more pictures

okay, so that last blog with the picture of gracie was easy enough to do..... so, here are some more pictures for your viewing enjoyment! :)
some are a little old, but well worth the wait, like our christmas vacation pics! yay!

first, some surfing wounds and injuries!

these are luke's arm right after his collision, and then a few days after when the bruising has set in. nice! it was way gnarly looking!


here i am the day of the mishap, and then the next day after the real bruising and swelling has taken effect. i look like a mutant alien!


this is our christmas eve picture in our hotel room in hawaii. we got sorta matching p.j.s from old navy, mine have whales and his have bumblebees. and we have matching slippers with skull & crossbones. mine are pink and his are black. and see our cute christmas tree and snowflakes in the background?!?!

these are taken the night luke and i met with bill lowman. after we exited the hotel/mall type area where we visited with him, there was this ice castle sculpture and slide, and all these other beautiful designs. when we took the picture in front of the penguins, we were sitting on the ice with my camera on a timer...... brrrrrr, very cold! :)


this is one of my students, bryan lee, who rides those little mini trick skis. he's really good, most of the time. :)
on our last ski trip, he saw luke riding on the rails and decided he wanted to try..... yeah, he fell pretty hard on his ribs, which is the action seen in this picture. it was SO funny, and he was a good sport about it. and he kept trying until he got it later in the day. yay, bryan!
now, if you look hard enough in the background, you can see the dirt along the side of the trail, underneath the lift. i know its not the best picture to see it, but i'll take more next time to prove to you how crazy these mountains are! :)


and here we are after a long day of teaching the kids, eating our apples. one of the snowboarding girls took this picture for us. although the snow isn't all that great, we are happy to at least be able to go up and ride something! :)

hope you all enjoyed the pictures! now that i know how to post them, i'll keep taking more for you and blogging! :)
later, dudes!

gracie

how cute is this lizard!!! she is so funny, too. she has become aware of when we are going to feed her because we take her little plate out of her cage. so when we come back with the food, she has jumped down off the branch she normally hangs out on, and is waiting for us to give her the food. as soon as we set it in the cage, she goes at it ferociously. she really is a cutie. :)

phlegmings.........

updates in the world of the phlegmings......

~we have a pet iguana now! her name is gracie and she is really cute! some other teacher had her, but he kept her in his room at school and it wasn't warm enough there, so he had to give her up, and we took her! now she is warm in our house and we get to talk to her everyday and she really is cute. and she doesn't stink wither, which is extra bonus! :)

~luke has started his school. he has classes 4 nights a week, which makes us miss each other even more with our busy day schedules, but its okay. he only has it for 8 weeks. so far he's liking it well enough...although one of his professors is a native korean and he says he is very hard to understand at times when he's taking notes. silly!

~he's been subbing a lot too, which is great, so then we can kinda see eachother during the day. sometimes we have the same lunch period, depending on who he subs for, and we have lunch dates. its cute. :)

~we went snowboarding today! it was very fun! we went with the school club again and taught kids, but different ones from the ones we taught last time. i had a beginner group who did so awesome! they started at the beginning of the day not even knowing how to stand on the board or balance or anything. byt the end of the day, they were all going down the hill consistently without falling, and 3 of them learned how to do turns and everything! so rad! luke had a great group too, and they had learned how to carve too. it was a great day! and beautiful weather, which is added bonus! :)

~i finally beat luke at tony hawk pro skater video game! its the first time EVER, and really quite an accomplishment! it was only once, but i'm optimistic to beat him more! hahaha

~i've started playing my flute again more, which i really love to do. i practiced for an hour the other day here at home. it was great. so i'm going to start playing more. and i've been going to the high school and helping out their flutists with some audition music and i'm going to start giving lessons to one of the girls up there. i really love playing, so this makes me very happy. :)

~i need to send some more email pics.... i have great ones of the surfing injuries, the pros at pipeline, little gracie, etc. if i knew how to put them here, i would. jess has to teach me.

okay, that's our life right now.... except for the homemade pot-pie i made for dinner that is ready now! yessssssss!!! sweeeeet!!!! ( a little napoleon dynamite for ya, jess) talk at ya later!

nothing like it.......

a warm bed is the greatest.
let me just tell you how great my husband is.... the night before last, our bed was freezing cold when we got in it. seriously! and i was whining about it (of course).... soooooooo, last night luke snuck in the room while i was about 20 minutes from going to bed, laid the electric blanket down, and warmed up our bed for us! so then, when i was ready to lie down, he said "there's a surprise in the bed for you" and i looked under the covers, and the bed was soooooo warm and comfy! i get too hot with the electric blanket on me all night, so taking off the electric blanket and still having warm sheets was so fabulous! luke is so great! :)

so we went to this crazy mountain snowboarding saturday. luke and i help out with the ski and snowboard club at my school and teach the kids. its a free ticket for us, so we love it! well, being from the reno-tahoe area and all, we are used to going to ski resorts with LOTS of snow everywhere......
well, luke went by himself on friday and just kept telling me how much i was going to laugh on saturday. so there we were, in the bus with a bunch of kids, and the whole while, i'm looking for snow somewhere. i mean, we can't go boarding without snow, right?!?!?! well, apparently in korea, you can!
this place has all manmade snow, and it is only on the runs. no joke. nowhere else. under the lift, dry dirt and trees and bushes. next to the runs, a chain fence to keep people from going into the non-snow areas. and on the runs, it was like 5 inches of snow on top of a sheet of hard ice. the size of the mountain was crazy too. our smallest hill around in tahoe, boreal, is about 3 times as big as this place. very small. it was the craziest thing i've ever seen in my life!
and the people! they ski and board like they drive. fast, and totally out of control! at one point, i saw a korean lady on skis going straight down, obviously out of control, and she ran smack into a group of about 20 people and plowed them all over! there is no ski patrol here to yank your pass if you are being reckless, and there are no "SLOW" signs at the bottoms of the hill near the lift lines. therefore, they go as fast as they can, without control, and really don't care who they knock over in the process. good thing i know how to turn fast, or i would have been in some wrecks! :)
and, the snowboarders don't ride the lifts strapped into their boards.... they take them off, hold them up the chairlift, and then have to run off at the top, on the icy ground, slipping and falling 90% of the time. what?!?! luke and i made our kids learn how to do it the right way. we explained to them that if they tried to carry their boards on the lift with them anywhere else in the world, they would be laughed at and kicked off the mountain. they learned. hehehe :)
all in all, it was a really fun day though. the kids had a great time and so did we. the mountain was the perfect size for them and luke and i had fun "racing" some of the kids. their idea. (we beat them everytime!)
okay, gotta go to bed.... i saw luke in there plugging in the blanket for us! yay!