a dc wedding

    Last month Kade and I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC for my brother Stephen's wedding.  He married a sweet girl from Spain named Claudia.  It was a great trip.  Because Jonny lives so close to DC his house became the meeting place for everyone.  And I mean everyone! All the family came out for the wedding! Having everyone together was so much fun.  And I was also able to see Aaron for the first time in 2 years!!  He had just got off a mission in Chile before the wedding.

My brothers are such studs!

     We flew into DC on Friday night and were picked up by Stephen and Claudia driving from WV.  It was the first time I was able to meet Claudia.  I really wish I knew Spanish better because that's all she knows.  We went to Jonny's house that night to see everyone before going to the hotel.  The next morning we all got ready for the wedding and drove to the temple.

This was Kade's first time seeing the DC temple.  It is such a beautiful temple!  The ceremony was all in Spanish, so about half of the people in the room understood, and the other half got a few tidbits of what was being said.  It is such a wonderful thing to see two people so in love get sealed to one another forever.

     After the ceremony, we all went outside to take pictures. Even though it was the end of September it was really hot and humid that day.  Maybe I'm just not used to the humidity anymore, but I was sweating to death!  And I was even in a dress, I don't know how the guys were standing it.  Oh, and by the way, I made the dress I wore.  I thought it came out really good.  This was a second attempt for a dress.  I started with a different pattern but I made it too short even after adding about 4 inches to the pattern!  But my second try was with an easier pattern and it came out good.  I was able to make both dresses while Kade was elk hunting in Colorado.

    After pictures, we ate lunch and went to do some sight seeing in Washington DC.  Kade had never been there before so we were excited to go.  We wish we would have had more time to see all the sites, but we got to most of the important ones.  We went to the Smithsonian natural history museum and took pictures in front of the white house, though they wouldn't let us get very close.

  After touring DC, everyone went to Jonny's house for dinner.  Stephen and Claudia also cut a beautiful wedding cake made by Megan, she's so talented!  The cake was gorgeous and delicious!  After talking a while, we went back to the hotel.   The next morning we went to Jonny's church and ate lunch before saying goodbyes and heading back to the airport. 
     Because we weren't expecting much traffic for a Sunday we were a little late getting to the airport.  We had the same plane back to SLC as Aaron and Timmy.  So we were all in kind of a hurry to get through security to get to the plane in time.  It was the funniest thing seeing slow motion Aaron and Timmy going through security.  Kade and I were standing on the other side of security going crazy wondering why they were going so slow when they knew we were late.  I think its just guys that age, they are always so slow! :)
But, we got to our plane on time and even our bags made it, so everything was good.   It was a short trip, but it was great to see everyone!
Wedding Pictures
DC Pictures

student teaching

     So I noticed that I never wrote about my student teaching at the beginning of this year.  In order to finish my elementary education degree I had to complete 4 months of student teaching.  I was placed in the school down the street, Sonoma Heights, in a 3rd grade classroom.  While I think I probably would have done a little better in a younger class, I struggled tremendously through the whole thing.  I would have to say it has probably been the most stressful 4 months of my life.  Thinking back, I don't know how I finished!  Actually, I do know how I finished. I had awesome people helping me through the whole thing, my amazing mom and wonderful husband! Plus others who probably have no idea how they helped.  Going into it I knew it would be a lot of work, but I had no idea what teaching was really like.  College doesn't really prepare you for the reality of it. 
    As you probably already figured out, I'm not going to be a teacher, its just not for me.  I can write lesson plans all day long, but actually get up in front of a room full of kids and trying to get them to do what you want is torture to me.  It didn't help that I had my teachers constantly there to judge and criticize what I was doing.  Most of the time the kids were pretty good, and I got to liking quite a few of them.  But I don't miss teaching that classroom at all. 
   Still today I'm kind of embarrased by the fact that I spent almost 5 years trying to get my teaching degree, and I have no plans on actually teaching any time soon.  It's kind of awkward for me when people ask if I'm trying to get a teaching job.  Luckily for me if I don't want to explain the real reason I can just say that there are no teaching jobs, and there really aren't!  I just wish that I could have experienced the real thing at the beginning so I could have chosen a different career before it was too late. 
   After student teaching, I worked on the farm with Kade cutting and baling hay for the summer.  It was a nice change from the classroom, but it didn't leave much time for anything else.  I was able to teach a little girl piano lessons for the summer and I realized how much fun it was.  So later in the summer I started trying to get the word out that I was teaching piano lessons.  Now I have 8 students and I love it!  But with only 8 students I still needed something else to do.  I had applied and was hired to work at a new preschool.  The hours were terrible and would not work with piano lessons, too. So I decided not to take it and bet on more students.  I'm so glad I did because I know I would not have liked it very much.  I was blessed when my bishop offered me a part time job in his office.  Now I work part time in the morning in an attorney's office and come home to do piano lessons in the afternoon.  It's working out great and I'm so grateful.

utah vacation

I had a great week with my family when they came out to take Timmy to BYU. Kade and I drove out and spent the next day at the cabin. Kade went fishing with Jacob and Dad in the morning at Trial Lake, then everyone else met up with them that afternoon. We then tried to take a very muddy, wet, snowy trail to another lake, but we lost the trail and never made it to the lake. It was still a fun little hike though. And I caught a fish with my dad's pole! After fishing we went back to the cabin for fish and hamburgers. The next morning we went to church near the cabin where everyone was dressed in cowboy boots and funny looking neck ties. Kade had the leave early to get back in time to bale hay that night.
Monday we drove down to Bryce Canyon and did some really cool hikes there. We started at Sunset point and took the Queen's Garden and Navajo trails into the canyon. Joanna and I posing in one of the tunnels on the trail.Tuesday as we were driving to Zion National Park, we took the scenic route and saw Cedar Breaks and Kolob. They were both gorgeous and Kolob reminded my a lot of Yosemite, but with red rocks.The family in front of Cedar BreaksKolob
Cool picture of cactus flower in Kolob
We got to spend a couple days in Zion. Zion is an amazing place, there is so much to see! We did pretty much all the easy and moderate hikes at the park, like the emerald pools trails, weeping rock, and riverside walk. I tried to convince mom and dad blood to go on angel's landing with a 1488 foot ascent, but they couldn't handle it. So us kids (Joanna, Jacob, and James) went up the Narrows instead. We had to get swimming suits on because the hike was up the Virgin River. Most of the time the water was only about to our knees, but there were a few spots where it got pretty high. It wouldn't have been to bad but the water was freezing! As illustrated in this picture of Jacob.. lolJoanna and Jacob in a little cove in the narrows.
The next morning we drove to Winnemucca! I was so excited that they could come to my house! We spent Friday on the farm with Kade where they got to shoot guns, ride dirt bikes, and drive tractors.James on the bike
Kade taking Joanna for a ride on the bike
I have some priceless pictures of mom shooting that we got with a disposable camera. I'll put them up as soon as I get them developed..lol
This was an amazing trip! I'm really glad I got to see everyone and have so much fun with them. And thanks so much for coming out! :)

Rest of the pictures --> click here!

i know, it's been a while..

But I have a very legitimate reason. Student teaching. The past four months have been completely dedicated to torturing myself. But that's not what I wanted to blog about because technically I have one more week. I just wanted to get into words the crazy weekend we had. It all revolves around our wonderful dog, Roxy.She has had a rough week. First on Tuesday she comes home from the farm with a long scratch on her belly (we are guessing is from barb wire). Kade didn't take her to the farm on Wednesday so she could heal. But on Wednesday night there was a terrible storm and it was pretty cold. Roxy came in Thursday morning whining and crying, because there was obviously something wrong.
Kade took her to the vet that day to figure out what was going on. Well, the vet gave him some antibiotics and said she was probably sore from the cut and was being a baby. She wasn't being a baby.. she kept getting worse and worse. She would barely eat or drink, she was really stiff, couldn't bend over, and had trouble breathing. Last night was when we really started to worry, she wouldn't come out of her dog house or even lift her head to look at us. We couldn't think what to do because it was a Saturday night in Winnemucca. Everyone was asleep.
I was able to find online an animal emergency place in Reno that was open all weekend 24 hours.
We were so worried about her dying that night that we drove to Reno at midnight. When we got there we found out through some x-rays that the area around her lungs and heart were completely filled with fluid. The vet at first thought it was an infectious fluid from the cut and said she wouldn't make it! We were so depressed.. I can't believe how attached you can get to a dog.
But the vet didn't give up, she extracted some of the fluid and found out that it was blood. She came into the room and asked if Roxy had any access to rat decon. Unfortunately there is some at the farm and apparently dogs love the taste of it. While it was still bad news, she was going to live. The vet gave her plasma and vitamin K and watched over her for the night. We left the vet in a much better mood. This morning we got a call from the vet letting us know that Roxy was doing much better and we could take her home.
We are so glad we took her to Reno, because she probably wouldn't have made it until Monday. While she is still recovering, she is doing much better and soon we will have our dog back. :)

Painting Class

As I am finally finishing up my elementary education degree I had enough room in this semester to try out a painting class. I had been wanting to get into painting and because GBC offered a painting class I signed up! I was really excited to try it out and I was not disappointed! That class was the first night class (7-10pm) I had that I loved going to! The class focused first on acrylic then we worked with watercolor. I wanted to post some of my work. To get us started the teacher mostly had us copying other artists' paintings like in this impressionist painting where we were copying Paul Gauguin's Tahitian Landscape:
Then she had us work with still life. She brought in some objects for us to paint. I chose 2 big seashells. After I painted the seashells I was trying to figure out what to put them on. So I painted in a beach. Because I painted the seashells when they were sitting on the table in front of me they look sort of odd like they are standing up after I painted in the sea and sky. After still life we worked on painting buildings for perspective. She told us to find a picture with a building in it. Kade suggested for me to find a cabin in the mountains. The best I could find was a picture of an old worn down house next to a mountain, so that's what I used. This is also in acrylic: Then we moved on to watercolor painting. Except we didn't actually use watercolor paints. Because the teacher only had a certain amount of money for the watercolor supplies she bought everyone watercolor crayons. They were harder to use but once everyone figured out the best way to use them it got better. My first painting with the watercolor crayons looks like a crayon drawing so I'm not putting it up. This was the first decent watercolor I did, it's two deer during a sunset: As part of the class we were supposed to research a famous painter, report on them to the class, then create a painting like theirs. I did Albert Bierdstadt because he had some beautiful western landscape paintings like in Yosemite. I did one of his paintings in watercolor, Light in the Forest, because it didn't look quite as detailed and difficult as his other paintings. For our final we were supposed to do one last painting and choose another painting we did to display at the college. I wanted to try one of Bierdstadt's Yosemite paintings but they are just insanely detailed so I found an easier one online at yosemiteart.com by Mark Gudmundsen called Half Dome and Two Bears. I chose this one and the Light in the Forest painting for the final. We matted and framed them then hung them at the college during finals week. Now I just have to brave through four months of student teaching starting January!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we got to go to West Virginia to see all my family. The only one who wasn't at the house was Aaron who is still on his mission in Chile. However, Stephen had just gotten back from his mission the week before from Spain. It was so great to see everyone! Especially the little babies, they were so cute!We arrived in WV on Monday and stayed until Saturday. We played sports, games, and lots of Wii. There was a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with amazing rolls and delicious pies made by Megan and Wendy. We also got to try a Thai dish that Stephen made, and some crazy desserts made by Stephen, Scott, and Mom Blood.
I wish we could have stayed until Sunday to hear Stephen's mission coming home talk in church. We also missed Dustin's mission farewell talk that Sunday too as we were driving back from Salt Lake City.
I always look forward to the holidays to see everyone again, I can't wait until next time we can all get together when Aaron will be home!

Catching up...

So I've been slacking since school started. But finally everything is starting to slow down, though I know it won't last long. In January I start student teaching in a third grade classroom! I'm scared, but excited to finally be done! Well, what has happened since school started... Kade went elk hunting twice with his brothers and dad. Although Kade was just helping he had a great time. He helped his brother Ryan get a nice elk down by Pioche, NV. Then later he went with his dad and brother, Dustin, to Ely to get his dad an elk. They came back with this
After all the hunting trips things have been pretty mellow, except for the school work. This semester I am taking two methods classes (reading and science) a required GE class that is really retarded, and an awesome painting class. For my observations this semester I was in a fifth grade classroom. The teacher was awesome and taught me alot about controlling a classroom. I also subbed a little bit, too. One week I was scheduled to sub all week in a fifth grade classroom but I got sick half way through and had to call a sub for myself.. But it was good to experience the higher level, I liked it a lot.

It was very depressing to see my garden die from the frost, but before the frost came I managed to pick all the watermelons. They filled up the fridge.And I was still picking some delicious raspberries for a while after the frost. Now I guess I just have to wait until next spring.