Snapshots of a Crazy Summer

So for anyone who actually checks this blog, besides my mother who just complained to me that she keeps coming here and seeing only July 5th, here's a quick look into the past month of insanity. We begin with the beauty of FINALLY getting to see Jessie's amazing and beautiful baby Citlali Rose shortly after arriving stateside. She's a jewel with a unique little mind that she knows well already ;)

From there we go on some crazy adventures with the Hopper crew. I had great times reacquainting myself with Rowan and Adelia whose vocabularies continue to fill me with shock and awe! They're non-stop and ridiculously cute as well. We have here pictures of our little hike to the cave where we saw the rattle snake as well as their lovely fingernails I painted and Adelia's early 7th birthday party.




From there I scurried along, after a long drive from Moscow back to the Portland area, to Wichita where I met up once again with my lovely roommate Laura for a tour of the Prairie's. Yes, the fact that her name is Laura and she grew up on the Prairie shoud not be lost on anyone. It was, in fact, intentional.

It was so cool to be able to visit so many of the places she'd told me about all year. It's also always so interesting just to see people in their natural habitat. We had a great time getting ready for her wedding, including spending 4 hours at her hairdresser. I have for you now some pictures of us in our wedding garb, as well as one of the little school house in which she was married. There were only about 25 people there total, and it was truly beautiful. I should spend more time on each of these events, but at this point I'm just thankful to finally be talking about any of them, so I apologize that it's just this rapid fire approach.




So for anyone who actually checks this blog, besides my mother who just complained to me that she keeps coming here and seeing only July 5th, here's a quick look into the past month of insanity. We begin with the beauty of FINALLY getting to see Jessie's amazing and beautiful baby Citlali Rose shortly after arriving stateside. She's a jewel with a unique little mind that she knows well already ;)

The day after the wedding Laura's mom (consequently her parents names are Tim and Cheryl in case anyone wanted to be amused by the correlation to my own sister Cheryl and her husband Tim) drove me back to Wichita where I met up with Angie and the kids. We did a little shopping and then drove the 4 hours back to Leoti, after which we immediately washed the girls' hair, then got back in the car and went to the hairdresser in Tribune for them to get all cute and stylized ;)




It took them a little while to warm up to me, having not seen me in two years and therefore mostly having no idea who I even am, but once they did we had great times together. I even managed to teach them so Czech! It was so nice to be able to fit in time to spend with them.



I also really enjoyed watching Bob how to figure out the rip-stick :) Emily was pretty good by the end of the evening when one of their friends got it for his birthday, and I'll admit I had no interest in even trying it out!

I've got to say the day I left Kansas was pretty intense. We left Leoti around 7 AM and drove the 4 hours to the Denver airport. After an hour or two my flight took off and I arrived a couple hours later in Portland where my parents picked me up and drove me the hour back to McMinville. We ate a quick lunch at Quiznos, then I drove for four more hours to Janet's place in Medford. In all the actual travel time was about 11 hours, but if you look at the times all in PST it was like I got up at 4 AM and arrived at my final destination at 10:30 PM. That's just a long day by most anyone's standards.
It was well worth it, however, because bright and early the next morning we hustled out to watch the new Harry Potter flick. Good times with the boy crew. I got a nice photo of the boys in their natural habitat.

Also whilst there Janet decided it was time to attempt domestication. Therefore, I can now say I baked a blackberry pie. Not without plenty of instruction, and she mixed up the pie dough. Ryder took copious photographs in attempt to show just how much I did, but I'll just share a couple here.


I also got my fill of baseball games. I attended two doubleheaders. First for Tyler and the next day for Ryder. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures there, but when Ryder came over to eat his dinner with us during the break I got this nice one of him and Janet. They just grow up WAAAAAY too fast!

I've got some more photos I just haven't managed to download yet, but this will have to tide you over for the time being. Needless to say, I haven't just been sitting around doing nothing all this time. I'm currently in Pasadena just starting the second week of teacher training. I think we've got a good new group of teacher here. I'm getting two new teammates this year which is quite exciting. That means we'll have a total of 4 ESI teachers in Cheb. Yeah for growing numbers!