Christmas

I spent Christmas at Aaron and Haley's house with their little family. It was so much fun to be around kids at Christmas. It's really the only thing that made it feel like Christmas for me, because there was no snow. I guess I never really had snow on Christmas growing up in Tennessee, but I lived in 5 feet of snow all winter. It feels like fall in the south now.

This is Emma in the barbie jeep that Santa got her. She calls it her barbie jeek. After we were done opening presents we took her outside so she could drive it. After she drove around for a little bit she looked up at Aaron and said "Dad can I keep it forever?" Aaron said, "Yes Emma, its all yours." She hugged the front of the jeep and said " Thank you, thank you." It was so cute.

Since it was about 50 degrees outside we went for a walk in the afternoon on Christmas. The boys are strapped in and ready to go. My mom and I made these blankets for the boys. Just thought I'd point that out.

We'll call this the family Christmas photo.
Me, Jonathan, and Emma

Thanksgiving

After I left Jacob Lake I flew to Michigan to see Janel, Derek and little Brooklynn before we drove to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. It was so fun to be up there and spend time with them.
Brooklynn was so excited to have me visit. She welcomed me with a big kiss right on the cheek. I think she remembers me since I was one of her first babysitters. Okay probably not, but she did warm up to me really fast and enjoyed having someone else to play with.


It was a rare occasion to have so many of my siblings home for Thanksgiving since we all live across the country.
This is Brooklynn's first time meeting her cousins. I don't think she new what to do with so many new people around. It was also the first time Janel and I got to see the twins. It was so good to finally meet them.
William is on the left, Jonathan is on the right.
Kathy, Janel, Me and Aaron. Only one of our siblings that was home for Thanksgiving is not in this picture. This was before Julia came.

We were lucky enough to have Grandma and Grandpa Hale come out from Utah for Thanksgiving.
Brooklynn, Kathy, Janel and I.
This is everyone on Thanksgiving morning in front of the house.

It was a good Thanksgiving. It was fun to spend time with family, and play with my cute nieces and nephews. I love the holidays.

Jacob Lake Inn

As most of you know. Kathy and I worked at a place called Jacob Lake Inn this fall. Jacob Lake is in northern Arizona about an hour from the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It is a lodge with a gift shop, a convenience store store and a restaurant. I worked in the kitchen and Kathy worked in the store. It is run by an LDS family. Most of the workers were from BYU-Idaho too. They paid for our housing and our food which was a plus. We lived in a dorm. All of the girls slept in the same room. It was like 30 girls in one room and there were only 3 bathrooms for us. It was like a 4 month long girls camp in that sense, which I'm sure you can imagine gets REALLY old. Though we worked on Sundays they made it possible to still go to all three church meetings. We had Relief Society on Saturday night a 10:15, Sunday school on Sundays at 2 different times so everyone on both shift could go, and Sacrament meeting was on Sunday night at 10:15. Kathy was the relief society president, it was a good experience for her ( a growing experience). You should ask her about it sometime.

On our day off a lot of times we would go adventure somewhere nearby, like Zions National Park, Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon Dam, the Grand Canyon, or St. George.
This is me at the east rim of the grand canyon. It only like half an hour or so from Jacob Lake. Its not a big tourist place. There is no lodge and its not as good of a view.
This is a group of us on a day off in St. George, notice the St. George Temple in the background. I just noticed I'm with a bunch of short people. They make me look so tall I'm really not that tall. This particular day off was the week of my birthday and David met us there in St. George, it was a fun treat.
Kathy threw me a surprise birthday party. I was not at all surprised though. Poor kid, she did such a good job of not saying anything to me. There is just something about her that gives everything away to me. I even went along with her diversion and everything. It was just so funny to me.
Kathy got a couple of girls to take me to the Mexican restaurant in Kanab on the night of my birthday. We played around in Kanab for a while and on the way home I was on the phone with David and I told him I was on the way to my surprise party. He just laughed because he knew about it and was not surprised that Kathy gave it away without giving it away.
Kathy so lovingly talked some of the girls into giving me "big girl underpants" for my birthday since I was turning 18. What a kind sister she is.

In Fredonia and Kanab (the 2 closest towns to Jacob Lake) they cannot afford to hire very many police officers so they plant dummies in cop cars. They call the dummies latex Larry. This is Kathy and I flirting our way out of a ticket, haha. We were successful then but not as successful when our friend got pulled over later that day coming out of the canyon into Cedar City.
This is at horse shoe bend right next to lake powell. Right after this we went for a swim in lake powell. This was the first part of November, I was surprised it was still warm enough to go swimming.
Every Friday night we would have a party. This Friday night we went down to the culvert and had a bonfire. For those of you who don't know what a culvert is, its one of those pipes used for drainage under the road but this one is about 25 feet in diameter.

Most of the Friday night parties were themed. This one was little kid party. Other parties we had were ugly sweater, old people, halloween, night games, valentines, scary stories, etc. For the dress up parties the more ridiculous the better. As you can tell from the picture above.
This was on my last day off. I went on a tour of the glen canyon dam. On the way back to Jacob Lake we randomly stopped at Navajo Bridge. It was probably one of the best sunsets I have ever seen. This was looking to one side of the bridge. The other side was covered in shades of orange yellow and red.
This is the Grand Canyon from the North Rim. Pictures really do it no justice. If you have never been there, you should make a point to go. I had the opportunity to hike from the north rim to the south rim in one day. Its a 24 mile hike and I think like 6,000 feet of elevation change. It was fun, hard, and very rewarding. I went with a group of co-workers. We started at 5 a.m. and finished at 8 p.m. It was such a wonderful experience. Its one thing to look into the grand canyon, but to be in the middle of it and surrounded by it, I understand why they call it one of the seven wonders of the world. When I walked out the other side of the canyon it was amazing to me, to look back and see what I had just walked across.

These are most of the people that I went on the rim to rim hike with. A few of them are not in the picture. We were all dead tired, but we all were so excited. We grew together as a team. Coming out of the grand canyon is a mental game. The last 4.5 miles is nothing but switch backs which would have been not so fun to go up just those, but we hike like 20 miles right before doing it. It would have been so hard to make it out for all of us if even one of us was complaining. Everyone was so positive and enthusiastic it was great!!

My First Year in Idaho

I have had a lot of fun adventures this year, and since I was away a lot of you didn't get to hear about them. I graduated last December and left 2 days later for my Christmas in Utah. On December 29, 2007 my brother David came back from serving a 2 year mission in Seattle, Washington.It was especially fun to have him back because David, Kathy, and I have always been pretty close. We all started college the same semester and it has made for some pretty fun times and more to come.They say that this was the worst winter in Rexburg in 15 years!! Crazy! Negative thirty for 3 weeks straight, lots and lots of snow.

My roommates and I decided it would be fun to go tubing at the sand dunes. We didn't put much thought into how we would get 9 people and 3 tubes out there...
I was able to attend the dedication of the Rexburg, Idaho Temple.
I went to a few fun dances. Here is a picture of the group I went to the sweet hearts ball with. It was my first college formal.
My second college dance was Sadie Hawkins. David, Kathy and I went together with our dates. Well David and I went with our dates, Kathy and Russel just had a "hang out". (Kathy told me to say that).
My Sister Janel was still in Rexburg for a while when Kathy and I first got there and we were lucky enough to be around when she had her first baby in March of 2008, little Brooklynn. My sister-in-law had twins 13 days after Brooklynn was born. I went from two nieces, to five nieces and nephews in 2 weeks. I must admit I am a proud Aunt.
On Sunday nights they have stadium singing. We go under the stadium and sing hymns, the acoustics are really good under there. I love to go stadium singing even when it is so cold out side. I always had good company. In the summer the temperature is perfect for it.
Those are some of the fun things from winter semester. Now on to the summer semester. I would like to say that it was a super warm summer, but that would be a lie. I think the last time it snowed was June 11. I only remember because I thought it was so ridiculous. It really was not bad at all though as far as weather goes. You get used to, and even if that weren't the case it would not matter because I LOVE REXBURG!!

Like the second week of the summer semester we were at the park playing football. Most the people I had just met. We were playing on some nice grass and I had just showered. I jumped and caught the ball and it was the perfect catch, but what I didn't notice was that I was over the only mud puddle in the park. As I came down I knew something was not right when I ended up in a tidal wave of mud. Most the people didn't know Kathy was my sister and thought it was so rude of her to be rolling on the ground laughing at me. The only person laughing harder than her was me.
The fun thing about being a poor college student, is you are surrounded by poor college students. We made our own fun, football in the park, sledding, bonfires at the sand dunes, ice blocking, fugative, etc. These pictures are from another weekend when David came to visit, we went ice blocking and had a bonfire at the sand dunes.
This a picture from one of many road trips down to Utah. We stayed at my cousins the Engebretsens house in Provo. That was one of my favorite things about going to school in Idaho. It is so easy to go to Utah and see a lot of my family.
The BYU-Idaho Triathalon. I did it with two of Kathy's roommates Nicole and Brittany. It was fun and I totally want to do it again. Maybe next year I will do it by myself.

I Have A Blog

I recently visited my sister Janel in Michigan. The first thing she did when I got there was make me a blog. Literally. So for all of you who never see me anymore and want to know what I'm up to you can thank her for making this happen.