Happy New Year!

Hello everyone! Hope you had a Merry Christmas!
We feel so very blessed after returning from a wonderful two weeks in the Midwest with family!
After a fairly painless exam week, I enjoyed several days at home catching up on sleep and other things that had been neglected this past semester. I joined Todd and the track athletes for practice one afternoon and was mistaken as a new student! I'm working on building my miles up again in hopes of running some faster 5Ks this spring. 
Todd has his work cut out for him staying ahead of all of the track athletes. Some of the boys have really improved over the past year. He may be traveling up to Idaho for the Simplot Games, which is a 3 day indoor track meet later this month. 
The first half of Christmas break was spent in Michigan. We enjoyed having the whole family in one place! Some of the highlights of our stay in Michigan were being able to see the extended family at the Klein-Wassink Christmas party and on Christmas day, seeing high school and college friends, going for a hike on Christmas Eve, playing many games together, going to see the Hobbit, having running partners, and sharing many great conversations! This trip to Michigan may have been the last time I would be in our cozy blue house. It is a little sad, but I am excited for Mom and Dad to be building a new house!
A few days after Christmas we flew to Minnesota. This year we did not make any trips to Iowa to see extended family. We enjoyed the snow in Minnesota, especially since snow did not come to Michigan until the day before we left. We had a great time playing games, sledding, spending Christmas Eve with Todd's high school friends Ben and Alivia, going to see Skyfall, and sharing meals & conversations together. We are looking forward to having Bonnie, and maybe Grant, come out to Utah for a weekend of skiing sometime this winter.
Todd is back to school now and I start on Monday. We went to a Timberwolves vs. Jazz game this past week with our friends Mark and Jenna. Turned out to be a bad game for the wolves fans--but we enjoyed being there regardless. 

The lights at Temple Sqaure

The white elephant gift exchange at the Klein-Wassink Christmas party

Lots of little ones!

Christmas Eve hike at Yankee Springs State Park

Todd playing with Emmett

Family Picture 1

Family Picture 2

Making the white elephant gift Troll puzzle on Christmas day

Grandma and Holly looking through the memory book we gave Grandma

Todd and Skip

Searching for the pickle!

Grant and Allison

Family picture

Timberwolves game

We are excited to see what this new year has in store!

Hi everyone! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! It's been quite some time since I've been on this blog...
Here's what has been going on:
1. 3 of the athletes that Todd coached at Olympus High School made it to the State Meet. Annie, the only girl who qualified, ran very well and finished 31st. She ran very well--this is her first year of HS cross country. Two boys qualified, but didn't have their strongest races at the state meet. Todd planned an end of the year banquet to celebrate the season which was a great success!
2. To celebrate my birthday, we went to a Utah Football Game--and won! We played Washington State and beat them 49-6! We also went for a beautiful trail run in the morning and out to eat for lunch. As a gift from Todd and family members, I got a Canon Rebel DSLR camera! I've had a lot of fun learning how to use it.
3. We had a BIG snowstorm a few weeks ago! It was beautiful. I think we got about 1 foot. Unfortunately it was back up in the high 60s a couple days later, so it melted quickly. I'm wishing for snow again...
4. I've submitted by manuscript for publication! I'm so glad to have it off my hands. After reading 200+ research articles and spending lots of time sorting the information it's a relief to just be playing the waiting game now. Things have slowed down a bit with school. Now that the manuscript is finished and the football team is not going to a bowl game I have less responsibilities. It's nice to be able to have some time for other things.
5. We spent Thanksgiving in Michigan! Holly and Matt, Ben, and Daniel also came to my parent's house for the long weekend. We arrived on Wednesday in time for me to attend Amanda's wedding shower. It was great to see friends at the party. We celebrated Thanksgiving with the Klein-Wassink side of the family! We had 26 people there! The weather was beautiful--nice enough to play crouquet outside. Thanksgiving fell on Dad's birthday--which we celebrated that evening. My mom, sister, and I went shopping on black Friday. We found quite a few deals! We went to a Griffins hockey game on Friday night. On Saturday, we were able to celebrate  Matthew and Amanda's marriage! It was a beautiful wedding. We flew back to SLC on Monday.
It was wonderful to see friends and family--and to know that we'd see them again (and the Mitchells!) in just a few short weeks!

SNOW!

Playing bags in Michigan. We had wonderful weather!

All of the girls at Amanda's wedding shower

Gavin and Owen watching Dad carve the turkey

Reilly and I. What a cutie!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Congratulations to Matthew and Amanda!

The Haagsma and VanWyk girls.

Now the Visser, Dykstra, DeVries, Mitchell, and Haagsma girls...

My family :)

Fall has finally arrived!

Hello friends and family!
We are happy that cooler weather has arrived in Salt Lake City. The temperatures seem to have settled in the 60's and 70's now and we are seeing (limited) color changes in the trees. The mountains are quite pretty with red trees covering them and there is even a bit of snow at the peaks.
Last weekend Todd and I traveled to Chicago for the Chicago marathon. After many miles of training, I was finally able to toe the line. After planning to race with Kristen Mast, we were unable to find each other among the 40,000 runners before the race. I was so thankful to bump into a high school friend (rival?) who ran for another school in our conference, Sarah Brewer. I was able to keep up with her for the first half of the marathon. It was great to have someone by my side! Thanks to friends from high school and college, and of course Todd, who jumped in to the race with me, I ran only 2 miles without a friend by my side. Despite slowing down in the second half of the race, I ran the time I was hoping to run! Thanks to all my friends and family who cheered me on! 
Unfortunately, Todd had to fly back to Utah a few hours after the marathon concluded. However, I was able to enjoy a week in MI with my family. I was able to catch up with many  MI friends, and even stopped in to see coaches and teammates at Calvin's cross country practice. We celebrated my mom's birthday on Thursday with a nice dinner at the Bostwick Lake Inn, went for a few bike rides, checked out some houses in the Parade of Homes, played games, made puzzles, helped my friend Amanda Haagsma put together favors for her upcoming wedding, went shopping, and relaxed. The past week was exactly what I needed in order to be re-energized for the remainder of this stressful semester. 
Meanwhile, Todd's team had its regional meet on Tuesday. Both teams ran well and there were a lot of personal bests. Unfortunately, the boys came up only 5 points short of making the state meet. However, two boys and one girl will compete at the state meet since they qualified individually. The state meet is this week Wednesday. Todd also had parent-teacher conferences recently. He saw parents of 126 students over the course of 2 nights. It was a busy time, but nice to meet some of the parents.

Making favors with Maxine, Amanda, and Mom for Amanda's wedding

The beautiful fall colors I've been missing!

The beautiful view from the land that my parents bought.

Lake Michigan!

Todd and Jake. Thanks for running the last several miles with me!

Bonnie, Paula, and Holly. I was able to spot my fans by this sign! Thanks for coming to cheer me on!

The Calvin group--runners and cheerers!

Thank-you to the parents (and Uncle Bruce!) who cheered us on!

Todd and I. 

That's all for now! Hopefully by the time I next post, I will have submitted my manuscript for publication! We'll see...

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.

Bowling with Classmates for a pre-wedding Party for Sara

With friends at the Utah vs. NCU game

Big win! 41-0

The view of long lake from our campsite

Todd and Mark cliff jumping!

Visitors and the Return of School

As usual, life here in SLC is keeping us busy. We are both preparing for our return to school, with Anna looking forward to classes and me wishing I had a longer break. Anna has been busy with the Utah sports teams, especially the football team. She attends a team meal at least once a day and is enjoying working with the athletes. While it keeps her busy, it is not without a few perks, namely good food and a lack of cooking for me. I have been spending most of my days tutoring for the ACT after morning cross country practice. The team is improving and the boys are looking like they could be alright after seeing them at our 2-mile time trial.

We also were lucky enough to have my family out to stay for a week in Park City. We spent some time relaxing at the resort pool and played a round of miniature golf, but most of the time we were exploring the area. A highlight was racing down the Olympic bobsled course at 60+ mph and experiencing 5 G's. We also tried out the zipline and alpine slide and spent some time watching the Olympic aerialists go flying into the pool. We hiked up to Timpanogos Cave which is a National Monument and took a tour. Grant and I played two rounds of golf on some spectacular courses. Playing with 80 year old Dale and Alice was entertaining. It was a great time for us, and we are looking forward to hosting more guests. Come visit.

 Mini Golf

 Olympic Aerialist

 Ready to Bobsled

 View from Olympic Park

 Hiking to the cave

 Mom and Dad

 We made it to the entrance

 Stalactites

 Will eventually become a cave column

 Grant

 Family Picture 1

 Family Picture 2

 Golf

 Walking to the slide

Anna coming down