Happy Thanksgiving! Kirk's parents and brother came down to visit us for the week. We had a lot of fun and are so glad that they came down. We ate lots of food, went to Universal studios, hiked, fished, toured UCLA, and the guys went golfing. This was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from my parents (weird huh?) and it was really fun. Here are some pictures from the week: This is our Thanksgiving dinner. It was the smallest group of people I ever remember eating with. We had ham and funeral potatoes instead of the traditional turkey, and it was really good. I even made the famous Smith family yellow jello.

When I am coming home on the freeway, just before my exit, the 2 right lanes merge. This causes some major problems and slowing, especially on Friday afternoons. Daily, I hit a slowdown (<10 mph) anywhere from one to 4 miles before this merge. Well, about a week ago, someone got a genius idea to repaint the lines and now the lanes don't merge. Yesterday it only took me 27 minutes to get home. Usually Fridays are over an hour. I don't know if the slowing was all due to this merge or if I've just had amazing traffic the last few days, but I am so excited that it has been better. They have also finished up construction projects on the roads that I take to get from my house to the freeway and from the freeway to my school in the last couple of months that were going on for years before that. So, right now my commute is eight million times better than it used to be.

The most exciting news is that I am an aunt! My little sister Lindsey had her baby on October 27. So, here are a few adorable shots of Daniel Jason Flamm! The entire Flamm family. . . Daniel is so tiny! I won't be able to see him until Christmas. I would love to fly out to Idaho this week. Good luck to Lindsey though. I know that she is super excited.

6:30 on Saturday morning. What are you doing? Most people are snuggled in their beds, grateful for blinds and so happy that the alarm clock hasn't and won't be blaring at them to get up and go to work or school. Not us. At 6:30 on many Saturday mornings you won't find us at home, including yesterday. We were at the beach, fishing. I don't know how Kirk convinced me that this was fun and exciting (but it is) and that I should look forward to it (sometimes I do), but here are some pictures from a pretty typical Saturday morning for us.

Usually we catch fish. After we've been fishing a while I will start to get bored and look for dolphins and sea lions. Eventually Kirk will ask how long I want to stay and I'll tell him "I'm ready when you are," which really means, "I'm ready to go home, but I know you're not (and won't be for a couple of hours), but can we compromise" then he'll say how about "10 more minutes." We really have this conversation almost every time we go out. I got lucky this time and caught one right after we decided "10 more minutes."

Kirk spent the last week up in Canada with all the Morris guys fishing for Walleye and Northern Pike. (really, in case you haven't noticed, this guy is addicted to fishing. He's also been on a break from school so he tried to get in as much as possible) Here are some pictures from the trip. Kirk said his favorite fish was this small-mouthed bass.

This is a walleye, I just think the angle is funny. This must be what the minnow sees right before getting eaten by the fish :). I think Kirk looks really happy in this one. Here's the whole group. Grandpa, Uncle Jack, Uncle Steve, 2 cousins, Scott (brother) and Dad. They ate a lot of fish that week. Kirk had a great time and I'm glad he could go, even though I missed him like crazy at home. I got to go visit family in Orange county which was also really fun.

Last Friday I went to the Hollywood Bowl with my school. It is a field trip we take every year. Imagine this: 16 yellow school busses filled with teenagers and a few teachers. We roll up to the Hollywood Bowl and begin unloading coolers of drinks and piles of food. We tote our picnic down the hill to a nice park next to the Bowl parking lot and split into our family home room groups. Each group pulls out their food they've been planning for the last week and starts to chow down on piles of Panda express and pizza, along with a few homemade enchiladas and cookies. Then we spread out and spend an hour socializing and taking pictures and cleaning up our picnic. After every piece of garbage is picked up the students get their tickets and then 500 students and their teachers start walking up toward the Hollywood bowl. Somehow we all make it through the crowds and ticket boots and keep walking up to our seats. We fill up our two sections in the Bowl and wait for the Philharmonic Orchestra to start playing Tchaikovsky. The students quickly realize that it is just classical music and that the songs are kind of long, but love the ending as the orchestra plays the 1812 overture, complete with fireworks and cannons. Aftere the concert we all wait in the stands until most of the crowd is gone then sing the school fight song and make our way to the busses. Somehow we make it there without losing anyone and sit and wait for the parking lot to clear a bit. We get back to school around 11:30 p.m. relieved to still have all the kids and another school-wide field trip out of the way.

I really like my school. We do some crazy things and some fun things and some normal things. I enjoy going to the Hollywood Bowl every year.

Life is going well. Kirk has finals next week and then he's off for 3 weeks which he will use to study for the boards and go fishing with his dad and the Morris family in Ontario, Canada. I've been hanging out and making cards and trying new recipes (thanks Stacey). I feel like I haven't done anything super exciting lately, but we've been having fun.

My jury service ended late Friday afternoon, so I was free to go back to school today. It was a little crazy because I hadn't been there since the last day back in June, but I was teaching today! I think everything worked out ok. The classes were only 45 minutes and I just pulled out some activities that I did on the first day last year that worked pretty well. It was fun to go back and see my friends and meet new teachers. In some ways, it felt like it never ended, I just got new students. I'm looking forward to this year; I hope that everything goes well.

Guess who get to serve on a jury for the next week! Yes, you're truly. I was assigned jury duty last week and didn't have to report Monday through Wednesday, but on Wednesday night when I called in, they said I had to come Thursday morning. Then I got assigned to a trial and spent the rest of Thursday and Friday listening to lawyers and testimony in a court room. Not quite my first choice of how to spend the end of my summer break. I start school on Monday. Luckily all I will be missing is teacher meetings and setting up and stuff. Luckily, I'll still get paid for that week. The trial should end on Friday and I really hope that it does. I (should) start teaching a week from Monday and I would really like to be there. Pray for me that the trial goes fast!!

Kirk and I each had a camera before getting married, and they both died this summer. Does anyone have any good or bad stories about digital cameras? Any recommendations or non-recommendations? We want something we can take out camping and fishing and stuff and will probably spend around $200(?). I've been researching different features etc. online, but any personal recommendations would be welcome as well.
Thanks!

Guess what! We saw a grizzly bear in Yellowstone. Crazy. It was a small bear (the ranger said about 3 years old) and it was on a hill right above the road. We saw it from the car and then hurried and parked and took a few pictures. This was the first grizzly I'd ever seen in the wild and it was pretty cool. The other cool part is that after we saw the bear we did a short hike and then continued driving around the loop. About 10 minutes later we saw a mama black bear with 2 cubs. I felt so lucky to see so many bears. The cubs were so small and looked like they were having fun playing in the grass. The other other cool part is that we also saw one other black bear on Tuesday, so all together we saw 5 bears.
This is a pictures of us with lower falls in the background. I think that the grand canyon in Yellowstone is really pretty.We left Monday and spent the night in Rexburg with Lindsey and then spend Tuesday through Thursday in the park. We counted 6 waterfalls total that we saw. We also played the license plate game and got all but Hawaii and Delaware on the trip. Melissa and I had a lot of fun looking for wildlife too. Along with the bears we saw a bald eagle, coyote, elk, deer, buffalo, and pelicans. Here is Melissa and I at at the Tower Falls lookout

I'm really glad that I got to go spend time with my family. I really enjoy camping and Yellowstone is awesome! There is so much wildlife and many beautiful places to go.

So, my aunt Patti was right. About a week after mouse number 1 came mouse number 2. We ended up catching this one too. Kirk and my sister Melissa saw it run in ot the coat closet then lost it when it ran inot our bedroom closet. Later we saw it run in ot our spare bedroom storage closet. By the end of th eday we ended up rearranging all of th eliving room furniture, emptying the floor of our closet (we have way too many shoes), and piling all of th estuff from the spare bedroom closet in the middle of the floor. Another funny addition to the story is that soon after we saw it , my parents called and needed a ride home from the airport. So when they got to our apartment you could barely see the floor because we had stuff piled up everywhere. It was crazy.
We have had traps set for the last 2 weeks and haven't caught anything. We got the hole under our fron door fixed. I think that the mice were living in our neighbors apartment and when they moved out and it got cleaned, they needed a new place to run to. Hopefully that will be the end of it.