My husband rocks!!

This is how he went to school today....

Love you, babe!
(More Halloween pics to come)

And, they're off!!

Remember these guys....?
Well, you won't be seeing them around in any of our pictures for a while (who knows how long, really). They've up and left us and MOVED TO AUSTRALIA!!! Honestly?! Why not American Fork or even Brigham City, or St. George? Maybe even Florida, or California? I could handle them being out of the state, maybe....But out of the country? And half way across the world for that matter!! *Sigh*

We're definitely going to miss them. In fact, we miss them already!! Luckily we just downloaded Skype so we can see and talk to them over the internet. The problem will probably be the time difference. They're pretty much 16ish hours ahead of us time-wise, so it may be a challenge to line up times so we can chat. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, here are some pics of them leaving us....

J left first, on September 25th, to get things ready for T & R to follow

J's farewell crew

More of the crew

The boys

Then, T & R left today. T's mom and brother went with them to help with the travel & visit Aussieland for a few days before coming back.

R and her cousin

Me and R
(We had to bribe her with using my chap-stick in order to get this picture of us. She's a chap-stick maniac thanks to me. Sorry T!)

R & some more of her cousins

Last sight of them, and Mike showing off his cute pink luggage ;)

Have a safe flight, you guys!! We love you!! Come back to us as soon as you can!

P.S. If any of you faithful readers feel compelled to donate to the "D & K Australian Vacation Fund," we'll gladly accept donations of any amount :)

T'was a blustery morning!!

This is no joke. This morning just as I was leaving my house heading towards the freeway on my way to school, I was completely startled when I saw something HUGE coming towards my car. A tumbleweed that was at least half the size of my car was headed straight towards me!! The thing was ginormous!!!! No kidding! I think it missed my car by only about 3 inches. It didn't help that it was still pitch black outside, so I didn't see it until it was about 5 feet away. The wind was blowing so hard the tumbleweed was coming fast! Thank goodness for those close encounters that don't actually become encounters :) I swear...this only happens in Utah!!

Have a great day!!

2009 Conference on Adoption

I've been privileged to sit on the planning committee at UVU for the 2009 Conference on Adoption. It's going to be AWESOME!!! Seriously. It's a yearly conference, but we're hosting it this year.

I'm positing this because it's a free conference open to the public, and will be held on November 2nd from 9am-4pm in the Student Center on UVU Campus. I know several of you who read my blog are social workers, or you have adopted children for yourselves, or you have been involved with adoption in some way, so this conference would be great for you to attend! (Every one else is invited too, no worries.) Here's the most exciting part about the conference...are you ready? Michael McLean is the keynote!! Woot! Woot! And...of course Michael McLean can't come talk about adoption without singing his amazing song "From God's Arms, to My Arms, to Yours." You have no idea how excited I am for that! (Also, as a little side note, if you do decide to attend, make sure you bring some cash or your check book because he's going to be selling CDs and stuff too.)

If you're interested in attending, click on this link for more information. At that link you can print the program and pre-register for the conference as well. You can also ask me if you have any questions...I know quite a bit about this conference, so I should be able to answer your questions. I hope some of you are able to come attend! I'll be there all day starting at 7:30, so let me know if you're going to come, and make sure you come say hi to me!!

He's a genius!

I just want to say how proud I am of my genius husband. About a month ago he had to take a couple of Praxis tests for his teaching job, and we just found out that he scored in the top 15% of everyone who has ever taken it! Great job, babe! I'm so proud of you!! Not only that though, he is also in the top 10% of his Masters program, he has a 4.0 gpa for his entire program so far. Woot! Woot! Keep up the hard work, my love. You rock!

P.S. For those of you who don't get the picture of Sid the Sloth being put up with this post, Sid claims "I'm a genius" in the movie Ice Age. If you haven't seen it, repent and sin no more ;)

Monster Mash, anyone?

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Truly blessed!!

Despite my crazy, busy schedule it seems like things are really going my way, and I can't help but smile and be happy. First off, I have a wonderful life, with the most amazing husband in the world who loves me more than life itself. What more could you ask for after that, right? I honestly don't know what I've done to deserve the incredible life, husband, family, in-laws, and friends that I have been blessed with, but Heavenly Father continues to pour down blessings upon me, and I thank Him every day for it because I know how truly blessed I am!

Today was one of the neatest days of my life, and definitely one to remember!! You ready for this?! Today I got to shake the hand of not one, not TWO, but THREE Apostles of God. Honestly. I even have a witness! ;)

Today was the inauguration of UVU's new President, Matthew S. Holland, son of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As my friend, Janice, and I were standing by our seats waiting for all of the "important people" to walk in and take their seats, I was spotted by Jack R. Christiansen, an amazing member of the Church, previous president of the Orem Institute, and newly made VP of Student Engagement on campus. He is such a great man, and such an amazing example to D and I, and the many, many others who have been privileged to know him. Shortly after Jack walked by and shook my hand, a tall man came walking down the isle in an extremely bright pick graduation gown. That tall man was none other than President Henry B. Eyring of the 1st Presidency. Janice and I looked at each other, smiled our beautiful smiles at President Eyring, and he took the time to smile back and shake both of our hands. That totally made our day, and we would have been satisfied with that, honestly. :) The inauguration was amazing, and we were both glad we decided to skip our classes today to attend this once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity. Following the inauguration, we wanted to see if we could find Elder Holland to shake his hand and thank him for his amazing talk he just gave in General Conference this past weekend. As we were walking toward the front where he was standing with his wife and grandchildren, I spotted Elder Neil L. Anderson, the most recently called Apostle. His wife shook Janice and my hands first, and then we were able to shake the hand of our second Apostle of the day :) This was almost too much for us to handle. Just kidding. We finally made our way up to where Elder Jeffrey R. Holland was standing and greeting everyone who wanted to talk to him. He was seriously so genuine and so happy. He asked me how I was doing, and when I replied, "I'm great, thank you," he responded back after looking in my eyes, "Yes, you are great, aren't you?" It was seriously one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. To be able to look into the eyes of a true Apostle of God, and have him tell you "you're great" gave me a feeling I can't describe. I even got close enough to see that he has amazingly crystal blue eyes, and on top of being privileged to shake his hand and speak with him, he also gave me a half-hug as he talked to us for a second and said he's totally okay with adopting Wolverine Green over the BYU Blue he's been used to. Haha. He told Janice and I that were completely justified in skipping our classes for this wonderful event when we told him we missed class to attend. What an amazing day. It's not very often anyone has the privilege of shaking the hand of one Apostle, let alone be in the same room as them. Being able to shake the hands of three living and true Apostles of God is surely a day and an event to remember.

We are extremely excited to have Matthew Holland as our new UVU President, and he has been doing amazing things on campus already. He is super funny and so down to earth. It has been a privilege to meet him in person as well. Welcome to UVU President Holland!!






P.S. Last week I won one of these little beauties at school....
All I did was dress up for the career fair, put my name in the drawing, and finally won something!! But not just something...an iPod! Yeah, it's just 1GB, and only an iPod shuffle, but since we're slow on the technology updates, and we didn't have an iPod yet, this is a good start for us. I swear I never win anything! Maybe my luck is changing ;)

"No time to say 'hello', goodbye!!"

That is totally how I feel most days right now. D and I have just been running from one thing to the next, and taking one day at a time. School is going well, but is keeping me crazy busy and I'm already counting down the weeks until the end of the semester (11 weeks left of classes, and 12 until the end of the semester). I have SO much going on between now and then that it seems so stinkin' far away, but I am trying to enjoy the moment and savor this time in my life. I am super excited to finally graduate next April, but I can guarantee that I'll miss school when I'm no longer here. UVU is currently my second home. In fact, I'll be here longer than at my own house today (14 hours on campus today)! And then I'll be spending half of my Saturday here again too. Whoo! Bring it on, baby!!

I have come to REALLY LOVE check marks!! It's so nice to be able to cross a "to-do" off my list, and to put a slash through every day that goes by. Don't get me wrong, I really do love having the opportunity to be so involved on campus this semester, but I'm also really looking foward to not having so much on my plate. Right now my life pretty much consists of being at school all day, going home and working on homework, making dinner, spending a few minutes of "down-time" with D, and then we're off to bed and ready to do it again the next day. It's hard enough to find time to get everything done that I need to, let alone make my visiting teaching appointments and prepare our Sunday school lessons. Who ever decided that 24 hours in a day would be enough? When somebody figures that out, would you let me know?

P.S. I substituted a class for one of my professors yesterday and I'll be doing it again today and tomorrow...I have officially decided I could NEVER be a teacher. Honey and Pappy J, you are my heros. Thanks for having the patience to teach other people's kids. I don't even have the patience to teach/instruct college students!

San Francisco....here I come!!

Along with 3 other students and a couple of the professors and their spouses, I've been invited to attend the 71st NCFR (National Council on Family Relations) Annual Conference in San Francisco in November! I feel so privileged to go because I'll be one of the first students to major in Family Studies at UVU because the program is brand-spankin'-new this fall. The university is doing everything they can to boost this new program, and I'm so stoked about it!

I'm really excited to go and be part of this conference, but I'm totally bummed that D doesn't get to come with me. We were originally trying to work it out so he could come too, but we're poor students, so thus is life. I'll be gone for 5 whole days, but I think we'll survive ;) This will be the first time I leave him to go on a trip planned for me...usually it's him who leaves on trips while I stay home. This will really be an awesome experience for me, and I'm so glad to have this opportunity!

Happy Birthday, Bean!

Today is Bean's 20th birthday! Happiest Birthday, Little Sister!
P.S. For those of you who know her and care, she's having a baby girl in January!

Yellowstone/Teton Anniversary Trip

For our anniversary trip this year we went to Yellowstone and Teton national parks. I absolutely love it up there. It's so beautiful, and I love being on road trips with my sweet husband. He's such a blast, I love to hang out with him!

Sunday: We drove up to my G-ma's house after church to sleep so we could leave early the next morning to drive into Yellowstone. I've been going to my grandma's house several times a year since I was little, but we got lost twice on the way up there...I guess I'm not used to going up in the dark, but thanks to my dad for being able to talk me back to where I needed to be, we made it to Grandma's safely and still in pretty good time :)

Monday: We hit some of our favorite spots in Yellowstone, like Old Faithful. We set up camp, and then headed up to Mammoth Hot Springs. Part of the road was closed, so we couldn't get to Mammoth from West Yellowstone. Instead, we had to go all the way around the bottom loop, and then all the way around the northern loop to get there. It was totally fun though...we stopped at other places along the way too. Neither one of us had been to Mammoth Hot Springs before, but my grandfather used to work there, so it was fun to go and see his old stomping grounds. On our way back to camp we stopped at Norris Geyser Basin, but decided we'll need to go back there again because it was getting dark at that point so we didn't get to see all that we wanted to.

I found these sweet moose hats at one of the gift shops by Old Faithful. And you know how much I love moose!

Driving out to Mammoth Hot Springs we saw these cool rocks. (D says: " This is a basaltic lava flow that is now showing columnar jointing. As a bed of lava cools, it contracts and breaks in near hexagonal columns. I just had to stop and get a picture.")
(D says: "You can see the lava flow and the columnar jointing from across the valley. It's apparent thickness is about 20-25 feet thick. We can see that Yellowstone was and still is a very volcanic place.")Us at Old Faithful

A petrified redwood tree. (D says: "Petrification here has occurred when a ton of ash has been blown out of a volcano and covers the tree before it can decompose. In this case, the tree was still standing when buried. Then little minerals filled in and replace the organic material of the tree making a rock that looks like a tree.")

Watch out for buffalo on the roads...a common sight in some parts of Yellowstone

This was not zoomed in...he really was that close to our car!
Mammoth Hot Springs

Norris Geyser Basin

If you click to enlarge the picture, you can see the stars :)

Tuesday: We woke up after sleeping so well in our new cozy sleeping bags! The temp. was about 30 degrees, but we were warm all night long and both of us slept really well. D made us a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hot chocolate. Once we got all of our stuff packed back into our car, we did a little bit more touring around Yellowstone before driving down to the Tetons.

Our campsite

This elk was huge!! Traffic wasn't moving very fast because everyone was trying to get pictures of him. We weren't exactly sure what they were looking at, so I jumped out of the car and snapped a couple of pictures before running back to the car, and catching up with D before traffic started moving again. Smooth moves :)

This was the view from Inspiration Point in Yellowstone. You can see the lower falls of the Yellowstone river at the top of the picture.

After going to Inspiration Point, we hiked down to the lower falls.

There were about 328 stairs we had to climb down and then back up!

We couldn't believe how close those people were standing to a buffalo. They can charge you pretty quickly! Brave souls.

Teton National Park
After we were done in Yellowstone, we drove down to Teton National Park. This is the view of Jackson Lake with the Tetons in the background.

The sun was in my eyes...what can I say?
This landscape was formed from glaciers passing through the area, so of course we had to take a picture ;) (D says: "The curved line of trees on the left in the picture probably runs along a terminal moraine or end of a glacier where it plows the soil as it grows. Then it melts, shrinks, and exposes the curved moraine. The little lake and the depression to the left of it are called kettles. This is where chunks of glaciers have broken off and made the depression on the ground.")

Beautiful Tetons

We brought all of our food with us, so we had to make a fire each night to make our dinner. While we were at Teton, D got a bit too close to the fire and singed his arm hair! It was a close one!

This mama and baby moose were hanging out about 100 yards away from where we were cooking our dinner. It TOTALLY made my vacation. We had been looking for moose or bears since we got there, and finally saw some moose. We never saw any bears though.

Wednesday: Was the last day of our vacation. We tried to get up a little bit early so we could hike to the Tetons Inspiration Point before driving the 7-ish hours back home and not get home too late. I was glad we decided to do the hike. It was totally fun!

Our cozy little over-priced cabin we stayed in at Teton. We thought it would be fun and cozy for our anniversary trip, but turned out to be not-so-romantic because there was a gap between our room and the room next to us...big enough that we could see into the next room! So much for romance! ;)

We didn't see any bears on our hike up to Inspiration Point by Jenny Lake (about a 6 mile round-trip hike), but we did see some other fierce animals! ;)
This part of the trail was a bit nerve-racking, so we had to take a picture of it.
The chipmunks were relentless and there were tons of them! This one sat in this position for about a minute until D took the picture, then he finally moved. The little poser!
This little guy is called a pika. They're related to rabbits, but they have teeny little ears. On our hike back we saw one dragging a small tree branch up the trail!
On our hike back down we stopped at Hidden Falls. It was our last stop before heading home. The whole area is beautiful! We had a wonderful time together!

We got home Wednesday night, and D went back to work on Thursday to get ready for students to return this coming Wednesday. I also start school again this coming Wednesday, so it's time to get our noses back to the grindstone. So long sweet summer!

(P.S. D & I both got 4.0 gpa's again for summer semester! Yay us!!)