Summer 2011

Last summer was an eventful one for sure! I spent the entire month of May in Tonga for a nursing study abroad. I absolutely love that country!  Maybe some day when our kids are grown and we have enough money, I'll get to go back there with Craig. It was beautiful and a remarkable experience.  There are too many thing to share, but if you want to hear my stories and see pictures, feel free to check out the tab at the top of the blog.  It's not finished yet, but I'm planning on putting up snippets of my journal entries from the trip along with some of the best pictures.

After returning from Tonga, I jumped right back into normal life.  We planted our first garden!  Well, Craig did while I was away.  One of our neighbors let people in the ward sign up and claim a small plot in their back yard to plant a garden.  We had tomatoes, zucchini, spaghetti squash and bell peppers.  It was so fun to have fresh produce at our fingertips.  Unfortunately a bug of some sort went crazy throughout all the gardens and ate up all of the squash/zucchini plants... We were pretty bummed, but it was fun while it lasted.  We definitely want a garden to be something we keep doing.

I was called as the stake girls camp first aid specialist for girls camp in June 2011.  Because of the heavy winter, there was STILL snow at Camp Mia Shalom in JUNE!  We chose to still attend camp there and had to dig our way into some of the cabins and teach the girls how to layer and bundle up.  Overall it was a wonderful experience!  I didn't have to do too much besides divvy out cold medicine and pain killers, wash a pot-gut bite, wrap a sprained knee, and bandage a finger that was sliced when attempting to teach the girls how to sharpen a hatchet.  I also got to go on the long 3rd year hike since we'd be hiking through the snow and they felt safer if I was going with them.  We hiked through the snow to the top of a mountain that overlooked the camp and the surrounding valley.  It was beautiful!

 Notice my GIANT first aid kit/fanny pack... oh yeah. I'm bringing it back in style. :)

Craig packed my lunch for the trip up the canyon. It made me smile.

After returning from girls camp, we went to my little brother, Elder Gregory Ostermiller's, mission farewell.  He gave a nice talk and it was fun to spend some time with him before he headed off to the MTC in England.  I went with my parents to the airport to drop him off.  Needless to say, I was a crying mess, but I knew he would be such a great missionary... and he is!  He's been out about 9 months now and has grown so much and is touching many lives.

While I had been gone for nearly a month and a half between Tonga, Girls Camp, and spending a week at my parent's house with Greg before he left, Craig was working two jobs and going to school full time.  When summer semester began, I started working early morning custodial with Craig and was taking two classes: History of Creativity and Economics 110.  Econ ALMOST killed me.  Since it was a summer class, it was accelerated and moved so fast! I survived with a B+ in the class though.  Woo!  Waking up at 4:30 in the morning for work isn't all that awful if you manage to get yourself to bed by 8 or 9pm.  We had a routine VERY different from many of our friends, which made having a social life rather difficult, but we still found time to play.

We went camping with some friends from the ward and hiked to a waterfall.

I continued improving my "domestic goddess" skills when my mom taught me how to bottle beans.

 We went to a Bees baseball game with our parents.  (Aren't my moms so pretty?) 

Craig turned 25 and requested crepes instead of birthday cake.  

He also studied for and took the GRE this summer.

AND.... I ran  my first half marathon with my sister-in-law Karen.  I had been training for this race for 3 months, so I was nervous, but so excited!  It felt so good!

I finished 13.1 miles in 2:14:55