Happy Easter!

Mountain Home puts on a good Easter (see videos after the pictures).

Spring Break 2014: Seattle, WA

One of the perks of being a teacher is getting a week off for Spring Break every year.  This year, we drove to my parents’ house to spend the week in Seattle, WA. (technically Lake Stevens, but pretty close!)  We all had so much fun.  We got to spend an entire week with my parents and we crammed as much fun into one week as possible.  We also got to see my cousins and some of Michelle's extended family, what more could we have asked for?

The Ducky Tour:

The Space Needle:

Mason monkeying around at the Children's Museum:

The Troll:

Hiking with beautiful scenery (this whole area is so alive!  green everywhere):

Going out to eat with cousins:

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and other fun at the pier:

Michelle visiting with TFA friends:

Mason riding a train!  Actually it was a monorail but he still loved it.

I did a half marathon trail run, what an unforgettable experience!

Half Marathon Trail Run ("Dash Point Trail Run")

I did my first ever trail run over Spring Break in Seattle – it was a half marathon.  No moderate escalation of miles on a trail or mountainside, I just went straight to the half marathon.   If I would have thought about beforehand, I would have been able to realize that a trail run is going to be significantly more difficult than a regular run on the street or a path, but somehow this never crossed my mind.  Even mere minutes before the race I was telling Michelle “I should for sure finish before two hours because that would be like doing a 4 hour marathon pace and this is only half of that distance.”

Trail running is easily 1.5 times as hard as regular road running.  In my case, in the half marathon I did in Seattle, the entire course was pure sloppy thick mud.  It was also raining basically the entire time.  Also, I didn’t really bring all of my running gear/clothes on vacation so I was wearing cotton sweatpants (that got soaking wet pretty quickly) that with no drawstring and that weighted me down quite a bit.  The entire 13 miles consisted of leaping over puddles and mud, trying to maintain balance and not fall down the mountain (it was a pretty narrow course).  I actually managed to ‘run’ basically the entire time and yet I came in at just under 3 hours, averaging around 12 minute miles.  I really was running pretty much the entire time, so you can understand how much more difficult the course was if it made me go about three minutes per mile slower than I would have been running on a street.    

  

Having said all of this, it was an amazing experience!  I am super glad I signed up for the race.  The trail was beautiful, extremely green and very full of plant life – as is this entire part of the country.  I would totally do another trail run, and knowing what I am getting myself into will help a lot for the next time I do one of these races.

Tiger Tennis

When I started working at Mountain Home High School at the beginning of this school year, I was also presented with an opportunity to be the assistant coach on the Tennis team.  I thought this was an amazing opportunity because I have a real passion for the sport and have played it for decades.  I had done some coaching before at the school I worked out in D.C., but it was never a sport that I was truly passionate about or that I had played competitively growing up.  I for sure wanted to do this, but I was really worried about how much of a time commitment it would be.  I told the Athletic Director I needed to think about it and talk it over with my family.

Think it over I did.  I even asked the AD for more time to think it over when he needed an answer.  He gave me more time, and I thought it over some more, and fortunately he gave me even more time when I again asked him for more time while I was dragging my feet deciding whether or not to commit one way or the other.  There is a nice little stipend that definitely makes it worth your time, so that wasn’t the issue, it really just came down to me not wanting to find myself in a situation where I felt stretched too thin on balancing my time between, family, work, and potentially now Tennis. 

I finally made a decision.  Since coaching Tennis is something that I could possibly do every year for the rest of my teaching career, I decided that I should find out first-hand how much time it would take to coach and how it felt balancing working, family, and all my other responsibilities.  I felt like the only way to truly know if I could balance everything or not was to give it a try and find out for myself. 

I am so glad that I decided to coach Tennis.  It is tons of fun.  I get to be outside on the Tennis courts and get to know the kids outside of the classroom.  They are all really great kids and it is a pleasure working with them.  I realize now that this is why it was important to find out first-hand what coaching would be like.  I have discovered that it is really not too much of a time commitment at all (which was my primary concern).  As is everything in Mountain Home, the Tennis courts are really close to the school and our house and I often have to come home before practice. 

The plan is definitely to make coaching the high school Tennis team a regular part of working at the high school.  The pictures included here are of a recent team barbecue we had that I brought the family to.  Good times.

 This video is of Mason tracking a cat that went into the bushes.

Christmas 2013

This last Christmas was SO MUCH FUN!  It was our first Christmas living in Idaho and we got to spend it with both of our families. Brian, Kathy, Brandt, Kristin, Andrew, and Lauren also came up from BYU to spend Christmas with us. We spent Christmas Eve at our house. I planned a little devotional about the gifts Christ has given us and what gifts we can give him this year. We also made gingerbread houses and played games. We spent Christmas morning and day at my mom's house and we all opened presents together. It was really fun. We got to skype with Cara too! We feel so blessed to live close enough to our families now to spend special occasions like this together.

Our friends went up to the mountains and cut this Christmas tree down for us. It was much bigger than we expected!

The tree took up a large part of our living room and we had to trim it down a lot. At first Chad said he refused to have it in our house because it looked like a forest, but once we got it all trimmed he warmed up to it.

Mason loved to help "undecorate" the tree, so we had to leave the bottom without many ornaments. :) Mason loved looking at the tree and playing around it.

Making Christmas sugar cookies with Grandma and Grandpa - a little before Christmas.

During the month of December I would wrap Christmas books and put one under the tree every couple of mornings. Mason always got really excited to open it and always asked to open more and more. I was sure he was going to love Christmas morning, but when we got to my parent's house and he saw all the presents he acted like they weren't even there. We asked him if he wanted to see the presents and he said no and just grabbed a book. It was funny. Maybe next year he will be more excited. Once we got him to open a present he did want to open lots more after that. The first thing he opened was a wagon from Grammie and Grandpa and he was so excited! Chad took him around the house in it a few times and Mason couldn't stop smiling. He didn't want to get out.

Mason loved this dump truck from Uncle Brian. He tried to sit and stand in it.

He also got a big dump truck from Grandma and Grandpa Buckner. This was a little easier to sit in.

Driving and talking on the phone at the same time already!

Chad got a new hatchet for Christmas and his "first order of business" was to chop down the tree stump in my parent's backyard that had been driving him crazy ever since he started mowing their lawn.

We spent a fun evening playing ping pong and around the world ping pong.

Michelle got this new bike trailer from Grammie and Grandpa. We love it! Mason loves to go on bike rides in it!