The Past Few Weeks: Spring 2009

These are some things we had a chance to do during March and April of 2009. =) We had a lot of fun exploring caves near our town. Visiting CA was a great adventure...UNTIL I got seasick!! But eventually all fun must come to an end, and Daniel was deployed April 18th.

First Year Anniversary 8-11-08

Fun stuff we did in Las Vegas!

My Sad News

Today teachers in Nye County School District were notified of RIF (reduction in force). Sadly I was one of the SEVEN teachers at Hafen Elementary School to receive a letter. What does this mean for me? For me this means that I must now displace another teacher at another school who has less seniority than me. What does this mean for Hafen Elementary School? Our beautiful school will be left with 14 teachers. How has this been allowed? How has this happened? How will our school be able to meet the K-3 class size requirement of 22 to 1 student to teacher ratio and grade 4-5 25 to 1 ratio? I do not have the answers. I mourn the loss of my position at Hafen Elementary, as it is an AMAZING educational facility! What I hope and pray for is that positions/allocations will be given back to Hafen. I often wonder, why Hafen? Especially when other schools are only losing 3-4 allocations/positions. This is a question I hope will be answered sooner than later, as the children of our school will be the ones to suffer the consequence.

Broken AC

SO Erik and Amanda watched Simba at our house. Yesterday they came home at 6pm and our AC was blowing hot air and sounded like DEATH! Well, it was pretty bad I guess...120 degrees downstairs!! Hotter upstairs!! I came home from my conference today and OH MAN! IT IS HOT!! I decided to assemble my portable AC and stick it out....we will see if Simba and I survive. Anyhow, looking forward to getting it fixed!

Michigan Pics.

May 2009

SO much has happened and I haven't done a very good job of keeping this updated, so here's a short little list of the major things:

April 18th-Daniel left to Indiana, in June he will leave for Afghanistan.
May 2nd- Michael got married. Welcome Shelby into the family!
May 8th-Find out I might lose job.
May 9th-Air conditioning stops working while I am at a Conference in Las Vegas and Erik and Amanda are watching Simba and the house. Simba almost dies of heat exhaustion!

Update: September 2008

Lately we've been kind of boring...and well, busy and tired with everything going on. School started back for the both of us August 25th. My class has a handful of eight-ten year olds and Daniel is enjoying life at Great Basin College (for now). For our anniversary I got us Settlers of Catan...THE GREATEST GAME EVER! And I've been making Daniel and some of our friends play it over and over and over again! I love the game, although I think Daniel is tiring of it. It's fun to win...but he's been doing that more than I have. =( But anyhow, For our Anniversary last month we got to go to LOVE-Cirque Du Solel (spelling?). It was so great! I just LOVE the Beattles! We had a really good time and relaxed in Las Vegas before we took off to Michigan for a week.

When we were in Michigan we went tubing down the Betsy River. It was so beautiful! We ate at interesting places like the "Cherry Hut." We even had the chance to kayak down the Platt River and then see Lake Michigan! It was very overcast and windy that day, but it was SO beautiful! We even searched for Potosky stones in the freezing cold air. We had a great time being away and I've never seen so many trees in my entire life!

Well...besides our trip to Michigan and LOVE, we have been procrastinating our projects at home and now they are piling up in the garage. The other day Daniel took out the trash and saw 7 black widows hanging out by his car! Anyhow, I'm off, Daniel has finally agreed to play Settlers with me! Love ya'll!

Flaming Gorge Trip- July 2008

Fly Fishing Trip

Angelina, my sister, invited me on a fly fishing trip to the Green River in Flaming Gorge National Park. It was so amazing and beautiful!! We went on a boat down the river and our guide, Darren, gave us instructions on where to cast our line, when to knead it, when to let out line, etc. It was soooo amazing!!

The picture of me on the boat really is a picture of both my sister and I, however it keeps cutting my sister off. Anyhow, she has this really great smile (a totally fake one) because she wanted to get going and catch a zillion fish, while people wanted to take pictures. It really is a great shot. =)

The picture with me and the fish is such a funny picture because when I first went fishing in Kelseyville, CA and took a picture with it, it looks very similar to this one.

It was a great trip, my dad caught the biggest fish, I believe it was over 24 inches. My sister caught some big ones...and well...I had caught a big one, but being the inexperienced fisherwoman that I am, when I should have let the beast "run" up river, I didn't and it snapped the sucker off! It took the fly and and ripped my line! It was a big beautiful Brown. I don't know how big it was, but I imagine it was probably comparable to my dad's.

The whole experience of fly fishing on the boat was great!! At first I was really nervous because the FIRST time I cast a fly fishing pole I caught my mom's leg. YIKES! I thought I would hurt someone since we were on a 3 person boat, but shockingly my sister, the pro fisher, was the first to catch anyone--me!! She caught me in the thigh, but later I got her back by accidentally hooking her life jacket. YIKES!

The fishing part of the trip was amazing! I got the hang of casting and could eventually aim my line wherever Darren told me to throw it and I got soo many bites!! I also missed a lot (didn't set them soon enough). I think the fish were at 45 and I was at 23. 45 vs. 23....not bad for a first timer! We didn't keep them though, it was catch and release. It was so much fun, as soon as my fly hit the water it seems like they were biting! And I had on my polarized lenses, so I would see the whole thing! When they would just look at the fly it would drive me crazy!! I was thinking, 'Just bite it already!!'

When I wasn't fishing, my mom and I were hanging out at the Spring Creek Ranch Bed and Breakfast. We hiked around, enjoyed the rain, watched a fire start and end, fed the horses, read, talked, and ate a ton. It was so much fun and so RELAXING!

Anyhow, if you haven't tried fly fishing, you really should. It is AMAZING!!!

What a Day...

Life without Daniel is getting too boring to handle. Today I was going to go to Las Vegas with Eric and Amanda to do some shopping, etc. They decided they wanted to watch Dark Knight while they were there too, so now I'm not going because I told Daniel I'd watch it with him when I go to Elko...So instead I woke-up, went running with Simba, returned home and vacuumed the downstairs for a few hours, cleaned the kitchen, ate a few cookies, stained one layer of the color I didn't want onto the dresser I spent two days sanding, and now I'm sitting here...being bored and disappointed about the stupid dresser. SO NOT FAIR.