Life in SLC: School is underway

Anna and I are both several weeks into the school year. This year I am teaching an extra period and teaching the new common core Math 2 Honors to go with my Precalculus and Precalculus Honors courses. The Precalculus sections are off to a great start but the Math 2 has been more of a challenge because we do not have a textbook. Preparing lessons for it and finding assignments for the students has been time-consuming. We are also over half way into the cross country season. It has been a lot of fun to coach and the boys have a pretty good shot to make the state meet. The girls are not quite as strong but we should have an individual qualifier.

Anna has some very challenging and time-consuming courses herself, and then an easy statistics course. Her internship with the sports teams is going well and the Utah football team picked up a big victory against BYU last night. Her "free time" is spent making progress on her thesis which will hopefully be finished in October. We are three weeks away from her Chicago marathon and she is excited to run it but also excited for a break from the training it requires. It will be fun for us to be back in the Midwest and see some of our friends at the race.

We are becoming bigger Utah sports fans and have attended games of a few different sports. It's fun for Anna to see the athletes she works with perform well. We also attended an Olympus football game the other weekend. My students provide us with a number of entertaining reactions when they see me with Anna.

Over Labor Day weekend we did get a chance to escape our busy routines and take a trip to the Uinta mountain range for some backpacking with our friends Mark and Jenna Moffatt. We hiked to and camped at Long Lake. Mark and I went cliff jumping and we had a great time out in such a beautiful wilderness area. Hopefully we will get another chance to camp before the weather turns too cold as the first signs of fall are approaching.