Friday, June 15-Colby and Kimber come to town

Colby called a few days ago to see if she could come and do a Father's Day project with me.  I thought it was a great idea so she came on Friday and we got to work.  Well, we didn't get right to work  because we had a few errands to do first so off we went.  We went to the bank for some $, visited Russell there for a while then headed to Michael's for supplies.  By the time we got home, ate some lunch, feed the baby and got her happy it was after 1:00.  Colby's plan  was to make some cute photo blocks with pictures on each side.  I wasn't really planning on making anything but decided at the store to make something similar for Russell as a grandpa gift.  Well, it turned out to be a much bigger project than we thought and she didn't leave for Provo until around 9:00 pm.

We had to sand our wooden blocks, paint them, let them dry, print off pictures, cut them up so they fit the blocks, (that was the hardest part), glue the pictures on the blocks, cover them with mod podge and then let that dry all the while taking care of Kimber who wanted to be part of the fun.  Since we could only do one side of the blocks at a time then wait for them to dry it was a long process.  When it was getting close to time for Russell to get home we decided I better get mine all done so we put Colby's blocks on hold and Colby helped me get my done and put away.  After Russell got home we had another set of hands to help with the baby so that was a big help. He also went and got us dinner from Crown Burger which was yummy!!   Here are some pictures of the finished project.  Hope our spouses don't look at this blog before Sunday, HA!

You can see Colby had set of 6 blocks and I had just two.  Hers were 2x2 and mine were 3 1/2x 3 1/2. One of the pictures I took of her blocks didn't turn out so there are only pictures of five of the six sides. 

The hardest part of this project was getting the center set of Colby's pictures to fit the blocks.  Our pictures were 4x6 and we had to trim off the white edges so they were not quite big enough to cover the six blocks. The center block pictures had to be just a little bit bigger than the outside blocks.  After we figured that out it was all pretty easy.  My blocks were much easier to figure out since I was only cutting up photos to fit one or both.    We each bought one page of stickers to add to the blocks and printed some signage off the computer to add the words.  

Happy Father's Day Every One!

Wednesday and Thursday, June 13 and 14, 2012 CTE Convention in Park City

I spent the last two days in Park City at Park City High School, home of the Miners. I had a Career and Technical Education (CTE) conference to attend there.  My job as Work-Based Learning Coordinator at East High School falls under the umbrella of CTE.  It was nice to spend a couple of days among peers and listen and learn about the great things going on in the state.  I feel pretty fortunate to have gotten this job when I moved to Salt Lake three years ago. It can be very fulfilling knowing I have the opportunity to help kids make life decisions regarding their future and career.

Anyway, it is the last school related thing on my agenda for a while so I am now looking forward to sleeping in a day or two and exploring the beautiful place I live.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 Historic Walking Tour

You probably can guess by the title of this post that I live among really old people.  Who goes on a historic walking tour????  Well our ward Relief Society did this week and the average age of people in my ward is 76 years old, so we are kind of limited as what our ward activities can be (technically I am a teenager,HA!). Anyway,  I happen to live in a beautiful part of  Salt Lake City.  In my block is Brigham Young Park, City Creek Park and Memory Grove Park, each of which is very historic...so we do things like historic walks in my neck of the woods.  I shouldn't complain about it though, I got lost once in Salt Lake and ended up at Memory Grove and thought it was such a pretty place so when I found I was going to be living there, I knew it was the place for me.

When you look at these pictures you will see many white haired people who are extremely kind, considerate, thoughtful and pretty darn old.   It is a good ward though, never will you find more people who had given so much of their lives to the church: we have emeritus  general authorities, past mission presidents, temple presidents, temple workers, current general authorities, and all around good people.  Plus, we have lots of young people who are college students in our ward.  It is  a pretty interesting ward because we have no YM or YW and no primary.  The younger ward members must leave our ward and go to the family ward when their sweet little children are nursery age, because we don't have a nursery.

You should check out City Creek and Memory Grove next time you are in Utah.  It will be well worth your time and very relaxing and enjoyable.

I made a website today!!!!

Monday, June 11, 2012
May I just start by saying that I love technology so when I got a chance to take a web development class with our school district I jumped at it.  I spent the day today developing a web page for the class I teach at East High School.   I loved it.  Here it is:

It is just a beginning but I will surely be working on it throughout the summer.  The website is:
www.wblehs.weebly.com   WBLEHS stands for Work-Place Learning East High School.  Weebly is the website we used to make the our websites.  Check it out and let me know how you like it.

Dinner and Day Trip to Provo

June 8th-A new dinner dish                                                                                                                                                                                             Today I cooked a new chicken dish for dinner that was pretty tasty.  It has only three ingredients:

Dijon mustard, maple syrup, and red wine vinegar.  Russell and I both liked it a lot.  Something else yummy is a new way I learned about to cook brown rice. I baked it in the oven and it turned out delicious. I will surely make each of these new recipes again.  I found both of these recipes on the internet, from pinterest.

June 9th-Road Trip
Russell and I started our day out walking the loop up the canyon from our condo.  It is a 3 mile walk that we try to take often.  It is a beautiful place to live by.  After our walk we headed south to spend the day with Colby, Jim and Kimber.  Colby was playing softball with her ward team so we got there in time to watch that. After the game we went to lunch then to Reams, a western wear store in Provo.  Russell and I are spending nearly a week at Frontier Days (largest rodeo in the US), in Cheyenne, WY in July so we have been trying to get some western wear for that. I had a fun time trying on Wranglers, cowgirl shirts and boots.  Came home with some fun stuff.  Little Kimber came home with her first pair of cowboy boots.  Who knew they came so tiny.  Here she is wearing a little cowgirl shirt she got from her Auntie and a tiny pair of wranglers. She is a sweet little cowgirl.

School is out!!!!!

Well, school is out and I have been wondering what the heck I am going to do all day, all summer. Here is what I came up with....I have decided to do one new project, cook one new recipe, or do one new activity each  day of  my summer vacation.. The rules are: I can not spend a lot of money, and if I am doing a project it can not take more than one day to complete or needs to be divided into day increments. This morning I figured out I would need 70 days worth of stuff to do, which is all the days of the summer except Sundays.  I made a list of 42 things to do so I am off to a good start.  Here is the project I made yesterday..... it was easy and I had all the supplies I needed on hand.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  The pattern is a download from pinterest which is a super cool site, if you have never been there. 

I'm planning on blogging everyday this summer with whatever I have been up to.  I will be out of town a few weeks here and there so will have to catch up when that happens.  Happy Summer everyone!!!!!

Spring Break

The first week of April was spring break for me so Colby, Kimber and I took the opportunity to head to California to visit Brittany, Patrick, Royce, AubRee, Grace and Kruz.  It was so good to see all those guys.  We had a great time the whole week.  I am not sure how Kimber liked riding two whole days in the car but I liked the chance to visit with Colby there and back. 

We did much shopping while there, got new Easter dresses and baby clothes for Kimber and Meredith's new little baby that will be here  any day.  Brittany cooked us good food and  we spent a little time at the beach.  The water was not warm but it was fun to just hang around and lay in the sun.  Sadly Patrick ended up having to work lots while we were there so we didn't get to see much of him. 

The beach was nice.  I went one day by myself and had a good old laying out, sunning day.  I did give myself a bit of a scare though.  I had some crackers I thought I would share with the birds so I threw out a few crumbs and instantly I was surrounded by flocks of seagulls and pigeons.  Those birds were not nice.  They just kept getting closer and closer to me and all I could imagine was the Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, hoping I was going to get off the beach alive.

We had a fun visit with Royce and AubRee and loved seeing them and the kids.  Grace has her ears pierced now and Kruz has grown so much!!!  He kept doing this really funny laugh down in his throat and cracking us all up.  We did some bowling with them and Grace was quite a bowler.  A few times Royce had to bowl a ball down the lane to hit her ball into the pins because her ball was going pretty slow.  

It was Easter Sunday the day after we got home so Jim came up and Colby and Jim stayed at our house for Easter.  Here they are after church.  We walk through the Salt Lake temple grounds to and from church and right now the flowers are amazing.  You can see a few of them in this picture.  

I must thank Jimmey for letting me steal Colby and Kimber away for a week. I am sure it was quite a quiet week for him.  Thanks to Brittany and Patrick for blowing up their gigantically large mattress so Colby and I had somewhere to sleep and for taking good care of us while we were there.  Thanks to Royce and AubRee for arranging their schedule so we could spend some time with them.  And thanks to Russell for letting us take his car on our trip and for financing some of our trip.  Thanks to my dad who started long ago buying my sisters and I Easter dresses, a tradition I feel really good about carrying on....and thanks to the Lord for our safe travels to and from California. 

WE HAD A WONDERFUL TIME!