Shanandy

THE MOTHER OF ALL UPDATES May 29, 2008

The title is catchy, but it’s so not true.

We’ve been running around like crazy lately, and I finally feel guilty enough reading other peoples blogs to update my own. I’m still feeling guilty I haven’t actually made a pillow fort yet and taken a picture of it too.

My little sister Anne was married this past weekend, which was really cool. JC her new husband is a great guy, and a welcome addition to the in-laws so far.

We spent the rest of the weekend up on Cedar Mountain again, hoping to get in some great mountain biking. The weather didn’t agree with us though, and it snowed off and on Sunday and Monday. Rodney my brother bought a new mountain bike and we were so bummed we couldn’t ride trails that we rode on a road in the snow just to break it in. We did finally ride Green Valley Loop and we tore it up. I thought for sure he’d crash, but he did great.

Here it is in all it’s glory

Going back a month or two, I finally landed the lucrative career in public service I’ve craved for so long.

I work for an unnamed agency that does super top secret things, like retirement and disability. I’d tell you what else we did, but I’m pretty sure my job of issuing enough paperwork to clear entire forests and clog up landfills is classified so as not to embarrass me.

My new agency does like me enough to train me thoroughly with 4+ hours daily of video training, in a room by myself and on the other side of the building than everyone else, so I really can’t complain.

I did run into someone I read an awful lot about this weekend, Anson a good friend of Tomp was down and I saw him in Costco, I think I really like Anson and Brandi because Tomp is so fond of them. That and they were cool to talk to at Tomps wedding. ps her blog is great. I like people by association now, I don’t have time to make real friends so friends by association are my new in thing. (hear that Lulu Loves Bacon, I’m replacing you with associated friends, friends)

I’m out of time, so in the infamous words of men wiser than me

Yo, homie smell ya later!

Riding Bikes May 13, 2008

Since Andy has been confined to working indoors he is constantly trying to be outdoors the rest of the time. He started riding bikes and I followed. Almost every night after work he wants to go for a ride and on the weekends he wants to ride the bigger trails. Andy and Ryan decided one day they wanted a challenge so they decided to ride from Central to St. George on their mountain bikes. They were really proud that they finished the 24.2 mile ride in under 2 hours.

Andy, Ryan, and Joel have all done the Bear Paw Poppy Trail (the Loop) quite a few times since we got our new bikes. I decided it was time I joined them. I have to admitted I was pretty nervous. I had never really gone mountain biking. My biking always consisted of staying on paved trails. As we got to the first down hill part Andy gave me all of the necessary tips, don’t pull on the break, speed is better, and don’t panic. Well, I didn’t listen very well. I didn’t like the speed so I started pumping my breaks, I then noticed a 2 in. drop off and paniced. I apparently pulled on my front break causing me to go over my handle bars. Yes, my first hill and I crashed and hard. They said it looked pretty funny. All I remember is looking at a rock in my way and then my hands were spread out like Superman skidding across the dirt. I quickly got up and checked myself out. My arms and hands were scraped up but nothing was broken luckily. I felt so dumb crashing on my first hill that I assured the guys I could continue on. I didn’t stop shaking until we were 3/4 of the way done. I’m proud to say no more crashes and I only walked down one part. (I crashed on the hill that Andy was making fun of Carter and McKay for being scared to go down on our post Warm, so Warm. I can symapthize with them.)

Since we are just starting out again we have had a couple of crashes. We were pretty impressed with Andy’s bruise (this picture was a few days old). Then I got mine. I won for the biggest bruise. I also had other small bruises all over my legs and arms. Hopefully you can tell our legs apart. His is the hairy leg and mine is the one with freckles.

We have also had fun riding at night. Bob, Shayla, and Max joined us one night. We took the bike trail and head off to the park. Max had fun riding on the bike and then playing on the equipment.

We will probably be heading up to Cedar Mountain were the weather will be really nice as soon as school is out. Anyone wanting to join us is more then welcome too.

Missing something

So, I’ve been a little absent from the blog lately. I’ll explain, I was recently hired to work for Social Security here in St. George. It’s quite a change from the Forest Service. To expand on that a little bit, I really started to miss the FS the other day when I was watching the news and they said May 15th marks the start of the fire season. They showed a bunch of FS guys spraying out a grass fire, and a couple of days later we actually had a grass fire again out by Utah hill. The smell literally almost crushed me with sadness over missing it.

It’s not that the SSA is bad, it’s that I miss the outdoors, I miss the physical aspect, and I miss the confrontation’s I had with people. I miss the crazy, and I miss the unexpected.

The SSA is actually a great agency, rated #7 as the best federal agency to work for. The people I work with are actually amazing, very talented, very bright and very willing to go the extra mile to help people out. I like being a part of the team I’m on, but I sure do miss the old one something fierce.

On the entertainment front, Shan and I have been mountain biking the living daylights out of Southern Utah. We ride about 2-3 days a week, and usually a couple of times each weekend. We’ve both taken some pretty nasty spills, and had some pretty awesome bruises to show for it. A couple of months into it we both decided we needed some new wheels.

Shan has the pictures of our bruises, I’ll make sure we get them up in the next day or two.

We generally ride with other people, Joel my neighbor and Ryan my brother in law are the most frequent, but we’ve ridden with Owen and Serreta down through Snow Canyon as well.

I’ve really been watching the weather to see when we can move our riding up to the mountain. Currently the snow is almost all melted, and I think we’re gonna open back up the trailer this weekend and see how the riding goes.

Other than that the only real news I have about us is that Shan’s about to get out of school, and not a minute too late. She has whole chunks of her summer planned out, and from how much she talks about it, she’s pretty excited.

My summer on the other hand is probably going to be spent living out of a hotel in Provo. In June I’m due to go to training in Provo for around 3 months. The good news is I signed up for Marriot Rewards and I’m paying for it all with a credit card giving me frequent flyer miles. If I’m gonna be stuck away from home at least I can earn some benefits as I go.