Hiking in Our Back Yard

Last weekend on Memorial day we decided to take a little hike and check out the trail behind our back yard. It took us about 15 minutes to get to this pretty spot called Stewart Falls. It was pretty busy because it was a holiday, but it was still a pretty spot. So if you ever want a short pretty hike you can come and visit us.

We also got a chance to BBQ this weekend, which was fun even with just the two of us. It is so peaceful and beautiful up here in our forest. Tyler grilled chicken, potatoes and asparagus, it was all really good. He is becoming a grill master!

Summer Job

Tyler has been working hard at his new job. He is in charge of cleaning up the "yard" (it is more like an organized forest) around the cabin we live in. He frequently comes home with scratches and bruises from cleaning up trees. You would be amazed to see the piles and piles of dead leaves and branches he pulls out of the "planter boxes".

Occasionally he gets asked to go out and help the crew with other properties that the Ashtons own. Lately he has been going out to "the ranch" where he is turning all his work jeans green from weed whipping so much. It has it's perks too though as we found out today. Tyler was asked to test out the zip line that runs over their pond, so today I went up to the ranch to oversee the test run.
That is the pond, which is the size of a small lake. You can see the small dock with boats next to it, and that tower in the middle is where the zip line starts.
I was gracious enough to let Tyler try it out first. It's probably about a 20-30 foot tower.














And then I decided to try it. It took me a while to work up the courage to get off the platform, but that was the scariest part, after that it was just fun!

Finished Recruiting

That's right I am finished recruiting for my study. I have 82 families participating. Thanks a million to all of you who have helped me get this far! It has been more work than I thought it would be but hopefully it will be downhill from here. I have a few different groups since I would just have people start as soon as I found them. This week the first group is finishing up so I will start collecting data from them next week (if all goes according to plan). It will be nice that way because then I will get the data in waves rather than all at once. It is a huge relief to have everyone recruited, I almost didn't think I would make it this far, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. (Sorry no pictures)

We are almost finished with the semester. Tuesday was the last day of classes and Friday was the first day of finals. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun between Tuesday and Friday. On Wednesday we got a few new inches of snow so we went out snowshoeing.


Saturday we played racquetball in the morning and Ultimate later that night.
Sunday was a beautiful day, and Tyler decided to try making pull-aparts. They turned out really yummy, and we are trying not to eat all of them at once.

The next day my sister Alexis called to see if she could come visit since she was on spring break. Since I didn't teach until noon on Monday we decided it would be fun to go snowshoeing also. I learned my lesson and remembered to bring my camera. Unfortunately, it was snowing pretty hard so I could not seen any of the amazing views of the mountains. So sorry.

Snow shoeing!

Last weekend my friend Sheena (who was my companion in the MTC) came up to go snowshoeing. She had never been before and I had only been once. We decided to just go behind my house, which turned out to be a great idea. It was a lot of fun and a very pretty day. We had received about 4-5 inches of fresh snow the day or two before, plus there was over two feet of compacted snow underneath the fresh stuff. Unfortunately we forgot our cameras on the hike, but we had Tyler snap a picture when we got back. (he had to stay home to study and Sheena's husband had to work)

New Trophy!

On Friday Tyler participated in a charity-fund raiser bowling tournament. There were over 50 guys who participated and some of them were pretty amazing. Right off the bat we could pick out the guy that was going to be the one to beat, but Tyler wasn't too far behind him in scores. Sure enough, in the third round of games Tyler had to play this guy. He lost by about three points (196 to 199 was the final score) which meant that he had to go to the loser's bracket. He beat everyone in his path and made it to the top two where he had to play the same guy for the championship. Everyone that Tyler had beat on the way was there at the end to cheer him on (which tells you something about his attitude) plus others that were just excited to see who would win. By this point Tyler was on his eighth game while the other guy was on his fifth. It was a really close game and a lot of fun to watch, especially since the crowd was mostly cheering for Tyler. Unfortunately one of Tyler's throws, that looked like it was going to be a strike, didn't manage to get all ten pins and one was left standing. It wasn't much but it was enough to give the other guy the opening he needed the final score was 166 to 178. It was okay though, Tyler still got second overall, he got a trophy, some gift certificates, a T-shirt, his name on the wall and a bunch of fans, not to mention that he had a great time, and got a lot of bowling in. These were his scores for the eight games he bowled: 183 191 196 190 166 193 235 166 Pretty amazing isn't it! especially that 235! This is him with his trophy.