Catch-up

Although I definitely have more time during my summers, and although I am up and about and doing things worth blogging about, I never seem to blog. Oh, I have two or three drafts of blogs I never finished, but nothing concrete to show you. So, as I get ready for the rush of fall, today I will post a partly pictorial summary of summer. It will be long, but think of it as an entire summer worth of blogs condensed into one mega-blog.

First things first. School ended, and I left for Island Park with Allie and Rachel. Oh, and I was a blonde at the time.

When I came back, Cuny and I decided that we should road trip to Tucson for the heck of it, and also for a friend's birthday. We did this despite both being sick at the time. While we were there, Cuny got REALLY sick, and we spent all night in urgent care.

Less than six hours after returning from Tucson, I left for Ohio to spend two and a half weeks with my nieces and nephews and my brother and his wife. This was the longest I've ever gotten to hang out there, and I loved every day of it. We fixed chili and rice, went to the skate park and the pool, and played way to many card games. And I became a flaming red head.

After my time in Ohio, I headed to Indiana for a few days to spend time with my sister and her husband, whom I hadn't seen in forever. We went shopping and watched movies and world cup soccer and hung out and talked for hours. My sisters really are some of my best friends.

When I came home I stayed for only a week, long enough to meet with teachers from my new English department and plan some curriculum,skateboard, go to Cuny's family reunion, and chop all my hair off. Then I ran home for the weekend with Rachel to spend the fourth of July with Dad and to be there when my nephew got sealed to my brother and his family. Well, of course I mean to wait outside and babysit while my nephew got sealed to my brother and his family, but that just means that I got to read my book while the next nephew in line took a nap. And then we spent half an hour playing with a tape measure. Good times.

When I got back from Idaho, Cuny and I spent our time skateboarding. Seriously. Nearly every day. We canvassed parks from Salt Lake to Springville and had a marvelous time. We had packing to skating down to an art--including refrigerated water bottles and tupperware full of watermelon and carrots and humus for our ravenous, post-skateboarding tummies. This is also the span of time when I finally caved and spent $300 on a wii and wii games and wii accessories. I should regret this purchase, but I don't. I've had way to much fun on that thing for the rest of this summer to regret it. The only regret is that I only have two controllers, and that my wii will probably continue to suck money out of my purse in the form of new games and accessories for quite some time. Oh, and I died my hair a sort of purple/black. This also seems to be the part of the summer where I stopped taking pictures. Hmmm. Oops.

Then, Cuny and I went backpacking in Yellowstone National Park for three days. Romantic, right? Add my parents. Oh, and throw in my high school band director for good measure. And then fill the air with millions of frenzied mosquitoes and grape-sized flies. This backpacking trip will remain one of the most fun and beautiful I've been on, but not necessarily the most relaxing. The mosquitoes were so bad that we couldn't stop to rest on the trail, or sit down to eat our meals. We had to keep moving, and even then we walked in little buzzing clouds. At every meal we would fish between one and five mosquitoes out of our cups as the meal progressed. There was refuge only in the tents, where the first five minutes would be spent in cold-blooded murder of the tiny vampires that had followed us in. But, even with the mosquitoes, it was wonderful. We hiked over 30 miles in three days and saw hot springs and waterfalls and sunrises and moose and bison and meadows stretching away like lakes. Not only that, but at the end a day and ten long miles, I had someone there to give me a foot-rub! We wore him out though, you can tell. Pictures of this trip were stolen from Cuny's facebook.

After the trip, I stayed home for two days. Then I went back up to Idaho to go camping with my parents and Rachel, my brother Aaron and his family, my brother Jared and his family, and a friend from Germany. I loved getting to see all of my family this summer, every sibling and every niece and nephew. Especially because a few of them seem to share my penchant for playing multiple games of monopoly in the course of a day. I knew there were other people like me out there, I just had to wait a few years for them to be born into my own family and get old enough to play.

Finally, I returned home to my long abandoned apartment and my much neglected roommate and my long-suffering boyfriend. Since returning home I have skateboarded like crazy, hitting parks as far away as Park City, and begun to panic about my classroom. You see, today is the 15th of August, and I have all day meetings for school starting in five days, and students coming in nine days. However, my classroom is still under construction. You could see why this is making me edgy. I've taken to going into school two or three times a week and getting the newest updates on my room and the expected completion date. A teacher without a classroom is a lot like a pirate without a ship, or a crab without a shell, or a book without a cover, or a flea without a dog. They (the principals and custodians) tell me I should get in my classroom on Wednesday. (They say this with a hopeful look on their faces. I can tell if that's because my getting into my classroom by Wednesday is a pipe dream, or if they're just hoping I don't get mad because I can't get in yet.)

So that pretty much brings my life up to the present day. The only thing more to say is that I have, at long last, learned to drop in. If you don't know anything about skateboarding, that means nothing to you, but it has come to mean the world to me. It means that I have taken a tangible step toward not being a beginning skater. It means that all sorts of things I couldn't even think of doing before are now open to me. Basically it means I'm awesome. I will try and post some pictures of what dropping in looks like so you can appreciate how truly amazing I am. Oh, and I have dark brown hair. For the moment.