Holiday Party

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

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

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

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

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

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.