Remember that One Time...

Remember that one time, when I said I was going to be a better blogger? Yeah, right. I've come to accept that I am not a good blogger, and I don't think I ever will be. But I'll keep trying. Here's the update for the past 6 months from us.

• A Dream Job: In May I got a dream job, well... a 2nd dream job. I LOVE teaching and I LOVE scrapbooking, so what's the new dream job? I work at Archiver's teaching scrapbooking classes. I love it. And on days when I'm not teaching classes, Jeff says I get paid to do my favorite thing, which is shopping at Archiver's. It's a win-win situation!

• Trip to Colorado: We started out our summer with a fun trip to Colorado to visit my family. We had a fun time hanging out and doing a bit of sightseeing. We visited Estes Park, up in the mountains. And we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, which included a drive on the highest paved road in the world, and a photo op by the Continental Divide (which is not at the highest point on the road... how confusing).

• 5k... Not 5000 Miles: At the end of last year, I decided I wanted to do something different. I have always wanted to get in better shape, but it never seems to work out for me. So I decided to start training for a 5k. I have always hated running, and I still don't enjoy it, but I did it anyway. Training went really well for the first few months, then I got my wisdom teeth out, and it all went downhill from there. I still ran the 5k, I just didn't quite meet my goal. I do want to run another one and do better. Anyone with me? Even though I still don't enjoy running, I am starting to understand the running "addiction" people get. Especially when you run a race and everyone is cheering for you at the end. It's pretty cool.

• Camping on the Oregon Coast: My family tries to get together each summer and do a camping trip. This year we went to the Oregon Coast. It was so beautiful! You just don't see those kinds of trees in Utah. We had a lot of fun going to the beach, sightseeing, relaxing, and playing games. Jeff and I also got to fly our dragon kite for the first time. Too bad I got it stuck on the roof of a restaurant. I was really bummed because it was a really cool kite that his parents gave us for Christmas one year. So I embarrassingly went into the restaurant and asked them to throw it down for me. And since they were nice about it, we got our dragon kite back! Another funny story from that trip is the incident with the raccoons. We were close by a little lake, so a few people in the group decided to get fishing licenses. After two days of fishing and not catching anything, my brother went out one last time in the early morning. To our surprise he came back with a fish! My mom was so excited to eat fresh seafood for dinner that night. We put it in a ziplock bag, in a small ice chest and left for the day. When we came back to camp later that afternoon, the fish was gone. The ice chest was open on the ground with the empty ziplock bag next to it. One raccoon paw print left on the ice chest was the only evidence of who took it. Those animals are so sneaky.

• Moving: The month of July started out uneventful, but ended with madness. We knew our lease was ending so I looked for a couple days on Craigslist for a new place to live, but I didn't find anything better than where we were living. So we got an email from our landlord about resigning a contract. The thing that surprised us is that he wanted to raise our rent... by $75 bucks! Now if the apartment was worth it, that would be one thing, but this was a basement apartment, with no dishwasher, and the tiniest bathroom known to man. It was not worth it. But "to be fair" our landlord offered to meet us half way with the price if we did the yard work. So we would be paying more rent, and doing more work, for the same apartment... hmm, doesn't seem fair to me. So we looked a little harder and found a great apartment to move into. We love our new place. It is on the top floor (no noisy people above us), it's WAY bigger (1200 sq. feet), it has a built in dishwasher (no more babysitting the portable one), and everything else that we wanted. Plus, the landlord is awesome. I think we will be here a while. (This is the only picture I have of our new place. It's just a random picture I took with my phone of Olivia in her "new favorite place." ...disregard the dirty dishes. That never really happens around here.)
  

• Trip to California: Before the summer was over, Jeff and I wanted to visit his family in California. It was a pretty relaxing trip. We went swimming in the pool, did some shopping at the outlets, and I got to go to my first SF Giants game. It was such a beautiful stadium. We had a lot of fun. Especially since we got to see a "Splash Down" home run, where the ball is hit over the right field wall into the SF Bay.

• School Days: And then the summer came to a close. I wasn't quite ready for school to start this year, but it did. I am now ending the first term if the school year, which is crazy. But I do have to admit that I love my little kiddos this year. I only have 19, which is great. But they are pretty much all good kids. I have one that likes to act out, but he has been doing SO well lately. And my kids are so awesome as a whole. They work SO quietly. I have never had a class that was so quiet. I have had people come in and say, "Is this a first grade class? It's eerie how quiet it is!" I know some of it is that I've gotten better at classroom management (This is my 5th year teaching... crazy?!), but a lot of it is just the kids. They are an awesome group, and I love them.

So I think that wraps up the update. I hope to keep up this blog better, but I make no promises. Stay tuned...