single-digits

In the beginning I started counting by weeks. Because 730 days felt a little too overwhelming. But 104 weeks seemed possible. 

I remember when I got to 99 weeks. Jordon had only been out five weeks but it felt like such an accomplishment to be in the single digit weeks. 

It seems unreal but now I can officially say I only have 99 DAYS left. It still doesn't feel close yet. It feels closer then it did in the beginning but its hard to wrap my head around the idea that he actually gets to come home! I am getting incredibly excited. And so now you can expect a lot of count down posts. It will probably get annoying but give me a break I've been looking forward to this day for 21 months or should I say 89 weeks. And did I mention we got his "official" release date? Mark February 18, 2010 as one of the best days of my life :) 

Flashback to the 70's

Best Halloween Ever

Kelsie came to visit. I love her she is seriously my best friend. We especially love acting completely out of control together.

All my roommates dressed up as hippies. 

I love my roommates. I have seriously been so blessed to live with these amazing girls this semester. No matter what we do it's fun! I love them!

"R" Mountain

After dinner me and Krystin decided to make a spontaneous decision to go hike a mountain. We've been talking about hiking "R" mountain, here in Rexburg since the summer so we thought what better time than today? 

We didn't even know where we were going so our roommate Jillian gave us directions.  Unfortunately we did not follow those directions correctly, which lead us on the most intense hikes of our lives.  We thought it was going to be a nice, easy, relaxing hike we were wrong haha.

This just shows how steep it was. Literally straight up, so much that at one point there were these chains you could hold onto... ridiculous. At one point we may have accidentally veered off the trail a little bit.  Which was a completely bad decision because it was so steep we were crawling on our hands and knees up the mountain.

Us at the top. We made it up just in time for the sunset.

At the bottom. Notice the flashlight we brought along for safety haha. We were so glad to be back to the car especially since we were scaring ourselves because Krystin "heard" a mountain lion. haha. It was quite the Sunday adventure.

Midterms

Midterms are sucking the life out of me. 

Four Months.

4 months seems like nothing when I started with 24...

and 18 weeks doesn't seem like too many when I started off with 104

And something like 120 days seems completely manageable when I started with 730

I can do this. Piece of cake. 

Yellowstone

Its our tradition to go Yellowstone Park every fall.  Okay, okay, we actually only started this "tradition" last year.  But we followed through this year, so since it was our second time we decided to officially make it a tradition :) 

It was a bit chilly this year.  At this point in the park we had to turn around and not continue on the walk way because we were almost sliding off the walk ways... it was slippery.

Of course, no Yellowstone trip would be complete without a trip to Old Faithful.

We about FROZE to DEATH waiting for Old Faithful.  They said it was supposed to go off at 2:45.  At about 3:15 we were so frozen we decided to give up, just as we start walking back to the car it went off. Go figure.

At the Lake.

The buffalo got so close to us! And some confused people were following them around! Practically asking to be gored by them!

We went to dinner at Pete's pizza and pasta. Our choices were limited but it was actually very good.

We were laughing to hard after this picture was taken.

Year Two: Yellowstone Trip Successful

My life.

This weekend me and Laurie attempted to make caramel apples. 

Don't they look beautiful? Well we did something wrong. We figured we didn't really need to "chill" them in the refrigerator. We figured we could just let them sit for a bit longer... we were wrong haha.

Since we didn't cool them they were stuck to the tinfoil. The caramel literally acted like glue. We had quite the fiasco trying to separate our caramel apples from the tinfoil. I ate mine with some tinfoil on the bottom... I didn't mind it still tasted AMAZING :) 

This is Laurie and Tanner attempting to separate the apples from the tin foil.  It took all three of us to complete the task.

Me with the completed products, after we got them unstuck from the tin foil.  Funny thing is they sat on this plate overnight and the next day they were glued to the plate. It was hilarious.

Today was my first "real" day of teaching 5th grade.  I am in a group of three, and each week we alternate who is the lead teacher.  This week I was in charge.  I didn't think 5th graders could be so intimidating. At the beginning of my lesson they were fully pounding on their desk and clapping along with the "We Will Rock You" cheer. I'm not sure who started it but within minutes I had lost control and every student was participating. All I could do was laugh.  I have learned that teaching is ALOT OF WORK. And that you should never expect ANYTHING to go as you had planned, and don't expect things to work out perfectly.  Because it won't. You just have to go with the flow of things, and hope by some chance they are learning something haha. But I do have an official name badge, so I feel like a pretty legit teacher.

I am obsessed with this picture of me and Jordon. Its so awkward and precious at the same time. Oh my heavens I miss this boy so much. Only 4 and a half months :) Hallelujah!