F.U.N.N.Y.

The joys of living in a small town.....

Here is a conversation that happened with one of my students yesterday.

"Johnny": (out of nowhere in his kind of high pitched adorable voice) Hey Hunziker...do you live like at the bottom of 'Apple Circle'?

Me: Yeah, I guess kind of.

"Johnny": Is your house like kind of blue/gray?

Me: Yeah, I guess you could say that.

"Johnny": Oh, well you are my neighbor! I live on 'Apple Circle!' Did you see me wave at you in the green truck?

Me: (hesitantly) ...I don't recall...

I kind of chuckle to myself not really knowing if he really even knew what he was talking about. I tell the incident to my coworkers and we all agree that even if this student knows where I live, surely he isn't the type to just head on over.

Later that night I am emptying the trailer of wood and wheeling it over to Jeff to stack in our little covered area. I see from the corner of the trailer a little red bike riding back and forth, back and forth in front of my house. Then I see the little red bike right next to the trailer where I am busily working.

"Johnny": Oh, hey Hunziker!

Me: Well, hello "Johnny"...I guess you do know which house I live in...

"Johnny then starts talking NON-STOP telling me story after story while I empty the wood. I am kind of laughing to myself thinking, "this isn't really happening".

Then, after about 3 minutes:

"Johnny": Oh, hey Hunziker....do you want me to help? I can help.

Me: Well, do your parents know where you are? I don't want you to get in trouble.

"Johnny": Oh, they won't mind.

Me: Well, I don't want you to get scratched up.

"Johnny": Don't worry, I'm really good at this sort of thing.

Then he proceeds to help me unload the entire trailer...talking NON-STOP. It was quite funny and actually really helpful. The whole time I am asking him questions about things like "Have you done your homework?" "Did you read for 20 minutes?" "What book did you read?" He of course kept changing the subject.

Anywho, this goes on until the trailer is done. Then comes my favorite part:

Me: Thank you so much "Johnny!" You are so helpful!

"Johnny": Hey, Hunziker,maybe you can go ask and see if you can come over to my house to play.

I seriously couldn't stop laughing. In 7 years of teaching I have never once been asked to come over to someone's house. I'm not quite sure it's such a great thing my students are learning where I live, but hey, third graders are harmless, right??

Back 2 School

Yes, I know all the kids and teachers in Utah have been back at it for awhile, but here in the small town we just started school on Monday. The first week is always exhausting, but exciting nonetheless.

The first day went much smoother here than last year since I was more familiar with the school and routine. I am glad I decided to stay at my school. I really lucked out with my class this year also. They are ADORABLE. I have a little girl that moved here from England and she just makes the whole day that much better. I was really hoping we would have a baby at this point and that I wouldn't even be teaching anymore, but now that school has started I am glad I am still at it. My class has character with a capital C and I love those kind of years.

Anyway, what else have we been up to??? Well, let's see. We have done a lot of canning. We bottled over 40 bottles of beans and we just finished over 60 bottles of crabapple jam. Oh my. We have also had fun with our other veggies...zucchini, carrots, and onions. Our garden did quite well for the first year, and especially for being in WY. It must be the horse manure we stole from the horse corrals.

This month we also let Jeff's truck rest in peace. Yes, it really was time. Jeff was sad to let it go, but it just wouldn't pull the trailer when went to get wood. With my dad's help, we now have a beautiful new F-15o which we absolutely love and feel so grateful for. I am so proud that I have officially converted Jeff to join the FORD family.

I have also been busy with setting up our bedroom upstairs, hanging the beautiful shelf my sister-in-law made me and little decorating projects.

Now that the weather is cooling (we hope it sticks) we will go get wood one more time and then things should settle down a little for the winter. We will probably do a little more painting in the house, but we hope the winter will be somewhat quiet and uneventful. Is that a weird thing to hope for?

School

These little boys acting like pigs in the smokehouse have both started school! I cannot believe my little nephews are old enough to be in school. Tommy started Kindergarten and Jackson is in pre-school. Tommy called me after his first day. This is our conversation:

Me: Hello?
Tommy: Hello.
Me: Hi Tommy! How was school!
Tommy: I got to the ride the bus two times.
Me: Wow! How is your teacher?
Tommy: Guess what I am eating?
Me: Crackers. How is your teacher?
Tommy: How did you know I was eating crackers.
Me: Because I can hear you crunching. How is your teacher?
Tommy: But what kind of crackers am I eating?
Me: I don't know. Tell me about how school was.
Tommy: Guess what kind of crackers I am eating.

And so it went. Either way, he is adorable and I can't believe he is in kindergarten! Jackson started pre-school and is doing great. I wish we lived closer to family. I miss the days when we rented my brother's basement and I could see the boys whenever I wanted!

Five Years

Today Jeff and I celebrate our fifth year anniversary. That seems like a long time, but it really doesn't feel that long.

The first five years have been better than I could have ever hoped for. I married such a sweet, hard working man. I feel so blessed.

I can't wait to see what the next five years will bring!

Ready for Fall...Not ready for Summer to end

Is it just me or has this summer literally flown by??? I cannot believe it is the end of July. We have been so incredibly busy and Jeff is freaking out because summer is almost over and we have only been four wheeling once and camping ZERO times. What?? He has informed me that we can still go camping through the end of September. Good, I was worried. :)

Anyway, I hate summer weather! I really do. It's cooler where we live than Utah, but I still hate it. I just hate that you have to time and plan when you will do everything. These are often the thoughts I have, "Better get up and run before 6 so it won't be too hot by mile 8" or "Better go weed now before it's too hot to haul the trashcan around" or "Better start cooking now before the house gets too hot" or "I sure would like to go for a walk, but I won't get around the block without turning 4 shades of red and have sweat pouring from every pour" ...etc etc. I just love fall weather. You can go and do anything you want outside at about any time of day and be comfortable. Why can't we just have two season--fall and spring. Yet they seem to be the shortest. Annoying!!

However, even though I hate the weather, I am not ready for summer to end. I love having the freedom to work when I want to and get things that have been neglected done. Here is a taste of what we have been up to since our big vacation:

*I have been making Christmas cards with my friend so that I will actually send them out this year! Christmas time is just too crazy.
*We installed new carpet in our entire house. This ended up being a two week project of moving furniture, ripping out old carpets and pads, scraping old pads, moving furniture back, having strange people in my home, having my home smell like smoke, etc etc etc!
*We put more sod on one side of our back lawn. We ripped out...okay, Jeff ripped out, an overgrown side of plants that at one time must have been pretty but were so weed infested, we decided we would just rather have more yard.
*Watering, watering, watering the sod in spite of the heat. Can't wait for our next water bill...it will probably be like having another house payment. Water up here is expensive.
*Cleaning. I feel like I clean the house every day in the summer.
*Scrapbooking. Catching up on last year. I still have to develop and scrapbook our most recent vacation.
*Cleaning up a mini-flood. The hose on the toliet in the master bedroom decided to break and send water all over the place and start pouring down in the basement in a matter of five minutes. I am sooooo grateful I was home! Luckily we really didn't have too much damage and it happened the week before we got new carpet. That really was a blessing!
*Doctors. We have been going back and forth to Utah more than we would like to try and fix our problems. I've been grateful to have a summer where I don't have to worry about getting time off and am worried for how things will work when I am back working. I found a really great doctor. Sorry I never call or tell anyone when we come down. A lot of times it is unknown until the day before and then we are rushing back so Jeff can get back to work.
*Getting ready for a new school year. Not as much as I should be, but I have done my fair share of cutting, coloring, and glueing!
*Getting Jeff ready for a four day back packing adventure with his buddies.
*Young Womens...it takes a lot of time!
*Training for a half marathon.
*Jeff being ON CALL. So annoying!!! Some weekends we are just stuck home because Jeff is on call. Why are engineers on call? Seriously. I thought that's something doctors did. He's on call at Thanksgiving too so that really stinks.
*Gardening. We put manure in our garden and we now have a freakishly large garden. I hope the vegetables are also freakishly large when it comes time to harvest.

The rest of the summer is going to spent mostly getting ready for school and we have a few camping trips planned that hopefully won't have to postponed. I really hope fall weather comes early this year, but fall itself can wait a little longer. I have a lot to do!

Stay in your lane, please

On our trip Jeff and I would take turns driving. He hated all the construction through Nebraska so on the way home he decided it was my turn to suffer through while he slept. Fair enough....I do tend to have more patience with that sort of thing. Anywho, so while he was snoozing and I drove from one construction zone to the next I couldn't help chuckling every time I would get to a new construction area and big orange signs everywhere about every single 15 feet said:

"STAY IN YOUR LANE"

Really? Do I really need to be reminded to stay in my lane?? Usually these signs came when it went down to only two lanes anyway...one going east the other going west, so really, do you need to tell me to stay in my own lane?? Do they really have trouble with people "picking lanes"? I mean, for a split second I thought "Hmmm...I wonder what it feels like to drive on the wrong side of the road. " This was the only picture I could find of what these orange signs looked like and the picture reminded me somehow of what I was thinking every time the orange signs reminded me to STAY IN MY LANE! It's a good thing they were there otherwise I might have been confused. I have more question: IS THIS WHAT THE STIMULUS MONEY IS BEING USED FOR WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FIXING ROADS???? What's next--"STOP AT RED LIGHT" "GREEN MEANS GO" "STAY IN YOUR VEHICAL WHILE DRIVING"...you get the point.

Summer Started with a BANG!

I know I have been out of blog world for awhile and I have a lot of blogs to catch up on. School got out on June 5th at 3:30pm and Jeff and I headed out for our two week vacation at 4:30pm. It was a whirlwind!!! Now we are back and I am trying to adjust to being back home and trying to catch up on all the housework....weeds, garden, laundry, toliets, laundry, spring cleaning, laundry...you get the point!

Anyway, this summer has already been so crazy and I feel like it is going way too fast. This year Jeff had some comp. time and vacation time and since it will be our 5 year anniversary, we decided to take a vacation. We had so much fun!! We started by going to Kentucky to visit my brother. My nephews have gotten so big since I last saw them and there I got to meet my new little nephew, Hugh. My nephews were so funny and adorable. I wish they lived closer. We took them to a place called "Land Between the Lakes" where they had an old settlement thing with a bunch of animals.

On the way to my brother's house we stopped at the St. Louis arch which was really cool. You can ride up in the arch and there are windows at the top that show a view of St. Louis.

We stayed at my brother's a few days and then our next stop was Nashville. Nashville was awesome. We went to the Grand Ole Opry, which was the highlight. We got to see Carrie Underwood, Trace Adkins, Litttle Big Town, and a bunch of older people that I didn't really know, but Jeff was crazy about.

On the way to Nashville we stopped at the Mammoth caves. They were cool, but we actually liked the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico a little better. We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and we also stopped at the Parthenon replica they have in Nashville.

On our way out of Nashville we stopped at The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home. It was so cool and I learned a lot of history. Jeff is a history buff so we stopped at quite a few historic sites and battlefields. The Hermitage was really cool because we saw old slave houses and learned a lot about life on a cotton plantation.

Our next stop was South Carolina. We stayed the night with Jeff's aunt and uncle in Columbia. They were so sweet to let us stay and we had so much fun with them! After a great night sleep we headed to Charleston. We had a blast in spite of the nasty HOT, HUMID weather!!! I will spare you all the millions of pictures, but we went to Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie (again, I learned a lot of history), we went on a ghost walk at night and learned about haunted Charleston, we walked around the town, went to the Boone Plantation and on a swamp walk at the Magnolia Plantation where we were lucky enough to see an alligator! We really had a blast.

After seeing as much as we could in Charleston while we were there, we started our journey back towards to my brother's in Kentucky. We stayed another night at Jeff's aunt and uncle's house and had a great time! We went on an alligator hike, but unfortunately didn't see any gators. Then we went on a firefly walk when it was dark. It was so fun! The next we headed back to Kentucky, making a pit stop to the place we had both been dying to see: The Smokey Mountains!! I'm glad we did this last because it really was a highlight of the whole trip.

We hiked over over 25 miles while we were there! If we had been there longer we could have hiked 25 more and still not seen everything! We mostly went on hikes that led to waterfalls. Everything was so beautiful and I was so glad we had the opportunity to see such a beautiful part of our country.

I have hundreds more beautiful pictures of the Smokey Mountains and our hiking adventures, but this post has already gotten way too long. These pictures do not even do justice to what we experienced. I feel so blessed to have been able to go on this trip and see all of the things we saw. It was fun to see so many historical sites that were critical to shaping our country. I gained a greater appreciation for everything our ancestors went through to make our country a land of freedom. There are many other things we saw and other battlefields I didn't post about, but I didn't want to bore you too much! I hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer. I look forward to catching up on blogs!