Wedding Gift...

Kyle and I have been married for almost 2 and a half years.  One of the wedding gifts we received, we started using immediately and I have loved it.  It's a spice rack.  Every place we've lived seems to have a spot that it fits in perfectly.  I love this spice rack, but I've had one problem.  There are several spices that I just don't use.  So even though it looked nice and I used probably half the spices regularly, I still had to dig through my spice cupboard to find other spices I needed.  Well, that all changed on Saturday. I decided to clean out my spice cupboard and replace the spices in the rack with those that I use more.  I had just emptied out all the spices onto the counter when Katelyn and Jhessica came over.  Yup, they were a great help.  Here is my old but improved spice rack. With all my most used spices (with accompanying labels) in alphabetical order.  Oh, yeah.

Kyle's Surprise!

When I got home from work today, there was a blanket spread over the entire kitchen table with a note on top saying that it was a surprise for me and I shouldn't look at it.  Kyle and I had a busy evening, so when our paths finally crossed again, Kyle revealed his big secret.

This is what it was: 

One of my favorite authors is Victoria Holt. She wrote a ton of books that are romance mysteries.  Apparently BYU-I was selling a bunch of books, so Kyle bought all they had and brought them home for me. I was/am so excited!  I know what I'll be doing this summer!  And now we just need a nice big bookshelf.  Kyle, you totally rock! Love you!

p.s. don't mind my crazy hair, I went to water aerobics.  :)

Yellowstone National Park! part one

      Well, we finally made it to Yellowstone.  We had heard about it and talked about it so much, and we finally went.  Rexburg is about an hour and a half away from the west entrance, so we really have had no excuse for not going. This is possibly our last summer in Rexburg, so we've been feeling the pull of the national park more acutely.  Kyle checked out several books from the university library about The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, so we've been making small trips to visit landmarks that are fairly close.  Since we have Kyle's brother and my sister in Utah and both have expressed interest in going to Yellowstone with us, we decided it was time to check it out. Kyle has read a bunch of material about places to go and hikes that we need to go on. We left yesterday morning at about 9:30am.  It really is an amazing place.  I don't feel like I can explain in words, and the pictures don't do it justice, but it was an awe inspiring visit. I thought we'd see more animals, and luckily as we were leaving, we saw two groupings of bison, which was super cool.  Here are some pics from our adventure!

One of the gorgeous hot springs.  Some of the colors were astounding. 

Old Faithful!  We actually got to see it twice.  We arrived about 25 minutes before it was predicted to go off, after we got to see it in it's spectacularness, we had a picnic lunch, then went to walk around the big loop to see the other geysers, we were on the other side, when it went off again.  Really cool!

One of the rivers that run through Yellowstone.  This one actually had several hot springs that ran into it.

Downfall to the adventures:  Kyle didn't put on sunscreen soon enough.  He ended up with a pretty hefty sunburn.  I put sunscreen on as soon as I got out of the shower and then again at the park. My sunburn was minor, but still noticeable.

Bittersweet.

   Well, Friday was the last day of school. It was definitely bittersweet.  I have had such an amazing experience teaching this year.  The year started off kind of rocky.  I felt nervous and inexperienced, and to top it all off my aide quit after her second day.  The whole month of September I had one sub after another to fill her position.  They hired a replacement but she couldn't come until after harvest break (second week in October).  She was fantastic but unfortunately was offered a much better position elsewhere, so she gave her two weeks notice.  Luckily, one of the previous subs had been amazing, and so we hired her. Cathy was a Godsend.  She was such a great help and support. I could not have made it through this school year without her.  Aside from my fun, wonderful and at times oh so frustrating students, the other special ed teacher and her aide were great to work with.  I loved my principal and got along great with the other staff. I learned quickly and had a great mentor to answer all my questions. I was sad to leave on Friday after such a great year.  We have no idea what is in store for our family in the fall, so my sadness is due partially to the fact that we don't know yet if I'll be going back.  I hope so, but only time will tell. 

Here's a pic of my door and the beautiful flowers Kyle brought to me on the last day.