baby!

In March I went to visit my two friends in Rexburg, Natalie and Krista.  Natalie is about ready to pop out her very first baby, a little boy.  And Krista has a one year old that I haven't even met before!  She was absolutely adorable, she's like a little Krista! :) I drove up to all by myself - now remember Rexburg is like 7 hours away from Winnemucca so it was quite a drive all by myself.  It wasn't too bad, no weather or traffic.  I got to Krista's apartment in time for a St. Patrick's Day party.  Krista always makes cute decorations and she even dyed the water green! She's so great :)

I stayed at Natalie's apartment in her adorable little baby room.  She had it decorated so cute! 

Saturday was Natalie's baby shower.  Again, Krista put on a great party! All her cute decorations and food was great.  A lot of girls showed up and Natalie got lots of great presents.  The party was perfect!  

After the party I was able to hang out with Natalie and Krista.  It was so great to see them again, it had been way too long.  We always have so much fun when we are together.  Too bad they don't live closer.  Maybe their husbands can find jobs close to Winnemucca!  :)

feliz navidad!

Don't you just love the holiday season? Everything is snowy and bright and everyone is happy.  Especially me!  Kade and I took trip to West Virginia for the Christmas and we got to stay more than a week.  I love seeing my family every year even when 22 people are staying in one house.  I think that is what makes it so fun.  Minus the cold showers.. :)
We were able to spend Dec 20-29 at the Blood house, playing lots of games, shopping, seeing Stephen and Claudia's house, and lots more. We also played a lot of Wii, went go carting, made lots of food, and saw an old friend. It was very difficult to make dinner for 22 people, especially clam chowder. We needed a huge tub for all the soup they ate!

Christmas morning was pretty crazy with all the kids and presents.  But it was so much fun watching them open presents.  Jonny and Megan had us for Christmas exchange.  They gave us some much needed games.  We didn't have any!  Kade and I had James and he asked us for some throwing knives and a tomahawk.  I think he asked that of everyone because all his gifts had to do with knives :)  It was pretty funny. 
I gave Kade motorcycle boots and new scriptures and he picked out some pajama pants in WV.  Kade got me a new camera and let me do some after Christmas sale shopping which was great! 
It was so great to see everyone.  I don't realize how much I miss them all until I spend time with them.  I wish I could live closer but I have to admit it felt like coming home driving into Winnemucca- probably because of our flight home disaster! 
We were unfortunate enough to end up flying on a bad day for flying to Reno.  On our flight from Salt Lake to Reno our plane had to fly around Reno for 30 minutes waiting for the visibility to go up.  When the plane was running low on fuel we flew to Sacramento instead.  As the airline was trying to figure out what to do with us we sat in the airplane for 3 hours eating peanuts.  They finally decided we were flying back to Salt Lake.  When we got to Salt Lake we quickly realized through all the angry people on our flight who were trying to get flights that we weren't getting to Reno for a few days.  When Kade got on the phone to get us a flight we were blessed to get one the very next morning!  We are pretty sure we got a flight when few others were because Dad Blood had booked the flights and he is a special Gold member.  We were pretty beat after that flight, but I would do it all over again to spend time with my family! :)



This is what the guys did pretty much the whole time



Jocelyn and Megan opening presents

Seth- I love this face- he was very excited about opening presents

Kade and I got Mom and Dad new temple bags - Their old flowered ones were very sad



The amazing cake Megan made for little Rebekah (the Christmas baby)- she loves buses



Megan made the cake so realistic that Rebekah thought it was a toy and grabbed it! She wasnt very happy when it crumbled in her hands :)

The cake after being grabbed

We were back in Winnemucca for New Years Eve.  We ended up reorganizing our house and watching a movie at Kade's parents.  When the movie was over we looked at the clock and realized it was 12:01!  Oh well.. I think this year will be better than last without student teaching :) I'm looking forward to what it will bring !!

one crazy month

November has been such a busy month!  We have seriously been traveling every week.  The first week we went to St. George for Kade's grandma's funeral.  It was sad to see her go, she was so great.  She was always so kind, funny, and happy.  But it was also good to see some of Kade's relatives I never have met before. Here's a picture with all the grandkids.

The next weekend Kade competed in his first desert dirt bike race.  It was in Lynndyl, UT by Delta.  They call it the Cow Dung Race.  Very nice name.  Kade raced with his friend Dave, and brother in law James.  Dave has raced several of these before so he did the Expert class.  Kade and James were in the Intermediate class.  Because the race was 75 miles, we couldn't really watch the race.  They rode 3 laps of 25 miles and stopped in the pits for a fuel up each lap.  That was the only time we saw them when they were racing.  Except for the start up.  Well, we were supposed to be able to see them.  I got a video of what we could see.

 

 Kade got first in the 450 intermediate class!  He did incredible for his first race.  He did go down and smash his finger - you can kind of see it holding his trophy. 

We found some great photos online of the race.

Kade's the one in front

Again the one in front

 

still in front

Now this week it got a little crazy.  We got back from Utah Sunday night.  On Monday we packed our bags again for our trip to Omaha, Nebraska.  We got invited by the Lindsay pivot company to tour their plant and see how everything was made (and so we would buy pivots from them).  It was an all expense paid trip from Tuesday to Thursday.  We stayed in the Embassy Suites right next to Old Market in downtown Omaha.  The Old Market was a really cool place.  It had all the original buildings from the late 1800s and the original brick streets.  I wish I would have gotten some pictures but I forgot to get the camera out.  Touring the plant was actually really interesting.  It was cool to see how they made these huge pivots from sheets of metal.
And we are still not done traveling for the month, we are heading out this week to Utah for Thanksgiving!

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. :)