A few more camping pictures.

Scary Night-time flashlight face--Andrew

Sammy took this one of me. Interesting.

Beautiful Fall Colors Everywhere

Sammy's idea of the perfectly roasted Marshmallow

Some of Sammy's leaf collection lining the benches.

Camping Trip

We took the kids to Oak Grove for the long anticipated camping trip that we kept promising them but kept delaying. We all had a good time but were more than glad to be home to our own beds and a nice warm shower!

Ryan's idea of a "little campfire"

Roasted starburst--YUMMY

Yummy S'mores

Ryan made us gather ALL these pine cones to help with the fire builing. Can you say "Pyromaniac"!

I have NEVER seen Andrew's hands this dirty. He is the biggest freak about having clean hands. He spent the whole time playing in the fire (definitely his dad's kid) or chopping with the axe or hammer.

The rest of the Bulgaria story.

Burgas (Bulgarian: Бургас, Greek: Πύργος, sometimes transliterated as Bourgas) is the second-largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast with population 210,260.

Sunny Beach (Bulgarian: Слънчев бряг):is a major seaside resort on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, located approximately 35 km north of Burgas in Nessebar municipality, Burgas Province. It is the biggest and most popular holiday resort of the country, and is home to over 800 hotels with more than 300 000 beds. While here Ryan decided to go swimming and got stung by a jellyfish, right on his bottom! haha! He said there were a TON of jellyfish all over!

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Tsarevets (Bulgarian: Царевец) is a mediaeval stronghold located on a hill with the same name in Veliko Tarnovo in northern Bulgaria. It served as the Second Bulgarian Empire's primary fortress and strongest bulwark from 1185 to 1393, housing the royal and the patriarchal palaces, and is a popular tourist attraction.

Bulgaria Slideshow

We'll see if this works. Sorry I can't give very good descriptions on the pictures. Ryan is asleep and I can't remember everything he told me and most of the time he didn't really know exactly what anything was or the name of the place he was at anyway! This first one all the picture in the city are in Plovdiv (Bulgarian: Пловдив) is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia, with a population of 378,107

Feeling So Loved

So just an update on my job. I actually really like it. I wish it was more money and more hours because the job itself is really not bad at all. The math is easy, for me, so it isn't stressful at all and it is fun to be able to help these kids understand something that they otherwise will probably never learn. Most of them work pretty hard and are doing really well. So today I got my "reward" by having kids in two different classes tell me that they wished I was the teacher! One girl wanted to know how long I would be working for the regular teacher. I told her all year. She said well when do you get your own class, cuz I wanna be in your class! I explained to her that I don't have a teaching degree but a business degree so I can help with the math but can't be a math teacher! Anyway, it made me feel good that they like me and can understand what I am trying to teach them! I guess teaching does have its rewards! Too bad it doesn't pay a WHOLE lot more!

Mom's New Furniture Minus the Ottoman

This one where my flash hit it you can see the color really well.
Without the flash hitting it directly they just look dark brown.
Andrew was posing for us.
Andrew took this picture in so I snuck it in here.

Ok you impatient souls!! Here are some pictures of mom's lovely new furniture. She is already liking it more and more. She likes the added touch of the end tables and is almost ready to remove the tags. The ottoman should be here next Friday so I'll think about, maybe, putting up more pictures then! Enjoy! (did I make it in the hour time limit??)

Bulgaria

Some of the buildings and a gas station.
A Hotel in Bulgaria
A statue in one of the malls.
Some ruins that were recently unearthed in the middle of a town.
Some random statues that are just in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road.

Ok, so some day soon I am going to have to figure out how to do a slide show on here because, amazingly, Ryan actually took quite a few pictures. So I will post a few tonight just to give you a sneak peak and then someday I'll get more of them onto a slide show. Ryan had a good time but was glad to be home. He is back to work and just got a promotion at Viracon to "lead" so that is good. More responsibility but more opportunity and of course more money as well! He'll also be working at Wal-mart in the evenings for a while and still hasn't made a definite decision on whether he is going to stay in the guard or not. He still has until Dec/Jan somewhere in there to decide.

Samantha and I went to the "Tailgate party" country concert here at the Sun Bowl on Sat. the 13th of Sept. Mark Wills is one of her favorite singers (I gave her one of my old CDs from 10 years or so ago and she has memorized every song and LOVES him) and he was one of the singers there. I got her tickets for her birthday. We had a lot of fun. There weren't really that many people and I have been to better concerts but she had a good time.

Then last week I won tickets to the Rodeo from the local news station. So Thurs. night we all went to the Rodeo. We all had a good time but were a little too tired to stay for the whole thing.

This weekend we went to Salt Lake for mom to look for new furniture (she bought some and it will be delivered tomorrow! I'll have to post some pictures later) and for Sammy's blessing. It was SO fun to see little Sammy (he is SO adorable and just the best little baby ever! Tracey is very blessed after all she had to go through with the pregnancy. I wish we lived closer so we could have fun cuddling and playing with him) it was also great to get to visit with all the family. Thanks for everything everyone! (Especially Kurt and Jill for letting us stay there and drag them and Nicole and Zaylee all over town looking at furniture and for the OH SO YUMMY peaches! They aren't going to last long around here!).

Ryan in Bulgaria

Well Ry is still in Bulgaria. Apparently someone "forgot" to book the flight home so they will be there an extra couple of days. He should be home sometime this coming week. He's had a good time there with the National Guard. They have done a lot of training stuff and a little bit of site-seeing stuff. The kids miss him and ask everyday when he will be home. He took the camera and video camera but isn't known for being very good about taking a lot of pictures. Hopefully when he gets home I'll have a few pictures to post from his trip. Then I will have my camera back so I can take some more pictures as well! Work is going well so far. It is a challenge to teach 10-12th graders Algebra 1. But it is rewarding when someone actually figures something out!