July 13 - July 26 (I know how much you like pics...)

July 16-19, Moab Utah

Stacey and I took a 'girls weekend' to Moab. It was a great vacation from life and we had a blast! Here is the Kabin we stayed in (we stayed at the KOA). There was a single bed and a bunk bed inside. Luckily there was also an AC unit. The bathrooms and showers were a walk away...

Every evening we were treated to this view. I loved it! Even tho the days were blasted hot, the evenings and mornings were cool and beautiful! We had many 'friends' visit us in our campsite... Here are the red ants

It's possible the 'friends' we had were more interested in our dinner... lol

Here is a lizard friend. I don't remember what we called him... but he ended up eating some of the ants that were around. I was too slow to get a picture of that :(

There were several cottontails to jump thru our site. One of them had a lame foot that we called Handy. I think this is not Handy, so this would be Jack.

Friday, we went on a river rafting trip. It was a lot of fun! The water level was low, so there were many dangers. This rock jumped up out of nowhere and we were stuck!

Our guide had never been stuck before, so she wasn't sure what to do.

Due to the great thinking of one of the members of our team, we shifted the weight on our boat and voila! We were finding ourselves 'falling' off the rock and on our way.

We easily cleared the next rock :)

Interesting story: On our boat there were 10 people. The guide, Becky was from Salt Lake. Stacey from Provo, I'm from Alpine, then the 3 younger boys, Kale, Chad, and Cody were from California, with their uncle, Tim, from Arizona. Ann and George were from New York, and Bev and Sam were from Nebraska. After we got home from our trip, Stacey was telling her mom about our rafting trip and the people we were with. Her mom and Bev went to high school together in Oregon!! What a small world we live in!

Saturday we drove down to Hole in the Rock and took the tour of the house built in the rock. It was pretty cool. I couldn't imagine taking that much time to 'build' my house, but how unique to say you live in a rock!

There are many fun things to greet you around Hole in the Rock. I thought this dragon was cool.

I want to know how they got this guy to stay on the wall

Random... but I guess most of it was...

There were little cottontails there too.

They have proof of "Big Foot"!!!

Stacey sitting next to... something we couldn't figure out

He was hanging around, looking for something good

Me and my turtle friend

How creative can some people be? Jail House Rock? Wow!

After our visit to Hole in the Rock, we drove out to Potash and saw Indian Rock Art. At first we weren't sure if this one was real, but we later found out it is very real.

Here's some little warrior guys

There were a lot of them on this side of the rock.

Sunday, we were sad to leave our Kabin. But our adventures were not over yet.

If you sped in the KOA area, this skeleton cowboy would shoot you!

We drove out to Dead Horse Point and walked around for a good portion of the afternoon. This tree reminded me of something from Lord of the Rings.

Here's a view of the Colorado River

So many interesting trees adorned the landscape

On the way home, I was trying out different hair-do's. Comb over

Full of nonsense

On Tuesday (the 21st) I got to go to the temple with my mom, then got to babysit my nephew overnight. We had fun together. He is so sweet and makes me laugh. When it got about to be bedtime, he started crying for mommy and daddy. I told him that he was going to stay overnight with Aunt Klara and he'd see mom and dad in the morning. I asked him if he could be brave and not cry; he said 'ya'. He did really well. He fell asleep without crying and woke up around midnight:15 for a few minutes and started crying. I whispered to him and told him that Ashley (my roommate) was asleep so he needed to try and not cry. He whispered 'ya' and tried to stop crying (how precious!!!); after a moment, he did stop crying and fell asleep again. I love that boy!

Wednesday (the 22nd) I got to spend most of the afternoon with Allison. We went to the temple and then out to dinner. It was good to catch up with her and laugh about silly things that happened. *I think like this one girl*

On the 24th, my family got together at my Aunt Karen's house in Orem. We played games and had super yummy food. It was a lot of fun. I love my family parties :)

Yesterday was my Grandpa's 80th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA!!!

This week my adventures continue in Cedar City...

June 29 - July 12 (Lots o'pics and a video)

June 30, Becky, family and I drove up to Silver Lake again. This time, however, we drove thru the open gate, across the stream, and took a ride on a dirt road. We stopped by the water for lunch. It was gorgeous!

There were other people there and we weren't too sure about them... Or maybe someone just passed gas - who knows for sure!

Gotta drive thru the water as often as possible!!

July 2nd was a day of parties! My friend, Lisa Jo (that's not really her middle name, but that's what I call her...) turned another year older.



We had a small gathering to celebrate! We all work together at the school, and myself and the two ladies behind me are neighbors (well, they're now just neighbors with my parents, but I think it still counts!)


Check out all that YUMMY food we had!

From that party to the next:


Homemade rootbeer


Homemade icecream


I found two sets of 4 cherries! I'd seen twos and threes, but never fours. I decided to take a picture to prove it - plus, the white flowers in the background accent the cherries really well :)

Birthday girl Kailani! (standing on the left of the cake. Her cousin is on the right) She got sparklers in her cake instead of candles! Lucky!!

There were lots of sparklers for everyone to play with!

On July 3 we got together for our family birthday celebrations. We didn't get to play very long at the school this time around, but we still had fun!

Presents for Kati (in the back with the blue shirt), Sarah (front of the table, dark hair tie and glasses),

Jamie (standing. wearing gray shirt),

and Uncle Alden (he was very excited to get that game!!). We were missing two people: Jarren (he was with his mom on a trip), and James (who is almost done serving his mission).

July 4th we got together at my Uncle Mike's house for a couple different reasons.

This is my family (minus Kati, Avery, and Jordan - they couldn't make it)

Mom and Dad with Granddaughter

We celebrated my Grandpa's 80th birthday!

Can you tell who's who?

Dad and Dad Jr. ;)

Hint: Since I don't call my Grandpa 'dad'...

We also had a cousin come over from England who wanted to meet the family.

What a cute lady! Pam Hood.

She teaches adult dance in England, and she taught our family this Barn Dance. It's kind of a short video, but hopefully it will work.

Yesterday, Kailani (see above birthday photo) got baptized. Due to things beyond my control, I was not able to witness the event. I was, however, able to join them afterward for a BBQ - then a drive up the canyon and onto road 056 (which is finally open! yay!!)

It is so green up there and the flowers are fantastic!

Here's one shot of a Sego Lily.
I'm not sure what this flower is, but I like the angle I took it at... pointing toward the sky.
On our way home, over toward the Spanish Fork valley, there was this rainbow, coming straight out of the mountain! It was really cool looking.

We stopped at some point, to get pictures of the sunset and happened upon this mommy moose and her very young child. They didn't seem phased by us at all. This is not the best picture, but the mommy moose is the dark brown and the baby moose is behind her, light brown in color.

Isn't this sunset just fantastic? Now you know why we stopped!!

Best Buds til the day we die. And then some.

Lesson #6

Today I taught lesson #25 out of the Joseph Smith book. It was on the parables from Matthew 13. I think it went pretty good today. I started off by saying, "I have two stories I want to start with, and the first one has nothing at all to do with the lesson; but I will feel better if I tell it." We all chuckled, then I explained to them that I had an eye infection and am taking some medicine now and can't wear contacts. The glasses I was wearing were about 10 years old and the prescription proved it - I could only 'half' see while I was wearing them.
I then told them a story involving a bus, a group of girls, and hyenas. I asked them what they thought of the story and most shrugged their shoulders and one said, 'nice story, but what's the point?'. She hit exactly what I was looking for. I expounded the story a little better to them, and they understood it better. I then asked how often do we read the scriptures and the parables of Christ and say 'oh. nice story. what's the point?'.
I split them into 4 groups and each group got a parable to read over, discuss, and then teach the class. It turned out really well and I heard good comments from it. I didn't quite feel as nervous today, and I think that's because I couldn't see very well ;) We shall see what next month brings.