Preparing for Thanksgiving - The Week of the Inlaws

This week was uncommonly hard for me.  Saturday I woke up and declared I would not go to the all day meeting on my day off because I didn't feel like it.  I REALLY didn't feel like it because a few hours later I lost dinner from the night before.
Pam and I both missed that meeting since she had to leave it early.
I continued to not feel well into the night, the dogs of course wouldn't let me sleep since they had locked themselves in the laundry room, which was flooding of course, and wanted out.  I didn't want to get out of bed since I felt very sick and didn't want to leave the warmth of the many blankets I had wrapped around myself.
Finally I had it, I got up and stormed into the laundry room only to step into ICE water.  It was ice water because it was that cold in my laundry room.  I looked at the dogs and said the first thing that came to mind, "What did you do?"  And promptly kicked them out of the house, where it was still very cold, but at least it was dry.
The next morning, still feeling sick I discovered the ice lake had expanded quite a bit during the night.  I went into the laundry room and found the problem, a slight leak by the hose connection.  I turned off my hoses and fed the animals.  The Fowles and Pam stopped by to check on me and loaned me a mop.  Moving made me want to vomit more and gave me headaches so I spent the day, when I wasn't mopping up, blogging about happier things.
Lesson plans had to be turned in and I still hadn't done them.  Monday I made a sub plan and that night I wrote a plan for Tuesday and Friday before I couldn't do anything else.  My sub plan for Monday was a disaster so I went into work Tuesday, still almost completely unable to move without having the urge to show everyone what I'd been eating lately.
Wednesday I thankfully started feeling better but of course a cold was trying to attack my weakened immune system.
Pam left with the student council that day to go to Phoenix on Tuesday.  She would be gone for two days.  While she was gone she got the news that her grandfather had passed away.  She called me at about 3 am Thursday morning and I wasn't very talkative.
  Now I tried to figure out sub plans for the next week since Pam and I had planned to take a week off when the worst happened.  Well, I got a call from the other Pam, Jeff Fowles watched my room as I went and talked with the other Pam for a while.
Jeff Fowles and I were talking about the Pams and we couldn't quite figure out which was which.  So we decided to stop calling them Pam, at least for that conversation, and start referring to them by their middle names, which worked out really well for us.
Pam finally came home, my Pam that is, and we started planning our trip to Ohio.  Lots of phone calls and lots of conversations later Dad helped us find some good tickets so that we could fly from Salt Lake to Ohio on Saturday, and then from Ohio to Salt Lake on Tuesday, spend Thanksgiving as originally planned in Utah, and then Pam and I got Monday and Tuesday off work so that we didn't have to come in till Wednesday - which means almost a full week with my family!
Friday was rough.  The students had no interest in being there and I just wanted the day to end so that I could get packed, get into an SUV with the one I love, and drive!
It was stressful but we did it - and left an hour before we planned.  We made great time and we were able to get to Price and get the puppies settled in for the night.  It was a stressful day but we did it and now we are on a plane heading toward my future inlaws home.  In less than a week we will both meet our future inlaws who are separated by about 1700 miles.
Crazy week, but at least its over.  I told Pam that after all this I thought that meeting the families would be the easy part.

Veteran's Day - A Snowstorm, a Funeral, and a Wedding

This Veteran's Day was a little more eventful than normal.  Usually I take time to remember the wars of the past during this holiday, something that comes more naturally to me being a history teacher.  This Veteran's Day was different however.  We, Pam and I, had been invited to the wedding of our Branch President's daughter, which he would perform.
On Wednesday I met a woman, who with President Huxhold, asked me to do a grave dedication an hour before the wedding since he would not be able to be in both places.  I agreed to dedicate the grave and direct a memorial service for the man whom I had never met and for the family that I would meet during the ceremony.
That night Pinon had its first real snow storm of the year, there's been some snow before this, but no actual storms.  Due to the fact that the roads aren't paved Pam and I would have to leave pretty early in order to get there on time, which of course we didn't do.
You know me, getting out of bed is an all morning event.
The drive was extremely beautiful, snow gives Pinon and the surrounding area an aura of beauty that it typically doesn't have.
Luckily we still beat the body to the burial site, by a lot of time.  I got out of the SUV and was very worried to see a horse trailer near the grave with a very beautiful animal in it.  I talked with the family about what would happen during the ceremony and what would happen to the unfortunate animal.
In Navajo tradition a horse needs to be shot at the funeral so that the dead person can have it to ride in the afterlife.  The family really wanted this to happen and there was no way for me to stop it.  One family member laughingly told me of a time ten years ago when they tried to shoot a horse for a funeral and it ran away and is still alive.  I looked into the frightened eyes of the animals and silently told it to run.
The ceremony was very beautiful, the son gave a eulogy for his 93 year old father.  Granddaughters sang Christian hymns in the Navajo language, I offered some comforting words about the resurrection and explained the dedicatory prayer before dedicating the place for the body.
Even though I had never met the man; even though I would have never been able to understand him since he only spoke Navajo, I could not help but feel a sense of loss at his death.  The weeping and the sadness that surrounded me was intense.
Pam and I were invited to eat with them, but I decided that I wanted to eat with happier people.  We journeyed back into Pinon and ate at the wedding reception.
The wedding had started almost an hour late, Rez time works differently than everywhere else time.  It was good to see many of the branch members and a lot of my students were at the wedding, which was kind of cool to see them outside of the academic setting.
After the wedding Pam and I decided to relax, we had a big day, by then the snow had completely melted away (otherwise I'd have pictures of the snow) and we could have the rest of the day to just have a day off; even if the day was more than half over.

To be Pointy, or Not to be Pointy? That is the Question.

As you may or may not know, Angel was born with floppy ears.  The picture below was when she was still tiny and I was trying to get a picture of her with Bo.



When dogs get excited or curious they tend to lift up their ears like in this picture.  Normal dog behavior, seen just about every dog do it at one time or another.

Then one night, Angel sat up and her ears perked up and she stared out into the nothing for a long time as if concentrating on some sound or smell that I couldn't distinguish.  I thought it was strange after awhile that it held her attention for so long, but then her ears NEVER went back down.  In the picture below she is playing with her toys and her new perky ears.

A couple of days later I was watching her and I saw her perked up ears go all the way up.  There was just a small flappy section on her right ear and that was it.  I couldn't believe it, I had watched a floppy eared dog become a pointy eared dog.

Well, another crazy thing happened, her ears started to go floppy again!  One ear at a time as you can see below.  Most of the time now she is half way between pointy and floppy.  When she is excited and fully awake her ears are all the way pointy.  The more sleepy she is the more floppy her ears are.  In a day she will go from almost all the way floppy to all the way pointy and then back to floppy again.  It's pretty crazy.

 Another funny thing about this dog is as she's gotten older she has also gotten more spots.  At birth she had two very large spots on her back, like wings.  I was playing with her the other day and realized that those two spots had become one.  How else is this crazy dog going to change?  Will she be pointy eared, floopy eared, or inbetween?  Only time can tell.

Homecoming Week 2010!

Homecoming Week was a blast, but unfortunately discipline at the school has been lacking ever since.  But to focus more on the positive it was fun to have different days in which you could dress up as different things especially with how strict our dress code is here.  White, black, and grey are the only colors the students are allowed to wear.  Homecoming Week gave them freedom that they normally don't have, and I decided to have some fun as well.
Mr. Fowles and I decided that for Twin Day we would go together, which meant I needed to grow my beard.  I only had a week, so its not at its height, but it was enough to pull it off.  The kids called us all sorts of things from pimp daddies, Michael Jacksons, to Gangsters.  Jeff (Mr. Fowles) decided we were Blues Brothers and had a pretty good impression to go with it so we went with that.

My future wife can't stand the next two pictures.  For Multicolor Day I decided to come up with an outrageous and ugly outfit that would definitely fit the definition of Multicolor and then some.  She was on a trip to Ohio, when she heard me describe the outfit I was planning on wearing she insisted that I take pictures so that she could see it in all its horrible glory.  Now she won't look at them.  It comforts me to know that I am not the only one confused by women.

In sports news not only did the PHS football team win Homecoming (Overwhelmingly I might add) but it also had more wins this season than it has ever had in its entire history.  I went to two football games myself, one loss and one win.  Both games were extremely close and very exciting to watch.  The game we lost was an all out Hail Mary play, something that someone would make a movie about, it was truly awe inspiring except that it happened to the wrong team.

In other exciting news the Cross Country Team did very well in State.  The boys came in 3rd and the girls came in 5th, if I remember right.

Sisters

This is Angel's Sister Clara, the one that Pam adopted.  These two pups are virtually inseparable, they love playing together and causing mischief.  They are also super cute when they cuddle in these puppy beds together, sorry only pictures of that are on my phone and I don't know how to put those pics on the computer.

I got two of these beds, one for Angel and one for Bo.  Angel however decided that both beds belonged to her and she would chase Bo away from them when he tried to lay down.  I put one of them into Bo's house and kept Angel away for a few nights.  Angel had to deal with the loss of a bed, she was not happy about it.  She loves Bo, she likes playing with him and he watches out for her.  The fact that she won't share with him

but will share some things with Clara is just one way that the puppies have shown that they really do have a strong bond with each other.

One thing I will say for them though, they are both jealous little doggies.  Angel attacks Clara if she thinks Clara is getting more attention, for being named Angel, that dog can be an all out devil.  Clara on the other hand when she gets jealous she won't take it out on Angel, she'll jump and bite the person giving the attention.  We're working on training her not to bite.

I would feel sorry for Clara, Angel can be quite the bully, but Clara has began to hold more and more of her own.  Plus when Angel had an injured paw and couldn't defend herself Clara decided to take revenge every opportunity that she could get.  Of course when the paw healed Angel made Clara regret that.  But one of the things I love about dogs is their ability to forgive, a day later they were playmates again.

These pictures were taken awhile back, the puppies are at least twice that size now.

Being the thin sister Clara has been able to fit into places that weren't wide enough for Angel, and being the long sister she can also get things that are higher up, just because it is safe from Angel, doesn't mean that a puppy still won't get it and then fight over it with Angel.  Many times Angel will not know that something was important to her until she sees Clara with it.  Then, all of a sudden, its Puppy War!

On occasion their brother, a puppy named Granger, after the Harry Potter character (yes a male is named after the main lady of the story) will drop by and demand to be let into the kennel to play with his sisters.  The three siblings have played with Bo in the back yard a few times now, usually for several hours before Granger decides he wants to go back home.

Pictures of Pinon

This was taken in my backyard.  You may or may not see the fence that separates my yard from the other member of my duplex.

This is a shot of one of the dirt roads right here in the teacher housing.  It offers a nice short cut to school when I'm walking.  I twisted my ankle on it about a week ago though.

This SUV has helped me out a lot since I've been living down here, from mud to sand, dirt roads, shopping trips, and making my way out into the unknown, this car has been a great blessing.

This is the church house that I go to.  I have been made 1st counselor in the Branch Presidency and have both enjoyed and struggled with that calling.  The picture just above this one is what the view looks like from behind the church.



 This is what used to be left of the canopy I put up to provide Bo with some shade.  It's in much worse condition now.  The weather has been very harsh, it gets really windy here.  Not to mention that Angel and her sister Clara like to play in it and rip it.

Pinon sunsets, very beautiful.  One of the best ways to make Pinon seem prettier than it actually is.

The Engagement

This was the picture we took shortly after our engagement to show our families.

Well, here goes attempt number two to get this part of the blog up and going.  The site doesn't like to upload pictures for some reason.

Anyway, as I said before, when I came out here to Pinon I thought I might or might not meet someone special; I was coming more to work than to date anyway.  If I did find someone I imagined it would be a Navajo, Hopi, or Apache.  I was also open for the possibility of meeting someone special in Flagstaff.  The last thing I expected was to fall for an Irish girl from Ohio.

We met on the first day of work back in August.  They introduced the new teachers from each school and Pam was the new music director for the high school where I was the new history teacher.  After the meeting was over I introduced myself to her and we spent the afternoon exploring the building together.

The music department at Pinon High, was a mess.  Most instruments were broken, the last band teacher had made too stacks for them, Need Repair, and Beyond Repair/Hope.

Pam's job was to get a dysfunctional program out of being dysfunctional and into working well so that the school could have a band and choir it could be proud of.  My job was to teach the entire sophomore class about history.  Needless to say we both had and have our work cut out for us.

The next time we really hung out was about a week later when Pam came to visit me in my classroom after school.  Pam was already becoming more convinced that I was special, from the way that I introduced myself to the way that I talked about history.

Every now and then I would hang out with Pam, in a lot of our conversations the church would come up.  Pam, to put it lightly, hates being Catholic, and was looking for something else.

What really brought us together was the puppies.  We both adopted two adorable little puppies, Angel and Clara.  They were born under the porch of someone who works at district.  The puppies were still so small when we got them that they were able to fit through just about anything.  Making it impossible for us to leave them inside or outside while we were at work.  We found a wonderful puppy sitter and friend in Pam Fowles.  Yes, there are two Pams.  Yes, it does get confusing.

Taking the puppies there every day and then picking them up every evening meant that Pam and I would see each other almost every day.  The Fowles are both members of the church and Jeff is our Elders Quoarm President.  Pam's interest in the church and in me were increasing.  We invited her to watch General Conference with us and during one of the sessions she announced that she wanted to go to church with us the following week.

It was obvious to everyone but me that I was also growing more and more fond of Pam.  Pam and I started cooking for each other, taking care of each other during illnesses, helping each other with cleaning, and walking together.  Needless to say, when we actually started dating not a whole lot changed.  We spent even more time together, started kissing, and that's really about it.

I proposed on October 30th.  Pam calls it, "The best Halloween ever."

Speaking of Halloween there we are in costume.  I was a knight, most of my tin foil armor was blown away, there was a pretty big wind storm that day.  She was a lady and we came in her white stallion.  That was taken shortly after the Trunk or Treat was over.



Since getting engaged we've already done a lot of work.  We set a date that may or may not work out depending on whether we can get some time off, April 23rd.  We've also picked a location, the 1850's Guest House in Dallas, Illinois, which is about ten miles from Nauvoo.  The wedding colors are lavendar, yellow, and light blue.  We took the time to get registered at both Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

The Wildlife

There are all sorts of strange and not so strange things out here.  The strangest things to see are definately the insects.  The most common of the oddities are what the Navajo refer to as Rain Bugs.  They look like these giant tanks of the insect world that have black and red bands going across their shells.  They are called Rain Bugs because according to tradition if you smash one it will cause rain.  This being a desert where people are very dependent on rain, well, lets just say I'm amazed they aren't extinct.

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Other strange insects I've seen, but unfortunately I have no pictures of them, a Stick Bug, which was very fascinating, looked exactly like a normal stick, except for the fact that it walked.  There was one bug that I have no idea what it was.  It's head was like an ant's and its body was similar to a bee's.  That isn't that strange until you relize that its head was the size of my thumb.

For a while I had an enormous spider as a roommate.  Everytime I spotted him he would go into a room or closet and hide in the most hard places for a human to reach.  It took a combination of broom and foot to settle the issue of who lived here.

Insects and giant spiders aren't all that's out here.  I've seen a coyote right here in the teacher housing.  Many teachers have also had to deal with rattlesnakes this year.  I've been fortunate not to have had that problem, but I'm still careful.

Also the livestock in some ways are more like wild animals than they are like livestock.  They are allowed to wander free with just the sheep dogs to guide them from place to place.  They are trained to not like humans and to run from them.  One night there were several cows that made their way into teacher housing and I was determined to get a picture.  The cows did not like that at all and they ran the moment I would get close enough.  I finally caught up with one of the cows, keeping my distance I shot this video.