It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas....

We LOVE decorating for Christmas. We really enjoy having our house all warm and cozy and Christmasy this time of year. This year we got our Christmas lights hung outside, even though it was 9 degrees when we were doing it. I had to keep going inside to get my hands warmed up so that I could keep going.



We are even more excited this year about Christmas because we have family coming to visit. This will be the first time we've hosted Christmas in this apartment and only the second time my sisters and brothers-in-law have been out to visit us in Montana. We are going to Whitefish for a few days for some awesome skiing and we are all pumped about that. We have a cute little house rented in downtown Whitefish so that we can ski 2 or 3 days without having to drive back up there.

Christmas is a busy season here at the ranch. Sunday was the Christmas play which John and I fortunately did not have anything to with this year. No organizing a band, or playing Mary and Joseph- we just simply got to show up Sunday night and enjoy watching the show. The kids did a great job and had a fun time with it. We also have PH Christmas- when all of the staff go to all of the houses (6 this year) all on the same day, eat way too much food and watch the kids open their presents. That will be happening later this week, beginning at 7:30 am with breakfast and ending about 12 hours later with dinner. At some point we will be having a Christmas party at school, as well as a Christmas party with the youth group Sunday night, Caroling in the community on Wednesday, a staff Christmas party and Christmas Eve service at the church. Oh yeah, and another whole school Christmas party next week. After thinking about all of that, I'm kind of glad that my family isn't showing up until the 25th and 26th... Its going to be a busy and FUN few weeks.

Turkey Trot

We had a wonderful, much needed Thanksgiving break this year. It was great to have a 4 1/2 day weekend, and we were able to get a lot done and get caught up on some stuff. Thanksgiving morning, we went up to Polson with our friend Dave Moe who is a house dad at the ranch, and his daughter Katie and ran a 5K in some crazy dense fog. It was unbelievable how foggy it was because there was barely a cloud in the sky in St. Ignatius (about 40 minutes away). I was actually excited when I got up because it was about 47 degrees and clear skies, but when we got right outside of Polson it was like driving into a wall of fog. Anyway, the race was fun. There were lots of people we knew from the bike club running and it was fun to have friends from the ranch running with us. John finished in 20:30, somewhere around 5th or 6th place we think. There were probably over 100 participants. I finished in 25:45, which isn't great for me, but I was pretty happy considering I had basically stopped running in August until about 2 weeks ago. I am determined to do a better job training this winter.

John and Brande crossing the finish line- Brande almost caught him.

It was REALLY foggy!

Dave and Katie goofing off before the race.

The rest of Thanksgiving we spent hanging out at a couple of the houses. John played Wii and I played Monopoly with the kids. Friday we went shopping of course. We did get some Christmas presents, and we also got some great deals for stuff we needed, like a printer, new wireless mouse, and a coffee pot. Saturday we started putting up Christmas lights outside and decorating inside. We'll probably get a tree next weekend. Its been nice to relax and not have a ton of work to do all the time this weekend. Its a relief to know that Christmas break is only about 3 1/2 weeks away and those weeks usually fly by with all of the stuff going on.

Some Favorites from the Bison Range

The National Bison Range is one of our favorite places to go around here. Its about 20 minutes away and you almost always see lots of wildlife. I was just looking through pictures on the computer tonight and came across some of these pictures from various trips we've taken to the Bison Range.

Survival Mode

Lately things have just been incredibly busy around here and we have gone into survival mode. The end of the school quarter is always a really busy time (though not as busy as the end of the semester fortunately) and since our quarter ended today we've been busy finalizing grades and getting the dreaded book reports all graded. John is in the other room grading the last of his geography class assignments right now. I always look forward to the first week of a new quarter before there is any of this stuff to do, and then after about a week, book reports start being handed in and then there are papers to grade again and it goes on like that for the next 8 weeks. This time we have Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to interrupting the monotony of the school year. We are very excited that my family is coming to visit (and SKI!) at Christmas time, and John's parents are hopefully going to be here in a few weeks for Thanksgiving.

Last Wednesday night we were in charge of putting together the Harvest Party for our church again this year. We made caramel apples (ALL afternoon with some of the ranch girls) and spiced apple cider, and planned some fun activities in the gym. No bobbing for apples of course- we wouldn't want anyone to get the swine flu. :) It was fun and chaotic. The kids always have a good time. Its good to see all of them laughing and playing and just being kids. I didn't even take my camera, so I have no pictures. I haven't taken any pictures recently, so I don't have anything to share.

We are both hoping that the rest of the school year goes a little better than this first quarter did. The kids have not been doing very well in school, and at this rate, it looks like more than half of the students will be going to summer school. Not good! Usually first quarter is the best and then they start slacking after that, so maybe (hopefully!) they have started out slow, but they are going to finish strong. I guess we'll see. Anyway, we would appreciate your prayers for us, and especially for the kids and the rest of the staff here.

First Snow

It got cold here last week. We're not talking cold for October, like 40's, we're talking 14 degrees cold. It also snowed probably 4-5 inches and it stuck around for several days. I think we got the snow on Thursday night last week and it actually just melted today when it finally got above freezing and it rained all day. They're saying it is supposed to be 65 on Saturday so we are planning a big bike ride while we still can. I do love the winters here and really enjoy the snow, but I am definitely not ready for winter to come to stay yet.

Quick Recap of our Busy Summer

I have been a terrible blogger the last 2 months and haven't updated at all, even though we've been incredibly busy around here. We had a great summer and I won't bore you with all the details, I'll just post some fun pictures of the highlights of our summer.

Backpacking trip in Idaho/Montana August 2009

We both ran our first half marathons this summer.

We took a trip to Glacier National Park and hiked to Grinnell Glacier.

Our Latest Cycling Adventures

In May this year we went to Glacier National Park for our anniversary and we rode our bikes up Going to the Sun Road (the main road that goes up the mountains and through the park) while we were there. It was great cycling- complete with many miles of steep climbing. We did this before the road was open to cars this spring, so it was nice to not have to watch for traffic. We rode almost all the way to the top before I gave up. Someone had told us that the snow was still on the road at the Weeping Wall (an awesome place along the road where the water just pours out the rocks) and when we got there the road curved and we couldn't really see how much further we would be able to go. I was pretty exhausted by that point because we hadn't though to bring any food with us, since we had read that the road was only open to bikers about 5 miles past the vehicle closure. It was definitely open a lot further and there was nowhere to stop and even get more water. We decided to turn around at that point but were pretty happy with the accomplishment and had a great time doing it.




We also did our first triathlon of the season June 21st in Kalispell. It was pretty fun, but we were both a little disappointed with how we did. The course was a lot hillier than we had anticipated, which wasn't too bad for the bike but was hard on me in the run. It was our first triathlon with an open water swim in the lake, so we got to wear our cool new triathlon wetsuits. John finished in 1h23m and I finished in 1h32m. It was an 800 meter swim, a 12.7 mile hilly bike, and a 3.1 mile hilly run. We are planning to do at least 1 more Labor Day weekend, and possibly another sprint the weekend before that in Missoula.

And finally, on July 4th we went to Idaho to ride on our favorite trail, the Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes. John had ridden it earlier this summer with some guys from the cycling club in Polson. They did 125 miles in one day. He said it was the most physically exhausting thing he's ever done because they rode it FAST and they also rode off of the nice flat trail quite a bit and rode over some mountain passes. We rode 100 miles on Saturday. We stayed on the flat trail because I wanted to be sure that I could finish. It was really not as hard as I expected. We, of course didn't ride as hard as the guys did, but we rode at a pretty good pace. We stopped at a little town on the lake and bought some lunch and rested a little bit, then headed back the same direction. On the way back we saw a cow moose with 2 calves in a little creek beside the trail. We finished 7 hours after we started, but figured only 6 of it was riding, and the rest was stops. We hurried back to St. Ignatius for a 4th of July picnic and fireworks. We were so exhausted we took our lounge chairs to the picnic so we could lay down for the fireworks!