All in one week!

Well, it's been so long since I posted that school has started again. I am still teaching 4th grade at Providence Hall and have a really good class this year.
This week has been a really crazy one. Last Sunday the 19th a fire was started in the foothills behind my school. It was started by the National Guard doing a Machine Gun drill. Well, being the windy place that Herriman is the wind quickly picked up and soon the whole mountain was up in flames. School was closed on Monday the 20th as our school was then in the "evacuation zone." I had several students that were evacuated from their homes on Sunday night. Tuesday we were able to go back to school because the fire had moved the opposite direction of the school and the school was no longer in any danger. However, other areas of the evacuation were not lifted until Wednesday afternoon. I am very thankful to the firefighters and officials who helped to save our school and hundreds of homes. Three homes did burn down, but with the wind it could have been much worse. There are pictures on some news websites of the fire burning right up to people's lawns. *Note to self: Having a lawn and finished yard is a good fire preventer.



Here's a link to the story if anyone missed it wants to see.

Well, if that wasn't enough for a crazy week. Thursday and Friday added to the fun. We found out that our school won a KSL summer reading challenge. Their prize? A visit from the Chopper 5 helicopter and a pizza party. We told the students it was a fire drill and then the helicopter landed when we were all outside. The kids went crazy!! All the students got to see the helicopter and we had a class picture taken by it. News crews were there to report the story.

Ok so now to finish this crazy week was Friday. Several of the classes at my school had written thank you notes to the firefighters. Well, we decided to give them an extra big thank you. The principal asked all the classes to write thank you notes and each grade made a big thank you sign. Then we all went outside with our flags and lined the street entrance to our school. When the fire truck, ambulance, and police car from the Unified Fire Authority arrived we gave them a heroes welcome. Once again there were news crews on the spot and the kids went crazy. As several news reports would say it sounded as if Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber had arrived.

Wow! My school was on the news three times in one week! It was also my birthday on Wednesday -- I'll have to write about our fun at the circus. It was definitely a busy week and I'm so grateful for the weekend!

Making a house a home

Well, after a few weeks of moving things we're starting to finally feel like we're at home. We painted our living room and kitchen and Devin surprised me with a few really great surprises. I made him promise that it would be my birthday present because he bought me so many new things. In order to not make this post too long I'll just focus on the painting of our living room and kitchen right now.

Before Painting our living room:


Before painting our kitchen:


During the prep and painting:
Thanks to everyone who helped with prep (which takes forever) and helped with the painting.


After painting the kitchen and putting down the primer for the accent wall we were sad to realize our color was way too orange. We ended up running to Wal-mart for a different color.

Here's the finished product:

Movin' out

We've moved!! Devin and I currently now live in Orem. My parents got back from their mission and so right before we found a great 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment. One plus that we both really like is the they let us paint. I'll have to put up pictures because I love the color!!! We're still trying to get everything settled and find a place for everything. We're finding that after living in my parent's place that has so much storage to a 2 bedroom place is hard to find spots for everything. Well that's a quick update from us since I haven't blogged in such a long time.

We are still alive and well :)

Busy with FUN!

I haven't posted in a while. The reason is...it's summer and our summers are busy. We sleep in really late and hang out all day together doing whatever we want-- Fabulous right!!??!! I know...you're all jealous.

Here's what we've been up to for the month of June (just to make you more jealous):
~June 10th -- play two Ultimate games until 9pm then drive through the night to California. Driving through the night wasn't planned, but it didn't seem to make much sense to pay for a hotel for only a few hours.
~June 11th -15th -- PLAY in California with my sister Jen and her family. The purpose for the trip was my nieces graduation. It really makes you feel old to have a niece graduating from high school. We went out to lunch and dinner, went shopping, went to the movies, went into San Francisco, went to Santa Cruz beach and boardwalk where we rode all sorts of roller coasters -- even ones that made Devin scared and rode the coolest carousel where you try to toss these rings into a clown's mouth (it's sounds weird, but it made the ride so much more fun then just going in circles), over all VERY fun!
~June 16th - 18th -- Drive to Lake Tahoe to play with my other sister Julie and her family. We decided to stay an extra day because, hey...we didn't have anything pressing to get back to...like I said it's summer and we're free people in the summer. We stayed with them in a really nice Marriott hotel and swam, played on the beach (Lake Tahoe has the worst beach ever ... VERY coarse sand, so much so that it hurts your feet, okay so it's not sand it's tiny rocks!), rented paddle boats, watched soccer, and had lots of fun!
~June 19th -- Played in an Ultimate tournament from 8 am until 4 pm. Wow that was a long day and a lot of frisbee.
~June 24th - 26th -- Went boating with the family then left (again late at night about 10pm) to go to Cedar City for another Ultimate tournament. This was the Utah Summer Games tournament and Devin was part of the BYU team. They had 3 teams and each team did fairly well. This was a two day tournament so Devin was extremely tired as we drove home late Saturday. Devin's team didn't win the tournament, but they felt that way after having come back from being down 8-4 at half to win 15-9 against "Bowser" (a U of U team that we did not like -- let's just say some of their players are not the nicest people).

Next up to complete the month of June ... a week long trip to Lake Powell! June 28th -- July 3rd we will be relaxing in beautiful Lake Powell on a houseboat with Ben and Charlotte and his family.

Whew! What a busy month of June ... you can all be jealous now.

I Love Summer!

To start our Summer off Devin and I went on a little vacation over Memorial Weekend. Okay so it wasn't exactly summer yet, but my school schedule was a little crazy. I had Thursday the 27th, Friday the 28th, and Monday the 31st off of work and then had to go back to school after that until the 4th. Weird, I know. We went to Capitol Reef with my friend Allison (who I work with) and her husband and another couple that Allison knew. It was so much fun. Below are some of the many pictures that we took.

Despite looking a little silly and the fact that it kind of looks like I have a hot dog sticking out of my head, the sunset was gorgeous.

Camping in the desert does not offer much shade...so we created our own!
Devin and I looking at petroglyphs. The cliff wall behind us is where they are. The next picture shows them close up. It was pretty cool. Especially since I teach all about them and the Fremont Indians who made. Needless to say I took several pictures to show my class next year.




We found G.I. Joe looking at the petroglyphs too. He joined us on some of our adventures.

One of the hikes we did was the Grand Wash. This is the gang that hiked. Allison's husband is the only one from the group not here because he stayed at the camp to watch Gary and Alecia's dog.

Devin and I loved climbing up the rocks into all the little holes.



G.I. Joe had some close encounters with a rock face. He eventually made it out of the mouth to continue the hike with us.

Devin found some pretty flowers and put them in my hair. I was amazed at all the beautiful flowers everywhere. Nature sure is goregeous.
Once again in some holes.

I found a hole that was pretty high up, but I was determined to climb to it. Devin helped me by boosting me.

He had to get some help from Gary to shove me in the rest of the way.

But I finally made it up!


Getting down was a little bit trickier and I basically slid down the rock. Sorry if the picture below offends anyone, but Devin had to help me down somehow. At least I didn't put the picture up where both hands are on my bum.

The three girls of the group!

After hiking everyone was pretty tired (mainly from just being in the sun so long -- it wasn't a difficult hike), everyone that is besides Devin.

Even G.I. Joe had to sit and take a little break.

We visited the Fruita School house. The chalk board is actually painted canvas -- very interesting.
Two school teachers of course had to get a picture in front of the one room schoolhouse.

Another hike that just Devin and I and Allison did was the hike to Chimney Rock -- pictured in the background.

The three of us also hiked to Hickman Natural Bridge.


Devin saw a group of guys hiking along at the top of the bridge and of course he had to do it too. He's the tiny speck on the left boulder. I wouldn't let him go any farther than that along the top because I watched as this group of guys had to make a human chain to get up that boulder. Being by himself that was out of the question.


Gary and Alecia brought some 22s and we drove out to the middle of nowhere and I went shooting for the very first time.



I was actually a pretty good shot. My first shot was a peach can and then I shot it some more just because I could.

Poor little peach can got obliterated! I was a pretty good shot and caught on fairly fast. I hit the peach can on my second try!
Overall it was a very fun trip! This summer is going to be filled with all sorts of fun adventures. Our next vacation is this Thursday to California -- Hooray for Summer!