A Country 4th

On a whim, Michael and I decided to head to Washington a few days earlier than we originally planned so that I could visit my Grandpa Ashby and spend the 4th on the farm in Quincy. It was a summer holiday straight from my childhood, and I loved every minute. Enjoy these pictures!

Getting ready for dinner.

Lighting fireworks!

Michael helping with a Roman Candle

A cool, huge, orange moon 

and a video of one of our fire works

land of the happy

DISNEYLAND

I don't have too much to say about this because you've all been there before, and you know what it's like.  I loved it so say the least.  Here are some pictures that I took.

late night drive

it's not a disney day without seeing some of your favorite characters

we got quite wet on Grizzly Rapids 

one of my top 5

outside of the Temple of the Forbidden Eye

also one of my top 5

Chris looks like a stud in this pic, Shane... not so much.

disney graffiti 

the goodyear blimp was there for the opening of Cars Land.
Can you believe that some people don't know what the goodyear blimp is?! 

paradise pier

Coastal vacation

It's an anemone!  And you might think that I took this picture on our recent trip to the Oregon Coast, but you'd be wrong! because of course I'm months behind on blogging so this is from our June trip to Newport Coast, CA. 

We had a great time playing on the beach most every day.  Looking at tide pools, finding crabs and other little crustacean things.

When we weren't on the coast we watched some of the NBA finals, and lots of Discovery/Sci Channel shows (How it's Made, Dirty Jobs, Myth Busters)

We took an afternoon to visit the temple

I like this picture, it shows who we really are.
Steph likes to fix her hair, and I like to look at my pretty wife.

And an evening trip to Huntington Beach where we ate at Ruby's on the pier, and watched a cool street show.   I even got to be part of the show!

 

It was an amazing trip.  We were joined by some of our friends, Shane Brown, Erma Johnson, Chris Taney, and Chris Harrison.  We also took one day to go to Disneyland!!  but so much happened there that I'll write a separate post about that. :-D

Traditions

Originally written 6/2/12

The Murray family has a tradition of taking a Memorial Day bike ride.  Thus far, every year we've been married we've gone, and have loved it. This year's bike ride was awesome, the weather was perfect, thankfully not as eventful as the hail we got last year.
We  started in a park by the Riverwoods and rode up Provo Canyon to Bridal Veil Falls.  The one downside: this was the first bike ride that I had been on in a year and it totally kicked my trash. Seriously. I wanted to quit about ten minutes in. I could give you a bunch of reasons (cough, cough excuses) about why--most real--but I won't. I didn't give in to my weaker self though, and it really was great. Also, the way back was all downhill and amazing!
Here are some pictures for you general perusal and enjoyment:

Alex and Erin, us, Mary Clawson, Kacy, Micah, Micah's dad. (Schipper Clawson is taking the picture.)

Final Field Trip

Originally written 6/2/12

I am lucky enough to work for a school that encourages field trips. They told me that when they hired me, and in the week of training I went to before school actually started. And I took them up on it. The 7th graders in my school have gone on more field trips than any of the other three grades combined, and I'm not shy in saying that I'm the reason. I love field trips. I love taking the kids out of school and going on adventures. I love planning them. I like making everything work together and organizing payments and buses and coordinating with the venues... I like the power :)
For this final field trip of my first year of teaching, I wanted to have fun--but obviously I wanted to tie in the curriculum as well. So we went to the Olympic Oval to go ice skating (get it, Utah Studies, 2002 Olympics...) and then we went to the Clark Planetarium--because we could.
When I originally thought about going ice skating, I never considered that I was proposing taking 180 7th graders, only a few of them having any ice skating experience, to slide around on an extremely slippery surface with sharp blades on their feet.
After we finished helping 180 students tighten their laces and actually got on the ice, I realized two things: one, I haven't ice skated in a long, long time; and two, 7th graders are crazy--and there were a lot of them. Luckily, only two injuries occured (yes, the paramedics came, and yes, I was the "head teacher" so I had to sign off the medical release papers that I hope don't ever come up again). All in all it was a really fun experience. Michael was able to come and had fun showing off his skills and playing the photographer too.
We then drove downtown to The Gateway where we ate lunch by the water fountain (In the Olympic Park!) and then walked to the Planetarium where the kids had about 45 minutes to explore the exhibits and then we watched "Into the Arctic: 3D" in IMAX. It was good, but seriously, if they told me one more time that people were killing the Arctic with our greenhouse gases and making polar bears eat each other--I was going to scream. (And if the male polar bears ever really caught the baby polar bears and traumatize my 7th graders I would have been fired.) Luckily for my sanity and my job, it was overall a fun movie and no baby polar bears were injured.
Enjoy these pictures!

Entering the Olympic Oval

Ice Skating!

Me, trying to remember how to ice skate... Notice Michael is skating backwards in order to take this picture...

A student ran into me

Two injuries...and their friends--of course--this is Junior High. 

Lunch at the Gateway

Michael walking on the moon

Lovely Ducklings

Recently we had the wonderful oppoutunity to take part in a Duck Derby at BYU.  Head on over to Michael's blog for a full account, but here are some pictures to wet your appetite.

http://marvelousmike.blogspot.com/2012/06/ducks.html

The Bees

So an amazing thing happened to me by virtue of being on twitter.  I was sitting at home and my local radio station that I used to listen to tweeted, "RT this message for a chance to win Bees tickets this weekend!"  And I re-tweeted it (that's what RT means), and shortly thereafter I was awarded with two tickets to see the Bees that Friday night.

Let me just take this moment now to say, if you're reading this, and you don't already have a twitter account (which is likely since I have nearly zero friends on there), go to twitter.com right now and make yourself an account.  Someday you'll be glad you did (like me :D )

The night was cold, a lot colder than we planned on, so we nearly froze.  But it was a good game, some awesome hits, some good defense, and the Bees won.  Here are a few pictures we took.

Kids, racing like dogs..

Kids racing like food...?

The tallest player in major/minor league baseball (#55 P)

See, look!  the Bees won!

Our favorite player.  The switch hitting 3rd baseman
who had 2 hits (one a double) scored a run and stole a base.

Oh, and it was Firework night :-) so despite the cold, we sat back and enjoyed the show.