Christmas

We had a very fun Christmas this year, including 3 days of family gatherings and lots of sleeping in! This is our third Christmas to spend together, and it seems like the time has just flown by! Steve will have quite a job beating his Christmas presents to me on that first Christmas!

We spent Christmas Eve in Gentry with my family. It wasn't quite the same as it usually is because several family members couldn't make it. Made it a lot quieter which just didn't seem right! We were entertained with talented piano players and some caroling though. We were nice and didn't turn off the lights to make them go away. (Did I mention they were all related and were in the living room?!)

Christmas morning we slept in for a while and exchanged stockings. Since we were taking it light this year on gifts, we just did stocking stuffers for each other and it was REALLY fun! We apparently did pretty well on the gifts though because we had to hold the stocking hooks down with barbells after we filled them!

We headed over to my parents' after that and exchanged gifts over there. I think Lydia was a little impatient to get her gifts! Mom made us a copy of a really neat book she and her sisters made for my grandma a few years back. It goes all the way back to my great grandparents and tells all kinds of things about their lives. I'll have to get mom to update her part, and then Steve and I can put our own stories in there. Goodness knows he's got plenty of stories to tell! From there we went to Dad's parents where Steve finally got the Christmas dinner with all the fixins that he had been waiting for! Poor fella didn't get a meal on Christmas Eve. After a yummy lunch, we headed home and spent the rest of the day being lazy!

Yesterday we finished up the go 'round by visiting his family out at Steve's parents' house. We had a fun time visiting with all of his relatives and eating more great food! Oh, and shooting the nerf rifle, of course! I think the guys had more fun with it than the kids! I'm glad that we both live so close to our families though and can enjoy getting to know all the relatives. There's a lot of people to get to know between the both of us!

Thankful

Here are some things I have been thankful for over the last few days...
- Steve got home early yesterday
- no line at the Assessor's office
- no line at the DMV
- tooth sort of feels better
- Steve's truck should be all done tomorrow
- Tomorrow is FRIDAY

I'm sure there were others, too, but that's just what's coming to mind. I figured that was better than focusing on the negatives like the $600+ bill to fix the truck, the cats eating my leather shoes, and that my tooth still kind of hurts (meaning that it may have actually fractured under my crown with pulling the tooth being the only solution) :-(

I do have to share the one "you're kidding me" moment I had yesterday.

During recess yesterday, I ran out to my car to get something. On my way through the office, one of my kids was heading into the counselor's office with the University student who is interning with our counselor this year. When I got back inside, I stopped by to see what was up. I knocked on the counselor's door and heard, "Come in." I opened the door and stuck my head in. The intern was there talking on her CELL PHONE, but my student was not. Here's our dialogue:

Me: "Do you know where Mayte is?"
Intern: "I'm on the phone right now." (said rudely)
*several second silence while I try to process what she just said*
Me: "Yes, and I am looking for a student you just had in here who is not here anymore!'"
Intern: (to the person on the phone) "I'm sorry, hold on just a second."
(to me) "I think she got sent back to your classroom or something."
Me: "Right."

I closed the door with a half angry/half "surely she didn't just say what I think she said" face and left to go to my room to look for the student. (Allow me to be sarcastic for a moment...) For some reason they kind of frown upon children being left unattended...especially since the student was either alone in class (a big no no) or she was taking herself out to recess, involving leaving the building and walking across the street behind our school (a bigger no no).

Our counselor was eating her lunch in the teachers' lounge, so as I walked through, I asked HER if she knew where Mayte was. She said she sent her out to recess, which was fine because that's where she was SUPPOSED to be. I briefly recounted the above interchange with her, so we'll hope that doesn't happen again!

13 days down!

165 days to go! I have an awesome group of kids this year, so I'm actually looking forward to those 165 days! So far my class is 21 kiddos...8 boys and 13 girls. They have their own little personalities and issues, but overall, they are a great class.

I have several personal goals at school this year that I can tell are already affecting my attitude at work. The first is to stay more organized than I have been the last two years. I tend to be bad about using something and setting it in a "junk accumulating area." Then I either can't find it later or spend time cleaning up messes I could have avoided. After the first day of school, I was SO proud of myself for putting things away as I was finished with them and was telling Steve how my classroom was already staying clean. His response was, "Ok, that was one day..." Smarty pants!

Goal number two is to keep a positive attitude. Last year's class was a challenge, but when I focused on the negative, things never got better. So, I'm really trying to be thankful for each child and for each day. It's going pretty well, too. That doesn't translate into never getting anyone into trouble or never begging for a foot rub in the evening, but it's helped me recognize all the blessings I receive each day.

So anyway, school's going well, home's going well. :-) Steve's got Saturdays off now, so that has been an INCREDIBLE blessing! I was telling him just today how much I have physically and emotionally relaxed because I know that each week, I have that guaranteed day that is just for us. It's also given him a lot more time to work on praise and worship music and just find some time to kick back, so that's been good to see. We've set Tuesday aside as our "no TV day," so we're using that evening to do Bible study together. We get so much more accomplished on Tuesdays since we're not tempted to spend the whole time watching TV!

Well, I guess while Steve's at worship practice I will go see what else I can get done this evening!

Flight or Flight....I flighted, Steve fighted

For those of you who haven't spent a lot of everyday life time with me, you may not know that I have a fear of big dogs. It doesn't bother me all the time, but certain situations just bring out the whole adrenaline rush fight or flight thing.

Here's the perpatrator...or a close relative anyway.

Steve and I went for a bike ride this evening and encountered this guy (a lot more ratty and rabid looking!) out in the boonies near the Gentry Safari. We were doing a 7.5 mile loop and were just over halfway through. Since I am pretty out of shape, my uphill speed was reeeeeally slow. Steve was bringing up the rear, so I reached Mr. Friendly first.

Unfortunately this occured at the low point between two hills. He came charging out at me barking like he was going to eat my leg like a drumstick. My response: yelling, "STEVE!" and jerking my leg up to my face. There's the flight.

Steve came shooting up behind me yelling and kicking at the dog from his bike. There's the fight. The dog decided Steve was a lot meaner than I was and walked off. However, about halfway up this hill, I realized that between the stupid hill and the fear response, my heart rate had about doubled. My choices weren't good: stay on the bike and die of heart failure or get off the bike and get eaten by the dog. I stayed on long enough to make sure the dog was gone and then had to walk a good 5 minutes to get my heart back down to a countable number of bpm.

So now we're back home, and I'm thinking that I can probably count that as an 8.5 mile ride since my heart definitely got its aerobic activity for the day!

Next time, I'm taking the pepper spray.

Meet Tigger and Callie!

Premonition??

Our homepage on our computer is FoxNews.com. When I logged on this evening, the main story was about a researcher in Argentina who is.....

measuring how much of the country's greenhouse gas emissions might be from cattle. And I thought it was a silly conversation!!!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,379801,00.html

Fun with flies

Joey came over to spend the day with me today and discovered the fun of Steve's bug zapper racket. After unloading all of our camping stuff the other day, we have an abundance of flies in our house that really are becoming quite the nuisance. Within about 15 minutes, Joey had relieved us of about 4 flies. He would wait until they landed on the carpet and fling himself and the racket down on the fly. I think he's currently shut himself in one of the bedrooms to finish off a few unfortunate flies that managed to get stuck in there with him. Boys will be boys!

Back home

We've officially been back home for almost three days, and we're both catching up on getting rested. We drove from Colorado to Dodge City, KS on Saturday where we stayed in a hotel, and then after visiting Boot Hill, the Dodge City museum, we headed back home to Arkansas. Life has returned to normal...Steve's working, and I'm trying to get caught up on laundry and get everything put back where it goes.

I mowed our three-week tall grass yesterday and had to keep my eye on a baby robin that was hopping around the yard. Eventually his mama came down to the ground and hopped around with him feeding him bugs.

I guess I'll get back to work!

Three things I didn't like about Friday morning...

Three things I didn't like about Friday morning:

- 37 degrees at 7:00 am

- putting in my contact that had been in contact solution in the near-freezing temps overnight

- having to wear socks with my Chacos since my tennis shoes were still wet from the snow

Thankfully our destination for the day was Mesa Verde, a national park in the southwestern corner of Colorado (aka...much warmer). Mesa Verde is an area of mesas where the Anasazi, or "ancestral puebloans" as we learned is the new PC term, built cliff dwellings hundreds of years ago. Due to my upbringing, I am unable to go through areas like Mesa Verde without hunting for wildlife, so Steve turned around when I spotted a couple of deer resting in the shade of a tree. I hopped out of the Jeep to take a picture, and after a few minutes, the buck stood up and just stared at me. I'm sure he wouldn't have charged me, but his attitude did convince me to go ahead and leave him alone! Plus I got better pictures when he stood up!

Mesa Verde was actually a really neat place. I strolled through the museum while Steve visited the boys' room, and there was SO much to see! They had artifacts they had discovered at the sites, including pottery, tools, corn, moccasins, jewelry...all sorts of stuff! We didn't want to take the ranger guided tours, so we visited the self-guided sites. It was amazing to think of people living there and building all those dwellings! We even got to climb down in a kiva, an underground room usually reserved for religious ceremonies.

Since we wanted to get as far east as possible before camping since Saturday started our trip home, we left Mesa Verde and drove until about 7:30 when we finally found a camping site somewhere in the Rio Grande National Forest. Of course we had to stop a few times on the way there to get pictures of a deer...

and some turkeys.

Finally we set up camp in a beautiful area right along the river for our last night of camping.

We fought the mountain, and the mountain lost...kind of

Thursday was the setting of a battle between man and the elements, and it was a very close finish. Who exactly was the winner is still up for debate.


Mom and Dad climbed Courthouse Mountain back, oh, what was it? 20 some years ago? Unfortunately, Steve and I were uninformed of the fact that late June is a little early to climb the mountain. Or else the area just had an extremely hard winter this year. After a long drive up to Owl Creek Pass at about 10,000 feet altitude, we finally found the Courthouse Mountain trailhead from directions we found on the internet. Courthouse Mountain and it's neighboring peak, Chimney Rock (you should be able to tell the difference by the picture!) were in view for the first part of the drive, and we were very optimistic and excited at this point. We also saw a doe and her fawn bouncing across the road, so it was a very enjoyable drive.

Where we parked at the trailhead, there were two other guys gearing up with backpacks and other gear, and since we didn't see them after that, I assume they took one of the other nearby (and longer) trails. The trail to the summit of Courthouse was 1.8 miles, which sounds fairly short until you realize what you're climbing! As soon as we got onto the trail, we encountered the first snowdrifts, and it never really left. There were a few points where we could see the actual trail, but the rest of the time, we followed a pair of bootprints through the snow. As you can see by my graceful movements, it wasn't always easy to get through the snow. Sometimes it was packed enough to stay on top or just up to our ankles...other times, we'd step at a spot and end up with the snow up to our knees or above!



We also spotted a lot of deer poop...

and several bear tracks.
Here's one of our first (of many) rest stops.




At one point we lost the main trail somewhere in the snow and ended up following what appeared to be a deer trail along the ridge line...it must have been easier for the deer. Here's our commentary during another rest stop.




The rest of the hike up was pretty much the same. Snow, steep, and lots of breather stops. We got started kind of late though and there was an approaching thunder storm, so we tried to keep our breaks rather brief. After clearing a STEEP field where the trail zigzagged back and forth, and CLIMBING up the snow banks that were probably 10 feet deep in places, we finally made it to the base of the rocks. We spent another ten minutes climbing up the rocks and then the thunder started. Since the rocks were already treacherous, and we had gone through slick mud and tons of deep snow to get to that point, we decided it might be wise to go ahead and turn back rather than getting stuck in a storm. Here's our final video of that decision.




The trek back down was definitely easier going since we had our own footprints to follow, but the muscles still burned! There was also a pretty steady sprinkle of COLD rain. I also continued with my paranoia about bears, so I tried to make plenty of noise. Some was intentional like asking Steve how he was doing every few minutes, and some was unintentional like me yelling as I slid/fell/tumbled down snow embankments. At one point, I suggested we sing, but Foreverandever Etc. by David Crowder was a little hard to sing when we were already panting.


We finally made it back to the Jeep where we changed shoes since ours were soaked and cold. My pants were soaked up to the knees with snow and mud, so I even had to change pants before getting in. Our feet were red from being so cold, but once we collapsed in the Jeep, I don't think we cared! We drove back down to Ridgway where we stopped for lunch (about 4:00). I called to check on Mom, Steve bought some jerky, and in general, we tried to recover.


The rest of the evening was pretty easy going since we just drove through the mountains down to Silverton, an old mining town, where we camped for the night. We didn't even make dinner...just took ibuprofen and hit the air mattress. Steve actually turned in a little earlier because he wasn't feeling good....guess the mountain was meaner than we thought! I also came out with a scratch on my back from a sharp pine branch. After a good night's rest though, Steve was back to his chipper self and ready to hit the road! Look back in a bit for tomorrow's story!

We'll end with a word to the wise:

Don't climb Courthouse Mountain if there's any snow. :-)

Deep End

We'll be comin' 'round the mountain!

Ok, rewind to Wednesday, June 25, and we'll get you caught back up to the present. :-)

Wednesday started out with a phone call from Dad letting us know that Mom's surgery had gone well, so that was great news to wake up to! We hadn't set alarms, so Dad's call actually kept us from missing breakfast! After finally getting everything together, we took off. I (Emily) drove from Grand Junction to Montrose where we restocked on food for the next three nights of camping. Steve took the road from Montrose to Ouray because it starts getting into the mountains. We stopped at a place called Box Canyon Falls that was beautiful. It looks like the river had carved out a path just wide enough for the water, so it was very narrow. A neat place though!

Our main destination for the day was Yankee Boy Basin, a open area in the middle of the mountains. It was a fairly long drive and much higher elevation, so the temperature cooled from about 90 degrees in Montrose to 72 degrees just by the time we started up on the 4x4 road. It did get rough at times, but Steve handled the roads very well and brought us and the Jeep back down unscathed! We got some video of the ride down that we'll post later.

The Basin was beautiful when we got up there, and we were the only ones up at the end of the road. We saw lots of marmots on the way up, and I had to chase them all over trying to get a picture. We also saw a small doe on the way back down that let me get pretty close to her before I finally left her alone. Steve also got a nice pic of a chipmunk that mysteriously disappeared right as he clicked the second picture.

We finally settled down at a campsite back toward the bottom of the road toward Ouray. It was pretty empty with just a few vehicles at the first few sites, and our spot was over a few little hills. For some reason, once we set up camp and it started getting dark, I was worried about bears. Really worried...I imagined all kinds of things coming at us from the darkness outside of the firelight. Well, things didn't take a good turn when Steve shined the flashlight around the perimeter in an attempt to make me feel better because the words that soon came from his mouth were, "I think I see eyes!" He started for the Jeep (about 100 yards away) to get his spotlight, and I was NOT going to be left there by myself, so I sprinted to the Jeep and jumped in the front seat. If there was something wild in the woods, I certainly wasn't going to be outside! Thankfully when he got the BIG light, we saw that it was just a deer. And I figured that if there was a deer, surely there wasn't a bear around or he would have eaten the deer! Ta da!

Heading out!

Although this will be a rather late start for the day, we have finally uploaded all of our pictures online. If you want to check out all the pictures we've taken, go to the following site:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=1qt19jsn.2gt6hahj&x=0&y=-3eib5i&localeid=en_US

Let me know if it doesn't work, and I can email it to you.

Our plans for the next few days are:
Wednesday - Yankee Boy Basin
Thursday - Courthouse Mountain
Friday - Mesa Verde?
Saturday - Leave for home, stop somewhere in KS
Sunday - Leave KS, get home!

Talk to you all Saturday!

Dead legs...again!

Another beautiful morning! And the hope of a shower this evening! Our plan was to drive back out of Colorado National Monument, making stops for pictures and some hiking. We started out on the little plateau thing right near the campsite. The climbing was fun, but we couldn't really get to all the places we thought we could! The top made a good lookout for critters, and we did spy a fox and a rabbit. Hope they didn't meet each other! I also chased some chipmunks while Steve drove around to get pictures of me on the top.

The whole park is canyons, monuments, and other features worn out by erosion. The pillars of rock were awesome, and each turn looked so different! There was a sign at the entrance warning about mountain lions, but we didn't get to see any. We did see a bunch of lizards though! After a few stops at lookout points, we decided to take a trail down into Ute Canyon. After about a dozen cutbacks, we decided to head back up...whoo! That was one steep trail coming back up! That's when we decided we were done hiking for the day! Would have been pretty at the bottom, but we might not have made it back up! From then on, we stuck to pictures from the road or close to it!

And that brings us to the present! We've gotten cleaned up, had dinner, and are watching tv. Gotta enjoy all the luxuries before we head back out into the wild tomorrow! I'll put the rest of our pics on a photo website and put up a new post with the address We'll be camping until Saturday, so look for more pics then!

Happy Anniversary!

Our first anniversary was a very fun day spent at the Black Canyon. We drove around the canyon (about a 2 hour drive) and made it to the South Rim entrance. We didn't receive the memo on the bicycle tour taking place, so we were a bit surprised to see hundreds of cyclists when we started up the canyon. One of the women said they started in Durango (160 miles south) and were heading back to Telluride (130 miles away) after their day at the canyon. I think they were crazy. Especially the ones who rode INTO the canyon and back out. That thing has 16% grade in some parts!

Next on the itinerary was Grand Junction, so we headed north. We weren't totally sure where we were going to camp for the night, but we ended up in Colorado National Monument. The 19 mile drive from the entrance to the campground took quite a while due to the curvy roads and Steve having me stop every hundred yards for another picture! :-) We switched drivers about halfway through because I couldn't see any of the scenery and didn't like the steep, curvy roads!

When we finally got to the campsite, we found there were no campfires allowed, just charcoal fires in the grill. The closest store was 9 miles down the twisty, turny road, so we pulled out the propane stove and boiled ourselves some hot dogs. That's when we entered a battle. Steve pulled out our electric fly racket and started swinging, but we were no match for the gnats. Our neighbors were sitting under mosquito netting at their table, but we hadn't packed any malaria protection. Ok, so maybe gnats don't carry malaria, but I just knew that every bite I took of my hotdog also included several gnats. Thankfully the tent was already set up, so we carried everything to the door of the tent, unzipped the door, and threw everything in as fast as we could! God apparently has a wonderful sense of humor because as I was cursing the gnats, praying for them to go away, the wind started picking up. It was a nice, gentle breeze but enough to keep the bugs away! Well, by the time we got back from a little walk, the tent was all but folded in half. Here's a nice shot of the tent before and after.

Crusted Butt

Any guesses on whose idea that title was?! Our stay at the Almont campsite was very good, but I apparently woke up a little early for Steve. Here's Steve at 6:30...

and me at 6:30!

The display on the Jeep said 49 degrees, so after we got up and around, we made a trip into town to visit Walmart. We picked up hoodies and a few other supplies we found that we needed. Unfortunately, one of the supplies we needed was a new cooler because we discovered that we didn't have the plug for the one we mooched from Dad. Since our vehicle was so packed, there was not room for two coolers...you know what I'm coming to, right? I think I had a single tear roll down my cheek as we drove away. Don't worry though, Dad! You're welcome to the one we replaced it with, or we will get you another one of your choice. That old cooler looked like it had worked hard!

We weren't sure exactly what we wanted to do for the day, so we just took off driving. Crested Butte was just up the highway, so we stopped at the chamber of commerce and got information about a hiking trail. Since we had just arrived in the mountains and weren't completely adjusted to the altitude, we wanted something relatively level. The trail was beautiful and seemed popular with cyclists and hikers.

Although the hike was beautiful, my foot started hurting, so when we came to the end of the loop and were trying to figure out which way to go, I suggested we take the dirt road. Haven't heard the end of that one yet! APPARENTLY, it wasn't the dirt road that we had parked on to start the hike. It trekked over a mountain. So much for taking a shorter route. After about our 10th mile, a lady pulled up beside us and said she'd passed us earlier and asked if we wanted a ride back in to town. I'm not one for hitchhiking, but we took it! She took us the last few miles into town, and then we walked back across town to where we had parked! Here's a nice picture of my feet after we got back. Eeeeeew!

Our legs were now useless, so we let the Jeep do the work and headed for the North Rim of the Black Canyon. We went across the dam bridge (Matt, that's for you) and got some really awesome pictures of the gorges along Hwy 92. I also learned why Dad told me sandals in Colorado weren't a good idea. They were incredibly comfy on our Crested Butte hike, but my flip flops weren't the best choice once we got out in to the drier desert areas. After taking this picture, I was running back to the Jeep and didn't notice a nice Prickly Pear cactus. My flip flops are kind of foamy, so the cactus stuck right into the side of it. Steve had to pick a few barbs...whatever you call those things...out of my foot when we got back. Then I dug out my socks and tennis shoes and learned to survey the ground for cacti!

We saw a few deer along the drive to the rim, so that was kind of exciting since we hadn't seen much wildlife. We set up camp at the North Rim of the Black Canyon and took a walk down to the look out point. Wow! It is amazing to think of the awesome creations God has given us to enjoy! Our campsite was really nice, once again. We even had a humming bird in a tiny nest in the tree right beside our tent!

We're back online!

Finally! We're at the La Quinta in Grand Junction and are enjoying a break from the tent! After more than three days with no showers, we have cleaned up and even ate dinner at Applebee's for a treat. Since we've done so much since our last post, I'll just do a day at a time. So...we'll start with Saturday!

Just as a reminder, we started off Saturday morning in Garden City, KS. After stopping at Walmart to stock our cooler, we resumed our trek westward. The novelty of wheat, corn, silos, and irrigation sprinklers started to wear off, and we began to understand how a person must feel while stranded at sea. I don't know how many times I said, "Are those mountains on the horizon?!" only to hear the response, "I think those are just clouds, babe."

We finally got into the mountains and were amazed at how beautiful the scenery was along the Arkansas River. Since we had plenty of time, we made a stop at the Royal Gorge. As you can see by Steve's hair, it was a little windy!

We finished out the evening at Almont, right along the Gunnison River. We found a lovely campsite and set up the tent and got the fire started!

Garden City, KS

We are finally here at the Clarion Inn in Garden City, KS. Today's drive went very well, and we got here about the time we figured we would. We set out at about 3:30 this afternoon, driving until I (Emily) needed my first bathroom stop at...well, a McDonald's somewhere in Oklahoma. Can't remember what the town was called now. :-) Somewhere past Tulsa anyway.

We got our nice picture outside where Steve kindly tried to point to my bladder to indicate the purpose for our stop. Now it just looks like I'm pulling his finger. :-)





Our next exciting stop was when we crossed into Kansas. After getting out our handy dandy camera stand thingie, we set it up on the hood of the Jeep, set the 10-second timer and ran to the sign. As you can see, we didn't make it in time! When the picture took, Steve was actually turned around saying, "Are we gonna make it!?" I thought it turned out better than if we'd actually made it to the sign! We set off for Wichita...a fairly uneventful drive with conversation topics such as cow flatulence being a contributor to global warming. Any guesses on who started that conversation?!

After a stop at Spanglers, a burger place in Wichita, we got off I35 and started west on 400 at about 7:30. We stopped an hour or so later in a little town called Pratt to get gas and switched drivers. I took that last stretch from Pratt to Garden City, and that's when my nostalgia kicked in. By about 9:30, it was getting dark, and we could see lightning on the horizon. It was pinkish-purple just like I remembered from our trips when I was little. Of course I had to point out the color to Steve EVERY time lightning would strike. He tried to sound impressed each time since he is SUCH a nice guy.

The next moment of nostalgia kicked in when a smell hit our noses. Yes, it was the smell of cows. Along with the memory of laying my head on the pillow up against the window while I watched the pink lightning, I remembered a feed yard somewhere along that drive. It's amazing the memories my mind held onto for the last 16 or 17 years!

I guess that's probably about as exciting as I can make a post about Kansas. We'll head out of here tomorrow morning, maybe not as early as we hoped since it's after 12 now! Guess we'll be back on here from Colorado the next time!

Love you all!