happy mother's day!

I know Mother's Day was yesterday but I was on the road.  That's why I'm a day late.  I just wanted to wish all the mothers out there a Happy Mother's Day! Including my wonderful mom!
I'm so grateful for all that you do for me.  I'm so glad I have grown up to realize just how great you are.  You're my best friend and I miss you! Love you Mom :)

ps  I'm planning on calling soon, promise! :)

my lovely new camera

For Christmas I got a new camera from Kade (when I say Kade I mean I picked it out, ordered it, then wrapped it and wrote his name on it..:) I started by experimenting on the couch, then bought The Digital Photographer Book, by Scott Kelby (I definitely recommend!) It was just what I needed.  I took these pictures from outside our back door.  Look how beautiful Winnemucca can be!

One evening Kade needed to go and water our cows out at Adams Peak Ranch.  I wanted to go with him because evening is a perfect time for photography!  The sunset was perfect, and the cows provided a great subject.  

On the way to the farm we saw a rainbow! I set a long exposure to get the surrounding area blurred.  

Before the sun really started to set.  The sky was still blue.

The cows came running when they saw us!

I love the white headed cow that is staring at us in the center of this picture

I think this is my favorite from the group, I love how the water is reflecting the sky.

I'm loving on this picture of Kade and Roxy standing side by side. If only he was wearing a cowboy hat.. it would have been perfect!

I thought the red bucket would add interest to the picture

 I thought I got some pretty good shots for an amateur! I'm going to keep working at it.  I know of some great places to photograph around here that I have to try out.  

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.