The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

One of the things I love about living in Phoenix is that most people here live in houses (vs. apartments), making it easy to ding dong ditch. Last weekend Amanda and I made these delicious oatmeal chocolate caramel bars . We were planning on just dropping them off to the other ladies in our small group, but then decided to take it to the next level and looked up random people in the church directory and left a few treats at other people's houses, too. I'm thinking this will be a monthly activity- keeping an eye on the bulletin for people who have prayer requests, then anonymously leaving treats at their house. Well, not totally anonymously; we left little cards that said they were from "your friends at Trinity." This was so much fun. I got to try a new recipe (that was SO good!) and drive around the city giggling with Amanda. I'm already looking for next month's recipe!

I had quite an adventure up on the Rim a few weeks ago. I decided to spend my Saturday doing a loop drive in my Arizona Backcountry Adventures book. The first part was rated a 2 and was just an easy dirt road. The second part was rated a 4, and this is where my trouble started. Bernie has this book and has told me I shouldn't do anything harder than a 3. I learned in Silverton that he was right. But I want to do a loop, not just drive back the way I came. The first obstacle was crazy rocks. Like, I didn't event think my tires would be capable of crawling over them. I had to get out every few feet and plan my route very carefully. After two stretches like this, I knew there was no way I could go back the way I came. I was also really impressed with my Subaru. When I stopped to open a gate, I saw an older man on a 4-wheeler. (It was pretty crowded up there that day.) He informed me that it was the first day of hunting season and said everyone was talking about the lady i

Lately I've been realizing that the things that make me a good teacher are not-so-desirable traits in the real world. Stubborn This is helpful when dealing with a difficult student. If a kid tries to argue with me... Well, I feel sad for him/her, because I will always win. This causes problems in my personal life when everyone is trying to tell me that something is a bad idea, and I refuse to listen. Trying to save people This is a great trait for teachers to have, right? Seeing a kid who's in trouble and trying to turn their life around by loving them and setting a good example and giving them good advice... Unfortunately, this does not work so well when people are grown. I have a problem with wanting to save people. I get downright pushy when I'm trying to fix their lives. And the more I love you, the worse I get.  It's really hard for me to acknowledge that people have to take responsibility for their own lives. Picky I am picky about most things in life. Th

Bernie and I headed up to Utah for the long weekend. We drove late into the night on Friday, entertaining ourselves with silly songs. If we ever had kids, we would be THAT family that sings on long car rides. Finally, we found the cabin we wanted to camp near. We spent a long time driving on dirt roads on Saturday. We stopped when we saw a herd of wild horses. They came right up to our car and let us pet them. We took advantage of the $5 all-you-can-eat buffet at Lotsa Motsa Pizza and headed down Skatumpah Road to Bull Valley Gorge. I've been wanting to do this canyon since I saw it on my last trip. It's deep and dark and narrow, and a truck crashed into it in the 1950's. The bodies were extracted, but the truck remains, and a bridge was built on top of it. We hiked up canyon and saw big, deep pools. Yuck. I wasn't in the mood to go swimming. We decided to drop in towards the end and explore up canyon as long as we felt like it. On our way bac