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!

Yard work

So it's been more than a month since my last post. I really need to do better and have been meaning to, but school is just really crazy right now. It's almost the end!! And the 4th grade has HUGE projects going on right now. We're doing this huge Utah program with songs and stuff. I'm over social studies and so I've been in charge of a lot of it. Not that I mind it's actually been quite fun. It's just there's always stuff to do. Plus the kids are doing county reports. And to top it off no one wants to be in school right now (including me). Summer can't come soon enough.

So my parents have turned in their mission papers. They haven't gotten anything back yet, but it shouldn't be too long.

Devin and I have taken on the yard. Growing up I was never a fan of yard work and I'd quite often choose to clean inside while everyone else cleaned outside. This year though I feel more in charge of the yard work. Devin and I have planted a garden and it's been so much fun to plan what to plant. We have zucchini, 2 different types of squash, pumpkins, green peppers, red peppers, banana peppers, purple peppers (I didn't even know these existed but the sounded good), cucumbers, corn, carrots, onions, lettuce. It's a rather large garden. I'm hoping to take some pictures once things start growing and post them. Besides the garden we have a huge backyard that Devin has to mow twice a week and lots of flower beds. If anyone would like to weed you're more than welcome to come to my house!! The flower beds aren't the top priority so they're still kind of sad looking, but the garden looks great.

Who knew yard work could actually be fun?!

Spring Break cont...

So here's what happened the rest of our trip...

Day 2:

We headed into San Fransisco to tour around the city. I had been there before, but it was still fun for me to see all the sites and Devin had never been there. Our main attraction for the day was Pier 39.

We had some of the best donuts I've ever tasted. They were really small too, which made you think that you could have a lot :) My dad kept handing me money saying, "Go get some more donuts." I think we probably could have just eaten donuts all day and been perfectly happy.

We saw quite a few sea lions who practically permanently reside at Pier 39. They are always there and they're even marked on the map.

My sister and I watching the sea lions. If you can tell, the one above and to the right of my sisters head was actually sleeping with his arm raised. We just kept joking that he was probably dreaming of being at school..."I know the answer, call on me!"

We took a ferry out into the bay. It was really windy for part of the time, but it was a lot of fun and we got some great pictures. We saw the Ghiradelli chocolate factory and Alcatraz -- more pictures of Alcatraz to come.The ferry took us out by the Golden Gate Bridge and we actually went right under it. It really is a huge landmark and is such an incredible architectural design, especially considering it was started around the Civil War time. Me, my mom, and my niece Emma -- We kept telling my mom that we were trying to take a picture, but you can tell from her face she obviously wasn't listening :)

The Rock! I've actually been on the island of Alcatraz and it's just a creepy place. In this picture you can see some of the rundown buildings. They say that that the water currents and temperature of the water made it virtually impossible to escape from. Plus they would bring in sharks as part of the guarding system too. Definitely wouldn't want to live there. Devin was the cameraman manning the video camera most of the trip. That's Alcatraz behind him. We ate lunch at a famous Boudin's Sourdough bread factory. It was really cool because you could see them making the bread at one part then go over and buy food. It was really yummy! Go San Fransisco Sourdough bread!

We walked a little bit more around Fisherman's Wharf, touring some of the sites around there. We wanted to go to the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, but the rest of the family was starting to get tired at this point. Outside the museum we saw this sign...

So we thought, "why not?" Who knows, maybe these fertility statues will give us some good luck! We decided to go into the wax museum, because that's the one my nieces wanted the most. Here are a few of the famous people we met while there...We drove around the city a little bit and went down Lombard Street -- the curviest street in the world. It's kind of funny because there's always a huge line of cars waiting to drive down the street. It's so curvy that you literally can't go more than 5 mph plus it's steep too. These pictures were from the car so they aren't the greatest and it's a little hard to tell how curvy the road really is. I can't believe people actually live on that street. We were going down the street in a suburban which was an adventure in and of itself. San Fransisco has got to be one of the hilliest (is that a word?) places in the world. Well, after driving around a little bit we ate dinner at The House of Prime Rib. The menu -- Prime Rib. If you're a vegetarian this is not the place for you. The menu literally consist of prime rib and that's it. Basically it comes down to how big a piece of prime rib you want -- small thin slice, small medium slice, medium, or extra large. Here's a link to see the menu for yourselves http://houseofprimerib.net/ Devin and I opted to split the King Henry VIII cut -- the largest portion. This might have been the most expensive restuarant I've ever been to and Devin and I figured sharing one $50 plate would be cheaper then getting two $30 -$45 plates. It was a really nice place with great food.

Well, that was day 2. I'd finish the rest of trip now, but I'm just tired at the moment -- have to finish later.

Spring Break

This was the first year in a while that I've gotten a spring break off school -- BYU doesn't have spring break. Devin and I really took advantage of it. We found a REALLY good deal on airfare and went to California!!

Here are our adventures...

Day 1: Wicked
We flew into Oakland in the early afternoon. This was actually our first flight together. Oddly enough we've taken separate flights since being married, but this was our first together. We were picked up by my oldest sister and then went to her house where we were able to relax, eat, and play with my adorable nieces. Then we headed into San Fransisco. We got to see one of my favorite plays -- WICKED!! It was awesome as usual. I almost liked it better here than in New York because the theater was smaller and we were closer to the stage. They kept saying no photography, but I snuck some pictures anyway. It was a really cool theater -- even the ceiling was very intricate.
Well, that sums up day one!