Evan is 29

I am 4 months and 5 days older than Evan. For those 4 months and 5 days, Evan likes jokingly to call me his "old lady." Needless to say, I'm glad we're the same age again!

Because I was so busy with the German exchange and my Professional Certification paper (and Evan had late class), we didn't end up doing much on Evan's actual birthday. Mostly, I gave him the professional waffle maker he's been wanting for years and we ate waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast. It was awesome. In fact, we've been eating more waffles in the past couple of weeks than I've eaten in my whole life combined! Hey, at least Evan is getting good use out of the thing.

I sure am glad that Evan was born 29 years ago! He makes my life a little bit better every day. He makes me breakfast, packs me a lunch, and will even make me dinner. He takes out the garbage when I don't want to. He goes on walks to the library with me. He reminds me of things I need to do (e.g. fill the air in my tires). He changes my oil for me. He does many things, but most importantly loves me unconditionally. And he shows it. I sure love this guy. Happy Birthday, Evan! :)

Library Walk

I'm on my way walking home from the library. It felt so good to get out of the house today! I've been working for hours, days, months on my Professional Certification paper. I finished writing it and now just need to edit it. It's been a crazy last few weeks with the German exchange students here and working on my paper. The end is in sight!

Meanwhile, here are some cool train tracks on my way home from the library. Gotta love living in a small town! Back to walking...

Late night car wash

We're at the car wash because apparently an entire flock of birds decided to poop on the hood of my car. Not cool. I was too lazy to want to do anything about it, but Evan is nice enough to wash it for me in freezing cold weather. (Washington has decided to continue winter into May.)

Mosquito Eaters

Spotted this sucker on the wall next to my door today. Yikes! I'm not excited about these bad boys hanging around. Anywhere else in the country deal with these creepy bugs?

Cleaning the church

Someone creatively lodged this guy inbetween the top of the curtain rod!

Easter Cookies

Last year, my sister got me the cutest Easter-themed cookie cutters. Well, I never really had a use for them until I saw Easter sprinkles in the $1 spot at Target! I decided that my nieces and I needed to make cookies together for Easter. I had been telling them for weeks that I wanted to make cookies with them and decided the Thursday before was the day.

The girls LOVED making the dough (read: eating the sugar), putting on the frosting (read: eating the frosting), and dumping out ALL the sprinkles onto the cookies! I'd say if I were to do this again, I'd buy the pre-made dough at the store rather than spend so much time rolling it out. The girls liked cutting out the cookies, but their favorite part really was decorating the cookies and eating them! All in all, we had a good time.

Friend Reunions

Last weekend, I had a remarkable day where I met up with 3 (unrelated) friends in one day!

I met Alessandra 5+ years ago after I had graduated from college and moved back to the Seattle area. Immediately, we were friends! Her amazing musical talent warms my heart and makes me happy. We lost contact a year or so ago and recently found each other again! It was so fun to meet up with her at the Daffodial Parade!

Darcy and I met 10+ years ago as freshman in college at a birthday party. Where most people went searching for someone to date, we ended up chatting with each other about music and life. I lived with her for a few years and loved every second of it. She is still one of my closest friends! I was so glad to drive out to her brother's house to meet up with her!

Beate and I met 12 years ago on our German-American exchange trip; she came from Germany, I from America. We have stayed friends over the years and have seen each other on several trips across the ocean. Well, this trip she came to America with 25 of her students. Now, we are in charge of the German-American exchange! YAY! (This picture of us was taken in 2006. We're too busy to take pictures together during our exchange!)

Snow in April?

Drove into work and there was snow this morning! Yikes! Where is our normal Spring weather?

The Daffodil Parade was just as funny this year as it was last year! I met up with my friend, Alessanda, who drove down from Seattle to see it. There were still the token pirates at the parade, the token square dancers, and the token Bavarian float. We had some good laughs at some of the floats and enjoyed the parade in general. Yay for life in a small town!

German Exchange

Our German exchange started and we had a fun welcome party with all of the German students and their host families! This is a picture of my sassy little Billy and I at the party. I wore my Bavarian Dirndl I got last time I was in Germany and the students loved it! We had fun dancing some traditional Bavarian dances. All in all it was a success! Our exchange is going well and I cannot believe how fast it is going and how much my students have already learned because of it. Seeing the effect this is having makes all of the work for the past 7+ months worth every second! Only 2 more months until we go to Germany!

My German best friend and now our the teacher in charge of the exchange at our partner school!

We broke out into dance. Awesome!

  ´My niece and her exchange partner

The group of host students and exchange students! So cool!

Beate and my sister, Nicole

Evan and I at my sister's at the end of the night

I guess...

General Conference

I loved General Conference last weekend. Nay, I love general conference. It always happens right when I need to hear the messages. I really enjoyed all of the talks and the reminders from our current apostles and prophets of the things we should be doing in our lives. I felt the Spirit and am grateful for those reminders. I am also grateful for Elder Holland's reminder of the sacrifice the apostles and prophets make in our lives. Such a sweet man with a sweet, humble testimony.

All throughout conference, I took notes (it helps me to stay focused). At the end of conference, Evan and I sat in the chapel of our ward building for a little while and I thought to jot down some things I'd like to do as a result of the words I heard. Here they are:

• Stay positive and be an example because of my positivity.
• Live worthy to have the Spirit. Turn off the "noise" in order to listen to the Spirit.
• Serve more as a result of revelation.
• Write Evan more love notes.

And now to explain the picture. I attended Ricks College (and then BYU-Idaho) for 4 years while Elder David A. Bednar served as president. I love that man. Well, during said time, my former roommate, Darcy, and I took a Photojournalism class. It was awesome and our teacher was awesome. Anyway, one day we were in the darkroom working and our teacher showed us some pictures he took of Elder Bednar for the University magazine. He had extras and since Darcy and I were pretty much obsessed with Elder Bednar and his wife (obsessed in an "I want to follow what they do and say" way), we gladly took the pictures. One of the sessions of conference, Evan and I stayed home and listened to it on our computer. When Elder Bednar's talk came up, I put up his picture and we started laughing and couldn't stop. Honestly, I'm still laughing just writing this. It was HILARIOUS!

Hiking with the Girls

I love my sister's kids and feel really close to them as if they were my own children. Because they only have one set of BUSY grandparents, I try to spend as much time doing activities with them as I can. It doesn't always work out that we get a ton of time together, but sometimes it does!

In the past few weeks, I've taken the two younger girls separately on hikes up Mt. Peak. It's fun to see how much they LOVE getting on-on-one attention! The 3-year-old was a trooper to go up with me (even though I ended up carrying her part of the way when she would get "tired"). We were singing "Zippity do dah" and any other song I could think of to keep her hiking up that trail! She made it!

The 7-year-old hiked up with me last week by herself. As we were hiking down, I was telling her some things about my dad and how he would go slug-hunting with us. No sooner had she said "I want to do that!" did she run into a bush and get a slug stuck on her leg. YUCK! I loved her thoughts and her answers to some questions I asked her. One of the cutest things she said was that her little sister was most alike to her and was her best friend. So adorable! I love my little kiddos and am so glad that I get to spend time with them! :)

P.S. You'll notice these pictures were PRE haircut! Ah... I miss my long hair a little bit, but it's going to a good cause.

Trading UP

As mentioned previously, Evan has a history of accidents and head injuries, particularly when on bikes (motor or otherwise). I was really grateful, therefore, when he told me on April 2nd he was going to be selling his mountain bike. At first, I thought it might be a joke, April 1st being the day before and all. Nope, it wasn't a joke. He said he was sick of getting injured and decided it was best if he sold his mountain bike and focus on his other hobbies. To say I was grateful is an understatement. Not that I didn't want him riding... more because our bedroom acts as the garage of our apartment, meaning HIS BIKE was always in the way in our bedroom. So glad it's not there anymore. (Granted, it's now been replaced by more climbing gear on the floor. I can't win!)

Evan is really into selling/buying things on Craig's List. He loves scouring the site for good deals on things he wants ("needs"). I've been mentioning for a long time that I wanted a digital SLR camera. We already had Evan's film SLR camera, but that didn't suit my needs in this digital world. I guess taking a black and white film photography class spring quarter really gave Evan the bug to get a digital SLR! The funny thing is... he traded his bike and used the money to get the camera and a new lens. (That's not the funny part. That's the awesome part.) The funny part is that he said the camera was for me for my birthday. P.S. My birthday is in December. In case anyone noticed, it is April AND Evan's birthday is in April. Funny guy. He has definitely used the camera WAY more times than I have and that's okay. He's a better photographer than I am.

So he traded this:

For this:

(NOTE: Post written on 1-13-12)

Hair Cut & April Fool's Joke

SO, here's the story... I had taken the day off of work on Thursday for various reasons. All thoughout the day, I kept getting this urge to chop off all of my hair. Really, I've been getting these urges for at least 6 months! Evan had begged me to keep my hair long at least until his birthday. I called up my sister and like any good sister, she supported me in taking the plunge and chopping off all of my hair to donate (again) to locks of love.

SO, I did it! I'm really not sure how much I chopped off. All I know is that my hair when pulled straight would touch the base of my back and now my hair is above my shoulders. You do the math.

While at the hair dressers, my sister gets the BEST April Fool's joke idea ever! She has the thought that since my students don't KNOW I cut my hair, I should wear a hat to school hiding all of my hair underneath. I should use the ponytail they cut off to fake out my students and then pretend to pull out my hair and set down the pony tail.

I found the perfect knitted hat I purchased at Banana Republic and put my hair underneath. I stealthily attached my cut off ponytail. I used this not only for my 2nd period class (I chickened out in my 1st period!), but also in my coworker's class (she pretended to pull out my hair. Her students screamed when my hair fell out!). It was AWESOME! You should have seen the look on my students faces as I said "Man, my hair is really bothering me" and pretended to pull out my hair and then set it down on my desk. I went along as if nothing had happened. My students freaked out. It was awesome.

I heart April Fool's jokes (well, the ones I get to play on others). Here is a post from a few years back with my FAVORITE April Fool's Joke.

Hair cut picture

Here is the picture of my hair! More details and a joke to come :)