Meet Jackson!

I've really done it. I am officially a dog owner and I am in love.

Meet Jackson Smith! An 11(ish) month Golden Retriever who already has a love for comfy furniture and a slight obsession with tennis balls. He was found wandering somewhere in the great valley of Salt Lake and I found him among pages of pit bulls and tiny yappy dogs on the Salt Lake Animal Services website.

I was told that someone was already looking at him but the next day I called, he was still there and I immediately drove to Salt Lake with Mike to meet him. The rest, is history.

Southern Comforts, Part 1.

About a year ago, I found out that Tennessee was playing at LSU on October 2nd. My Americorps term ended on September 30th. Perfect, no? Well I set it in my mind that I would be in Baton Rouge 2 days after my job ended, and lo and behold, there I was.

What a wonderful trip it has been so far! Aside from the absolutely ridiculous ending to our game on Saturday, which I can't even talk about. I flew into New

Orleans on Friday, October 1st at 10:30 pm. My dear old friend, Catherine, came to pick me up and we drove to Baton Rouge and promptly changed and headed to the bars. I was able to see some good friends from LSU and to my surprise, I ran into a handful of old Tennessee friends as well!

The next day, we started our tailgating bright and early. How I have missed gamedays in the south!! And what a day of reunions. Amy and friends came up from Pensacola and it was the first time we've seen each other in a year and a half. We began our day walking around campus, and visiting different tailgates. As we were walking down the sidewalk, watching an overweight man booty dance on a cooler, we ran into our long lost friend from middle/high school, Katherine Torrence. It had been years!! It was so great to catch up.

We then went to meet Courtney, who was with her family tailgating and who I was going to the game with. We had some fried food and then headed to the game. It was wonderful to be in Tiger Stadium as a Volunteer fan with fellow vols, as I am usually there with all of my LSU friends. Well, we won the game, if you didn't know. We celebrated, cried tears of joy, and then we had our celebratory bubble quickly stepped on when LSU got a second chance and we promptly lost the game. Unbelievable.

The rest of my trip in Baton Rouge was wonderful. I love that city. We had another friend, Amanda Armstrong visiting as well and we all went to get our beignet and cafe au leit fix at Coffee Call. Only my favorite place to eat in Baton Rouge. And thankfully, this time I wasn't immediately leaving to drive for 10 hours with fried dough and rich coffee in my stomach. Then I ran into my dear friend Louise at Wally World. That afternoon, I went on a wonderful walk around the LSU Lakes with my old camper, Renee. When she introduced me at her sorority house as her old camp counselor, I felt OLD. We had a great walk and got to catch up on our past couple of years! Not to mention the walk around the lakes is beautiful.

I am now in Jackson, Mississippi. I'll let you know how this leg of the journey turns out!

New Post, New House!

Greetings! It's been quite a while since my last post. Woops. I can't even begin to recap the past 8, going on 9 months. I went from teaching snow skiing to teaching water-skiing, which has given me an itch to pursue a career in adaptive water-skiing (which will have to be an entirely different post). I was home in May and then, as most of you know already, I drove back out to Utah with my sister, Erin, who took a summer job in Park City at the NAC. Her experiences this summer and her newfound love for Utah drove her to apply for the upcoming Americorps position at NAC and she will be joining us out here for the next year! YAY Erin! Her new residence here also leads me to my most exciting news...our new house! Unfortunately it isn't "ours" but we are the new residents of a cute, 2 story old miner's house on Park Ave.

For those of you know don't know the significance of Park Avenue, it is the residential road through Park City that parallels main street and is within walking distance of Park City Mtn. Resort (aka, work), coffee, stores, bars, parks and is on the route for all of PC's finest buses and parades. Hurray! I was able to experience the perks of living on Park for a few, blissful months last fall until the unfortunate flooding of our condo. Now we're back and ready for a fun year of being right in the action! Erin and I will share the house with our friend, Erica, who is also joining the Americorps force with Erin in the fall. We'll start the moving process in a few weeks, as well as the locating of furniture and household items. It will be my 3rd move in a year, but hopefully we will stay put for a bit.

Everyone come visit!!

White Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

It has been a crazy month and I can't believe it is already Christmas on Friday! My sister got here a week ago and my parents got here on Sunday. It is so wonderful to have them here in Park City for Christmas this year and to be able to show them around my town and have them meet my friends. They were able to secure a condo right in town, so I have moved in with them for the week. They have been skiing while I have been working, but I finally have 3 days off so we can all ski and spend the day together. Erin attended my volunteer training last week for the Ski Center and she has volunteered on one of my lessons and is volunteering on Evan's lesson today. I'm making her work for her ski passes.

Speaking of skiing, I taught my first ski lessons this week! It was a little bit of a shock actually. As a new-hire, we have to complete 12 hours of team teaching before we can be put on the schedule. I had completed about 6 hours when I walked into work and my boss told me that I was going to have to teach in 30 minutes. Ok! My student was great. She is an 11 year old from Texas and we sang lots of songs and played in the snow in between runs. I also attended a 2-day Bi-Ski clinic last weekend. A bi-ski is a sit ski with 2 skis underneath that the instructor usually tethers from behind. It is one of the most physically demanding lessons that we have, and possibly one of the most dangerous (when something goes wrong) but definitely one of the most fun. You can put anyone in a bi-ski and go rip it up all over the mountain. In our clinic, we learned all about how to set up and adjust the equipment, how to load onto the chairlift (and unload), how to bucket the bi-ski and how to tether it on steeper terrain. We did have sand-bag students so we weren't endangering each other's lives.

In other news, I have a place to live! For those of you who didn't hear, we had a water main bust in our attic a few weeks ago. I woke up at 4 am to water dripping onto my bed and a river rushing down our stairs. Within an hour, we had water coming through every seam, overhead light and crack in our ceiling from our upstairs to our basement garage. I left to shower at a friends before work and when I returned 12 hours later, our entire place had been evacuated and gutted. My friends were wonderful and everyone offered me a place to crash as long as I needed to. Luckily, our neighbors aren't returning until after the first of the year, and they were gracious enough to let us stay there. I started looking for a place to live immediately, but the selection in mid-December in Park City is slim. Two of my friends in Americorps with me told me that they were looking to move, so the three of us will be roommates. We finally found a townhouse in a neighborhood in town, right across the street from 3 friends! It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, LOTS of extra beds (for visitors!) and kelly green carpet. I can't wait to move in!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful and blessed Christmas and New Years! I hope that it is a wonderful time with family and friends this holiday season for everyone. I miss you all and am looking forward to seeing some of you in just a few short weeks! Merry Christmas!

Stats Update

• Total Ski Days: 9
• Lowest Temp of the Day: -6 (Yesterday)
• Today's High Temperature: 0 (as in, ZERO degrees.)
• Hours spent outside in 0 degrees: 6
• Amount of Duct Tape insulating my gloves: Approx 1 ft.
• Number of days homeless: 3

Cashew Chicken Traditions.

Apparently, it is snowing in Baton Rouge right now. That's nice and all, but why isn't it snowing in a place that needs it? All we have are high temperatures that aren't reaching past 30 and icy ski runs. Hopefully though, it will start snowing tomorrow and will continue throughout the week like it is supposed to. If I wasn't absolutely frozen and buried under blankets, I would be doing a snow dance right now. (Though, despite the cold, my friend and I got ice cream tonight...only at the BEST ice cream place ever, called the Yellow Snow. Expect to go there when you all come to visit.)

Anyway, I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! Things have been great in my neck of the woods. Last week I boarded a plane bound for, first Chicago, and then Springfield, Missouri. It was great to get out of town for a bit and see my family. I love Park City, but it

really is kind of like a college town for college graduates. It's small enough to only have about 2 degrees of separation between every person here between the ages of 20 and 35. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was good to get away for a weekend. I love Thanksgiving in our family. I love the predictability of it. It is 5 days out of the whole year that have followed the same schedule for years. Wednesday night, we all get into town. We go out to Mexican Villa...which we didn't do this year

and I think it rocked my cousin Jeff's world a little. Instead, we went to get pasta. Who, you might be wondering, goes and eats a big, Mexican or Pasta dinner on the night before Turkey Day? The Smith's do. And then we run it off the next morning at the Turkey Trot. Paige and I were the champions this year! We even beat out Mitchell. Then we take family pictures, race to the cold showers and head out to the farm. We then eat ourselves into a food coma. We had 20 people at the farm this year, plus 3 dogs. Unfortunately, Shelby wasn't allowed at the farm since she would roll in every pile of cow poop there. Anyways, we eat alot, as does everyone on this day. The day after Thanksgiving, we split up into shopping groups. The brother's go to Bass Pro and take the annual tour de childhood. Aunt Kim and Maria tackle the intense sales and my mom, Paige and I venture out to an outdoors store away from the madness and then to Starbucks for momma's daily fix. Then, we got Cashew

Chicken. If you have never been to Springfield, you apparently have never experienced THE Springfield Cashew Chicken. It's like Jambalaya

is to Baton Rouge. With a Springfield native as a father, we grew up having a homemade version, which I actually prefer. But it is a necessity, to have the origonal while there. We then go to Grandpa's for pizza, pool and patio-sitting. I introduced the fam to Apples to Apples this year. It got pretty intense. Day 4 of Thanksgiving, we all go see an early movie, watch the Kansas/Mizzou game and go to Grandma & Jim's for early Christmas presents and a homecooked meal. Then day 5, we wake up before the sun and hit the road. What a wonderful 5 days of my life. I am already looking forward to next year.

It's Here!

Tomorrow is the first day of the ski season in Park City! Hurray! It was a long day at work: cleaning the ski center, making copies of training packets; and GETTING MY INSTRUCTOR SKI PASS! Its official. I've got the uniform and the pass. Even though the pants make me look like a gangsta/snowboarder, I am so excited to wear it. I can't wait to finally go skiing. I also am ready for things to get busy again. Tomorrow is the returning instructor training, so everyone will be back and on the slopes. I also get to play sled hockey tomorrow, so that is exciting too. I've started my winter work schedule, so I have no more weekends on the weekend. So while my roommates are planning lots of fun for the next two days, I will be doing the 8-5 work day. Didn't you hear that Tuesday is the new Friday?