you are.
love,
Matt

Southwind 2011

"I see, you see, we all seaHORSES!!!" This was the chant of our cabin all week at Southwind. This picture on the right was taken of our cabin on Pirate night. From left to right: Sam, Mark, Paul, me, Max, Casey, Hinton, Peter, Tripp, David, Alex, JW, Freddy, and Chris. We had such an awesome cabin, and we literally sang songs the whole week. It all started on the first night when we realized everyone enjoyed singing. By the end of the week, we had all lost our voices because we had sung so much. Our favorite song was definitely "Lean on Me."

This picture was taken of McLean and I on Pirate/Princess night. Paul is definitely creeping in the back of the picture.

Cartoon Camp

  I had 15 kids participate in my Cartoon Camp this week! It's the first time I have ever tried to teach cartoon drawing, and it was a blast! It made me remember Coach Gentry and when I was first learning how to draw cartoons back in 1995 (I was 10 years old). Here is what we covered. 

Monday: History of Disney and How to Draw People

Tuesday: History of Warner Brothers and How to Draw Animals

Wednesday: History of Hannah Barbera and How to Draw Letters

Thursday: History of Cartoon Network and How to Draw Comic Strips

Friday: History of Nickolodeon and Final Project

Summer is Here!

 This is a picture I took at the beach on Memorial Day weekend! It was an awesome sunset and a perfect way to kick off the summer!!

This is a good picture of the six of us.

Goodbye LE Class

This was my very first Language Enrichment class to teach at St. Mary's. I have a special connection with this group because I got to teach them every day for the last 2 years. Besides having a billion inside jokes, we all got to know each other pretty well during our time together, and I know that I am going to miss them a lot next year. Good luck LE class!!!

First House

This is the house my family lived in for the first 10 years of my life. I have several great memories in this house, but here are some that always come back to me. Selling lemonade and cartoons on the front of our driveway, pushing Mike in the ditch in our front yard, riding bikes around the house, Mike falling off his skateboard head first and getting stitches, playing basketball in the backyard, playing hockey in the garage, building forts and climbing the pine trees in the back yard, running around in the common ground behind our yard, mowing the common groung for Mr. Duke's crouquet tournaments, jumping on the neighbors' trampolines, Samson getting run over in front of our house, Samson getting blown up by a firework's surprise ending in the backyard, Samson eating asbestos above the garage, playing double shot, Sega, pillow fights, and the sheet game down the stairs in the playroom, sitting around the dinner table in the kitchen at every meal, lying in the hallway by the washer and dryer for days when I had migraines from diving in the neighborhood pool, Dad watching countless hours of sports in the living room sitting on the pink chair, the brick fire place where we hung our stockings for Christmas, the old yellow out-of-tune piano in the corner, the tiny room that Mike and I shared our bunk beds(I always slept on the bottom bunk, and he always slept on the top bunk), sports posters on the wall, hiding a Halloween skeleton in the closet so Mom wouldn't find it, drawing cartoons on my cherry wood art desk in the corner behind the door, staying up late talking to Mike, going to sleep on the floor in Mom and Dad's room when we were scared or couldn't fall asleep, the night light that always stayed on in the bathroom in the hallway, fighting over use of the sink, toilet, and shower, always being the last one to take a shower in the morning and having no hot water, the yellow throw-up basin under the sink, and how much bigger Dave and Andrew's room always seemed.

The Van

Being in a family of 6, the van played an integral role in our family. I have many memories driving to school, the grocery store, and long beach trips in the van. Dave always got the best seat right by the broken sliding door which he slammed too hard, Mike got the seat right next to him because he would get car sick in the back seat. Andrew and I were the only ones who could stomach being in the back, but we never got any air back there! I remember pleading with Dave to roll the wheel up on the air conditioner to give us some air, but he would only do it for like 5 seconds. I also remember Dave leaning the middle seat back to crush our legs at random times, and he always thought it was so funny. Dad would ALWAYS drive, and mom always had shotgun. This picture of the red Astro van looks like the first van we had when we were living in the house Cottonwood.


This the first vehicle that I learned to drive. It had several nicknames like the Bean, the Space Ship, and the Death Mobile because it could accelerate so fast. In fact, it was even used by criminals because it provided such a quick getaway! Our family bought it brand new in 1993 about the time that Rena, our boysitter started taking care of us. She was always so scared that she was going to wreck it, and we were too as she got older and her driving got worse. Somehow, this van survived a long time in our family, and this is the van that we have the most memories.

Last HS HUB Video 2010-2011

Last MS HUB Video 2010-2011

Proposal Video

This is the place where I proposed to McLean...the best decision of my life:)

Goodbye Algebra 1 Class!

This picture is of our Algebra 1 class on the last day of school. They were my very first math class to teach, and I'm going to miss them all next year. Don't forget the Quadratic Formula Song:)