Back to School

It's official, summer vacation is over. It is a happy/sad thing. Probably more of a sad/happy thing. As sad as it is to see the freedom of the summer months gone, it is nice to get into a routine once again. Plus, this is my last year! Woohooo! This semester I have five classes - Teaching Math, Teaching Science, Teaching Language Arts, Teaching Social Studies, and Teaching Reading - and then this spring I will do my student teaching and I am done! The down side is that this semester is really intense. It all started Monday morning when I went to school at 5:30 am to get in line to hand in my student teaching application (they don't open till eight, but to get a placement close to here you have to be there super early) . Crazy, yes. But my application is in and I feel so much better! After going to all of my classes and looking at all of the assignments and projects to be done I am freaking out just a little bit. It is definitely going to keep me on my toes! Oh well, it will all be worth it in the end!

Tribute to Tigger

Last Friday my sweet cat, Tigger, died. It was a very sad day as Tigger has been such a huge part of our family for the last 19 years (yes, 19). The truth is that I can't really remember life before her. I do remember my sister bringing her home though. I was 4 years old and my sister brought her home from her friends house in her little pink bike basket. As I am sure you can imagine, Tig didn't like that so well! I wanted so badly to name her Samantha (after the girl on 'Who's the Boss'), but Tigger was chosen instead. And it fit.

The first year of her life she was not a very friendly cat. Then one winter night she accidentally got left outside. She found that our neighbors car engine was warm, and climbed up inside to sleep. The next morning when our neighbor turned on his car he had a really yucky surprise. It did some major damage, but my mom couldn't bear to put her to sleep (dad was on a business trip). A week later she returned home, sewn together and with her jaw wired shut. Miraculously, she recovered fully. And even better, it seemed to have changed her.

Where she hadn't been a very kind kitty before, she became the sweetest, most loving cat you could ever imagine. If you were sick, she knew it. She would cuddle up to you and not leave until you were feeling better. When we moved to a place with lots of fields she learned to catch mice she became an expert mouser, keeping our house mice-free.

Tigger had a very odd trait. When she wanted anything (to go outside, or to be fed, etc) She would turn around and use her back foot to quickly thump the wall behind her several times. you know thumper on 'Bambi'? It was just like that. It is hard to explain, but I have never seen another cat do anything like it. Several times I thought someone was knocking on the door before I figured out it was Tigger. We always joked about recording her and sending it to America's Funniest Home Videos. She only stopped doing this a few months ago as she began to get sick.

She loved my niece, Maddie, and would sit patiently, letting Maddie pull her fur, acting like Maddie was scratching her ears in just the right way. It was adorable! And since my Grandparents moved in she had taken to lounging with them throughout the day, giving them attention and love. They just adored her.

Yes, Tigger has been a huge part of our family over the last 19 years. She will be very missed.

Education Week

This year I finally got to go to Education Week with my mom. I have wanted to go for years, but it has never worked out with school and such. For those of you who don't know, Education Week is a church sponsored week at BYU, where thousands and thousands of people come to hear some really incredible speakers. The classes range from scriptural classes, to self-help classes, to financial classes. It is Monday - Friday, and really just an incredible program.

We stayed with my cousins (THANKS GUYS!) And then went to classes all day. I went to so many wonderful classes and learned so much! I filled up many pages with notes, and now I just need to get to work on applying all of the things that I learned. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the week:

"The critical question now centers on whether you are more committed to remaining where you are or getting where you want to be."

And that is just one of hundreds! I seriously had many "Ah-ha" moments and enjoyed every minute of it. It was so much fun to spend time with my mom, and we even got to go to some classes with my aunt, Michelle.

I also found a new obsession. Chocolate Covered Cinnamon Bears. I have heard about them before, but never tried them. As soon as I saw they sold them at BYU I had to buy some. They are SO GOOD (though anything covered in chocolate is high on my list :) Good thing I don't know where to buy these little guys close to home, I would be buying them all the time!

Family Fun!

In Bear Lake there is a cute little theater called “Pickleville Playhouse”. Each summer they put on two plays. This year they were doing Thoroughly Modern Millie. My family has been talking about going for weeks, but we finally got around to it, seeing as summer is drawing to an end. We went over and enjoyed hamburgers and shakes, and then went to the play.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was honestly the best play I have ever seen at Pickleville! It was so good! It is a tiny stage, but they manage to put on such a good show. I think my niece Madison enjoyed it more than anyone else. She danced all over the place when they were dancing, and waved her arms all around in the air. We had to put her binkie in when she started singing along at the top of her lungs. It was adorable. I will not be surprised if she grows up to be an actress :)

On Saturday we celebrated Madison’s 1^st birthday. She got lots of presents, but was really only interested in the very first one she opened (her first cell phone, which she already knows how to use, even if a bit backwards). There was lots of good food, and then Maddie got to play with her birthday cake. It took her a while to figure out what to do with the cake, but once she got the hang of it she got it all over the place! It was so much fun!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE JO!

Babies!

My sister Lacey, and my friend Katie were both pregnant and due the same week. I always told them that they needed to have their babies the same day so that I could come and visit them. They came close! Ivy was born on June 3rd, and Jack was born on the 4th. I wasn't able to visit them in the hospital, but yesterday we did get together and I got to see the two adorable babies together. Though they were born close to the same time they are so different! We went out to lunch and talked, and I had lots of fun holding babies! When we were at the restaurant the manager came over and commented that we were missing a baby, and asked where mine was (awkward)! Hmmmm . . . welll . . . one day! For now I am great borrowing other peoples babies to cuddle with!

Ants and a Dead Bird

Somehow, this summer I picked up two cat sitting jobs. The first is for a cat named Leon. Leon is old (20 human years), and since his owners are out of state a lot, I watch him a lot. Over the summer I would guess that I have taken care of him for about 2 months. It has been a perfect side job and I have loved it. The second job (this cat’s name is Charlie) is just a short two week gig while Charlie’s owner is on vacation. Leon’s house is not super close to my house, but it is close to my other job so it works out well. Charlie lives in my neighborhood, so I can just walk over there.

This week both jobs overlapped. Since it is simple to cat sit, I didn’t think this would be a problem. Then yesterday rolled around.

I went to take care of Leon first. I got there in the late afternoon, watered the garden, brought in the mail, etc. Then I went to get Leon’s old food bowl so that I could get him new food for the day. His food bowl is in the kitchen, and when I walked over to pick it up I realized that the bottom of the white bowl was completely black, covered in ants. I stepped back looked around, and saw a line of ants, weaving its way from the closed back door, around the rug, through the dining room, towards the food dish. Seriously, thousands of ants, and there hadn’t been any ants the day before! We had ant problems in Brazil, but I have never seen such a huge number of ants in such a small space.

I threw the dish under scalding water and ran to the store to by ant spray. When I got back I locked poor Leon in a bedroom and went to work. It took a bit to get it all cleaned up, but finally there were no more ants to be found in the house (or at least in that area). I left feeling pretty good about the fact that I handled it so well.

I went home, finished my student teaching application (YAY!) and then headed over to Charlie’s house around 10:30 at night. I opened the front door, flipped on the light, and there, in the middle of the living room, was a dead bird and a cat looking awfully pleased with himself. I gagged. Charlie has no claws and only has a very, very small yard to run around in. How he caught the bird and dragged it through his tiny cat door is beyond me. I didn’t hesitate, I picked up my phone and called my dad.

While I was waiting for my dad I walked around looking for cleaning supplies and inspected the mess. As if the dead bird and blood spattered all over the hard wood floor hadn’t been enough, the feathers and blood scattered over the carpet in the master bedroom did me in.

Thank goodness my parents live close and my dad isn’t squeamish! He took care of the bird itself and the feathers while I began scrubbing the blood off the floor. As I was finishing with the floor, and my dad was putting away the vacuum we had this conversation:

Katie: Do birds carry diseases?

Dad: Yep

Katie: What kind?

Dad: West Nile . . . if the bird had been sick it probably would have been easier to catch.

Are you kidding me?!? And on the same day that the newspaper declared that West Nile had been found in our county! I am not assuming that the bird truly had West Nile, but I did make sure to clean up as well as possible, and then I washed my hands a billion times.

What are the chances that both of these would happen in the same day? I may need to seriously rethink the whole cat sitting thing :)

Jackson Hole: Take Two!

This last week I got to go to Jackson Hole again. I know I went two weeks ago, but Jackson is so wonderful, I don’t mind going twice in a summer (honestly, I wouldn’t mind living there for the entire summer!) This time I went with my parents, my little brother, my SIL Liz, niece Madison, and my friend Bethany. Unfortunately, the rest of our family couldn’t come due to work, but we still tried to have fun ;)

We left on Wednesday morning and arrived in Jackson late in the afternoon. The trip was a bit long (and filled with lots of construction and accidents) but we finally got there! That night it was over to the Bar-J Wranglers for a yummy dinner and a great show!

We woke up early the next day to get ready to hit the Snake River. Maddie kept us all entertained as we got breakfast ready.

While our family generally takes a raft down the river, my dad and I have always wanted to try rafting the river in duckies (little two person rafts). Since we had less people with us on this trip we decided that it was the perfect opportunity! Dad and Eric went down in one, and Bethany and I went down in the other (the duckies really didn’t appeal to Mom or Liz, so Bethany came along to be my rafting buddy) Here we are before we set off on our adventure!

I have always loved river rafting, but never been in charge of guiding the boat! Bethany had never rafted the river before, so it was my responsibility to get us in the right place and not get us killed! I got quite the workout and ended up putting us in lots of eddies! On our first trip down I didn’t see a rock in front of us, and we ended up stuck on top of the rock! My dad and brother were further downstream, and couldn’t stop laughing. Right at the end of the first trip we hit a rough rapid sideways that almost threw both of us out of the boat, but just Bethany was lucky enough to go swimming!

By the second trip down we had gotten the hang of things and enjoyed the rapids! It was awesome! I will definitely be going down the river in one of these things again!

That night we went back to camp and enjoyed tin foil dinners and peach cobbler. I love camping food! I don’t think it gets much better!

We headed home Friday morning. It was a short trip, but very enjoyable!