MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

This is lasts years memorial day weekend. You know little trip to Vernal, Utah, home of the dinosaurs, river raft, camp, and get sunburned. Everything you hope for in a memorial day weekend, including flipping the raft in the big rapids just so you can appreciate your life a little more afterwards. It was SUNNY and a ton of fun. Now fast forward one year and the saga begins. The 1st problem was I really wanted to go camping by a lake and/or pond so that I could use my new kayaks. Well Tuesday prior to the weekend was the hottest day on record so it was looking good. Then Thursday before was the coldest day on record and things started to look down. I am a fair weather camper so my cousin Katie and I decided that going camping in the rain would not be that much fun so we decided to go help my Auunt Nancy in Sandy for Friday and Saturday.

We worked in the yard Friday night and Saturday morning and were able to accomplish a lot. I helped plant the garden and sang the primary song "The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden," the whole rest of the day. After four hours on Saturday all I could do was lay on the grass and yell how much I hated yard work. Yep, I hate it because it is actually work. I was exhausted, dirty, and hungry. Even all we had accomplished did not make me really appreciate the work we had done.

Saturday evening we took flowers to my grandparents graves as well as my Aunt Julie and Uncle Lynn's graves. This was nice because I had not visited any of the graves since the funerals. The only downside was that spring has not really happenned here and so Nancy bought flowers in stead of using the ones from her yard, that are usually amazing (we had enough from the yard to do my grandmas flowers pictured below).

On Sunday Katie and I headed up the Heber canyon to have a little fun at her Aunts cabin. Well I finally got to see a BEAR!!! I have been wanting to see one for a really long time.
Yea, it is stuffed but it was still really cool. So cool in Heber that it snowed all day Monday. So instead of kayaking we pulled out the snowshoes and went snowshoeing in May. Yep, who would have thought. The weather has been crazy this year. All in all it was a really productive weekend but it just wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. But I am happy with how it turned out.
Please bring on the warm weather!!!!!

A Great Investment

So, four years ago I bought a bike rack at Wal-mart for $100. It worked great I definitely got my monies worth and then when I went to San Diego for spring break it scratched both of my bikes. Mind you the thing was on the verge of collapsing but I was being cheap and decided it would work. Well after the bikes, new bikes, were scratched I swore I would never use it again. So I decided with my stimulus package I would buy a nice bike rack. There was a lot of drama behind the bike rack search because one bike shop was so RUDE to me I had to leave even though they had the rack I wanted, but I am not willing to buy things from people that are rude even if I had been eyeing the rack for months. So I ventured out of Provo to Sandy and found a rack on sale at REI. I used it for the first time this weekend and it is amazing. My bikes do not move at all. I am so happy and the rack was on sale for $150 normally $250. It is a Yakima rack and I love it. The true test will be how it does on the way to California but so far soooooo Good!!!

IS THE SCHOOL YEAR OVER YET?????

So typical day at Lakeridge: get to school and check my eamil, realize students are emailing me, instead of coming to talk to me about their grade, me emailing them back and saying come into my office and I would be happy to talk to you about your grade, the student rarely coming in to talk to me.

One of the most frustrating things is that students are afraid to come in and talk to teachers. They are so used to communicating through electronic sources that they don't know how to actually communicate with their teachers. Oh yea and all their emails use symbals and one letter to represent a word like they are text messaging.

Then the best is that their parents call and yell at me, or email me, or as I experienced today when the student came in to talk to me she was yelling at me. I had to say um when you are done yelling I will be happy to talk to you about your grade. Her response was sorry that's just my personality. Well it is not going to get you very far if you always yell at people. Anyways I can not wait for SUMMER!!!!

The Track Meet

So I finally got a hold of the pictures from the track meet. You can enjoy the pictures of me attempting to run in the 4x400, you know the race where I almost lost to the "FAT GUY". Not a shocker to anyone who has ever seen me run.
I could not stop coughing after the run because I was sick but don't think for one minute that it stopped the athletes from dumping water on my head.
And I could only smile afterwards knowing that I had resigned as the head coach and this was the last time I would have water dumped on me!!!! Yea.
So other then these pictures this last week was good. My proposal for my thesis went well I can make a few changes but other than that it is good to go. I also worked at the Utah State track meet on Saturday. Worked on my tan and burn and got to see some of the students I have coached in previous years win the state title so that was really fun. Now I am just looking for good ideas for memorial day weekend.

TRADITION

There is a tradition at the junior high school I coach at to dump water on the coaches at Alpine Days which is the last meet of the season. Well Alpine Days was this last Thursday and Friday and I did get water dumped on me but it was not as eventful as last year so I thought you would like to hear the story. Picture up above is me grabbing some parents baby that I don't even know because I know if I am holding her I am safe. It had snowed earlier this day and it was freezing and you can call me a party pooper but I did not want water dumped on me. Eventually the kid betrayed me and realized I was not his Mom and I had to give him back and then this happenned.
There are three buckets being used there. Don't worry this year I learned I did not bring any water buckets. I know I am so mean but don't worry they found one but at least there were not three of them.
As if those big ole buckets are not enough students felt the need to dump their individual water bottles on me as well. The funniest thing about the whole situation is that because they are junior high students they feel a little bad afterwords and they ask things like aren't you glad you know your track team loves you enough to dump you? Coach don't you feel appreciated? I bet the other coaches wish they were going to win so they could have water dumped on them? Um I am pretty sure having a bucket of water dumped on me does not make me feel appreciated.
So this year we won the meet again but because I was smarter I only had one bucket of water dumped on me. That was good because I was actually really sick and I did not want to be soaked. The good news is track os over and for the first time since October I can leave school everyday at 3:30 instead of 5:30. I can not wait.

Last but not least every year at the district track meet they have a coaches relay. So far I have alwasy been able to get out of it. Well this year I was trying to as well but there was no escaping and so I had to run in the 4x100 relay. Anyone who knows me knows I am slow and I know this so I really did not want to participate but I decided that was really prideful and that the athletes would really get a kick out of it so I just let go of my pride and did it. Well I was the first leg (naturally because that is where your slowest runner starts) and in defense of myself I was running against 7 other male coaches all of whom used to ran track and only one is now overweight. Lets just say I was second to last in my 100 yards, which I was happy about. However I was teased about being slow the rest of the day. But the best part was the one guy I did beat is extrememly overweight and one of my athletes said well coach at least you did not let the fat guy beat you that would have been really sad. Thank you at least the obese coach did not beat me. When I get pictures of the coaches realy I will post them. All in all it was a good season of track and I am grateful this chapter of my life is over.