Road Trip?

My life has been a little hectic lately. Math tutoring, piano lessons, voice lessons (for me--I'm not teaching them), Girls Camp (this week!), the Wasatch Back, Youth Conference, two family reunions, two college math classes (I have to take those to renew my teaching license), and trying to plan for teaching next year. I'm supposed to be running the St. George Marathon in October also, but I'm falling sadly behind in my training. Blah.

With all this...shall we call it resposibility?...I've decided that I'm ready for a break! I want to go somewhere. Somewhere I won't have to do laundry, or clean bathrooms, or even make the bed if I don't feel like it. But I'm not sure where to go.

So who out there has the perfect weekend getaway spot? I'm open for suggestions!

My Green(ish) Thumb

In the last couple of days, I've started getting veggies from my garden. The first to produce were the peas, followed by the wax beans. I've had a lovely time snacking on fresh peas, so much that I haven't actually cooked any yet. But I thought I'd give a garden update. I posted pictures from when my garden was pretty much just dirt, and here are two more sets...

My zucchini plants--which the birds promptly ate. So I planted more. The birds ate those also. So I bought a slingshot and some jelly beans. I actually hit a couple of birds, but I still have birds in my garden. The zucchini and summer squash plants are pretty much gone, but everything else survived.

Baby peas.

Itsy-bisty corn stalks. (Side note: I'm not sure why this picture is sideways. It's not like that on my computer.)
These are my mini pumpkin plants and the wax beans.

Corn. Although Kiirstin's corn is about a foot taller. Grr...

Peas. They look kinda scraggly. Are they supposed to look like that? They were definitely cuter when they were smaller. =)

Wasatch Back 2009

Okay, so I'm a little behind in my posts. But I had to share some pictures from our 31-hour, 187.5 mile relay from Logan to Park City. Our start time was 12:45 pm, Friday, June 19th. We ran through heat, rain, dark, animal sightings, hail, and cold. We had 12 people on our team, with 3 drivers. We lived out of our 2 vans, and catnapped when we could. It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Our Fearless Driver, Matt

Mark after our 2 hour nap at Marcie's parents house.

Bill running like a mad man.

Cannon snoozing in the van. Believe me, he EARNED this nap!

Brent and me doing our chip commercial right after my second run. You gotta entertain yourself any way you can, right?

Stretching and waiting for the handoff before my 2nd run.

Mark handing the baton (slap bracelet) off to Cannon at 5:30 in the morning. We had to wear reflective vests and carry a flashlight or wear a headlamp during the dark hours. They were stylin'!

Brent and Cannon ran the "Ragnar Hill" which was in Wasatch Mountain State Park. It was a dirt road with about an 8% uphill grade if I remember right. Pictures just don't show how hard these two runs were. And it started raining during Brent's run. This picture was obviously before Brent started.

The handoff. These two definitely earned my respect!

Just before Brent handed off to me for my last run, it started hailing! And I must say that hail hurts bare legs! I passed this little snowman someone had made from the hail and made Matt go back and take a picture of it. It rained pretty hard for all of my 7.3 mile run. I was a popsicle by the time I finished. Then I handed off to Bill, who was our last runner, and we headed to the finish line to wait for him.

This is most of our team huddled at the finish line. It was still raining and cold, but at least we were finished running, right? Except that they have your entire team run the last few hundred yards to the finish line. So you wait for your runner and then join them so that they can take official pictures, etc.

Our team sporting our Wasatch Back 2009 medals. Don't we look tough?

Normal is Relative

Occassionally, I post pictures of me and/or Matt that are a little...well...creative. You may wonder why we take pictures like that. Here's your answer. All of the following were taken at a recent family barbeque at our house. None were posed. This is just what my family does when faced with a camera.

My brother Rodney.

My sister Valerie.

My niece Sydney.

My brother Brent.

Either Jackson or Jordan. I can't tell.

My nephew Tanner. ( I might add that this is pretty normal for him, but I had to add the popsicle shot because he's a MOOCHER. Whenever there's food around, he mooches from anyone who'll share. It's kind of like grazing.)

My nephew Eli. Yep, we start 'em young.

Matt, the King of odd camera shots. (Also notice Eli in the background.)

Family Photo

It's really sad when you go to take a family photo and this is the best one...

Aren't Cars Just Moving Billboards?

I got this idea from someone else who recently adopted and thought that I would put my time stuck in traffic to good use! So my friend Kiirstin made this for me on her Cricut. (Thanks, Kiirstin!)

I hope we get the word out there a little more with this. We're so excited to welcome a little one to our family and its REALLY hard to be patient. I'm lucky to have nieces and nephews and neighbors to play with, but it's just not the same. I'm ready to change diapers and stay up all night!