The last five months of my life have all been filled with new things.  I’m 30 – I shouldn’t have all this newness in my life, but then again, I chose all this newness.

First, I haven’t been blogging.  Why?  Mostly because I’m busy – so busy.  I wonder how a person like me, someone who doesn’t know very many people can be just so overwhelmed with life.

Reason #1: My new job.

You would think teaching English in Utah wouldn’t be much different than teaching in Wyoming, but there you would be wrong.  Would you ever be wrong.  I feel like a brand new, first year teacher all over again.  I’m teaching seniors and sophomores.  But here is the real kicker – I’m only .7 time – not even full time.  But I’m creating everything from scratch and learning the state testing, district assessments, and even trying to get down how they grade here.  It is all so new and different.

In September I went on a school trip to Jackson Hole to an Art Festival.  Imagine being a chaperone for kids you don’t even know.  It was fun and we got to see cool art like this:

Old Faithful:

And the Tetons – of course:

Reason #2 – New Calling.

I was called to be the YW First Counselor about 4 weeks after I moved in.  I love it.  I really love working with the girls.  We have a small Young Womens – only about 7, but not a small ward.  But YW is one of those callings that you have activities every week, sometimes 2x a week (not including Sunday meetings), so it can be a tad overwhelming.

But how can you not LOVE working with girls like this?

Reason #3 – New Town.

You would think I would be traveling around, taking pictures, and enjoying the Wild Wyoming scenery.  But no.  I’m distracted by all the wildlife.  I really should bring my fancy camera with me everywhere.  But here are a few shots from my iPhone.

The sunrises and sunsets here are beautiful! I think it is because of the clouds, but I can’t decide.

Deer right in my back alleyway. Weird. And there are whole herds that live in the fields on the side of the rode. My car insurance actually went up because Sheridan County has a really high rate of deer/car collisions. In fact, I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t see a dead deer on the side of the road Sad.

These are across the street from my friend’s house:

Wild Turkey crossing people – and this on a road where the speed limit is 55 mph.

And believe me – they move at their own pace!

They really aren’t very pretty.

Reason #4 – New Hobbies.

I’ve started quilting.  Initially I started so that I would have something to do, but now I can see that if I had only waited a few weeks, I would have had way more to do and wouldn’t need quilting.  But you know what?  I love it!  Really.  I’m the youngest women in my quilting group.  (hee hee)

I got adventurous and I am taking a class to make this quilt:

Here is my progress:

Organizing all my pieces of fabric – all 272 different strips in 272 different colors.

Putting all of it together:

Now I start on a color gradation in the checkerboard border where I have to label and number every piece. Whew!

So, there is a very brief update.  I will try and blog more, but no promises.

I must admit that there was definitely a small part of me that was so excited to move to Wyoming because of the cowboys. (Okay, okay, maybe it was a big part of me.)  Everywhere is rural in Wyoming and that means that everywhere has honest to goodness, down to earth cowboys.  I’ve only been here about a week, but I still get a little thrill when I drive down the street or when I’m in a store and see a cowboy hat.  Not a clean black felt “city-boy” cowboy hat, but a straw, worn, sweat stained, and “other-stained” cowboy hat.

What I didn’t expect was to be inundated with so much cowboy culture.  I see little things and just giggle.  I am loving it!  Here are just a few cowboy things to share with you.

First, Sheridan has a movie theater, with like 5 theaters.  I was sooo excited.  But when I went to see a movie, they were only playing Harry Potter once and they had this movie Buck playing all the time.  And they aren’t even showing The Help, which I was super excited to go and see.  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see it on Netflix.

Anyways, I’d never heard of Buck, but decided to check it out.  It is about a horse whisperer or really a horse trainer, his life, and how he does what he does.  It is a documentary and they follow him around and interview him, his family, and people who know him.  It was good, not great, but I could see why the ranchers around town would much rather see something like that than Harry Potter or The Help.

Second, you know the Wyoming license plate?

That cowboy right there in the middle is EVERYWHERE!

It is officially the state symbol of Wyoming.

Or the other version of it is like the one on the sign for the Mint Bar in downtown Sheridan. Apparently it is like way famous – the bar and the sign. ( As a side note, I found out that you can’t buy alcohol in grocery stores in the state of Wyoming.  I wondered why there were so many bars, even bars with drive up windows and now I know.  You have to buy alcohol at a bar/liquor store.  And people think Utah has weird liquor laws.)

Back to the Cowboy symbol – I mean people here have it cast in iron and on their trucks, fences, houses – I even saw a tattoo yesterday. Now, I like it, but whoa! Can you imagine everyone in Utah putting up pictures of beehives all over their garages and stuff.  But then again, cowboys are much more interesting than beehives.

My next favorite Cowboy thing here in Sheridan is the “Cowboy State Bank.”

Look at that “banking the Cowboy way.” What does that mean? Do you work in how many head of cattle and not actual money? I don’t know, but I do know that I love it! Check out the phone number 1-877 – Go Cowboy ! Love it! I giggle every time I drive by it and it is right by my house. I want to get an account just so that I can say I bank at the Cowboy State Bank. I wonder if they would even let me get an account since I’m not a cowboy or a cowgirl. I’m a bonafide city girl through and through.

And last, but not least is that today I went into the library and they had a whole display of books like this:

They really are appealing to their audience aren’t they? But I have to say I loved it and the photography was beautiful! Just beautiful!

I know I’m having a bit of a culture shock, but once I get used to it, I’m sure I’m going to love living in a small country town. Maybe I can even convince a cowboy to settle down and marry this city girl.

If you are a child of Stepford, then you plan a move. You don’t just plan it, you over plan, you prepare, you make itineraries, maps, directions, and in general drive your family crazy.

I moved on August 4th. I started buying packing boxes in May. Started packing in early June. I didn’t just want to pack. I wanted to go through everything. You know, get rid of things I didn’t use, want, fit into, etc.

About a two months before the move I had a little breakdown. No, a huge breakdown. Sorry Mom! As a Stepford Child I like to plan. I find comfort and peace in knowing what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, and how it is going to happen. I needed to make a moving plan, but we couldn’t. There were too many variables. I actually only got a place to live a week before I moved. But I did as much as I could beforehand.

It is a good thing I was so ready and prepared for the move. Tuesday I got the flu. I couldn’t even finish a haircut appointment. I even threw up in the church parking lot. Ick! I hate throwing up. Then I spent the entire day in bed. The next day, Wednesday, the ward helped me pack my Uhall. I got the smallest Uhall – it was 10′. I wish I had taken a picture of it. I had taped off on the floor of the garage how bit the truck was going to be. Then I started stacking my boxes to see if they would fit. They fit perfectly! My parents flew in that night.

Thursday I got them up early, early and we were out of the door before 6 am. We went to Idaho to pick up a kitchen table and chairs and a loveseat. They squeezed into the Uhall and we were on our way. We drove all day to Billings, Montana. I followed my dad (he drove the Uhall) and got killer gas mileage – 32 mpg. I get 25 mpg on a good day normally. Going 65 mph down a highway must be the sweet spot for the fuel economy in my SUV.

Friday we drove into Sheridan. By this point in time my sinuses and jaw were killing me. I knew I had an infection, but couldn’t do much about it. We got to Sheridan at 11 am and we had the Uhall unpacked and returned by 1 pm. We hauled behind and got everything unpacked. And boy was it hot! I don’t have A/C and moving all my crap in and out really killed us. By Saturday I had everything unpacked and put away thanks to the help of my mom and dad. Sunday my dad flew out of Billings, Montanna (2 hours away) and Mom flew out on Monday. Saturday morning I was in so much pain and my face had started to swell that a friend of mine wrote me a prescription.

Needless to say, I wasn’t all that good of a companion for my parents. Between the flu and the sinus infection I was rough. But I’m feeling much better now. Just bored. I’ve never lived alone. And I don’t really have a job to distract myself with.

For my next post, I’ll take you on a tour of my apartment.

As you know from Thursday’s post, Teresa and I went hiking at Mill Hollow over the weekend. While I chose the hike we went on more for the distance and the view, I couldn’t help but remember my first kiss. I thought I would share the story – it is funny. And since there is no way that the boyfriend in the story reads this blog, I feel rather safe in sharing it with you.

I worked at Mill Hollow just after my senior year in high school. I had never had a boyfriend or been kissed, but that was all about the change that summer. I met Jeff at camp. I didn’t like him at all, not at first. He dressed really nicely and all the girls fawned all over him and his truck. I’m not the type of girl to go after someone that other people like and so I tried my hardest to ignore him. This is until one weekend when schedules changed and we were going to have to work together. I thought, “Oh great, we don’t like each other and we’re supposed to work together.” I just couldn’t see how it would work. So I did was any red-blooded American teenage girl does to get something she wants: I flirted. I flirted big time! I flirted so much that I actually started to like the kid and he started to like me. Amazing what happens when you let your guard down and get to know people.

Fast forward a few weeks. We were “officially” dating. But we still hadn’t kissed. We had held hands, snuggled, gone on dates, watched TV late at night (way late into the night – I even fell asleep once and woke up at 4 am. Oops!) I even think we might have said, “I think I might be falling in love with you” by this point. But still no kiss. I was getting frustrated.

Well, unbeknownst to me, Jeff had a master plan to kiss me for the first time at this beautiful view on the trail they were making that summer. Here is the view courtesy of my iPhone and a panoramic app I have:

He kept asking me to go on a hike with him, but I don’t really like hiking. Then one Friday night, while I was chasing a pot gut squirrel out of the kitchen/cafeteria, I slipped on some water and sprained my knee. So I single-handedly ruined Jeff’s incredibly romantic plans to kiss me on this beautiful vista. Sigh!

By the next week I was just so dang frustrated and ready to be kissed that I kissed him first one afternoon while we were watching a movie. Well, I kissed his chin and then didn’t move my face. He took the bait like any red-blooded American male would and that was that. I do have to say that it was a splendid first kiss. When it was time to go, we stood up, kissed some more, and my knees even got a little bit weak. Yes, wonderful first kiss.

Too bad the relationship didn’t last.

But when my knee healed, that fall we went back to Mill Hollow to hike the trail. We made it up to Makeout Point and we, well . . . made out. It wasn’t as romantic as I thought it would be. Maybe because I was hot and sweaty from hiking. Maybe because I was worried about my breath. Maybe because it wasn’t our first kiss. But it was a beautiful view none-the-less.

Since Jeff worked at Mill Hollow for several more years, I’ve always wondered . . .

How many other girls Jeff has taken up there and kissed?

I guess I’ll never know.

Teresa and I went for a hike over the holiday weekend at the camp that I worked at when I was 16 years old. It is called Mill Hollow and is run by Granite School District. It is nestled in the Uintah Mountains, about 45 minutes or so from Kamas.

I really just wanted a simple hike, not too strenuous, and a beautiful view. The hike I chose was an “easy” 2.5 mile hike. It took us 3 hours. Here is our little journey.

This trail was “made” the year that I worked at Mill Hollow. The summer of 1999.

Teresa and I both love to do photography and so we wanted to take a leisurely stroll through the mountainside.  We hike for the journey, not the destination.

We expected paths and trees like this:

But this is what we found:

There were downed trees everywhere that up close looked like this:

And from far away, looked like this:

There were also snow banks we climbed over, and sometimes through:

We even had to walk across a “tree bridge” in order to get across a river that had appeared because of all the snow run-off.

Teresa is much more brave than I am. She went first.

This picture doesn’t quite show it, but it took me about 5 minutes to cross this. I was petrified!

But the view was worth it all in the end!

I haven’t blogged in a while (like over a month). I wish I could say that I’ve been doing really interesting and exciting things like traveling the world or that I’ve met “the one,” but I haven’t. I’ve been pretty sedate.

First: I packed up all my stuff in my classroom, cleaned it and walked out. I was surprised at how emotional it actually was for me. At my school we never had to “clean out” our classrooms for the summer. So I dug through five years of my desk, my filing cabinets, my books, cabinets, and boxes. I had to leave a lot of stuff behind, but still my room looked so empty when I shut the door and left. I left with 11 boxes and three bags. I have to admit that I am excited and nervous to go to a new school. It is just weird feeling like I have to start all over. The school I am going to be teaching in is very different from the school I’m leaving. I struggle with change, y’all know I struggle with change.

I have also been working on my family history. I found a man who has transcribed all the civil records for the county/town that my grandmother grew up in – Aywaille, Belgium. So I have been importing and transcribing all the records. I’m currently up to 5,000 people. I started with my direct relatives and their children. Then I added spouses and their parents. Then their brothers and sisters. Then their spouses and children and on and on. Crazy!

I’ve started packing, organizing, and . . .

making piles to donate to the DI.

I also started couponing. I’m not working full-time next year and I want to try to start saving more money and being smarter with money.

I have been inspired by the show – Extreme Couponing on TLC, but I don’t want to go nearly that far. But I did make a spread sheet. That is the Stepfordy part of me. I wanted to know if it was all worth it. Here are the results. The numbers don’t lie.

I think I’ll keep doing this for a little while.

My “new” car rolled over 12,000 miles. Yup it is only 8 months old. But starting in August, my daily commute to work will be a total of 16 miles, not 50. I can’t wait!

Other than that, I have just been calling moving companies and apartment listings. Moving is so fun! (read sarcasm there, please.)

And last, but not least.

My good friend Jenni came into town. She currently lives in North Dakota – crazy far away. I got together with her and Teresa for dinner one night. We have all been friends for more than half of our lives. You can’t beat those kinds of friends! (not the best picture – sorry)

One of my students asked me to take her senior pictures for her. I was extremely nervous because I take mostly pictures of plants and mountains, not really people.

We took her pictures at Gardner Village in West Jordan. These are my top 9 favorite photos. (I only took about 350 or so.)

This is Carly’s favorite!

While I was shooting Carly, she said that I would get the biggest smile on my face. I loved every moment of it. If I could do this for a living, I totally would. But there are so many photographers out there, so it will probably stay a hobby.

I know, cheesy . . . and a little bit dirty of a name for a hotel, but this is where I recently stayed in Casper, Wyoming and let me just share with you how dang cute and country it is!

(Disclaimer: my camera batteries died, both of them, so these pictures were taken with my iPhone)

It is made to look like a Lodge. The outside and inner courtyard all look like a log cabin.

The entrance looks like a nice, comfy, very large family room. Loved the stone fireplace and at night they totally make a fire!

Here is a view of the inner courtyard. Down below you can see two of the four hot tubs that are made too look like a gratto. There are two more on the other side of the stairs.

A closer view of the hot tubs. Boy, I did enjoy those hot tubs!

The hotel has three floors. The top floor is all suites. I noticed a lot of business men in them because they have a “office” type room in the front and they would all prop their doors open and talk to each other room to room. They also have little sitting areas on the top floor. Nice. The second floor has private balconies that look out over the courtyard.

I loved the decorations. The trees and all the western accents. They also had several stuffed animals. I know that creeps some people out, but it totally fit with the “Lodge Theme.”

The swimming pool. I actually didn’t swim, but it was nice and big and warm in there. I loved that it was separated away from the hotel by the glass. Sometimes swimming pools can get quite loud, but I couldn’t hear the kiddo’s in it at all.

They had a waterfall . . .

. . . a pond . . .

. . . and coy fish!

I think they are pretty much trained to go crazy when people are around because they were calm when I was far away (see picture of pond above), but as soon as I got close they went all crazy like.

I didn’t get any pictures of my room because I was so tired when I got there that I just started unpacking and forgot to take some pics. But it was nice. I got a room with a king size bed and let me just say . . . LOVED IT!!! I’m thinking I might need to get one just for little ol’ me. But I don’t think it would fit in any room I’m about to move into and certainly not in the one I have now!

So, if you ever go to Casper – stay there! Also, I reserved it on Hotels.com and it was way cheap!

I recently drove from Riverton, Utah to Riverton, Wyoming for a job interview. Of course I had my iPhone on me and I snapped pictures from my car. Yes, I was driving, but hey, I was careful.

The long road ahead.

Sheep being herded on the road. I loved it!

Baaaaa!

Red Canyon

I drove through a wildlife preserve. They didn’t fence in any of the natural wildlife. So they had some great signs to warn you of the animals. Here are my favorites:

Slow moving traffic! Ha!

Who knew Antelope could run that fast?

Love the windmills!

It was a beautiful, sunny day for a drive.

You have the control.

The number 2 reason: you are actually smarter than your camera.

For example:

My mother and I recently went to look at the hugest fish you will ever see in your whole life. Seriously. They were like 8 foot long Sturgeon. Anyways. I wanted to get a picture of my mom in front of these giant fish and one very old and ugly salmon. I set my camera to automatic and this is the picture I got:

Umm, yeah. This just isn’t going to cut it. I didn’t know about the lighting and the glass and so I thought automatic would take care of me. Nu-uh. Terrible, terrible. So I opened up my aperture and slowed down my shutter speed, held really still and then I got this picture:

Much better. My mother actually has a face.

You might be asking, “But Lesli, couldn’t you have just used a flash.”

“Well yes. But then you get a glare and reflection off the glass.” So, you see. Don’t always trust your autmatic settings on your fancy cameras. Switch to manual. Then you have the control and the power over what your picture looks like. Because baby, you are much smarter than a piece of machine.

If you don’t have a fancy camera, well . . . . . This is probably the number one reason why I got one. I wanted all the power and control.

But I’m not a control freak.

I promise.

Okay,

maybe just a little.