The Longloopers: Reflecting on 2012

Here's a collage of some of our memorable moments that may or may not have made it into a post, but things I that I still wanted to share. Sometimes I took pictures and thought, "hey I'd like to blog about this!"

Spring 2012- Finding the hole in our air mattress.
We miss the Pierces, who used to live in Salt Lake. They would come over sometimes on Sunday for "Sunday snack". On this particular Sunday Matt mentioned, "we need to find a leak in our air mattress. We think we should take it out back on the pond." If you dont know Eric, you should, he's kind of spontaneous and the fact that he did this is not a surprise. In response to Matt's crazy suggestion, Eric, in his very "Eric-like-manner" said: "Let's do it right now!" So withouth further thought, they did.

At this point I wondered if Eric was going to be stuck. :)


Eric is trying to listen for the "hole" Here's a picture of the Pierce's cute kids, Kinsley & Aila. They let me babysit their kids. We finger painted and Kinsley, the oldest, thought it was great, Aila on the other hand was pretty excited to see mom walk through the door when the night was over. They love my son and I love watching them talk to him. They use high pitch voices and make everything sound "cute". Aila keeps calling him Baby Boston. :) (She has a cousin about the same age that is named Boston.) They're always trying to get him to look at them and play with them. I'm sure one day he'll appreciate all the female attention. REAL Salt Lake. We were kind of hoping we'd go a lot but this seems to have been our only game of the season.

Trying Something New 2012
We got to do somethings for the first time.

I roasted a marshmallow over the stove

Shot a gun (and being pregnant was a first too!)


We made these reflecting light things at boyscout camp (that was a first too!)

Matt's first with his wet suit in icy cold water!

Second Grade 2012
I taught my last year of second grade. Man, I miss those kids! We took a field trip to the zoo.
We studied about animal habitats and then went to the zoo to "examine" if the animals had everything that they needed in their habitats at the zoo. My kids for the most part thought the zoo was doing their part but a lot of them were pretty unhappy about the elephants, giraffes, and especially the bats.

They thought the elephant enclosure was too boring. The elephants needed real toys and not just fake ones.The zoo had failed the elephants. They also thought it was unacceptable that the zoo had a "fake" tree for the giraffes. The giraffes needed a real one. As for the bats, the enclosure had too much light. The bats needed to be in a room that was pitch black.

My super cute class. We told them to all wear white shirts and blue pants that day. It made it easier to spot them at the zoo.

This particular class was a lot of fun too. For example, they were tired of being called "little kids" so as a class we thought we should write letters to the "bigger" kids and tell them what we think. They wanted to impress the older kids by using big words and decided to use the word "colossal" (we saw this word in a text we were reading once) to describe themselves. I told them they weren't really giants and couldn't call themselves colossal, so they thought to use it in another way.

They wrote, "we may be little but we are colossal learners!"

Teaching second grade is really that much fun.

Out doors 2012
We definetly got our share of national parks this year.

Zion

Arches

Glacier

Yellowstone

Jackson Hole

For Thanksgiving we headed down to Moab and did some mini canyons and camped out. My sister came along with us too.

She really "digs" dirt. :)

We camped under this arch!

Baby 2012- Probably the biggest change of the year!
This little man is SO MUCH FUN. He is pretty easy to keep happy and I believe he is SO SOCIAL. If it's just me and him he seems pretty bored until someone new walks through the door and then he's all smiles. When we take him out he loves looking at the people and loves it when someone stops to talk to him. These pictures were for my sister's birthday. I took them and then posted them on her facebook page.