Life and Other Things: July 2013

MURK LURKER Dec. 25, 2010- July 20, 2013

Ode to Murky

By Wendy Hughes

One lone fish, in a pretty little dish, was given as a gift 3 years ago.
Named by the brother, cleaned by the mother, lived in three places it is so.
He was midnight blue, a water bowl for Luna too, we watched him swim and grow.
But his life is now through, he will be missed it is true, bon voyage down the drain he now flows!

buuut.
Now we have a NEW fish Casper!
He is really active and is always watching us swim around. Plus he is a double tail betta so his fins are bigger and prettier! Plus Plus, he is a weird skin color that is kind of creepy/awesome.

Other than the not-so-tragic loss of my fish everything is going well!

Alright, lets get started:

I graduated from the U with my bachelors degree in may! I always thought having a degree would be a little more monumental but I don't really feel much different. Though- I am very thankful for my education and I think it has helped me expand how I perceive my circumstances as well as encouraged new ideas and ways to think about things (especially since I took a whole course on understanding beliefs and how to better look at the world). I really enjoyed the social sciences as well as my professors and teachers who took me through my education. It was fun and I'm thinking that's why it was so quick and easy. One of my favorite things was in a class we had to analyze parent child relationships in movies. My reports consisted of movies like Despicable Me and Star Wars (where there are some serious daddy issues). I also took a class on family violence where we talked about the prison system (creepy) as well as brutal convicts and studies done analyzing them- that was probably my favorite course! Oh, and how can I forget my course where we created group blogs with fun articles backed by research (click on this sentence to see it), that was fun too!

Towards the first of the year I started working as a substitute at the YWCA daycare. Once I graduated I switched to being the full time assistant teacher in the infant room. Right now we have 7 babies who range between 10-13 months. They are so cute and it is such a fun age (other than the new one who has been crying for 4 weeks straight!)! I've been able to watch them grow and develop so rapidly it is so amazing! I have pictures and some videos of them on my phone and I love showing people and bragging about the babies. I can't imagine how bad I'll be when it's my own kid! In Septemberish we will get a new class of babies and all of these guys will move up into older classes. I'm a little worried because the new ones will most likely range anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months and will be much smaller and dependent for care.

We bought a new car! A 2008 Nissan Xterra. After going through a huge mess with the Jeep (a.k.a. Lemon) we decided we wanted to invest in something nicer, newer, and with a better reputation. We have really enjoyed this car and it has met all of our expectations (so far)! Lets just cross our fingers for the winter time.

Dallon and I went Camping to Moon lake mid June. It was a lot of fun and a really pretty place to visit. We were able to take the Xterra with our bike rack and take our bikes. We unsuccessfully took my new crossover bike mountain biking (terrifying) but we also biked on the road and some more established trails around us. Dallon was even able to take his new mountain bike out on some rough trails.... before it got a stolen the next week while we were downtown. After a police report, going to pawn shops, constantly checking KSL, Ebay, and craigslist Dallon now has a new new bike. Now it just has to stop raining.

We went camping with my family down by blanding in the Blue Mountains. It was a lot of fun and the wildlife there was amazing. We literally had deer all over our camp as well as a limp deer who would eat right out of your hand! My dad got a video of him feeding "gimpy" an Oreo, it's pretty amazing. We put around 100 miles on our four wheelers in two days and had a train of 8 4-wheelers each with two people on them. I bet that was pretty amazing. We even found a little patch of snow high up in the mountains on one ride! It was so nice to get out of the heat and up in to some beautiful country.