A Must Read Book!!!

There is a new book by Brad Wilcox that everyone has to read. The book is titled, "The Continuous Atonement." It gave me a fresh view of the Atonement and it works in our lives. After reading the book, I had a renewed hoped in the Atonement and my faith in the Atonement grew by leaps and bounds. The way he explains things is so simple and easy to understand. After reading this book, the Atonement seems like something that is actually accessible now.

One cool thing is that I did a session of EFY last week and the session director was Brad Wilcox. I recognized him the moment I walked in to our fireside Sunday night. He took some time to talk to me about his book and gave me lots of great insights. Later in the week I was also able to participate in an interview with him about his new book. A girl from The Daily Universe at BYU came to interview him and he thought it would be nice to have me there since I had read the book. Read it. You will love it!

It's Already Over?

My first year of teaching was pretty much the best thing ever. I don't think it could have gone much better. I absolutely loved my students. They made me laugh every day and when I was extremely frustrated with a student or an entire class period, they would make me smile. The frustrating parts were few compared to all the wonderful things about teaching.

I feel really lucky to have chosen this as my profession. I love it and I feel like this is where I belong. I honestly cried when school ended. Thursday was my last day with my students and I cried a lot that night and also the next night. One of my students made a little book that I could have students sign. It was really fun to read what they wrote. Some of my students brough in gifts the last couple of days.

All of the gifts were very thoughtful and kind. Logan, my student who gave me a clapper for Christmas brought in the grass we had grown in class when we were talking about agriculture and overgrazing. It was really long since he hadn't cut it at all. It cracked me up that that is what he brough in - he has a pretty funny sense of humor. Sidenote - for those of my students who are reading this, just because I did not mention your gift or card by name does not mean it was not important to me, I loved them all. Logan's was just totally random.

I worry that next year will not be as fun or as wonderful as this year was. Could it get better then this year? I don't know. We will have to wait and see. Right now, I am enjoying my summer and loving the fact that I can sleep in. Oh yeah!!!

Oh Canada...

If I knew the Canadian National Anthem, you better believe I would start singing it right now. "Why is Christie randomly singing the Canadian National Anthem," you may ask? Well my friends, I had the opportunity to go to Calgary with Arturo over Memorial Day Weekend. Lucky for me I already had my passport from when I went to Brazil. So off to Canada we went.

His family lives in Calgary, so we went to visit them. We drove there in a Malibu with 3 other girls. And guess where your's truly got to sit a majority of the trip...that's right, in the back seat, in the middle, on the hump. Awesome! It really wasn't that bad though because I am kind of fond of the only guy in the car and he happened to be sitting by me. :)

I thought Calgary was beautiful! The Rocky Mountains were breathe taking. Calgary is surrounded by mountains and forrests. So in the middle of the city there will be large sections of pine trees - it is beautiful. The weather was perfect, so I was a fan.

One of the things that I loved about our vacation was that it was really relaxed. We didn't have a really packed schedule, so we could just do whatever we wanted to. We left Wednesday after work. The three other girls we rode with were Carlisa, Jen and Heather. Jen is from Calgary as well, so it was her car that we took. Arturo knows Jen from school. She was very normal and fun to travel with. The other two girls kept us on our toes.

We let Heather drive at one point and let me tell you one of the many things she said in hopes that it will kind of give you hint of what it was like having her drive. Here is the scenerio - it is 12:30 at night and we are in Butte, Montana. So it is extremely dark with mountains surrounding us, so there are many turns. Not too long after she starts driving and taking many jerky corners she says, "How are you supposed to know when to turn? How are you supposed to know when the road turns?" AHHHH!!! Needless to say she only drove for 20 minutes and then Arturo took over. Phew!

On the way home, I was not sure we were going to make it through customs. Carlisa had to go to the bathroom really bad and we had to wait in line forever. She thought she was going to die and we all thought we were going to die because they were never going to let us go through customs with one of our passengers having a melt down. Once you get into the customs area, you can't get out of your car, so she was stuck in the car. Arturo said, "Great, once they see I am from Colombia, they are going to think Carlisa is on drugs!"

Now for some of the things we did while we were there. The first day we were there we went to Daniel's recital. (Daniel is Arturo's little brother.) I felt like I was right at home going to one of my mom's piano recitals. It was even held in a piano store, just like my mom does. We had a BBQ every single night!!! On top of that, we had some kind of meat for lunch every day too. Now, let me tell you a little secret, Arturo loves meat, so we had lots of it. At one meal we had hamburgers with bacon on top and then a sausage on the side. I am pretty sure we had potatoes with it too - that was a staple at nearly every meal. Good thing I am an Idaho girl right? My dad would have died watching me eat all that meat. At home, I never eat that much and for some reason, I always leave a little at the end that I don't eat. In my mind, the last piece is going to have all the fat in it and it is going to taste nasty, so I don't eat it. Weird, I know. But in Calgary, I ate it all - last piece and everything.

Arturo and I got the chance to wash and clean out a car for a friend of his mom. Her friend's husband had just passed away and she couldn't drive his car since it was a stick. She wanted to sell it but needed to clean it first, so we went and picked it up and cleaned it. I cleaned that car while he cleaned his mom's car. It was extremely dirty! We washed it once and probably should have washed a second time. The inside was like the outside and once we were done with it, it looked like a completely different car. We are going to open our own car detailing company.

We also got to go to Banff National Park, which was also stunning. We only got to go for a few hours, but it was wonderful. The natural beauty there is incredible. The City of Banff reminded me of Jackson Hole a little. However, there was this incredible hotel that looked like a castle, and there is nothing like that in Jackson.

This is getting really long, so I am going to try to cut it down. Sunday I surprised Arturo by singing a muscial number in his ward. His mom had set it all up a couple of weeks before we went. The lady that accompanied me was very talented, so it made it really easy to sing with her. It went well but a couple were confused as to who I was - that was until they saw that I was with Arturo and then they figured out why I had sung in their ward.

Another adventure we experienced was coming home. We were supposed to leave Monday and be back Tuesday morning so Arturo and I could go to work. Well, Jen the girl who's car we took, got the 24 stomach flu and was tied to the toilet. Needless to say, we were not going anywhere. Thankfully I have good friends at work that helped me get ready for another sub. We got back Wednesday morning about 3:30 and then I went to work that day. It all worked out well. On the way home, we stopped in IF and my parents had sandwiches ready for Arturo and I. It was nice to see them.

Canada was tons of fun and beautiful. I highly recommend it to everyone! P.S. Loonies and toonies are one and two dollar coins respectively. Those are nicknames for coins in Canada, just so you know.