Well, I figured I'd better get my blog updated before April got hers updated. Below is a small collection of the pictures I took while I was visiting family over the 4th of July.

For anyone who might not already know, I surprised a good portion of my family by going home as a surprise for my mom's birthday on June 23rd. I flew in to SLC on the 22nd and took the shuttle up to I.F. where my dad and mom picked me up. Mom had no idea who they were picking up because she couldn't think of who would be coming home since I'm in school, Robyn's out of the country, and April was going to be visiting in a couple of weeks. I'm very happy that the surprise worked out so well.

The Idaho Falls fireworks were nice to see too although we did discover why we love being on the other side of the river. I absolutely loved being at home and just spending time with family. I couldn't believe how much I had missed my family and how much my nieces and nephews had grown (take a look at Tanner!). I spent a few days in Woodruff with Penny and her family. I was able to see her new fence and the pigs that the boys are raising. I was very glad to finally be able to see what I'd been hearing about for a while. :) I also got to take August and Addison to the movies which was nice. Another fun thing I did while I was at home was help Brandon surprise Britney by getting the basement insulated and sheet rocked. We didn't get all of the sheet rock up but we got most of it and you can really start to see how the basement will look once it's done. Another project I had while I was at home was getting a bunch of old family photos scanned in for my grandma as well. Any family members wishing for a copy of those just needs to contact GG or my dad to see if they can send a CD or something. :) I had almost three weeks at home and I felt like I barely had any time there but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Busy Month

Wow. I don't really even know where to start. I haven't had a busy month yet but this month is going to be busy. My normal schedule is school from 6:45 - 1:00 then work from 2:00 - 7:00. I don't work on Fridays but I volunteer to help with a race team instead. This month I will be volunteering at two races, a carnival, and hopefully a contest amongst the NASCAR pit crews. I won't find out if I can volunteer for that one until Monday or Tuesday. The Pit Crew Challenge is on 05/19, the All-Star Race is on 05/22, the carnival is on 05/23, and the Coca-Cola is on 05/30. This is still in addition to my normal volunteering for the race team. I'm pretty excited. Volunteering for the races pretty much means I will be helping drunk people locate their seats for the race before and during it. It also means that I get to watch the race for free. :) At the carnival I am going to be in charge of the velcro wall. It's supposed to be for kids but I don't how young of kids it's supposed to be. I personally would LOVE to try it out and I have a friend or two who are going to the carnival who would like to try it out. For the carnival I just have to work for a few hours then I get to just hang out at the carnival if I want to. And I get free shirts which is an added bonus. Free clothing works for me. :)

I am also looking for a new place to live. My roommate's boyfriend is going to move in and he has two kids so she would like to have her extra two rooms emptied by the end of the summer. So far I am not having any luck but I do have a few months to look. I would love to have a place of my own for a change but that is just out of my price range at the moment. I'm not really looking forward to packing up my stuff either. I can't believe how much stuff I have. I know most of it fit in my car for the trip out here but I just don't see how it did. Good thing I'll be able to make multiple trips this time around.

Playing catch up

Ok, it's been a while so I'm trying to play a little bit of catch up. For the slideshow above just scroll over a picture to get a view of the entire picture. A good portion of the pictures are from a volunteer opportunity I had for a fundraiser for Victory Juntion Gang. VJG is a camp for "kids with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses". It is 100% free to the families and there are cabins that they get to stay at while they are there too. There are a few pictures from a trip to Myrtle Beach that I went on with my friend Ashley just so we could say that we went to Myrtle Beach.

I've been putting off updating my blog because I haven't felt like uploading all of the pictures and creating a slideshow then writing about it. That's what happens when you fall behind. The longer you put it off the harder it is to get it done. So here goes. I'm going to write a brief outline of what I've done over the past months.

I spent Thanksgiving with my roommates Thomas and Sara at their mom's house with their family. I have been lucky to have good roommates. Whenever I hang out with the kids from school it just makes me even more thankful for my roommates because they are drama free. I like my school and everything that I am learning but it is primarily made up of barely-out-of-high school kids and this is their first experience living away from home. I have to admit...I'm feeling too old for that.

Christmas I spent here in North Carolina and I had the house to myself. My roommates went on vacation with their mom for a few days. I did get to Skype with my family for Christmas which was a nice compromise to not being able to physically be home for the holidays. Unfortunately there was no snow for Christmas itself but we did get a little snow the week before. The snow only stuck around for a couple of days which was my perfect idea of snow. I like to see it for a little bit then it can go away and I'm happy.

School has been going great. I earned my second SOC pin (Student of the Class) in Automatic Transmissions. Student of the Class is the person who has the highest overall score in class and I have come close in most of my classes so it was nice to get a second one. My first one was from my Service Writing class. I really wanted SOC in Auto Trans because I got my lowest grade in Manual Trans and getting the highest grade in Auto Trans, in my head anyway, makes it even. :) I just completed my second NASCAR course which was Chassis applications. The NASCAR classes are my favorite because they are so relaxed AND they start 15 minutes later than the core classes. Starting 15 minutes later allows me to sleep in an additional 30 minutes because I don't have to sit in traffic waiting to get to school. I have fabrication classes for my next three classes and those are NASCAR classes as well. I'm so excited to be able to sleep in until 6:00 for the next 9 weeks. It's pathetic I know. I still have some core classes to go through so it's going to be hard switching back to the earlier schedule.

I have been volunteering with a race team up in Hickory for the last couple of weekends. It's a great experience that lets me experience what it's like to help out in a shop and see if it's something I really want to do. I have only been able to help out getting the cars loaded and going to the track and then helping at the track but it has been a lot of fun. I've been helping with a small team that races on asphalt and the guys have been great. I pretty much just go and pick up the race tires once we get to the track, fill them up with air, measure their size, then when another guy decides which tire is going where on the car, I put them on the car. I get to fill the cars with race gas as well. Race gas smells different and looks different than regular gas. It's kind of got a flowery smell and it's a bluish purple. Pretty cool. Once we are done with the race, I take the race tires off and bring them back to the officials.

And that's the last five or so months in a nutshell. I'll really try to stay up to date with my blog so the information I provide has a little more detail and isn't just a sentence or two explaining what's been going on. :D

Jail and Racing

Usually those two words together are not good but when you live in the heart of the racing community (for NASCAR anyway) it's not a bad thing. I had the opportunity to go to the second annual Jail and Bail event on October 14th and then the last race at Lowe's Motor Speedway on October 17th (the track will have a new name next year).

Wednesday, October 14th I went to the Jail and Bail. The Jail and Bail event is actually pretty cool in my opinion. The event is a fundraiser for scholarship money for girls (like me) that want to go into mechanics and want to attent UTI or NTI. As far as I know I don't qualify for it since I am already attending school but I'm going to look into it and find out for sure. At the event they have a bunch of different drivers that they put in "jail" and you can either donate money to get them out of jail or donate money to increase their bail amount. There is a judge there that sets the bail amount for each driver and they also do an auction as well. The drivers will take money from you there so I gave some money to Kevin Harvick because he is Robyn's driver. My driver wasn't there but he did donate money to one of the people in jail to get her out (she is an announcer on the Speed channel). I gave money to Kevin pretty much to make Robybn jealous. That's pretty much my goal while I am out here...do everything I can that Robyn would like to do then send her pictures. :) At the fundraiser they also had the country music artist Tracy Atkins (I could totally be spelling his name wrong too) and that was pretty cool. It was misting that day so there wasn't a huge turn out for the event as far as I could tell but they did raise a lot of money and it was more up close and personal than I ever expected it to be.

Saturday, October 17th I went to the race. Yes, I went by myself and yes, it was very scary to do by myself. Sometimes you just want someone to do stuff with but I don't really have anyone that I hang out with too much yet. I hang out with a girl named Ashley but she was working that day so she couldn't go. The only thing I regret about the race is the fact that I did not dress warm enough. I froze my butt off. It was nice to go to a different track since I have only been to the one in Phoenix so far and I did notice a difference. Biggest difference to me was that this race track didn't seem as loud to me. Don't get me wrong, it was plenty loud but it either wasn't as loud as Phoenix or my memory of Phoenix made is wrong. Either one is a possiblity.

Today I had the day off from work so I went to Kevin Harvick, Inc. pretty much just to make Robyn jealous. A lot of the racing facilities aren't open to the public on the weekend so I don't get to check them out like I would like to. Kevin's facility was the farthest away that I'd found so I figured I'd get it today and maybe hit some of the closer ones next Wednesday. I've posted pictures from that trip so I hope you enjoy them. I'm working on the slideshow of the rest of the stuff I have done over the last few weeks so I'll try to get that posted tonight too.

I am currently taking my third class which is manual drivetrain (aka manual transmission plus mroe). I'm getting a good grade but I don't feel like I've learned that much. It's not that they aren't teaching it; I'm just not retaining it like I would like to. I've had to do more studying for this class than I have for the other two classes but it just isn't clicking. I know once it clicks it will be super easy. I'm hoping it clicks soon. I have mixed feelings about getting good grades when I feel like I don't know anything. On the plus side though, I did get the highest grade in the class on my last class and I will be getting a pin to wear on my ID badge. One person in each class gets that so I'm pretty happy that I get one. I hope to get more in the future because it is something that you can put on your resume and everything. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I'm dead tired but I figured I better update my blog before I start getting chewed out by certain family members. :D