Cabin Time

We absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE spending time up at my parents cabin. It has become our little home away from home. And we'll find any excuse to go up and play, which is nice because it's only an hour away.  My brother Ryan and his family were visiting from New Jersey and their trip wouldn't be complete without a few days up there. Stephen and I couldn't spend the entire time there because of work, but we were able to go up for a few days. It's always so fun to get away and relax. It's great when we're up there with family because it pretty much turns out to be. All the grandkids spend every waking moment outside, building forts, exploring, playing games, catching squirrels and getting filthy dirty in the process. While the adults spend time relaxing, chatting, eating and laughing. Oh and we can't forget the usual not showering for the day until about noon or so. Also, we must believe in the saying "where there's good food there's fun" there's always tons of food and I swear it seems like almost half of it is treats (donuts, ice cream, homemade goodies etc) It's all apart of spending time up there. Here's a few snapshots of this last time with Ryan's family.

New Eyes

I've been out of school now for three whole weeks and it has been wonderful. I feel like I'm just as busy as when school is in. I'm just busy in a different way with everything that gets put on hold the last 9 months of the year. It's kind of my catch-up time, with cleaning my house, errands, exercising, projects, yard work etc. Well, this year I was talked into doing doing ESY, which is a summer program for special ed kids. It's nice because it's only about 10 hours a week and it pays really well. So I thought I'd give it a try. We started our first week this week and boy my eyes were opened. We were paired with another teacher and given 3 aides for our 12 kids. Which seems like a lot of adults, but we needed everyone of them. We've been given K-1st graders with Autism. I feel like my eyes have really been opened to a whole new world in my profession. A lot of these kiddos are non-verbal or if they have language they just repeat words/phrases it has no meaning. They're in diapers, about 3 of them are runners, one who bites (himself and those around him), and others do the whole rocking/self-stemming thing. I'll be honest, the first day was a disaster. Neither me or the other teacher has worked with this ability level with autism. But each day has gotten better. We even had one boy cry for only 2 hours instead of 3. Progress right!?! Well, it made me indeed grateful for my own group of kids that I work with throughout the school year. Sometimes I complain to Stephen a lot about them. But I have gained a great perspective and respect for my profession. : )

Our new neighbors

So we've heard a lot of loud squawking out our window the past few weeks. A really loud and annoying sort of bird. I tried to ignore it, but the other day we finally found out what was making that noise. We live right next to a big field that lies between us and state street.  From our upstairs windows, we were were able to see over the fence and down into the massive weeds that cover the field. Stephen was able to capture some good pictures and was pretty excited. I'm surprised Stephen's never seen a real pheasant before!(expecially with his knowledge and expertise of birds) I couldn't believe that such a beautiful bird, could be so loud. They have nested with some females...so we might have a whole family sometime soon.

We Should Have Brought our Snowshoes!!!

So one of the things that both Stephen and I are passionate about is hiking, especially this time of year when the weather is getting warmer. This summer we've already been on a few hikes. But this last weekend tops them all. We've done a bunch of short mile hikes up to waterfalls close by our house and other local hikes. One of our goals this summer is to hike up to the top of Mt. Timpanogos, which is a peak that is around 11,700 ft. We've roped in some family to come and join us in July and are way excited for this adventure. Well this last weekend, we thought it would be fun to just start on the trail and see how far we could go. The weather ended up holding out on us and turining out to be great, so we hopped in the car and headed for the mountains. We started on the hike having a great time, but it was definately cold and windy! (probably somewhere in the low 40's) There were a few snow patches along the trail that we'd climb through, but about a mile and a half up the trail, we ran into the biggest snow patch I'd ever come in contact with. It was so big that we couldn't keep going and lost the trail. We did decide to have some fun with it though and slide down the 100 ft patch of snow. We were sad we weren't able to go farther, but ended up have a great time.

 

Here's Stephen making his way down the snowfield on the back side of Timp

Yeah, I'm trying not to fall on my face as we slide down. :)