Goodbye Summer...Hello Teaching!

The summer flew by! A lot of good memories were made though. I traveled to Colorado, Washington, and Texas.

My favorite memories of the summer

1. My great Aunt's 80th surprise birthday party

2. Backpacking with my dad and James

3. Stina's Miss Colorado Pageant

4. Hiking in Seattle with family

School started up again this week. It is my second year teaching 3rd grade at this school. I'm really enjoying it. My kids are great. I've only had three days with them, and I know it's the honey-moon phase, but I have a feeling it's going to be a great year.

"I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High."

-Psalm 9:2-

DMB!

I went to my first DMB concert this week. I never used to listen to DMB but it's James' favorite band and he got me listening. I must say that they are AMAZING musicians! The sax solos are pretty much my favorite. If you've never listened to Dave Matthews you should give him a try and let me know what you think.

Raindrops Are Falling On My Head!

My family and I went to Seattle this past weekend, and we had a grand time.

My Aunt Chrissie came out from California. She's going to have a baby boy in October :)

My Grandma Sarah came from Montana.

We got to visit with my cousin Desi and her daughter Bella. They live in Washington.

And, we got to meet Princess Leia the suckling cat. My Aunt and Uncle in Washington raise a type of wild cat. This is one of the cats that gets to live inside the house. Leia's mom bit her ears off when she was little so she has nubs in the place of ears. They look a bit like Princess Leia buns. Leia Loves to suck on peoples hands. She's kinda weird.

Lexy came with our family. Well, she practically is family now. Brian and her will be married next June. I'm excited to have a sister-in-law!

It was a good little trip. The only thing that could have made it better would have been having James there.

Ash the Pash

I met Ashley during Spanish class in high-school. We had so much fun in that class! It was in that class that Ashley gave me the nickname "Burrito." We only lived a block away from each other but we hardly spent time together outside of Spanish class. It wasn't until college that we really started hanging out. I have many enjoyable memories with my buddy Ash. She's moving to California at the end of this week. I'm super excited for her, but I'm sad she won't be here anymore. I guess that gives me an excuse to visit Cali.

We love playing games

taking pictures wherever we go

and being silly

We will miss you Ashley!

A is for Adventure

Boy did I go on an adventure this weekend! My dad invited James and me to go backpacking with him on Saturday. James and I showed up at his house as planned on Saturday afternoon. I had my tent, sleeping bag, a sweatshirt, and the clothes on my back. I've been backpacking before but apparently wasn't thinking straight. I forgot to bring long pants and forgot to tell James to bring warmer clothes! Ooops! We ended up borrowing from my dad. We finally finished packing and then drove up to the Uintah mountains.

My dad wanted to take us to this beautiful lake that his friend had hiked to. Since my dad had never been to the lake we were kind of going off of his friend's directions. We followed a trail for a while until we came to this sheer mountain of rocks! The motto of our trip soon became, "I wonder if it curves." We needed to get up and over somehow. So, we started climbing up the rocks hoping it would turn at the top and there would be a way over. I made it the farthest up and realized it was a horrible idea to keep climbing. By this time we were a long ways up. I was kind of paralyzed. James took off his pack and graciously helped me down. It took a lot of him saying, "Just move a little to your right. It'll be okay. You can do this" before I had enough courage to budge from the rock I was gripping. We eventually made it down the mountain and back to our car. It was dark by this point so we drove to a car camping site and stayed the night.

It was beautiful! The trip definitely didn't turn out the way we had expected it to, but I'm glad it happened the way it did. I had to put a lot of trust in James to help me down that mountain, and it felt good knowing I could trust him. He even took beatings from some rocks to get me down safely. All in all, it was a great adventure full of memory making moments. And the scenery was breath-taking!