A Peek into my Classroom

 This is our school's spiritual theme for the year. We have to display it in our classroom and here's my display. I think it turned out pretty cute. I had made the fish and ocean stuff for something else last year and threw it all together. See how good the blue paint looks?! I'll be posting more as my room continues to come together.

Mexican Pizzas

This is Taylor's new favorite meal. We ate these three out of five nights I think! I made up my own recipe for this and really anyone could...

• Brown ground turkey, add taco seasoning. I like to put this in the food processor to make the meat consistently ground.
• Use whole wheat tortillas for extra healthy benefits. Poke them with a fork because they tend to raise up in the oven. Sandwich a little cheese between and bake this for about 5 minutes at 400 degrees.
• Take it out and spread taco sauce on top. Add the ground turkey, cheese, tomatoes, green peppers.
• Again, bake for about 5 minutes until the cheese is gooey.
• Top with green onion, guacamole (not pictured), sour cream, tomatoes, etc.

Oven "Fried" Chicken

This recipe was really quick, yummy, and versatile. I had mine plain and Taylor ate his on a sandwich. I used chicken fillets and panko bread crumbs instead of what the recipe calls for. I also baked it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes on each side. I would make it again because the spices and the crunchy panko bread crumbs were just right. It's spiced with thyme...which I think I really liked. I think I should have let it bake a few minutes longer to make the outside a little crisper.

Just a few pictures of us...

I love Penny's little smiley mouth! Look at her blinking, too! How cute!

Two Years

Today is our two year wedding anniversary. Here's a picture of us on our honeymoon in Destin, FL. We were walking and enjoying the sunset that day and soon after, the ocean swallowed up Taylor's camera. I would love to be at the beach right now! 

We spent the weekend at Pitchfork and got home really early this morning, so we're just relaxing on this rainy day. We're going to try a new restaurant tonight called 309 and maybe go see Despicable Me. I love being married.

Family Pictures

We took some Christmas card pictures in Colorado on a windy evening during sunset.

Now and Then

And us about 24 years ago...

A classic Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, with Heather's wonderful parents in the background. But more from Wednesday...

Penny's first people accessories pictures.

Sidenote: I wish pictures would post as colorful as the originals are. Hmm...

Great Sand Dunes National Park

 On Thursday, we drove a couple of hours (on a looong windy gravel road through the mountains) to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Taylor had looked at this place online before we went to Colorado and he was so excited to see it in person. There were great reviews of this park and it looked like a lot of fun. I rated it a 3 out of 10 overall, but Taylor gave it a 10 out of 10. :)  It was so beautiful!

There was a stream that ran through the park where families were playing. This also meant CRAZY mosquitos at dusk!

Penny loved it:)

There was a forest fire here, too.

 On the way home, we stopped here for really good pizza. We tried to hide Penny coming in, but she was too squirrelly. She was obviously seen by our waiter, who called her my seeing eye dog:)

Also, on the way home, we saw a black bear, enjoying his time in a meadow on the side of the road!

Big Horn Sheep Canyon of the Arkansas River

On Tuesday, we drove a little while to get to the Arkansas River and saw helicopters putting out large forest fires. Because of the fires, the part of the river we were supposed to go rafting on, the Royal Gorge, was closed. Instead we had to go on the milder course, Big Horn Sheep Canyon, but it was still perfect for our day. We suited up in wet suits, life jackets, and helmets, and listened to a lot of instructions for being in the rafts. Our group went in two boats. The guide of our boat was K2, the first woman to climb the north face of K2 mountain. She's also a Kindergarten teacher! She was very serious about getting us to paddle right (which was harder than it looked!) By the end of the trip, we all had it down and we had a lot of fun. The water was so clear and cool and refreshing and there were little portions of rapids between calm water. I would love to go white water rafting again after this.

Parents' Boat:

Aren't these pictures awesome? There was a photographer who drove along the river snapping shots. We had no idea...our faces and expressions are real! This is called a paddle high five. We did this after correctly steering through rapids or doing something like singing "Happy Birthday" to David.

 So here, we did know there was someone taking our picture:

The rafting company also included a few pictures of the forest fires and the helicopters putting out the fires.

The two helicopters dipped down to the river and sucked up water, then flew to the hills and let it go. They did this constantly all day, probably for several days. There were many forest fires around. I thought we had one picture of open flames, but all I see now are smoke pictures.