Summer fun so far...

This summer has been a special one for Devin and I. I have time off because as a teacher I get a nice summer break. He isn't taking summer classes and is looking for a job. All of this adds up to one great Summer of Fun! We realize that we won't have too many summers like this in the future and so we've been taking advantage of our time together. Here's what we've been up to...

Going up AF canyon with Mom and Dad for breakfast
Mom and I making aebleskivers


Devin and I went camping on the last minute. We were walking to a reception when we noticed it was a really beautiful evening -- with all the rain it really made a difference when it finally wasn't raining. So we decided to go camping -- that night. We hurried through the reception and got everything ready to go camping. When we got up there we realized we didn't have something very important...
Our TENT!!! We didn't let that stop us and we slept on the ground under the stars! Thankfully we were not attacked by bugs or animals.

We also didn't have a pan to heat water up for hot chocolate in the morning -- a must when camping -- so we used an aluminum bread pan instead. It worked great and the breakfast was delicious.



Another one of our summer projects was a birthday present for Mom and Dad. We organized the storage room for them. We took everything out -- What a lot of stuff!!
Then bought some more bins and put it back so it now looks like this.



Who says kiddie pools are for kids? Devin and I pulled out Mom and Dad's kiddie pool and had a great lunch by the pool. (Except the water was FREEZING)
Devin also got to be a superhero in his blue towel. Of course, he's my hero every day.


Devin played in an Ultimate tournament. He played for 5 hours straight. I ran for the first little bit then sat and watched. We both came home pretty burned and he was pretty sore.


We pulled out my brother's legos and built a lego ship. There were so many pieces we had to organize them to find them easier.
Plus, we didn't have the instructions so we looked them up using the itouch.
After several days of working on the ship here's the finished project...
The cannons were especially fun since they could actually shoot cannon balls. We spent one evening just shooting each other with the cannons.
Well, it definitely has been a blast so far and we are excited for the other fun things we have planned this summer!

One of my favorite places

I feel so lucky that I live in one of my favorite places. I really enjoy living in Utah and think that it is simply gorgeous. Utah has so much to offer and there's so many diverse landscapes. One of my absolute favorite places in Utah happens to be where I live -- Alpine, UT. Yes, Alpine gets a bad rep. for having stuck up rich people. But there are also really great people living in a beautiful city. Last Sunday Devin and I had his family over for dinner and then we took them to a favorite spot of mine in Alpine -- Lambert Park. It's this state park that covers much of Alpine, just preserving the land and having lots of fun hiking and walking trails. There's this old pioneer home (okay only half the home remains) and the women who lived there planted all these poppies. Well over the years the poppies have spread and continue to grow year after year. My family always goes to the poppies every year so I thought I'd share that tradition with Devin's family. It's been rainy so much lately it was hard to find a time to go, we were finally able to go on Sunday. Here are some of the pictures I took. You can see for yourself why I love Alpine so much.

New Arrivals

Well, we have some new arrivals...unfortunately it isn't a baby. Our new arrivals are some "new" furniture and a painting. Thanks to Alan we were able to redo our whole living room. He didn't have the space to store his nice couch, coffee table, and entertainment center and Devin and I were only too willing to provide our space. Yes we will have to give it up once he finds his own place, but in the meantime it's nice to have some matching furniture. So now here's our living room...
The painting is ours. We bought it from some art students from Israel who were going door to door selling their art. We actually got a great price for it. It's a hand painted original oil painting. The picture of it just doesn't do it justice. It's a huge and gorgeous painting. I especially love the frame -- which we also got a great deal on. It's so nice to have some good art for our house.

It's OVER!

I survived my first year of teaching!!! The past few weeks have been extremely crazy as I've tried to reign my kids in. They were completely nuts and out of control. Overall though the year has been a great one. It could have been so much worse. My class was a pretty hard class with a lot of drama. We had a faculty party where they gave funny awards. Mine was a Bratz coloring book and a "Drama Queen" trophy (actually a diving trophy bought at DI and then "Drama Queen" taped over it -- classic). I got this award because of how bratty and rude some of my students were to each other. I swear no matter how hard I tried a few of them could just not get along and be nice to each other. Hardly a day went by where there wasn't arguing between these students at recess or sometime. If I had to choose just one thing to say I've learned from teaching it would be the type of parent I want (and don't want) to be. I realize so much more how the influence of parents have on all aspects of a child's life. I will not spoil my children and let them get away with anything -- they turn out to be brats. I will make my children learn how to work. As we were doing our major cleaning, I assigned everyone a job so they were all busy and there were even extra jobs so that when they were done they wouldn't just sit around doing nothing. Well one student (my "drama" maniac) didn't really do anything on his job then continued to do nothing. So I assigned him to a different job where he would complain then walk over to where he should be and continue to not work. Finally I assigned him to throughouly clean out the garbage can. The more he whined the more I told him it had to be spotless. The bell rang before he had totally finished. He spent almost a full hour and a half complaining and whining instead of working. Thank you mom and dad for teaching me how to work!

Besides about 3-4 students I LOVED my class and they were so great! We've had so many fun times over this past year.

For now, I'm just glad to relax and not think about school...until August.

HOORAY FOR SUMMER!