Dear Erica,

This week is spirit week at Lakeridge Junior High, today was jersey day, and as a PE teacher I felt like I should dress the part. I dug deep into my hope chest (that I wail on at night when I am lonely according to some people) and looked at all of my options. I decided on a jersey that I wore in junior high. It seemed the most fitting for the occasion.

As I tried on this jersey I thought of you. This is funny because I didn't know you in junior high. But it was my gray all-star uniform. You know the year Thermalito/Palermo All-Star team beat the Oroville All-star team. I was just laughing at how mad you probably were. I didn't even know you then, but lets be honest you were mad you lost. I remember I wanted to beat Paula and Dana so bad. They were supposed to be on our team but they must have lied about their addresses so they could play in Oroville.

Jana, Saundra Hedrick, Emily Taylor and I were all on the team. At least that was all I could remember. Then I looked at the newspaper clippings and Janice and Julie Kohloff and Nicole Gilbert were on our team as well. You guys were probably better. I don't think we were supposed to win. I was supper pumped we did win.

Anyways I thought of you all day because of that jersey. And I smiled because we won.

Love, LaNell

P.S. one student asked me if I was on a team with a bunch of Mexicans because of the city name. I replied that no I was not but there was an Indian on our team.

P.S.S. Why do I feel like that jersey fits me better now than it did in junior high?

P.S.S.S. Why am I still typing this when the Cougars are playing basketball?

Erica I love you and I really love how competitive you were/are in softball. And let's be honest you were/are amazing. The End.

EIGHT MILES!!

Amber and I have been wanting to do an extended snowshoeing trip for sometime. This week the snow cooperated and so we decided to attempt to do a longer hike. We drove up to Aspen Grove and hiked to the top of the Alpine Loop and back. I did a little research and we knew the hike was eight miles and so we figured we would be hiking between 4 and 8 hours depending on the snow. As you can see the snow was AWESOME!!

Luckily some snowmobilers had broken the trail a little for us so we were able to hike at a little faster pace. I tried to brake trail but even with snowshoes the snow was higher than my knees. So for the most part we stayed on the broken trail.

I had to take a picture by my share the road sign. I always stop and take a picture of one of these signs when I bike the loop in the summer.

Overall it was a great hike. We did it in 3 and 1/2 hours (and according to my heart rate monitor we burned 1500 calories). It was so beautiful and there was tons of snow. Next time we just have to figure out a way to keep our water from freezing. OOPS!

A Weekend Away

Last weekend for the three day holiday Katie was able to secure a cabin in the Timber Lakes up above Heber and so we were able to get out of Provo (the nasty inversion) for the long weekend. It was so nice to be up above the bad air and just have time to hang out and relax. Cyndee, Todd and Dan accompanied us for the weekend.

We played lots of games. Well we only played two games but we played lots of those two games. Dominion and Pinochle. Oh and we played a little card game called Dog. It was fun to just eat junk food, and I mean lots of it, and play games. The games only got a little intense once when Dan tried to blame me for cheating in Pinochle. A few rounds later we were totally over it:)

On Monday we went on an awesome snowshoeing adventure. We hiked to the top of this mini mountain. It was super steep and there was around 2 and 1/2 feet of snow. It was pretty fresh snow so it was a great workout. This was my first real experience off of a trail. Our mini mountain was pretty steep so Todd taught me and Katie how to run straight down the mountain with snowshoes on. That was really fun and I am excited to try it again.

Todd also demonstrated what happens if you don't keep the front of the snowshoe up while running down the mountain (aka face plant).

Overall it was a very nice weekend and I was not ready to come back to work.

Eighteen

Eighteen . . . . . that is how many down and backs I did on Friday at my basketball practice. Running is the only way to motivate my team this year. On Thursday we were playing a team that was not very good so I told my team if they lost they had to run a down and back for every point they lost by (I am mean I know). Well they were like if we win will you run for every point we win by. That seemed fair enuogh and so I agreed. They played so great. They won by eighteen. I was so proud of them. Their past two games have been great. I hope they can continue to play like this.

So after they won they were all feeling bad for me. They said I could bring them treats instead of running, they volunteered to let me ony run half, and they just kept feeling so bad. I told them I would run them all because I never feel bad when they have to run. So I ran eighteen down and backs. It was great. In this case I would much rather be the one running.

Other then basketball nothing else has been going on. I was really quite sick all week. I came home from work and just slept everyday. I was sleeping 10-12 hours a night. I finally started exercising again so we will see if the bug has finally passed. Maybe this week I will actually take some pictures of something fun that I do. PEACE!