Happy Thanksgiving

I am really bad at getting behind in my blogging but I like to spend the time catching up so that I will have this in the future. But today I am going to take a break from playing catch up and focus on the wonderful day that it is...Thanksgivning!

I watched this video to other day about a man who was really grateful everyday of his life and how important it is to not just for one day a year. I 100% agree with him and while I don't do it for the world to hear everyday, I try to thank my Heavenly father for all my wonderful blessings each and everyday.

(This years Thanksgiving!)

I am most grateful for the wonderful family that I have! They are amazing and my best friends. I hate living so far away but things never seem to have changed when I go back. I love you dad, mom, Nick, and Kevin! And all of my extended family too!

I am grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life and all the knowledge I have learned from it. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that has blessed me with everything in my life. Each day is a new adventure and He is always there to go through it with me!

I am grateful for the wonderful friends that I have spread throughout the country. I have met so many wonderful people over the last couple of years I have lived away from home. Each one has taught me something and I know there was a reason for each of them. I am also grateful for the long term friends like Erika and Erca and Megan and Ashley who will all be around in my life for a while!

( last years Thanksgiving!)

I am grateful for trials and adversity in life. It is hard to be thankful for hard times but really that is where i have learned the most in my life and made me who I am today. Yes they are not always fun to go through but I am lucky enough to know that I don't have to go through them alone.

I am grateful for the chiropractor. After much time of not knowing things I am grateful to finally know what is wrong and be able to stet fixing it. It is not always easy when doing my therapy but I know in the long run it will be most beneficial!

I am grateful for my teaching job and the wonderful school I work at. When I interviewed I really knew right off the bat that I would love to work for and with them. Thank you David Gourley Elementary for helping me so much in my first 2 years of teaching! My second year is starting off a lot better than my first year. Also I work with an amazing staff and am grateful for all of them!

I am grateful for my health. While there are a couple things I am working out, I am really very healthy. I am grateful that I have insurance to cover a lot when I do need it. I am grateful that I can still be so active in my life.

Other things I am grateful for:
A home, clothes, food, bed, blankets, my jeep, a garage, sunrises and sunsets, sunshine, Utah mountains, lakes, rivers, and oceans, animals, Reese's cup holiday editions, Christmas time, Christmas music, country music, sweatshirts and sweatpants, the scriptures, warm showers, winter coats, neighbors, gas stations, police men and fire men, soldiers, dentists, doctors, hospitals, health insurance, furnaces and fireplaces, copy machines, laminators, printers, computers, iPads, cell phones, Skype, FaceTime, movies, shoes, boots, airplanes, books, Pilgrams, religious freedom, living in a free country and so very much more!!

I have always wanted to spend sometime serving others on Thanksgiving, but I hadn't found a good place until this year. I got ahold of the Christian Life Mission and they said they needed a lot of help this year. I was so excited to go downtown and be abe to help. I stood in the kitchen and dished out food as people came to take and serve it or some that just wanted to take some home. We were very fortunate to have a ton of food and I was grateful for all the people I met while there.

There was a lady who was also working in the kitchen named Renea and she was so great! We talked for a long time and we even started our own kitchen dance party. These people came up and were taking pictures and asked what the name of our group was and we came up with The Stuffing Servers on the spot! I love when you can just meet people and totally be yourself and not feel weird because you don't really know them. Thank you Renea from Heber for help making the day awesome!

There was another old man that came through the line and he couldn't stop saying how grateful he was that we were there serving. It was my pleasure to be where they needed the most help! Then he asked to share a message with us and from what I could hear and understand him he was quoting a scripture from another version of a bible but its message was still that charity never faileth and to serve people is to serve God. I wasn't there to be recognized or to be told how awesome I was, I was there because I know how much it means to be with family and if you cant be with family then at least around friends or happy people. I wanted to be that happy person that could help make someone's day a little brighter, and to be able to serve Gods children when he can't be here serving them himself. 

My last story comes from Gordon. He was a very big dude, tall and round. He immediately started talking and telling me his life story. He is an artist, and author, and he owns 15 small businesses. He was there because this morning he was interviewing a truck driver at a rest stop for his new book, and he bought some andom stranger breakfast who told him about the Christian Life Mission dinner. He told me how he's going through a divorce because he wife can't handle all of his lady friends. Apparently he has 225 lady friends that he takes care of. He goes out on dates with all of them and makes sure they are well off with anything they need. All I could think in my head was that this dude was a PIMP! Oh he was also a comedian and it was my mistake to tell him that I love jokes. This is the joke he told me: "my friend was a cashier at Walmart and for her birthday I was going to get her a bra, but I didnt know what size. So I asked a lady that was getting in her line to check her out and then came back and tell me what size she guessed his friend was. The lady told security and he got kicked out of Walmart." THAT WAS THE JOKE! Then he says, you can tell I'm a comedian right?! Uhhhhhhh yeah. I just did not understand him. So then he starts telling me about how he is an artist and if he stared at me long enough he would be able to draw me later when he went home. He said he would always remember my beautiful smile and pretty eyes. Now the funny thing was that there was a little black lady standing by him now and she was all, leave this poor girl alone and stop trying to hit on her. Gordon made a bad joke about me being to young, but the black lady was having none of it so she went to get the pastor to get him away from me. She came back later to check on me and we laughed about his terrible jokes. Oh but that was not the end of Gordon because he came back to ask if I wanted to be one of his lady friends!? Luckily the pastor came back over at that moment and saved me! Ohhh Gordon, what an interesting man!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Climbing Mt. Timp

I never listed climbing a mountain on my bucket list but I think I should add it now after doing it. I have heard many people in Utah talk about Mt. Timpanogos or Mt Timp for short.  I thought it always sounded fun and would ask people to go and was always stunned that I couldn't find anyone to go with me...now I know why! The bishop of my ward wanted to go and we got a small group together that started at 1:52am so that we could reach the summit and watch the sunrise. I thought we were leaving a bit early but I wasn't going to argue so I went along with it. Well let me tell you that was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. The hike was very challenging and it took us exactly 5 hours to reach the summit, getting there at 6:52 right before sunrise. I didn't get any sleep that night and that wasn't helping but I was tired and sore and there were some points my body didn't want to go any further. I am actually still surprised I made it the whole way but I am so glad I did. I love nature and beauty in all things and that is exactly what I saw. Although it is good that we hiked up in complete darkness so that I never got discouraged by seeing to far ahead of me and wanting to give up.

Sometimes I think that is like life. If I knew my future or could see the road ahead I might get intimidated or scared and give up. But by just putting one foot in front of the other each day I can confidently go in the direction that I choose.

Summer Fun

Some of my summer pictures I didn't know what to put under so here is me finishing unloading some random summer pictures!

That is some intense badmitton! Grandma got new birdies that light up and she was really excited to play with them. Dad and Uncle Ken were showing their competitive sides!

I found this picture and cannot express how much I love this man! Pappap is such a wonderful grandfather to have and I am glad that they moved back from South Carolina 17 years ago and that I could grow up close to them to be able to spend a lot of time with him over the years. There is no one I know that knows more about everything and can fix anything than him!

This is part of the stack of books that I read this summer! I love love love reading and I was glad that I had time to enjoy it. Most days I would read one of these a day!

Cucumber falls is at Ohiopyle and Mom and I stopped there once for a couple of minutes to see how hard the water was flowing. Last summer when we came here, it was barely a trickle over the falls. This summer it rained everyday for at least 3 weeks!

Tour de GAP day 2

 Day 2 was again another beautiful day. The only bad way to start the day was that we had to go down a large hill the night before to get to our hostel, so to start off the day we had to go back up this steep steep hill. Let's just say that the majority of us are not champions like Kevin and we walked our bikes up the hill!

 It was definitely hard to get back on the bike but after you got comfortable it actually wasn't so bad.

 Today was the day for a lot of bridges and tunnels! That makes it even more fun!

 This was literally the highlight of our trip.Up until the continental divide we had been biking all uphill. It wasn't big hills but a constant uphill is harder than you might think. That was also what made our first day so hard. The first 9 miles of day 2 was also uphill.On the elevation map below, we started on the right and were biking to the left. The red arrow is the divide where we are standing. So we have steadily been going uphill but now seeing this map show us that we have some serious downhill to go! We weren't more excited during the ride then right at this point. We decided if we do ever do this again we will go the same way, if we went from DC to Pitt we would have to go uphill in a shorter amount of time and I can't imagine what that would feel like.

 ABOUT TO GO DOWNHILL! :)

 This was our first big tunnel. They tell you to watch out for snakes in there which is hard because you cant really see anything in there! There are little overhead lights but they don't help much. We had our phones out and little flashlights to light our way.

 Coming out the other side of the tunnel was amazing! You could see forever!

 I only include this picture on the bottom because I am not embarrassed by the fact that I am smacking my butt. I guess it may only be funny to my family because they can fully feel my pain and at some point on the trip we all did that multiple times. We just had to try to get feeling back and the blood flowing so we would stand up and smack it or do a little dance! Oh man I love my family and that they put up with me:)

 What a stud of a brother I have!

 Seriously it doesn't get much better than this!

 We couldn't go the whole time without at least one crash! Right before this I was showing Kevin how I was learning to ride without my hands and I was so proud because when we started I couldn't even ride one handed. I don't think he fell because he was riding no handed, but according to him later he thinks he was forgetting to breathe (say what?!). Don't worry we haven't made fun of him at all for that (yeah right!). But he spun out on his bike and got some nice scraps on his arms, hand, and leg, but for the most part he was okay,  or so we thought! He was standing there cleaning himself off and he started to pass out. Luckily my mom was right there and she knew what was going to happen so she shouted at Nick to come over quick. I think Nick made it just in time so that he didn't fall over. We were able to get a nice break near a beautiful field! The rest of us have at least passed out once in our lives (some more than others), but we were laughing because now Kevin knows what I feel like when I pass out all the time!

 The last 20 miles or so we were riding right next to the railroad tracks which was really cool. I thought that they don't use this railroad anymore but it is still in great condition and it is possible that they still do. So I am glad that none came speeding by while we were riding next to it.

We reached the Mason Dixon Line! It was nice to know when we finally crossed into Maryland.

 I am just so grateful for my family going with me on this adventure and truly I think we all had a really good time. When we are together we are always laughing and having a good time and this was no different even though we were fighting through pain at some points. We took turns riding by each other and even though we were riding together I got to talk to everyone in my family individually which I really love being able to do when ever I can since I don't live so close anymore.

There were mile markers along the way and being only a mile away I was having very mixed feelings. I slowed down my pace as I reflected back on the last 36 hours, the conversations I had, the nature I had biked through, the pain in my body, the memories we had made. I felt sad that we were so close to the end because it was one of those times spent with your family that you just never want to end, because you are having so much fun and everything seemed perfect. We didn't have to worry about school, or work, or the fact that our plumbing was working at home. We enjoyed being together and that was enough. But in all honesty too I couldn't wait to get my butt off of the bike and be able to just sit in a car for 3 hours going home, what I had just biked.

 I don't think they know that I had slowed down but it was perfect because when I did make it to the end, there was everyone I loved standing there waiting for me. Grandma and Pappap were there too and I just wanted to tell Pappap everything that we did and saw in the last 2 days. I know that this was something he had really wanted to do, but was not able. It really was an awesome family vacation!

 We finally made it to the end of the GAP trail and maybe someday will go on the towpath all the way to DC! I don't know where mom went but I am sad that the whole time, and hundreds of pictures taken and none of the 5 of us together.

 I felt so accomplished making it to the end! I am also proud of my mom and dad who each did about half but they were champions through the whole thing. Also Nick and Kevin for being awesome and doing the whole thing with me. And yes Nick rightly wore the yellow shirt today because apparently he was the one who was ready to be done as he raced to the end!

 Loading the bikes into the back of Pappap and Grandma's van to return to the starting point.

At one point we were talking about what we were going to do next year as a family. In my family they always like to hear about the adventures I go on and I didn't realize but the last few years I have been taking them on crazy adventures with me. Growing up we would go to the beach mostly every summer. This year I made them go on the bike trip, last April they all came out to Utah for my graduation, that in itself was an adventure for them, but then we hiked all over southern Utah. The summer before we went kayaking down the Youghiogheny River. It seemed like for some reason my family all decided that next year they want to go back to the beach or something like that :) what, who likes to do the relaxing stuff!! :) They did say they might go para sailing with me though!