California dream'n.....

LA weekend with the Girls!

2010-05-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

This is another post long over due! Oops! I've just been so busy on the weekends trying to make the most of them while I have so few left. This a post from May 14-17th. Enjoy reading! I'm excited to be back in good o' Minnesota in two weeks! Woohoo!

Laura and Emily come to visit!

Wednesday: As soon as I finished work I hoped into my friend, Ange’s car to get to the airport in time to pick up the girls. There they were waiting for me! It was so exciting to see them both! When I picked them up it was pretty dark out so they didn’t really get to see all the gorgeous views around every corner. Plus it was surprisingly smoggy. As we were driving along the highway both of the girls were shocked to be able to see the mountains all around us. Emily was the first one to say, “is that a mountain?” And Laura and I both said, yes Emily those are mountains. :) Oh, if only Minnesota could have mountains instead of hills which we like to think are mountains.

Once we got up to Nawakwa I introduced them to my roommates and then helped them settle in. Laura basically crashed as soon as her head hit the pillow. Emily stayed up and we chatted while I packed for the weekend. They were both tired though from a full day of traveling and having to adjust to the time difference. I knew they would need a good night sleep for the hike the next day and to also ward off any altitude sickness. Thankfully we didn’t have any problems there.

Thursday: Wakey wakey! It’s time to go to work! Emily and Laura came to work with me which was SO much fun! Everyone was so happy to meet them and they helped us out so much! We ate breakfast and then I taught them the process of how we make all of the kid sandwiches (we usually crank out about 250 at least every morning.) I put them to work by either jamming the jelly or spreading the peanut butter. They caught on pretty quick.

Then it was time for switch over. If I haven’t explained before, switch over is when the students go from being with their cabin instructor to their field instructor. Emily, Laura, and I were standing by my field tree waiting for the kiddos. As they came over I introduced my guests and they all thought they were sisters. In fact, some of my friends thought that too. :)

I had three classes to teach, Plant Detectives, Water Wonders, and Environmental Awareness. I decided to take the class to Jenks Lake so that Emily and Laura could see a typical hike that we usually go on. Here are a few shots Emily took during the hike. They are great and you can get to see what the trails now look like in the spring time. I love that the snow is finally going away!

Good Morning! Welcome to my cabin in the woods! :)

This is me and my group starting out on our hike. Emily and Laura (the photographers) were bringing up the rear. Say Hi!

My new goal is to “teach while I hike” and Emily caught me in a moment. I was teaching the students about the different evergreen needles. Spinning spruce and flat fur, right Dad? :)

This is Laura posing along the hike with all the beautiful trees!

This is me leading one of the activities for the students.

I had to help the students across the creek because now that the snow is melting the water is really starting to flow down the mountain.

This is Jenks Lake in the spring. So pretty!

Emily and me. I made the girls their own tree cookies to wear for the day. Emily has hers on in this picture. They’re part of the High Trails family now. :)

We had lunch at the lake and then took the short walk around it while Emily and Laura took a short nap. :)

Cook Out is something we started doing after spring break. It’s really fun for the kids who have never cooked over open flame before. We just have hot dogs (which are actually pre-cooked so it doesn’t really matter how well they roast them) chips, watermelon, and smores for desert. We have to go over a lot of safety precautions for the students and remind them that fire is HOT! The field instructors help distribute the food and it’s a little awkward when the students come up to saying, “Can I please have a weenie?” And then you have to slide it on their stick. All the instructors just chuckle to ourselves to avoid the innuendos.

Emily and Laura helped supervise the fire pit.

After dinner I had to help put things away and also have a staff meeting. I told the girls they could head back to the cabin if they wanted since it was going to be awhile. They seemed a little nervous that they might get lost but they did just fine. They both took showers and we basically went straight to bed. All the fresh air and hiking made them pretty tuckered out.

Friday: We woke up fairly early and went up to the dinning hall to grab some breakfast before we headed out. Then we packed our stuff in the car and then of course I was a doup and locked the keys in the trunk. (nice way to start the trip huh? :) ) Then I had to run back to upper camp and find Ange to ask if she had another set of keys. Thankfully she did and then we could get on our merry way.

We didn’t have a set plan of what we wanted to see or do in LA. We just had a GPS and a goal to see as much as we could. Our first stop was Hollywood.

Hollywood or BUST!

This is Laura and I with the Hollywood sign in the background. It was hard to get a good picture of it but it was neat to say that we’ve now seen it.

Time to hit the streets ladies just like the stars! Maybe we’ll see some?

Well we didn’t see any real stars but we had fun looking at all of these stars on the side walks. This is Emily with Tom Hanks.

This is me with my more famous self, Sharon Stone.

This is Laura leaving her mark where Julie Andrews once was.

This is me posing as Richard Gere. He has big feet!

We stopped in bunch of souvenir shops because Laura was on a hunt for a Christmas tree ornament. We didn’t exactly find one but Emily and I found these awesome sunglasses. Very fitting, don’t you think?

Then we had to put our normal sunglasses back on. Sad times. :)

Emily wanted to check out the Kodak Theater. Which is where they host the Oscars. We are standing on the stairs where they role out the red carpet.

Once we were done with Hollywood Blvd. we kept driving to hit up some other famous Boulevards. Our first stop was Rodeo Drive. We basically window shopped because all the shops were places like Dulce and Cabaña. But we stopped in Coach for Catherine. The cheapest wallet I found was something like $95. Ouch!

Laura loves this street can you tell?

This is Laura and Emily posing with their Coach items, Emily’s sunglasses and Laura’s purs. I was taking the photo because my things are from the Village (not quite as high end). :)

Laura and I a posing outside of Tiffany’s as if we have huge jewelry.

Then we got back in our car to drive to our final destination for the day, Santa Monica. This is where the famous hwy 66 ends. I honestly didn’t know it was famous until we got there. Apparently people used to drive this hwy all the time and come to the Santa Monica pier just to reach the end of it.

This was our motel that we pulled into. It was a little sketchy especially when we checked in and they handed us the remote control. Oops I guess they don’t trust people with the remotes at this place. The room wasn’t all that great especially compared to the price we paid for it.

Once we check in and settled in we hit the beach. This is a view of the pier. They had a whole carnival on the pier. The view wasn’t the best this night because the smog was so bad. Bummer, dumb pollution.

Santa Monica is known as the muscle beach and this picture shows why. There were work out stations all along the sidewalks. It looked like an outdoor gymnastics play area with hanging rings and everything.

On the pier was a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I told the girls that when I first got out here I thought that this was such a cute local coffee shop but then I soon realized that they are everywhere. They are about as common as Caribou Coffee in Minnesota. They thought it was really funny so they kept pointing them out everywhere we went.

The thing I liked best about the pier was the restaurant we went to. It was called Mariasol. We had an excellent view of the ocean and a great waiter. Plus the food and drinks was great as you can see!

We treated ourselves to fancy margaritas. Yummy!

After dinner we tried to chase the sunset, but didn’t quite make it. We still had fun and got a great picture.

This was a pretty sunset but the colors are due to the smog. Yuk!

Once the sun had set we went off and played in the waves. Run Laura! Oops Emily got wet. :)

Right as we took this picture a huge wave came and our pants all got soaked!

We drove back to our motel and got dolled up to have a night out with the girls in Santa Monica. It was fun since I hadn’t done that forever! While we waited for the night life to come out we did some browsing in some shops. This one was fun and of course met we had to take a picture of our silliness.

We eventually went out to a Pool Bar and a British Pub but neither place really suited us and so we just went back to our motel. We bought a 12 pack of beer and just stayed up late catching up with the girls. It was so much fun! See sometimes it doesn’t matter were you are to have a great time just so long as you are with good friends. :)

Saturday: We woke up the next morning excited for our beach day. We grabbed some breakfast on the pier and then laid out so soak up the rays. The rays were warm but the weather was not. We still had a nice time people watching, reading and talking. I of course burnt my back (no surprise huh?) but since I had my shorts on my legs were spared. :) The water was way too cold to actually go in but Laura and I waded for a while and our pants soaked. There were lots of laughs and screams.

Aww a relaxing day at the beach!

For lunch we went to Paneria which was great because we got to eat outside. It was also funny because the woman who took our order asked if we had been to the beach because we looked like it. Beach bums all the way!

While we were at the beach some birds pooped on the car so here Laura and I are imitating the birds. :)

After the beach we hopped back in the car and went for a scenic drive down the coast. We had to weave a little bit to try to stay by the coast but it was worth it. We got to pass through Hermosa beach (which is were Kevin’s aunt and uncle live so it was fun to be back there), Venice Beach, and Redondo Beach. There were others but these were the ones I remember. We stopped to see the coast and the true beauty of what I call California. I was so happy to show them the image I have of California. It was so pretty! Here are a couple pictures Emily took. They turned out great!

After a packed afternoon of weaving through traffic and cars we decided we just didn’t want to be in a car anymore. We called the hotel we were staying in to see if they had a hot tub and sure enough they did so that’s where we went.

We made one stop for dinner at In-N-Out. No trip out west is complete without an In-N-Out burger.

Once we got to the hotel we got ready for the hot tub and just relaxed there for the evening. We had to go to bed fairly early because they had to fly out at 5:00 am. We conked out pretty quickly.

Sunday: We got up early and I dropped the girls off at the airport in Ontario. Thankfully the airport was close so we didn’t have to go far. The poor girls had a long day of traveling ahead of them.

I was so happy they came out and we had a wonderful weekend! I can’t wait to see them again in just a matter of weeks! I’m starting to count down the days!

San Fran Part 2

2010-05-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Here finally is the Part 2 of the San Fransisco trip! I still have a lot to catch up on. I think I need to stop going on weekend adventures.... nah... I got to live it up with the few weekends I have left! I'll try to catch up best I can. Thanks for reading! Enjoy! See you soon!

Tuesday- Alcatraz, In and Out, Legion of Honor, De Young, Lemongrass Birthday dinner

This was really our only somewhat structured day. We bought our tickets to ride the ferry to Alcatraz Island. I didn’t really know that much about Alcatraz before we went but I certainly learn a lot while I was there! For those of you like me, Alcatraz is the island where they sent all of the prisoners to stay who were the most wanted murders and deadliest villains. Prisoners are no longer kept there and now it is a museum with beautiful gardens and home to many types of birds. With our ticket we got to have an awesome audio tour which told actual accounts and interviews with some of the prisoners such as the “Birdman” and some of the men who worked here.

This was the first view for the prisoner and the walk of shame as they entered Alcatraz. They walked down what was called Broadway to be laughed at and sheered at by the other prisoner.

The cells were very small and the bars were very thick!

The view of San Francisco from Alcatraz was beautiful. It was hard for the prisoners to see this sight everyday but not ever be able to reach it. They said that they could even heard the New Years parties going on when the wind would blow the sound in the right direction.

Here’s a view of the Golden Gate bridge from the island.

Here’s is a picture of John and I being nerdy with out audio tour head phones on. :)

Besides visiting the prison the island has also attracted visitors because of the gardens. They have made beautiful garden beds where the houses used to be that were the homes for the wives and children of the men who worked at Alcatraz. It was crazy to learn that some children grew up on Alcatraz where all of these prisoners were kept. Yikes!

And finally this is what the island looks like from afar.

After we took the ferry back to the main land we decided to get lunch and what a better lunch in California than In-N-Out burgers. I don’t have it that often, but it’s kind of a must when you visit the west coast. The burgers are pretty darn tasty and about as good for you as fast food can get.

On our way to In-N-Out we stopped at Pier 39 which has great shops and its own atmosphere. We got to see the sea lions basking in the sun on the docks. There weren’t as many this day as there usually are but it was still fun to see them just chill’n there all big and lazy. :)

Since it was the first Tuesday of the month a bunch of the museums were frees o we planned to hit as many as we could. Our first stop was the Legion of Honor. This was a smart art museum that had a variety of art work from multiple periods. I had fun seeking out some of my favorites that I could remember from my art history class. We didn’t spend too much time here but got a few funny shots outside in the court yard.

This is John posing pensively next to the Thinker done by Auguste Rodin.

This is me peeking out from around the pillars.

This is John showing off how strong he is. :)

Once we had seen enough art we thought we’d see some more at the De Young museum. The De Young had a few more contemporary pieces that were interesting to see and then we went up to the top of the building. From what we read the few of Golden Gate Park is just spectacular so we didn’t want to miss that. Thankfully we found the entrance just in time to be one of the last ones up the elevator before they closed it for the day. It was pretty sweet even though we really only got to stay up there for not even five minutes.

This is John walking around the glass room checking out the view.

This is the Academy of Sciences building. We were 8 stories high! It was so cool to look out at the city!

For dinner this night I took John out for his birthday. I made him have to figure out which restaurant we were going to by putting together a puzzle. It was called Lemongrass which was a recommendation by my roommates sister. It was this small Thai restaurant in the Nob Hill district. It was really cute and excellent food! There couldn’t have been a better place to go!

Wednesday- Lost second muni pass, Chinatown, Palace of Fine Arts, Exploratorium, Frozen Yogurt along Union Street Shops, Presidio, Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, walk along Crissy Field and Fort Point, late night sushi

This day didn’t start out on the right foot because I woke up and found out that I had lost my muni pass. Gees! We were doing really great. We had both managed to loose our muni passes in less than a week. Pretty comical if you ask me? So we walked to the internet and to the information center to purchase our fourth muni pass for the week!

This was also our last day in San Fran so we tried to hit all of the must sees that we hadn’t gotten too yet. We walked around Chinatown for a little shopping and fun pictures. :)

Here is the main street in Chinatown with all sorts of shops and restaurants.

This is John in his new summer hat. Doesn’t quite fit. :)

This is me trying a summer hat. Mine doesn’t fit either.

John tries a Chinese hair style. What do you think?

Ah! Finally some shade from the bright sun! :)

Once we had concurred Chinatown we headed to the Palace of Fine Arts. Here they had a beautiful park which you can see in the photo below. Behind this building is the Exploratorium. Since it was the first Wednesday the admission was free so we wanted to be sure to check it out. It was basically like the science museum in Minnesota but it had a lot more of the interactive and hands on activities. It covered all aspects of science like wind, sound, light, etc. It was really fun! There were a bunch of kids there with their parents since it was spring break and all but it was fun to watch them explore and figure the exhibits out.

This is the Palace of Fine Arts.

This is John and I playing around in the mirrors exhibit. It was a little creepy to see yourself from so many angles. :)

After playing in the museum until they kicked us out we then made our way to finally see the Golden Gate Bridge. This was basically our last day in San Fran and we were just now going to see the bridge that makes it so famous. :) I guess we just thought it was always going to be there so what was the rush? We planned to see the bridge around sunset and so we had a little time to kill before we needed to go over to the bridge so we walked around to find a bite to eat. We topped and got some frozen yogurt which is one of the greatest California sweet treats! I’ve only seen these kinds of yogurt shops in California and they are all over! It’s always self serve and there are always crazy flavors PLUS you can on all sorts of different toppings! The possibilities are endless!

The Golden Gate Bridge! Finally!

We started walking across the bridge and ran into a bunch of runners. Wouldn’t that be something to have your daily jog be across the Golden Gate?

This picture is the reason why we went to the bridge at sunset. Picture perfect! I would highly recommend it!

John and I at the bridge.

Walking along the Presidio and Crissy Field, which had this really nice path were a bunch of people come to walk there dogs and such since no one really has backyards.

Once the sun went down I got really cold and this is what happens to my hands. They basically turn purple and other funky colors. John thought it was pretty funny and wanted to take a picture. :)

This is such a gorgeous picture! Good job John!

Walking back to the bus we went by the Palace of Fine Arts again. This time it was all lit up and John got this great shot.

Thursday- Check out, wait at Amtrak Station listening to the Oakland game, arrive in Davis, Walk around tour with Matt, get yogurt and see the Davis campus, dinner at Oz – Korean BBQ, play 500 over some beers

John and I checked out in the morning and then headed out to the Amtrak Station. We were going to take the Amtrak to Davis to meet our friend Matt. We couldn’t purchase tickets ahead of time so that made us worried about actually getting there, but it all worked out. The Amtrak station was just outside the Oakland stadium so we got to listen to the game while we waited for the train.

Once we pulled into Davis we called Matt to pick us up and he of course gave us a walking tour of Davis. Matt is our mutual friend from college. He is studying as grad student at the University of Davis. When he gave us the tour he walked us around his campus and down the main street. It was really cool to finally see all the bikes everywhere. The town of Davis is known for biking. There are bike paths and bike racks everywhere! Pedestrians always have the right of way in Davis. I which Minneapolis could do that much biking but I guess the freezing cold winters don’t really encourage people to bike all year. Matt took us to his favorite place in town, the frozen yogurt shop. It is definitely the place to go in town because there were a ton of people there. It was great as usual. :) Yum!

After our tour we went back to Matt’s house and met his roommates. He lives in a house with two other grad students. We hung out there for a little bit before going to dinner. Matt wanted to take us to this Korean BBQ place called Oz. He and his roommates go there often when they want to eat a lot and man was there a lot of food! It is an all you can eat place where they just bring out all these different kinds of marinaded meats that you put on the grill at the center of the table. Matt and his roommate did most of the grilling. They were masters at it and of course wanted to make sure to cover the most surface area so that more meat could be cooking at once. It was really fun and crazy to see how much meat those guys could eat!

Davis doesn’t really have much for night life so we decided to grab some beers and play cards with his roommates after dinner. Matt loves cards and is really good so this was going to be fun. We taught his roommates how to play 500. It was a great night and fun to hangout and get to know his roommates.

Friday- drive to Napa in Matt’s Mazda Miata, Bothe hiking trail, St. Helena main street , winery tour Sutter Home, grill out at Matt’s , hamburgers on the grill Yum! Play cards Big 2, guitar hero, and watch a movie

In the morning Matt helped us with tips and directions to Napa Valley. He recommended some hikes and great wineries to check out. We got to take Matt’s car which was really nice and really fun to drive! He has a Mazda Miata convertible and I was so glad I knew how to drive stick! (Thanks Blue Beauty!) We drove the highway 128 which was beautiful and scenic! While I was driving John took a nap. He got pretty sick sometime after dinner and just didn’t feel well. Poor John always gets sick whenever he comes to see me. :) I blame it on the kids I work with. They bring up all these illnesses every week!

Look John was a wake to take one picture. :)

Our first stop was in Bothe. Matt recommended this beautiful hiking trail which was inside of this camp ground. It was amazing! Everything was SO green! I loved it! We had out picnic lunch there and then started the hike. Check out the pictures below they really show the trail better than I can tell it.

This is John looking extra happy on this cool log that was over the creek.

This is my favorite picture! It was so green along the trail! I felt like we were in an oasis or something!

The water in the creek was really interesting. The color was this murky gray which in this picture just looks like the camera is funny but it’s actually the color of the water. I’m not sure if it was water coming from snow on a mountain near by?

This is was my proud moment on the hike. If you look close enough at this picture you should be able to see a black lizard and a coiled up snake. Yes, a snake and I didn’t freak out! :) Did you find them?

If you couldn’t find them in this next photo I’ve helped you out by blowing it up and circling them for you. :)

This is me doing a silly yoga pose on another cool tree. I felt like Dirty Dancing. :)

I took this picture because John was joking that he was going to fall. I told him that he was just going to scare his mother so this one is for you Kathy. :)

Our second stop was to tour St. Helena which is this tiny town within Napa. The main street was really cute and hand little shops to look around in. My favorite was the olive oil shops. They had great olive oils of so many different varieties and they also had lavender! OH! I love lavender! I wished I could have bought something but since neither of us checked a bag there was no way we could take it home. Stupid 3 oz fluid rule!

After we did enough browsing we went to our first and last winery. Matt recommended going to Sutter Home which is a well known winery that we would be able to recognized and brag about when we got back home. It was fun and totally different than the wineries that I went to in France. John and I did the tasting and the woman who helped us was every understanding that neither John nor I knew all that much about wines. I can tell you ones I like but I can’t describe the “nose” or the flavors that’s for sure. :) It was still fun and we ended up buying a bottle to give to Matt as a thank you for being such a great host.

We couldn’t go any other wineries because they were all closed by the time we were done. Bummer. So we headed back to Davis and picked up some groceries to grill out at Matt’s. Yum! Hamburgers on the grill! They were delicious! Then we just had a low key night after that. His roommate taught us a new card game called the Big 2 which is kind of like PA. After that we played Guitar Hero and watched a movie. It was nice.

Saturday-Farmer’s Market, Crepéville, drove to Sacramento, got lost, Olive Garden for dinner with the family, settle in and go to bed

Saturday morning we went to the Farmer’s Market in Davis. It was wonderful! I loved it! It was so big and I couldn’t believe that it is always that big! Wow! They had so many things! John, Matt, and I then grabbed brunch at this awesome crepé place called Crepéville. Yum! I loved it!

Then it was time to head to Sacramento. We had plans to meet John’s great aunt and uncle for dinner. We got a little lost but finally pulled into there house to meet them. They’re names are Jack and Terry. Because we were late we didn’t have time for drinks and instead just got into their car and headed straight for the restaurant. We went to the Olive Garden where we meet the rest of the family! It was great so many of them could make it! The whole group totaled 11! :) We meet Jack and Terry’s kids, Julie who’s married to Don, and John who’s married to Suzie. Plus all of the grand kids which were Donovan, Shawn, Katie, and Adam! Oofta! That’s a lot of names to learn! Good thing I get practice at my job. :)

Dinner was great! John and I sat across from Julie and Don which was nice because Julie just had so many stories to share about John’s grandma. It was fun to learn about the things that made her so special. When ever Julie made a family connection or reference I didn’t get I knew I could always look over at Don and know that he didn’t know who they were talking about either. :) It was fun swapping stories and catching. I had a great time! Afterward we went back stayed the night at Jack and Terry’s house which was really nice of them.

Sunday- breakfast and Mass, drive to Granite Bay to visit Julie, Don, and Donovan’s place, 10 acres, lot of animals! lunch and then headed out to beat the rain, back to San Fran

In the morning we got up and went to mass with Jack and Terry and then drove to Granite Bay. This is where Julie and Don live. The night before they had told us so much about there place that we just had to check it out. They live on 10 acres and it was just beautiful! Julie loves animals which is why they need so much land. They have Frisian horses, swans, Wood ducks, geese, Kookaburras , mallards, whistle ducks, French roosters, cranes, Troy the dog with arthritis, and a cat with cancer of the ear so Don operated on him since he’s a plastic surgeon(poor kitty). Just to name a few! :) It was awesome! Their son Donavan gave us the grand tour and told us all about all of the animals. It was so fun! We even got to see them feed the Kookaburras who eat frozen mice which they thaw and feed them. They call them “micicles.” Hehe. Don showed us his collection of Japanese maple trees. They were really pretty!

After the tour we had lunch and then drove back to Davis. It was supposed to rain all afternoon so we wanted to get out before it got bad. Matt drove us to the Amtrak station and we made our way back to San Francisco. We stayed in a hotel close to the airport and had a nice dinner there. We got up the next morning to got to the airport and then had to say good bye. :) It was an amazing week and we had some great adventures. We saw a ton and did a lot! Now it’s just waiting until May 30^th and then we’ll get to see each other again! :)

San Fransisco Part 1

2010-04-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

San Francisco- Spring Break = all 10 days in Sharon detail with pictures so this might take a while. Read at will. :)

Saturday- Hotel, muni pass, Japan Town, Juban dinner, Easter vigil

John and I met in the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then quickly learned how to use the public transit in the area to get to our hotel. Everything went well and we got to our place just fine. It was a small little place with a lot of character. One our way we stopped to get our Muni Passes which are the traveling passes to ride all the public transit in San Fran. At this same place we picked up a bunch of brochures to browse because we actually didn’t have much of a plan for the week. :) We had just planned on winging it and everything actually turned out perfect!

Once we checked into our hotel and settled in we got dressed to go to church. We walked to The Cathedral of St. Mary’s which was in Japan Town. We had planned on going to Easter vigil but really didn’t know what time it started. We walked there between 5 and 6 hoping that we would make it. When we got there all the doors were locked and there was no information about any sort of mass. Oh no! But luckily there was a man there who told us what time the vigil started. It was at 8:30. This left us with a few hours to kill so we decided to walk around Japan Town and find some dinner.

There were all sorts of restaurants but the one we liked the best was called Juban. It was a Yakiniku BBQ type restaurant. We had no idea what kind of food it was but that was the fun part. It was going to be something new to try. J It was a really get experience! The way it works is that you order a kind of meat and they bring it out to you raw. It’s been marinated already but you have to cook it. There is a small grill in the middle of the table for you to place the meat (it’s not like a George Forman or your typical outdoor grill). It’s very small and has a gasoline fire underneath. Your only flip the meat once and then dip it in the sauce to cool and then you eat it! We ordered beef loin and it actually tasted pretty good. I’m not really a big meat person but I know some people such as my dad, Paul, and Chris who would have loved it! I couldn’t finish my plate of meat but it was fun to do the grilling right at the table and to try grilling some of the vegetables too.

After our “Easter dinner” we went to mass. Inside the church was beautiful! The lights were all turned low so it made the stain glass stand out even more with the sun setting. John and I both thought it had to be a relative of the St. John’s Abby with the tiles on the floor, the stain glass, the cement slabs, and everything. It just had the same sort of feel. We thought maybe it was the same architect or at least had something to do with Brauer. But after looking it up we couldn’t find any connection. Bummer :)

The vigil was quite long as tradition. We were there for 2 hours with 4 readings! Oof! It was tough for both of us to stay awake especially for John who woke up at 4am to get his flight and then on top of that was technically still on Minnesota time which was 2 hours a head. Poor guy! :) He was a trooper and made it through the whole thing. The mass was beautiful. My favorite part was when they turned on the lights half way through to signify the resurrection. When the lights came on, it lit up this entire art piece hanging from the center of the church. There were all these hanging silver pieces that shimmered in the light. It was so pretty!

Here are some of the pictures of inside the church. This a view from outside the church.

This is the stain glass your see as you are leaving the church.

This is the best picture we could get of the stain glass above the church and of the silver hanging piece. You can only see part of it in the lower left hand corner.

After mass we walked back to the hotel and headed straight for bed. We were exhausted! :)

Rainy day Sunday- lost our first muni pass, Lombard Street, Cable Cars and museum, Fisherman’s Warf, Ghirardelli Square and factory, Boudin’s Bakery, clam chowder bowl, sourdough bread, pizza and a Redbox

This day we slept in just until last call for continental breakfast. We needed the sleep. :) When we got up and going we found out that it was raining outside which changed our game plan for the day. We also had to make some adjustments because John lost his Muni pass after not even a day so we had to go back and buy a new one. :) What a way to start, huh? Since it was the weekend and we knew it would be pretty busy everywhere with tourist we thought we’d hit up all the land mark things that did require admission. We headed out to Fisherman’s Warf. We took our first cable car ride there. It was pretty fun!

This is John and I ready for our day in the rain. Your options are to get wet or get wet. :)

Here’s John sitting on the cable car.

This is me hanging out of the car like they do in the movies.

Along the way we stopped to check out Lombard Street. It was pretty cool, but I can’t imagine living on this street and having to drive this road everyday. I think my brakes would give out. You can only go 5 mph and when you look at the hair pin turns you’ll know why! :)

Here is a picture of John and I trying to take a picture of ourselves with street in the background. Nice picture, but no street. :)

We continued on our way to Fisherman’s Warf to hit up a few of the favorite spots. We first went to Ghiradelli Square to check out the factory. It was fun to look at the shop and see all of the things you could get made of chocolate.

Here’s me licking my lips for chocolate outside the shop.

This is John posing in front of the fountain with the naked mermaids. I think he has a thing for naked mermaids?

After sampling some chocolate we started to get hungry so we went to Boudin’s Bakery to get lunch. Here they are known for their sourdough bread and their clam chowder bread bowls. And what sounds better on a cold rainy but a warm bowl of soup. Mmm…mm…good! It was very packed in the bakery with other people with the same idea and trying to stay dry but we found a table and enjoyed our lunch.

This is one of the bakers creating an alligator out of the sourdough. They made all sort of shapes and things out of the sourdough. Pretty much anything you could image! It was great! Pose for the picture!

We road the cable car back to our hotel and made a couple stops along the way. We stopped at the Cable Car Museum which was really neat. I would highly recommend going here to anyone! It was free and it answered a lot of questions of the history of the cable cars and how they work. It was cool!

On our way back to the hotel it started to really pour and we both got drenched running for car to building to bus. We didn’t really feel like going out anymore so we stopped to get a Redbox movie and ordered in pizza to finally dry out from a very wet day.

Even though this was the a pretty gross day, we were really blessed with weather to only get a couple rainy days for our whole trip and to get them at pretty good times.

Monday- Golden Gate Park, Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Sharon Meadow and Building, Lefty O’Doul’s- corn beef and pastrami plus the Final Four play off game

We woke up this day to find the sunshine after the rain so we decided to take full advantage of it! We planned to hit up the gardens and be outside as much as we could! We headed straight to Golden Gate Park. This is the largest park in San Francisco. It’s basically the only patch of green you’ll find in the city (not really, but pretty close). The park was huge and beautiful! I couldn’t help take a ton of pictures. Enjoy!

This one is for mom. She loves sundials. Looks picturesque huh? This is were we had our Panini picnic lunch.

I thought this one was just pretty. :)

This is John walking around the Japanese Tea Garden which is inside the Golden Gate Park.

This was in the Japanese Tea Garden it was a giant Zen Garden.

This is John and I in the Japanese Tea Garden.

The ponds and walking paths were just gorgeous! The Botanical Garden had such crazy plants I had never seen before. Dad would have loved to see and try to identify all of the exotic plants.

These are my favorite flowers of the trip. They were all in bloom and ALL over San Fran. Does anyone know their name? Mom, do you like the white?

After walking around all of those gardens we decided to take a nap in MY meadow. There is in fact a place in Golden Gate Park that is called Sharon Meadow. Sweet, I know! We went there to relax and listen to some musicians playing in the park.

Here’s me standing next to MY building in MY meadow. Awesome!

The building is an art studio that offers community art classes for all ages. My name is so sweet!

John wanted to watch the Final Four basketball game so we decided to find a place for dinner where we could watch it. We went into a place called Lefty O’Doul’s. It was bar style restaurant with meat and potato kind of Irish food. John tried the corn beef and I tried the pastrami. It was pretty good. They cut the meat right off the slab and put it on your plate. (Dad you would have loved it!) After dinner we went back to the hotel to finish the game and rest up for another busy day of walking the city.

More to come once I write it! To be continued...

Volunteering, picking up shifts, and GOAP Day

2010-03-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Volunteering

Last weekend a few of us went into Big Bear to volunteer at the San Bernardino Ranger Station to volunteer. I have been trying to volunteer since getting back from Christmas break. We need to do 4 hours of volunteering plus some other things in order to move up to level 3. It turned out to be a lot harder to do with our scheduling and not having a car.

Anyways I finally found a volunteer opportunity with the National Forest and thought it would be a great way to get involved and help out with the forest we work and play in everyday. It was so much fun! I went with Drew, MaryHelen, and Jessica.

Here's MH and Drew at work.

Starting in March they have a monthly volunteer day to help germinate and plant some native plants from the forest. I learned that many of the plants in the forest get destroyed not from the forest fires, which is actually good for the forest, but from the putting out the fires. The chemicals we use and the fighters going in there. The plants also die from all the trafficking of campers and hikers not staying on the trails.

There were about 20 volunteers in total. We were assigned to projects. There were two biologists in charge. They brought there children with them and as it turned out I ended up working with them and playing in the dirt. I was with about five little kids from 4-8 years old. It was so fun! At one point a little girl Maren asked me frankly, “do you go to church?” I said, “Yes”. And she replied, “Oh, well I don’t.” It was so cute. They were great to work with!

Our job was to fill these “bullets” with dirt so that we could later plant seeds in them. It was fun to see the little kids get so excited about plants and playing in the dirt. They were so helpful. I worked with a boy named David to get the bullets ready for the seeds. I told him his fingers would be perfect to make holes in the dirt for the seeds. He got all excited that my pinky was about the same size as his pointer finger. It was really cute! :)

Drew and MaryHelen worked on trans planting things such as sage brush and other native plants. I found Jessica weeding in the green house for a while and then she was pulling of seedlings off of branches collected from the forest in the fall.

Here's MH and Drew. SMile!

Volunteering felt so good and it was so cool to get involved in this process. The biologist actually said that the seeds we planted won’t actually be ready to go into the forest for about two years. Maybe I’ll have to come back then to plant them? Hmm? :)

Here's a picture of the green house. What do you think dad?

Picking up shifts

This week I was on single field but by the end of the week it turned into a time and a half because I had to pick up two cabin nights. Luckily I had got to work with two sets of great kids but it’s just a frustration of having a staff that gets sick on a rotating basis. :)

My field group this week was probably one of my favorites. We had so much fun hiking all over and now that the snow is starting to melt away we can go farther and go back to places we went to in the fall. My kids didn’t really care for the classes and the activities. What they really wanted to do was just hike around and have me point out cool things and ask me questions. Their favorite fact was a new one I learned at our in-service on Monday. I learned that mistletoe is a semi parasite and when it produces its berries, the berry explodes to spread its seed to another tree. Pretty cool huh? Its funny what kids think is neat. :)

Another thing that my group loved was pick up trash. Since the snow is melting and reveling all of the trash and things under the snow we came up with a friendly competition called “the cleanest forest competition. ” We have the cleanest cabin awarded each day and so we thought we could have the students on the look out for trash while their on the hikes. On Tuesday we hit a jack pot of trash in this ravine. There was rusted metal, broken plates and glass. It was really depressing and I think the students really got to see how sad it is when people are careless about their trash in such a beautiful place. My group ended up getting second place in the competition. It was pretty cool and they were really excited.

Get Out And Play

This Friday instead of having an in-service we had a “Get out and play day.” What this means is that we go play a game with all of the staff. We did this once in the fall before. This time we were going to play a giant game of capture the flag. We played 3 rounds and had mixed teams between the two sites. It was a lot of fun!

Here's us getting ready to start the game.

We went to a different part of the national forest that wasn’t on our property. The first round was like normal capture the flag but then for the second round they add all of these different elements. There were sashes and batons that gave you special powers if you could get them. It was a little confusing but made the game a little more interesting.

This is Jessica and Drew. The enemy... :)

I was playing offence and we found that traveling in packs was a good strategy. Running in the forest was harder than I expected. When you were running you really couldn’t look anywhere else but the at the path in front of you because you never knew when you would have to jump a log or run in the snow. It was crazy but so much fun! It was a great way to end the week. I’m glad I have a job that also knows how to have fun sometimes. :)

Here are the tough girls! Jessica, Me, Ange, and Brittani.

Well that’s it! I’m finally up to date! Next week is our last week before spring break. Woohoo! It’s going to be crazy because we have almost 200 kids coming. Craziness! I’ll just be glad when it’s over. :) I’m on cabins and I’m guessing I’ll be sleeping with at least 17 or more girls. Mmm…great. I’ll make the best of it! I’ll just have to keep thinking about Saturday. I leave to meet John in San Francisco on Saturday. I’m so excited! It’s going to be so much fun! Start looking forward to that post. It’s going to be a long one. :) I miss you all! Thanks for reading!

Spring has finally sprung and the snow is starting to melt away. We are discovering old paths and now we don't have to walk through 4 ft of snow anymore! :) Here is my cabin. MaryHelen hung up her hammock again. It's great!

Also here's a picture Jessica took to prove that we are working out. I've recruited a bunch of Jillian work out buddies. It's been fun!

Cookie and Fudge

2010-03-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to be what we call “Fudge”. It’s a rotating position that is basically the kitchen assistant. Fudge’s main job is to do all of the dishes after each meal. Sounds like the perfect position for me right? :) It was a very fun week and the best part was that I got to work with my roommate Jessica all the time! Our normal cook went to Bolivia so Jessica got trained and took over. She does a great job!

This is a picture of Brittani as Fudge from last week but you can see where I spent most of my time washing dish after dish. :)

Being Fudge was very tiring and A LOT of work. Monday and Tuesday I was so exhausted until my body could catch up with me. Working in the kitchen means you put in long hours. Everyday I was up by 5:00am to help start breakfast and got about 3 hours off in the middle of the day and then stayed at night until about 9:00pm. Ooofta! I was tuckered out by the end of the day!

Still the week was SO much fun and Jessica and I cranked out some great food! She and I planned most things together and then while she concentrated on the kid food I worked on cooking the staff food. Jessica let me have a lot of freedom to try some recipes. It was fun! Here was our menu:

Monday: Peanut Stir Fry- Erika’s recipe

I’ve made this plenty of times for myself, roommates, and family but I have never made it for 30 people before! Yikes! I just kind of went for it and people liked it! :) Success! I survived my first day!

Tuesday: Jamacan style Veggie Turnovers

This was a recipe I had never tried before and I really wasn’t sure how it would go. I mixed the filling and the spices were really strong. It made me nervous that it would be too much for people. I added a little mozzarella to tone it down and they actually turned out to be a huge hit. People loved them! Even one of the teachers ask me for the recipe. :)

Wednesday: St. Patrick’s Day

Cookie and Fudge! :)

Breakfast = green eggs and ham, shamrock biscuits with green gravy

Dinner = orzo with zucchini, garlic and red pepper, leprechaun legs (fried green beans), Irish bread, veggie's with the Brown's dill dip

Jessica and I went all out for St. Patrick’s day. We wore all green to match and paint shamrocks on our faces. We made totally green meals for the staff and even ventured with green gravy at night for the kids. :) Everyone loved it! It was so fun!

This is me making banana bread which tasted great but fell and looked funny. opps!

Thursday: Pizza night- labels genius! Zucchini cup cakes yum!

Thursday is always pizza night and so Jessica and I just had fun with the toppings to make it a must-go pizza night. We tried to use up things in the fridge and turn them into toppings. We came up with a BBQ turkey pizza to use up the turkey and then a Jamaican pizza to use up the extra filling. It was so fun!

It was also my genius idea to actually put labels out next to the pizza so that when they come up they don’t have to continually ask which is which. So simple but yet so smart. :) For desert we usually make desert pizza for staff but instead I asked if I could make my zucchini cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Everyone loved them! :) When Jessica told me that she was ordering zucchini because they were in season and on sale I got excited. I have so many recipes for zucchini! Last year Terry grew a zucchini that was so big that John and I were able to make two loafs of zucchini bread, zucchini brownies, AND zucchini cupcakes all from the same zucchini. It was crazy. Anyways, the cupcakes were a huge hit and another teacher asked me for that recipe too! :)

Friday: Jessica and I didn’t do anything too fancy for breakfast. Our goal was to get as much packed up and ready to go as we could so we could get out of there as soon as the busses were loaded. We did a pretty good job. We all got out of there the earliest we ever have before. It was so great!

Being Fudge was a lot of work but it was a great break from the field and cabins and it was so much fun to do some cooking and be with Jessica. :) Hopefully I’ll get to do it again sometime before the end of the year!

Camping in Malibu

2010-03-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago a few of us decided we needed to go find some sunshine for the weekend. We were tired of the snow and needed a break, so we went to the coast! It was an awesome weekend! We left Friday night and pulled into the camp ground at about 10pm. It’s not the best to set up camp in the dark but it was fun to wake up the next morning to discover the site that you couldn’t see before. It was also nice to have a full day to play on Saturday.

Everyone woke up when they wanted to and relaxed for a little while. I was the first one up in my tent and decided to go check out the waves. I walked down to the beach which was just across the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway). The walk reminded me of Cannes, France when we just had to walk on this under pass and then poof there was the beach! It was so beautiful to watch the sun get higher with the morning and to watch the waves role in. I sat there and read for a good while and then I walked back to see if anyone else was up.

Here is the beach. Gorgeous right?

Everyone was awake when I got back so we all had breakfast and made a plan for the day. The camp ground we were at was full for Saturday night so we had to find a new place for sure. Our plan was to hangout around here at the beach until we had check out and then drive up the PCH and to find this other camp ground that Aaron knew about.

This plan was great. We tossed a Frisbee for a while in the sand and then everyone did their own thing for a little while. Aaron went surfing (burr!), the girls went for a walk, and the boys kept playing Frisbee. I walked along the beach and caught up on some phone calls. Once it was time to check out we loaded up the cars and headed out.

This is my roommate MaryHelen and my friend Chelsea.

If you have never driven on the PCH you should make it a goal to do some time. It is spectacular. It’s kind of like taking the scenic route to the North Shore but instead of all of the forests and trees you continually have the Pacific Ocean at your side. J It was great! We didn’t actually make it up to the camp ground Aaron knew about but instead we pulled into another place which was just as great!

Here’s a picture of our site. The ocean was just on the other side of the trees. Can’t get better than that right?!

We set up camp and then went exploring. We found a path that led us down to ocean. It was rocky beach which was so fun to skip rocks and listen to the waves hit the rocks. My favorite part is when the waves pull back and make the trickling sound on the rocks. It was so nice to sit there and just take in the sights and the fact that I get to experience this. The rest of the weekend is just better told through pictures so enjoy!

This is Matt and I walking down the steps to the beach.

These were the huge rocks that were so fun to climb on and hear the waves crash in.

This is my roommate Jessica and I.

Roomates!

We all gave the skipping rocks a try. It was a challenge to hope the waves.

No words needed, beautiful!

The cliff was huge! Jessica and MaryHelen are sitting there on the rocks.

Before dinner we made sure to watch the sunset, beautiful!

I took this for mom. There were so many flowers in bloom on the coast it was great!

This is the group watching the sunset.

So it was a wonderful weekend and made us all happy and rejuvenated for the week! I love California! Woohoo for beach camping!

Whale Festival Weekend March 3-5

2010-03-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

Time for an update again! I’ll start where I left off and narrate some of the pictures I’ve posted.
After the movie night paid for by our boss a few of us spent the night in Redlands. It was so nice not to have to drive back up so late at night. We kind of hung out in Redlands for the day and then started to make plans for Sunday. Lots of people have been going in and out of being sick so we wanted to keep it low key so we would be well enough to work on Tuesday. But no need to worry about me, I’ve been healthy and kick’n through it all thanks to my vitamins. (Thanks Grandma! :) )
On Sunday morning we woke up and got on the internet to search for something to do. We just wanted to get off the mountain and out of the snow for a while. We ended up finding this Whale Festival at Dana Point that was happening for two weekends to celebrate the migration of the gray whales along the coast. Although we didn’t actually see any whales we still had a fun time and learned a thing or two.
The drive down the mountain was so pretty! Here are a few photos from our short stop for a photo opp. It had snowed about 2 inches which blanketed the trees so beautifully.

This one is for Dad. Can you tell what kind of tree it is by its branch structure? Hmmm… Quiz time! I’m not the expert but I’m pretty sure it’s a Douglas Fir. Am I right?

When we got into Dana Point and found the festival we were a little disappointed. It appeared that there were just booths and kiddy rides on the side of the road. But we found out there were other event held around the town. So we walked around to find the most interesting ones. The walk was beautiful along the port. There were so many boats, you would have loved it Dad!
Our first stop was the sand sculpture competition. I haven’t been to our Aquatenia personally but have seen photos and I think these guys could learn a thing or two from the Minnesotans. :) Take a look at the pictures and you be the judge.

They added color by using jello powder which is cool for the effect but then were do you think that jello runs off into???

This is a pirate face from Pirates of the Caribbean.

This one is my personal favorite because they used the different colored sand to be artistic.

This is a picture of the pier. It was a beautiful walk along the water.

After that we went to the Oceanianic Institute . It was basically a marine life museum, kind of like underwater World but not as big. It was neat to learn about the animals that live here on the coast and get a better perspective of what some of our students grew up with. When they come up to the mountains it’s so much different for them in terms of plant and animal life.
In the museum we got touch some starfish and sting rays. We got to look at a ton of different fresh water fish and things.

Here’s Jana having fun in one of the interactive tanks. :)

Included in our museum ticket we were allowed to go on this ship. We had fun taking some silly pictures. Enjoy them :)

This is us in front of the ship. Alan, Jana, Ange, Kelly, Drew, and me.

We got the brilliant idea to see if Jana and Drew could fit inside of the trash can. Sure enough they fit! :) It was pretty funny!

This is Alan trying to be tough to turn the tiny wheel.

Jana got to ring the bell nice and loud on the hour. It was funny.

This is me directing and steering the ship. Anyone worried? :) Good thing it was lock in at the harbor otherwise we might be in trouble.

This is Ange sailing the ocean blue and discovering new lands! Okay, not quite but it's fun to pretend. :)

Or last stop was to go to check out the jetty. It was so pretty! The waves were so cool! I stood there and just soaked in the fact that only a few hours ago I was in the snowy mountains and now I’m here standing on rocks by the waves. What a cool state and I’m so lucky to experience it all!

This is my favorite picture and my new background to my computer. Every time I look at it I notice a new rock!

This is another pretty picture. The coast is so gorgeous!

There are more posts to come. I'm no where near up to date but in due time... blogs to come are about my weekend in Malibu and last week when I was Fudge with Jessica. I can't wait to post pictures and write about it. Now all I have to do is find the time. :) Miss you Minnesota!

Green Gear

2010-02-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

This is a post for mom. She requested to see a picture of some of my kids dressed in our green gear. These are some of the same pictures from our crazy snow week but these ones you can click on and it will get bigger for you to see them better. The gear is so big on them. It really funny. I need to start bringing my camera out with me again I'm definitely slaking on my pictures.

Here is Matt and his class with their giant snow ball. :)

Long Overdue Update

2010-02-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since my last post so I figure it’s about time to do a little catching up. I'm sorry that I haven't been so regular lately as I was in the start. The past few weeks have been crazy busy with juggling work and my normal life. Ha! Sometimes I really can't tell the two apart. :) Here are some of the high lights from the past few weeks. Read the topics and if they interest you read on. Enjoy!

New Jack climbing

The cook at our site, Wayne, organizes a weekend every year called, “Climb and Vine.” We went to this place down the mountain called New Jack. There wasn’t snow but is was cool and quite windy. I was excited to finally use my climbing shoes that I bought from the 'damaged and dent' sale at REI. I drove down with Wayne, Emma, and my roommate Jessica. Jessica and I really just wanted to go camping. She wanted to try out her new tent and I wanted to use my new stove. But it didn't turn out to be the kind of camping we were thinking of.

When we got there we got there we set up camp and then hit the rock. Jessica did the longest climb there. It wasn't to hard but it challenged your endurance. She did great! I went up one run that was about a 9.8. It was really hard at the top when your hands can't move or hold onto anything because they are so cold and tired.

This is a photo of me mid-climb. It was really fun but SO cold! Some people passing by made a comment to my friend about my hands. They said, "She's got some crazy gloves!" I actually wasn't wearing any gloves at all. It's just that my hands turn funny colors when I'm cold and so apparently my hands where so red that it looked like I was wearing gloves. You can click on the picture below and see it for yourself.

After we were done climbing we went back to start dinner only to find that Jessica and my tent had blown over! Oops! We put in the stakes but I guess that wasn't enough. Jessica's poor tents maiden voyage did not fair so well because the wind actually put some holes in her tent. :( It was still funny and so then when Jessica and I set up our tent for the second time we choose a better location and came up with the idea of putting rocks inside of our tent to keep it on the ground, which actually worked! :)

So besides the wind and the cold it was a fun weekend to hangout with some different people and to get off the mountain for a while.

Working at Edwards

The week before last I got sent over to our other site, Edwards, to work. I had a cabin shift that challenged me like it hasn't before. Going over to the other site is always difficult because they do somethings a little differently than we do at Nawakwa but these 15 girls presented some different challenges. At the beginning of the week I had to deal with the contagious homesickness but we got them laughing by playing some games. They really liked to talk about boys and so when they asked about John, they wanted to know everything. They wanted to know if he was cute (yes), his eye color (blue), and what he did for a living (works for health insurance, which they translated to that he was a doctor!).

The trouble started mid-week when the girl drama started. The girls started to form clicks when we waited for the bathrooms. They would stand around whispering to each other. The girls would gossips and talk about boys and relationships. It didn't really know how to deal with this since when I was growing up I tried to avoid all of that kind of stuff. I knew that the tension in cabin was high and so I sought out some advice. As a cabin we ended up having a talk about gossiping and decided to put an end to it. This helped and was just a preview to what is a head as these 6th graders are now becoming 7th graders when the drama gets worse. Yikes! :) Oh drama...drama...drama

Huntington Beach

After a crazy week all just wanted to get out of the snow and relax so we went down to Kelly's house at Huntington beach. It was really nice! I got my taxes done! woohoo! I'm such a big girl! :) And I also went for a run! Two in fact! On Sunday we went out to the beach which was so nice! The water was cold but it was just so beautiful! A bunch of us went for a run to the pier on the beach. It felt so nice but hurt my arches a little bit.

Time and a half

This past week was another one of those weeks that is just so crazy that you can hardly tell one day from the other! I was working a time and a half plus covering for my friend Kelly on Monday. I only really had Tuesday off for my phone interview with Wood Lake Nature Center. Otherwise I was working around the clock. To add to it all I taught line dancing and had a total of 17 girls in my cabin. It was crazy!

The school I was with was a privileged high maintenance fifth graders. It was amazing to see the difference between 5th and 6th grade! The first couple nights I had about 5 girls who were homesick which seemed to spread like wild fire. I had one girl who cried every night! I had another student who I was warned had some social issues and was a little demanding. Her name was Delaney and she really only gave me trouble the first day. She cried the whole time carrying her luggage until after lunch when she magically got better and had no problems. Then she threw another fit when I tried to get her wear green gear pants. hmm...I thought, my week is off to a great start! :) It actually wasn't so bad but was definitely hard.

We didn't have proper drinking water so we were boiling and bottling water all week and many of the staff was sick or on vacation. This made it a challenge for everyone to be covering shifts and make it to the end of the week. But now it is here! Yah!

3 Day Weekend!

This weekend we are just kid of rolling with the punches and really don't have many plans. Last night we got some money from our boss to go to dinner and a movie. It was a nice break after such a crazy week. We went to go see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was so crazy to go see a movie in theaters since I haven't seen one since Christmas. :) It was good and relaxing. We'll see what the rest of the weekend bring??? Maybe camping in Malibu? Who knows?

Other updates

I finally got to talk to my parents and found out about my mom's new job! Woohoo! She's going to work at a health center for seniors. It's all brand new and sounds really exciting.

My parents also told me that they've began working on the kitchen remodeling again. It sounds there are some big plans and of course mom wants to have more white! It's fun to hear the plans for the design and styles they are thinking of. Yeah new kitchen! :)

As I mentioned above I had an interview for an internship as a Naturalist at Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield. It would be a great position if I can get it. There was a little confusion with the position at the interview but I'm working on smoothing that out and hopefully the out come will be good. We'll see... there's still plenty of time...

That's all for now! I hope this was interesting and I didn't bore you with too many details. :) Thanks for reading! I miss you Minnesota! I hope you are all well! Thinking of you lots!

An update about work and the kids

2010-02-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

It was another wintery week here at High Trails. Now it is the weekend and a chance for us to recuperate and regenerate for another busy week ahead. Next week I’m working time and a half plus taking a shift for my friend who needs the day off. So basically I’ll be working 24/7 except for Wednesday during the day. It’s going to be crazy but it’ll make my pay check that much heavier. :) Let’s hope everything goes smoothly.

This week was fun and easy. I was on single field and had a great group of kids. They loved being in the snow and so we came up with some pretty fun activities to give them a great snow experience. The first day I could tell that they were so antsy to play and explore all that white stuff so I gave them my snow talk and just let them play. I always tell my students some winter advice from my years of experience in the freezing tundra I call home. :) I tell them that they have to be careful of their hands and feet getting too cold. I tell them the warm places on their body (ex. arm pits) when their hands get cold. I also tell them some tips for making a great snow ball. It’s strange how these kids have no idea about snow. It’s fun to see them learn things as the week goes on. One of the best things is that since our snow is so deep out here some of the kids don’t realize that the have to walk lightly so they don’t fall through. Many of the kids at the beginning of the week just fall though so that they can have a good laugh and land in the snow. :)

We got to start out with adventure day (climbing, archery, orienteering, and adventure course) which they totally loved. They named our group the KFK which stood for Kentucky Fried Kids. :) It was pretty funny. Since we started out with the fun day I told them that we could do some snow play on the other environmental days. The first day we went to the designated sledding hill which was great but then the next day we had to top that so my friend Joe showed us this secret sledding hill he found which was huge! It was a hill that went down into the valley. We started at the top and then slid down. Joe went first to pave the way and then the kids got all excited. It was so steep and such a long run that it took some of the kids a good 20 mins just to get back up the hill. I had to help some of the ones that were really struggling. The kids convinced me to go too and it was crazy! Hills like that are hard to come by in Minnesota. We had a blast and I’m sure the kids won’t forget that fun!

I taught line dancing this week which I haven’t actually done for a while. It was very fun but also a little crazy. I taught two classes back to back. The first one was for the other school that I didn’t work with. I taught them the Macarena as a warm up and then when I was about to teach the second dance I found out that they already knew that one and the next one I was going to teach! What?! I didn’t know what to do. They were a performing arts school apparently and so the students were just good at everything! I looked at my friend Matt, who also teaches line dancing for some advice but he didn’t know what to do. There was another dance I sort of knew but hadn’t ever taught it so I wasn’t sure if I should do it. What ended up happening was that Matt, Jessica, Wayne, and I all ended up teaching this dance together. It was kind of a mess but we all just went with it and the kids had a great time. J We made sure to end it on a good note so we finished with the Cha Cha Slide. The kids loved it!

So as if that wasn’t enough for a surprise when I taught my second class I found myself in for another one. Joe had told his and Emma’s cabin to say “meow” every time I said the word dance. It was pretty funny when I was explaining everything in the beginning. For example, when I started telling them that, “we were going to be doing three dances tonight”. They all responded with “meow.” :) It was pretty funny and even though the evening wasn’t perfect it was definitely a great memorable night!

Well, that’s what’s new with me. This weekend is pretty uneventful. Today is Valentine’s Day and sadly I can’t be with my valentine but a bunch of us girls are going to be girly and eat chocolate tonight while watching The Notebook. Can’t get much better than that. Bring out the Kleenex! :) Thanks for always reading! Miss you!

Catalina Pictures

2010-02-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

The Ferry Ride

This is John and I on the boat with Catalina in the background.

This is the ferry's wake. Imagine water skiing behind that big thing!

This is when we pulled into the port and started to unload.

Welcome to Catalina!

We stayed in the town of Avalon. It was so cute! Here is a little picture tour of the town.

These are all of the sail boats docked at the harbor and the big casino building. This is the pretty main street that had cute shops and restaurants looking right out at the ocean.

Every house had cute beach like decor. This is John with his new mermaid girlfriend. She's so scandalous John she doesn't even have a shirt!

I took this photo for dad. There were such strange plants on the island. People didn't really have potted flowers instead they had these greens that looked so cute.

Everyone decorated with these beautiful tiles that I'm sitting by. The whole town was covered with them. Mom would have loved it!

This sign was just crazy and I had to point it out. :)

I'm not sure what kind of flower this is but it was everywhere! It looked so pretty with its colors but also very pointy.

This was just so funny and reminded me of Carolyn and Chris with, "Dumb dumb, me want gum gum!" hehe

John and I went into a couple shops and at this one we found some awesome sunglasses. What do you think?!

Early Sunrise

John and I thought it would really fun to get up super early to see the sunrise over the pacific. It was a very early morning but it was well worth it! Just look at the pictures.

This is us once the sun rose. Sleepy face!

This is the harbor before the sun came up.

I like this shot. I tried be photo stylist like mom. :)

Here comes the sun! do do do!

Kayaking around the Island

John and I went kayaking for a few hours before heading back to the main land. It was so much fun and a really great way to see the island. The water was such a crazy color and it was just neat to say that we were kayaking in the pacific ocean!!!

We got really close to seeing some sea birds. These are pelicans.

Here's me paddling telling John not to tip the boat!

John and I brought lunch with us and found a great spot to stop for a bite.

I like this picture too! :)

This is John paddling.

Our trip was fantastic! We had so much fun and got to do some great things! Please read a couple posts back for the full story. :) Miss you all!

Unemployed and Homeless

2010-01-31T07:34:00.000-08:00

Another week, another adventure! This week has been relaxing, exciting, and pretty much planned by the seat of our pants. :)

No Program
On Monday I was at upper camp in the dinning with some of the girls using the internet because there still wasn't power for our housing. Upper camp was being run on a generator so that was okay. While we were there we got a phone call telling us that program was cancelled for the week. This was exciting for us and a smart decision for the the admin. We were all happy and started to think of what we were going to do with our week, relax, see if work would pay us to do projects...etc.
No Water
Then a little while later we got another phone call telling us that the forest rangers have advised us to evacuate the mountain, the water is now contaminated. What?! As we found out later one of the filter systems runs on electricity and so it has not been working and therefore the water is contaminated. hmmm....now it gets interesting. I had texted my mom with both messages right after we had gotten each call and now she was starting to get concerned.
Getting Out
The few of us that were in the dinning hall went back down to lower camp (where I live) and started to figure out how people were going to get off the mountain and where they were going to go. The first thing that needed to be done is we needed to start digging out peoples cars so they could actually leave. This was quite a challenge with the cars being burried under four feet of snow. :) It was a struggle for some and a very funny sight to see people start to dig in snow was at even level with their windshield. :) After about 2.5 hours of shoveling with many helping hands we were able to get out the cars that were needed and put on some snow chains. Now where too? :)
As we were shoveling we made many plans. We thought of San Fransisco, Texas, Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Mexico, Los Vegas... the list was long. We just figured that since we had the week off we might as well do something cool with it! We couldn't make a decision quick enough so we just packed a little bit of everything and went to figure it out at Kelly's house in Huntington Beach. That was a great decision because Kelly has a hot tub. So to unwind from a heck tick week and a crazy day we had maragritas in the hot tub and planned the rest of the week.
We decided that we were going to go to Surprise, Arizona (just west of Phoniex) to stay with my friend Alan's parents. They live in a retirement community and Alan said it would just make their day if we came to visit. :)
Arizona it is!
After about 7 hours of driving we pulled in to Alan's place. It was later in the evening, but his parents had waited to have dinner with us when we got there. Every meal they made for us was great! I think they really like to cook and cooking for nine instead of two is more fun. :) That night we have Chinese noodles and then it was hamburgers on the grill (sorry to make you Minnesotans jealous) and then porkchops. They made sure we ate well all week!
Our typical day Arizona went like this, Kelly would wake up to sit on their patio to bird at about 8:30 in the morning. Then I would join her shortly after to read. Then Alan's parents would get up to start breakfast and would have coffee for us soon. Then most of the others would get up and come out to the patio to relax in the morning sun until breakfast. Then Brittani would wake up just before we were going to eat. Our mornings on the patio were my favorite part. It was so relaxing and enjoyable and his parents spoiled us with their hospitality. :)
Then we would find something to do with ourselves for the day. (Which I'll get to in a minute.) Once we got down with our day we would come back and have a wonderful dinner with Alan's parents. We would usually sit around and talk for a long while after dinner. Then we usually would put in a movie and fall asleep to wake up to the Arizona sunshine again the next morning.
Arizona Hiking
During the day we did a variety of things. The first day we went hiking in the White Tanks. It was about a seven mile hike through the mountains to some fresh water near the canons. It was great! Everything was so lush thanks to all the rain the week before. We all had a great time and it was so nice to be outside and not have to be layered in winter gear. :)
Frisbee!
The next day we went to find a field to run around and play frisbee. It was so much fun! Alan, Drew and I knew how to play so we spread ourselves out and taught the others. It was really fun to be playing again!
Me on TV
Just before we were going to quit a guy came up to us. He asked if we wouldn't mind coming and playing in the background of his shot. He was shooting a scene for a new tv show that is on the WE network called Sunshine Days. It will air some sometime in April. The shot was two old men talking on a park bench and the wanted some active people in the background. It was pretty funny and we werent' really sure what were supposed to do. So if you happen to be watching the WE network and see a girl playing frisbee in the background that's probably me. :)
Swimming
After getting all worked up from frisbee we decided to go to Alan's parents' work out facility. When got there we were probably the youngest group by about 20 years. :) Some people wanted to use the machines, others wanted to hit the pool. I wanted to do a few laps and then relax in the hot tub for a while. It was a great day spent doing all things I like to do, frisbee and swimming. :)
Back to Work we go... :(
We left Arizona yesterday and are now back in Huntington Beach. We had a great dinner with Kelly's family and today the plan is to go to church, run some arrons, and go see Avenue Q. Kelly's family is going to go and so a few of us decided to stay later and see it with them. It should be fun and the it's back up the mountain.

The status with work is that we do have program next week. They are working on the power and the water but until those are fixed we will be running on generators with propaine and drinking bottled water. (Yes, we are an environmental school :) ) Looks like it'll be another interesting week ahead. I'll let you know how things go and I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as I can load them. That's all for now! Talk to you soon! Miss you lots! Love you all!

Snow, snow and more snow!

2010-01-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I've last posted. To put it into a few sentences catch you all up, here we go. I went home, had Christmas, saw wonderful people, and flew back to California to find myself in more snow than there was in Minnesota!

Since I've been back we've had two weeks of program and it's been interesting for both. The first week I was over at our other site, Edwards and had to adjust to how they run things over there. It was good and the weather was much warmer than in Minnesota. :)
Then John was here again for work so we spent the weekend together. We went camping and kayaking around Catalina Island. It was great and I promise I'll blog about that as soon as I get pictures. They are in the mail. :)

California in alert!
During this time California has been under great stress if you haven't heard on the news. I'm in no harm but feel for those who are down the mountain. California has been dumped with feet of rain while we have been getting snow which means that there have been reports of flash floods and mud slides. Not good!

Last week- Snow!
Than this last week was to put it lightly, crazy. We had more snow than I have seen in years and work harder than ever! Let me know not just tell you about it but show you so you can understand fully. It was unforgettable and epic!

The students came up on Tuesday and it basically snowed from that day until Saturday with very little let up! We now have a total of at least 4 feet of snow! This was amazing, fun, beautiful, and frustrating.

All Dressed Up-
One thing that I was glad about was that I had all the right gear for the weather thanks to some awesome Christmas gifts and a purchase at the Village. This is me sporting all my gear! I'm wearing my new boots from my parents which are super warm and keep my feet dry! I also have my new mittens which I got from Carolyn that are sweet for teacher and actually keep my fingers pretty warm! Thanks guys! Then the crazy colors that I have on my legs are my $3 gaitors I bought at the Village. They are great for tromping in really deep snow! Don't I look amazing!

My Field Group-
I was working field last week and so we got to do a lot of playing in the snow with the kids. We went sledding and made snow men and built shelters. It was really fun! The kids had a great time and couldn't believe how much snow just kept coming. Here are a few pictures of my group.

One morning we had a competition between the field groups to see who could make the biggest snow ball. Here is my group working on their ball.
After they made the snow ball we decided to make it into a snowman but instead of putting on a head they took turns putting in their head. :) This is Angelia, she was really sweet.

This is a picture my students sporting our ever lovely "Green Gear." When the students don't come with the proper gear we give them this green gear which we get from the military. It is not fancy and not really made for winter or snow, but it is water proof which keeps them dry which keeps them warm. All of the gear is really made for adults so it never fits them properly and they usually hate to wear it but if they want to play in the snow they have to be dressed right. :) They look so cute! This is Natalie, Emily, and Brenda.

This is the dining hall all covered with snow!

Lots of Snow-
Every morning I woke up to walk to work there was more and more snow. It was crazy! This is the from morning Jessica and I woke up having to push our door open from the snow and when we had to shovel our way to get to the bathroom. It was actually really pretty!

On our way to work we passed the cars which were buried in snow. The humps are the cars. :) Most of us spent the day today shoveling the off. Ange said it was weird to be standing at the same height as the hood of her car and to have to climb down into the drivers side door!

The amount of snow has really taken a tole on the trees. They have gotten so heavy that they've bent over like this one which sadly snapped yesterday because it just couldn't take it. :(

This is a picture of my cabin with the snow up to the windowsill! Crazy! We get around by following the snow maze from place to place. :)

An Extra Night and Walking the Students Out-
It has only happened one other time in the history of High Trails that the students have had to stay an extra day. It happened this week! The high to get up to the mountain was closed because of all the snow and the plows weren't going to be able to clear it fast enough. Many of the students were really sad when Chris made the announcement and the staff wasn't too excited either. We thankfully had enough food and a generator to keep camp running. We've been out of power since Thursday.

We made some adjustment to our program and developed some plans to entertain the kids until the highway was clear. We played bunch of games and played in the snow a lot. At night we all pitched in to perform many skits to make the kids laugh and have a good time. It was great for us and them. I'm pretty thankful to work with the staff that I do where we can turn a bad situation into a fun and memorable time. It was hard but really a lot of fun!

Finally on Saturday we could get the kids packed up for the second time and get them ready to go home. The highway was open only for our buses but the only problem was that the buses couldn't drive on camp road which ment we had to walk all of the students out to the buses. In the morning while I was with the kids the other staff was loading and unloading luggage into trucks to drive to the buses. Then when that was done we exicuited the evacuation drill. This is where we line the field groups up end to end to make one long line of kids. There were about 150 of them and it was basically a parade of kids. We walked all the way to the highway in 45 mins. It was impressive!

This a picture of the road we walked on with the kids.

The walk was actually really pretty and we got to see some beautiful sights. It made me say, "Wow! I live here!!!"

We finally waved good bye to the buses from the snow banks of the highway. It was pretty funny! This is Drew expressing how crazy this whole week has been!

Then to get home we all squished into the the back of trucks for a bumpy ride. This is Kelly and me.

So it was one memorable week which makes for great stories to tell and we will remember it forever. My job is fun, crazy, and unpredictable which makes it so awesome! Work hard, Play harder!

Holiday Party

2009-12-12T14:23:00.000-08:00

Holiday Party- 80’s Prom Theme

Last night we had our High Trails holiday party. It was a blast! The theme was 80’s Prom mixed with Christmas. It was hilarious and everyone went all out with the costumes! They were great! I found a great dress from the thrift store with amazing shoulder pads lots of gold beading. :) With my hair I attempted to do elevator bangs which worked out okay but I didn’t have my mom’s styling expertise. Then I put the rest of my hair in a side pony tail and teased that too so it could be big and poofy. Jessica my roommate stole the show! She has naturally curly hair and so I told her she should tease it too. I showed her how with her pick and then she just went crazy! It looked so big and bad which meant it looked perfect! :) Everyone had so much fun! It was hilarious!

We basically had a big dance party in the dinning hall at the Edwards site. Our Admin even came to join us and it was so funny to see them outside of the office for once. We all had a great time and took some pictures to capture the moments.

This is one of just the girls from Nawakwa (most of them). Me, Christy, Emily, Kelly, Mary Helen, Jessica, and Stephanie.

This is Nick in his great sweater and sequent jacket and Joe who was Santa the entire week with his cabin group. It was hilarious!

This is Mary Helen and Matt. Nice touch Matt with the ‘stache and the rose for a boutonniere.

We all had a great night! It’s going to be a fun week next week with all of us looking forward to going home! I know I can’t wait! I’m SO looking forward to seeing everyone! I hope all is well and that you are starting to get into the Christmas spirit instead of being caught in the holiday hustle and bustle. :) Miss you!

Snow Day

2009-12-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! It’s now only one week from today that I will be flying home! I can’t wait! I hope this next week goes fast! I’m finally going to be back in cabins which I haven’t done for over a month now. It should be interesting to experience this in the snow.

My first Snow Day in years!

Speaking of snow… Last Monday we had our first snow day! It was so much fun! The night before we were told that it was for going to be a delayed start so we knew we could sleep in, but then we woke up to find out some exciting news. They told us that all of program was going to start on Tuesday due to the accumulating snow fall…. Woohoo! Snow day!

This meant that we weren’t going get paid so we decided that we were going to have to do something to make it worth our pay. :) This is what we came up with… I’ll tell you through this succession of pictures.

We decided to make a couple snowmen. This is our king and queen with Ange and I peeking out behind them. (Emily, It’s like Sarah and Boris of the Winter Carnival! :) )

It was funning how making a snowman actually takes skill. My friends were pretty impressed how I could put together a giant snowball so quickly. I just told them. That’s what you get for growing up in Minnesota! :) It’s a simple art form but does take some skill. Our snowmen are nothing compared to the snow sculptures of the winter carnival. I’m so excited to see them again!

We made the king running away from the queen so we took a funny picture with the snowmen to illustrate that. Hehe

Of course we can’t play in the snow without throwing a few snowballs and so a snowball fight insued. Brittany was definitely representing it for Minnesnowta. :) It was so fun! This picture is also great to show just how much snow we got. It was so awesome! It reminded me of the snow we used to get in Minnesota when I was growing up. (maybe that’s only because I was smaller then?) It was funny to hear people yelling because they got snow down their pants and such. We were all acting like our students and having a great time!

Then we started getting creative with our picture taking skills. Here is one of us jumping in the snow. This is Ange, Jessica, and Kelly.

We had a great day playing in the snow and decided that it was well worth our day off! Program started the next day and we continued to play in the snow all week long just instead of playing with each other, we played with our kids.

Here’s one last picture of me climbing in the tall trees. I love snow!

First Snow Week

2009-12-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

Teaching in the Snow
This week we started out with 6 inches of snow. Everyday was an experiment of gear, teaching strategies and figuring things out. The kids were so excited when they got off the bus. Many of them had never seen snow before. We had to be really strict with them so that they didn’t go run and try to make snow angel in their shorts. :)

First things first, the students went with their cabin instructors to get set up in their cabins and to get properly dressed for the snow. Many of them didn’t come with the right gear so we had to outfit them with our “Green Gear.” This is heavy duty water proof stuff used previously by the military. It’s pretty funny to see them all dressed. It’s also a pain to get on and they hate it, but it keeps them dry which keeps them warm. I had a couple students who brought those Converse All-Stars to wear all week as their shoes. Thank goodness we had gear for them. Minnesotans know how to do it but these guys have no idea. :)

It was hard at first to teaching the snow because I had to adapt some of my activities and sometimes we simply ran out of time because it takes so much longer for the students to hike in the snow. One thing I learned quickly is that poker chips as teaching tool do not work because they sink in the snow and the white ones are impossible to find.  I’m still learning and adjusting…

9 and 1/2 fingers
On Thursday night I had an eventful evening when I was helping prepare the second meal for the kids. I was helping by cutting lettuce but as I was cutting, I accidentally cut a little bit of my finger off. Yep. It didn’t even really hurt which is why I was more concerned about finding my finger piece than I was about the pain. We had just gotten new knives and so it gave me a pretty clean cut. I chopped off the corner of my nail and a bunch of skin. After putting some pressure on it I went to see our medic and she took good care of me by wrapping it up and things. It was funny to see some of my friends’ reactions. Some wanted to see the piece I chopped off and others could hardly come near me. They all made a joke of the fact that I had to keep my hand above my head to stop the bleeding. I held my pointer finger up so it looked like I was giving myself bunny ears. My friends mimicked me to be funny. They also made jokes like, “Sharon, do you have a question? You hand is up.” It was pretty funny!

The only trouble was that after a full day we couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. Then we talked to Drizzt the director and he suggested I go to the doctor to make sure we were doing the right things. My friend Ange took me to the ER late after work because we had to wait for the Workman’s Comp papers. When I got there they were surprised that I waited until then to get in. They didn’t really do much that we weren’t already doing but they gave me a tetanus shot wrapped the cut with an antibiotic thing. The nurse did a funny job with the gauze which you can see from the picture below. It looks like a hammer!

I’ll keep you posted and try to take picture of it once it finally starts to heal. The only thing that sucks is that now I have no chance at a hand modeling career! Bummer right?

Thanksgiving vacation in LA

2009-12-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

Kevin was going to be visiting his family in California for Thanksgiving and invited me to join him so I decided to take him up on the offer. He was going stay at his Grandma’s house and hangout with his aunt, uncle and two cousins.

Kevin was going to get into LA at 11:00 and the only ride I had into LA was at about 1:00 so I had them drop me off at a coffee shop near the airport and I was just going to wait for him. I spent about 4 hours there working on emails and such. Then the store closed at 7:30 so I had to find a new location to hangout. I decided to walk down the street to see what I could find. I came upon an IHop that was open 24 hours. Great! I went right in bags and all and sat down at a booth by myself. It was interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever taken my self out to dinner before. :) It was relaxing and I actually got a lot done while I was there. Then Kevin called to tell me he had landed I started making my way to the airport when he met me with the taxi which we road to his Grandma’s house.

His grandma was so sweet! I really enjoyed being around her. Her name is Helen. She loves tea and doing puzzles. We went to church with her on Sunday and she was Miss Popular. It was cute. :) That evening we meet up with Kevin’s aunt and uncle (Lynn and Steve). They have a great house only a block from Hermosa Beach which is one of the LA beaches. We took a walk along the beach and up on the pier. It’s a really pretty beach. We pretty much had dinner plans with them every night, either at Helen’s house or theirs.

Here is the view from the pier looking back at Hermosa beach.

The next morning Helen took Kevin and I to the Incredible Café for breakfast. This is where Kevin’s Dad always goes every time he comes to California. It was actually really good. But after eating such a big breakfast Kevin and I decided we needed to do something physical. We usually tried to find something active to off set our sitting and relaxing. :) Some days we went for a short run which was great since I haven’t done that since it got cold and snowy. This day Kevin and I borrowed bikes from Lynn and Steve to bike up and down on the strand along the beaches. There is this really nice bike path that goes for miles. It was a great day and really fun to see all the different beaches.

The next day we woke up early to help Helen at her church. They were putting together Thanksgiving baskets for those in the community who couldn’t afford a meal. It was great to see all that their church had collected and to see everyone come together to help. There was a lot of food! One funny thing was that with every basket they put about a dozen or more oranges. I wouldn’t think of oranges as a Thanksgiving food but they are so fruitful here they just wanted to get rid of them.

After helping out Steven offered to take Kevin and I to the Getty. It is a beautiful art museum in California. We had to take a shuttle to get up there which is well worth the ride. The building alone is beautiful let alone the art work inside of it. Here are some photos of the building and the gardens. It was so pretty! Kevin and I also decided to take some silly senior photos. It was fun. Our favorite part of the museum was the exhibit they had for you to try our own drawing skills. Kevin sketched a marble statue and I sketched Kevin’s profile. Of course being the art major he is, he’s blew mine out of the water. It was still really fun and we had a great laugh.

This is the garden with the building in the background.

There's where we had lunch. Beautiful view huh?

This is me with down town LA in the background.

Here's Kevin being silly in the garden.

After the museum we went back to Steve and Lynn’s to hangout before dinner. Their house has a ladder that goes to the roof where they have a spectacular view of the sunset. Steve invited us up to check it out and really, instead of telling you should just see the pictures. Gorgeous huh? Mom, are you a little jealous? :)

Once the sun went down we had a wonderful dinner that Lynn put together. After that Kevin and I plunked out some crazy notes on the piano and serenaded the others with our voices. Ha! It was a hoot. Later we played cards for a while. Helen’s favorite game is Kings in the Corner so we played a few hands and then switched it up with some Golf. Golf was fun! I had never played that with more than one other person. :)

One Wednesday Kevin and I finally just relaxed. I mine the whole week was relaxing but this was just one of the days we didn’t have to do anything. We slept in, worked on puzzles, and I worked on my blog while Kevin graded some assignments. (PS- that’s another thing I love about my job. I don’t have anything to grade! aww!) For lunch we decided to treat Helen to an In-n-Out Burger. This is a little Mc Donalds with the burgers but they just keep it simple and don’t have so many sandwich options. The burgers were really good and it was cool to find out that their hamburgers come from real ground beef not preformed patties and the fries are real potatoes. It was pretty good. I figured I had to try one since its such a west coast thing and Carolyn had talked about them so much.

That night Kevin and I went out for a couple drinks with his two cousins, Stephanie and Devin. They are great! We had so much fun! They both live in San Francisco and came home for the vacation.

Then it was Thanksgiving! Yeah! All the family came over early in the afternoon to play some lawn games. (I know, I was playing lawn games on Thanksgiving Day. Ha!) We played a couple games of crocket. It was fun. Then we went in for dinner. Helen pulled out all the stops. It was great! We had all the fix’ns! Kevin and I tackled all of the dishes, they were pretty impressed. :) It was great to be welcomed into some one else’s family on such a holiday when you can’t be with your own. Thanks Kingdon’s!

Then it was time to go home the next day, but I really didn’t get home until Sunday. I bummed rides from some of my co-workers but since I didn’t have an agenda we weren’t in any rush. Plus it snowed a ton and so we wanted to go up the hill at the right time so the roads weren’t so bad.

Extreme Sledding

2009-12-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

Once we finally got back be found that it had snowed 6 inches! YEAH! It was a winter wonderland! So pretty! All of my friends were jumping at the bit to get out there and play. Once we put away our stuff and got dressed we headed out there.

A couple people had the genius idea to go sledding behind a car. It was so much fun! They were asking me if I had ever done anything crazy like this. I told them that I hadn’t personally, but I told them about when Paul strapped skis to a lazy-boy and sledded on that. (I hope I didn’t give them more ideas. :))

Here’s a picture of us getting ready and tying things up. Jana was the driver and after seeing what her car can do in the snow I would definitely recommended it to anyone. :)

We tied up one saucer sled and then stole a camper mattress from the shed that worked like a toboggan. We also had one free rope that Dan used to ski behind the car with. He wore his down hill skis and got pulled along. It was just like tubing and water skiing behind a boat. It was hilarious and SO much fun! I love that I work with people who like to be crazy like this! It was a great day! We made some great runs around camp and went up all the way to the dinning hall. :)

Here are some more photos. This was our first run.

Here's me. I’m wearing the green jacket. We all took turns on the different sleds. Do I look a little nervous?

Here’s a video of the actual event. I’m the one taking the video, which is probably a good thing because otherwise you would just hear me yelling the whole time. Right family? That’s what happens when I go tubing. :)

Resent Adventures

2009-11-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

Anza Braggo State Park- Anza Braggo is the largest state park in California and only hours south of us. It was the first desert camping I’ve ever done. It was really fun and made for some great stories to share on Monday. We pulled in just before sunset on Saturday night. We made it to the wind caves to watch the sun go down. It was beautiful! The sun was pretty and the caves were so cool! It was basically this sand hills that had been carved out by the wind so it sort of looked like huge coral holes that you could climb in. They were really neat. We hiked to the top of the peak and watched sun go down then it was time to cook dinner and set up camp.

Here's a picture at the top of the wind caves.

No one was around us so we thought we might as well stay where we were and camp right there. It turned out to be the best place we could have picked. The stars were AMAZING and it was like we had the whole place to ourselves! We woke up to the sun rise the next morning and made breakfast. Jessica got greeted by an eight legged friend while she was changing behind a bush. It wasn’t on her but definitely gave her a fright. It was actually a tarantula! It was about the size of your hand if you can believe that! The boys picked it up but I didn’t really come that close to it. :)

Here's the tarantula Jessica found! Yikes! She's obviously a like scared of it in this photo. :)

Once we all were ready we set out to see a few sites before heading back. We went to the park information station to check out a few things and then decided to go hike to the Palm Oasis. I had never seen an oasis so I didn’t really know what to expect but once we got there I was quite impressed. We hiked about 8 miles of hot, dry weather to get there. Once we got there we found these huge palm trees that were growing in this small space together. There was this strange water source from under the water that allows these huge palm trees to grow in this desert area. Once we got there it offered some nice relief from the heat and the sun. I was laying on a rock and just happened to fall asleep while the rest of the group made its way. It was pretty cool.

Here's a photo of it from a distance. Pretty sweet huh?

Our next and final stop was to see The Slot which was supposed to be this cool rock formation off of the highway, but we didn’t quite make it. Our car got suck in the sand ditch. We tired avoid a part of the road that dips really steep but ended up off the road and suck. Not good. First we tried some techniques I new from getting stuck in the snow banks of Minnesota but that didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped. Then we tried to pull the car out using Christy’s Explorer. This strategy only led us to almost get her car stuck too and we ended up popping her tire trying to get her car out. This was not looking good. The first thing we did before all this was to call AAA so Drew, MaryHelen and I went out the highway to meet them. Once we got out there we called them again and they told us they wouldn’t come because they knew the off road we were on and didn’t want to take the tow truck on there. No what? This was not good! We only waited hopelessly for about 3 minutes when a huge white truck pulled over. I think they were stopping to go to the bathroom but saw use and asked us if we needed any help. (our guardian angels) It was two dirt biking guys and their dog. We explained the situation and they said they could just pull us out. It was pretty amazing because they did just that. They hooked us up bumper to bumper with a strap and gave it some gas. It was crazy! They were great! Thanks to them we weren’t late for work on Monday. :)

This is us trying to push Drew's car out. It didn't work. That's me by the drivers side window. :) Good memories.

John’s visit- A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to have John came out to visit again! This time he didn’t have to work. I picked him up at the airport on Wednesday night and them he came to work with me both Thursday and Friday. Thursday he got a taste of my classes and a day in the field and Friday we put him to work in out project areas. He was great! He was helping in the kitchen and every where. It was fun! (I don’t know if he would exactly say the same.) Then we went on a road trip with some of my friends to Sequoia National Park.

Sequoia National Park- This Park is huge! There is so much to see and do! We all said we’ll have to go back in the spring. John and I road with Ange and Drew. It was really fun with crosswords and conversation the whole way. We made a few stops along the way and here’s a photo from one stop. The cow was along the highway on our drive and so we thought we needed a picture.

We all got there early enough so we didn’t have to set up in the dark. It was really nice and out site was amazing! Honestly I would recommend it to anyone! We stayed at Potwisha which it the lowest site on the mountain. The ranger suggested for us to stay low because most of the other places had snow. We were prepared for cold but not quite snow. Potwisha turned out great! The weather was fine and was the best was the small river that was right next to our site. We got to listen to the water flowing over the rocks all night. It was beautiful!

In the morning we go up, made breakfast and headed out to hike. We all started out hiking up to the summit of Moro Rock. Here's our group at the top.

This is a picture of me with Moro Rock in the background so you can see how far up we hiked. It wasn't as tough as Half Dome but still just as sweet.

Our group split in two after this so we weren’t so big. Some wanted to hit up the elevation and do a more intense hike and others wanted to just explore the park. I had a pretty bad sinus headache so John and I decided to check out the park. It was really fun actually! The hike wasn’t intense but the sites were beautiful! There was just a small blanket of snow on the ground which was really pretty in the sunlight and it was neat to watch the trees steam when the sun hit them just right.

We saw the Giant Sequoias, General Sherman Tree, Chimney Tree, and Tharp's Log. It was great! We all met back at the site to get dinner started and to sit around the campfire. It was a great day and a wonderful evening.

Then the next day John and I got up super early to hit the road so that we could get him to the airport on time to catch his flight. Ange was nice enough to let us drive her car back which was fun to have a little road trip together. We actually got to the airport early so we had lunch together and then said our goodbyes.

Teaching Pictures

2009-11-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

When John was out in the field with me he was kind enough to take some action shots of me. Here are a few pictures of me while I was teaching with students. They are fun to look at because they are a progression of shots along our hike to Jenks Lake. The kids love to go out there but it is quite a hike for them.

This is me at a stump circle by a big sequoia tree with my students.

This is a picture at Jenks Lake. We stopped here to have lunch.

This is the Jenks Lake trail. It's pretty steep in some places which makes it a pretty tough walk back for many of them.

This is another favorite place to stop. It's called Burnt Flats. The over look is beautiful and it's a great place to teach about forest fires. There was a small fire in this area about two years ago and so now there is a lot of fire weed on the ground. The kids find it really interesting.

On our way back I tried to find some good places for me to teach and the kids to catch their breath. They were quite tuckered out by the end of the hike.

More catching-up… High Trails

2009-11-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

I thought instead of going week by week with the little things about my days, that I would just tell you about a few of the big things that have been happening out here in California for me and share some more photos.

High Trails Update:

Belay Specialist- At work I’ve been getting more comfortable with our tasks, the classes, and the students. It’s starting to feel more like a routine and it doesn’t stress me out too much. I was on cabins for a while straight which was fun because one of the weeks I got to be Belay Specialist. This means that while I am with my cabin group at night, during the day I have to set up and take down the climbing wall. I also stay for each class to be an extra belayer. It was a lot of work because I didn’t really get much time off that week but I had fun and it was nice to see the extra money on the pay check.

Moving on up- Also at work I have finally moved up a level. I’m not at Level 2 which means that I completed a certain number of work days and experience days, I’ve done a number of observations, and I’ve written a book report. (sounds like homework huh?) Because I’m now at Level 2 I’m eledgable for pro-deals, I got a t-shirt, and I get a little more of my health insurance paid for. Pretty good huh? It was a lot of work but now I just need to move up to Level 3 that’s when the real bump is. I get $5 more a day in pay! Woohoo!

Line dancing twice- This past week our staff changed around our evening programs so that the students cold be inside for a period of time each night. This meant that both groups have line dancing on the same night. I taught line dancing this week and it was actually really fun to do it back to back. I felt much better about my teaching this time than when I taught for the first time. I was much more relaxed and had a lot more fun. I still need to work on counting them in to start at the right spot, but that will come in time.

Observation- At High Trails we get observed twice each season. One is a full evaluation and the other is a flash evaluation. On the day that John was going to come out to the field with me they told me that I was going to get evaluated on one of my classes. Talk about pressure huh? I was pretty nervous and John helped me study the night before but it’s a good that when I’m teaching I can usually block out any observers. The person coming out to watch me was Dawn. She is the boss, Drizzt’s wife. I’ve worked with her through my project area and line dancing. We have a pretty good relationship. She’s actually from Minnesota and told me she sees a lot of herself in me. That’s nice. I wasn’t too worried about the whole thing but I wanted to be prepared and do my best. After the class I felt okay about it. I taught the Earthworks class which is all about Geology. It’s certainly not my strongest class but I felt I gave it my best shot. Dawn and I met the following day to discuss the feedback. She made some good observations, some that I was already aware of and gave me some great suggestions for the next class. Over all she said I was doing well and that she’s excited to see how I progress through the year. My score wasn’t high enough to move to a level where I can rewrite lesson plans but that’s okay. I had a lot of odds against me with the class, the location, and the students. Just ask John. J

I’ll let you know when I have flash evaluation. That’s when the administration can evaluate you with out warning on any form of job task. It could be when we are running a meal, belaying, something in the cabins…. It’s usually not class related. I don’t know when that will happen. Hmm…

No water pressure!- Last week had a bit of a catastrophe in the middle of the day. On Wednesday my director made an announcement on our radios that they were having trouble with the water pressure at camp and that we weren’t allowed to use certain bathrooms. I didn’t think much of this since I had taken my group away from camp for the day and if they had to go to the bathroom they would have to go Happy Tree anyways. Then later he came on the radios to say again that the problem on effected all of the bathrooms and that we should start to be more conservative with the water that we had with us. Now I was a little more concerned. This was obviously a big problem. I decided to take a second to make this a teachable moment for the kids to think about water concervation and to tell them that there isn’t that much clean water for us to drink in our world. They listened and it maybe stuck with a couple of the students. I think it was more of a scare for me because this is where I live and if I don’t have water??? That wouldn’t be good!

Once we got back to camp for switch over is when I really saw the problem hit the hardest. My director was telling the cabin instructors that they couldn’t have their students shower that night and that all of the toilets had to be flushed the old fashion way with a bucket and water.

Dinner time was interesting. We had enough water to cook with but we couldn’t wash any dishes because of the water pressure and there wasn’t hot water to wash them by hand. Some how we still got dinner out to all the students but ended up using every dish in the kitchen.

Thankfully the problem was solved by morning so we were up and in business to go for the day. It was quite the reality check for me and now is just another reminder to conserve water where you can. If you need any ideas of how just talk to my students, they come up with some great ideas. Shorten the shower, turn the sink off while you’re brushing your teeth, save the water while the shower water is warming up and use it to water your plants. They are only 6^th graders but they’ve got some good ideas!

Old Pictures

2009-11-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

I now have pictures from John so I thought I’d share them with you. They are from when John was in Santa Ana for work.

Here is one of us at New Port Pier. It was a beautiful day at the beach!

When John and I were in Redlands we did some costume shopping before heading up the mountain. We tried on a few hats in the store to see if we could make them into costumes. They didn’t work but provided a great laugh. This is the one I picked out for John. It was a little small.

This is the one he picked out for me. Bo-peep?

Here are is a picture of our final costumes. We ended up being “unknown heroes”. Hehe. We were inspired by the silver vest top that John found. It turned out well.

Here’s a picture of my girlfriends. They are zombie Spice Girls and MaryHelen in the middle is a zombie Willie Nelson. “Zombie” was the theme obviously. :) They were great!

Bits and pieces

2009-11-16T18:05:00.000-08:00

This update will have to be in bits and pieces. I have scattered free time to I will try to update as much as I can when I can and soon I will hopefully be up to the current date.

Enjoy!

Week 1 highlights: 10/19-10/25

This week I worked a “Time and a half” which means I had my own cabin group but split a field group with another person. It’s kind of fun because you get pick the days/classes you want to teach. I shared a field group with Drew which worked out well. At the end of the week it had been a lot of work but the extra money on the paycheck was nice.

Since we all had had such a long week, as we normally do, we were all looking forward to going to Seven Oaks on Friday. Seven Oaks is this bar that is connected to a seasonal camping resort that is only ten minutes down the mountain. Because it’s so far up here they don’t get a whole lot of business but when our hole crew files in we practically own the place. J It’s really a lot of fun for us and the bartender really makes a point to meet the new High Trails crew every year. The place has a lot of character which makes it great! It is totally decorated with hunting and log cabin type décor. It also has a juke box and two pool tables. I play pool pretty much every time we go and get a few pointers from people each time. It’s a great way to hangout and relax after a long week, plus the have the best bacon cheese burgers around. J

On Sunday I went on a hike with Ange and Jessica to South Fork. This is a trail we are allowed to take our kids on but we hadn’t been there before so we thought we’d check it out. We had heard from many people that it was just really beautiful and since it was such a nice day we thought, why not? Here are a few pictures from the hike. Isn’t it pretty? And I live here!!!

This was on our way out. Jessica is on the left and Ange is on the right. It was so pretty to look out at the trees finally changing colors. It was beautiful!

We finally got there to see this cute little creek. We had fun playing in the cold water and taking fun pictures.

Here’s one of me after I climbed out on the log pulling Dirty Dancing walk move.

And one last one. Smile! It was so great to be outside in our own backyard and appreciate it! The girls were great company and afterwards we were so thankful that Ange pulled us out the door.

Week 2 highlights:

This week I was on cabins again but just a single this time. It was nice to have time off and I took it as an opportunity to work on moving up levels. It worked out well but meant I didn’t have time for much else. The big thing about this week was that I was going to teach my first Line Dancing class! We had tryouts the week before and I guess I did pretty good because I was one of three the pick out of all that tried out. We had our in-service about how to teach the class the morning of the day was going to teach. Yikes! Talk about pressure huh?

I went back to practice a little in my room so that I could feel prepared, but then soon it was go time! I brought my cabin to the dining hall for the snakes class. I’m not sure if it was the nerves from teaching line dancing or what but I held a snake for the first time! Wow! I know! Me, Sharon, holding a snake?! What? It was only a little one who actually was just like a huge night crawler. His name is Bubblehead and he’s a Kenya sand snake. I was pretty proud of myself. Then towards the end of the class I had to get things ready to teach line dancing. I got the songs lined up, my head set mic on, and wore the crazy hat that Carolyn had got from a rugby game when she was working in London. It was a hit!

The class went fine and the kids had a ton of fun. I know there are things I can improve on and I wanted to get more comfortable with doing the dances facing them. I taught three dances, The Macarena, The Hitch Hiker, and Thriller. They love Thriller and especially since it was so close to Halloween. The funny part about the night was the call back that I used to get the kids quiet. I would say “Bragg” and they would respond with “Bobcat.” This was the schools name and their mascot. The only problem is that because I’m from Minnesota I said Bragg with a long a sound instead of a short to sound more like Bregg. The kids thought that I didn’t know the name of their school, but really I did, I just was saying it with a Minnes-o-tan accent. J

Then on Friday I got to see John! His was work flew him out to Sana Ana which is only about 2 hours away from here. He decided to stay through the weekend so we could hang out. I met him in Big Bear and we drove back to Sana Ana. We stopped for dinner at this pizza place which reminded me of Broadway on Friday nights, but it wasn’t as good of course.

Then we had a lazy morning watching the Hawkeye game while I caught up on emails with the fast internet in the hotel. We eventually had to check out which was a good excuse to get us up and out to see the sights. John took me to the New Port pier that was just a short drive away. We had brunch at this little restaurant called Charlie’s Chili where we split this deluxe chili omelet. It was the restaurants specialty and was really filling.

Then we took a walk along the beach. The sand was soft and the water was cold. We didn’t take a dip because I forgot my swim suit but I that was okay with me. The water was really cold! John would have gone in even though it was so cold. J Then we started our drive back to the mountain.

We stopped in Redlands (one of the closest towns down the mountain) to grab something to eat and to search for a Halloween costume. When we got into Redlands we found that the town was having a huge trick-or-treat party where the kids could go from store to store down the main street of town instead for going door to door. It was cute and we saw some really good costumes. We also drove by some very decked out houses! They were incredible! Even better then the one by my house on James. Crazy! Redlands apparently goes all out for Halloween. John and I just went to a couple of thrift stores and found some sweet articles of clothing that we just couldn’t pass up. They didn’t really work but we came up with a way to put them together. We found some little kids funky superhero tops and some doctor scrubs bottoms to match and called ourselves “unknown heroes”. It was original was going to work for the night.

Then John and I drove up the mountain to get dressed and ready for the Halloween party at Nawakwa. When we arrived at my room, my roommates where already dressed. The girls I normally hangout with decided to be Zombie Spice Girls. They turned out pretty gory and good. Once we were all dressed we all went over to the Square House (the community area housing) for the party. It was a great time and everyone came in some sort of costume. When John comes again I’m not sure if he’ll be able to recognize people because they won’t be in their costumes. J

In the morning I took John to the Oaks. This is a restaurant that is just 15 minutes down the mountain. It’s great for breakfast and they have the best coffee around! We weren’t the only ones who wanted to get breakfast so we joined up with the rest of the gang. Then we came back to camp for a short walk before it was already time to head back to Minnesota! So short!

What around for a bit…time to goL I left my camera in the rental car, but no need to fear I get to see him in 2 weeks! (actually he’s flying in this Wednesday! Can’t wait!)