Semi-Sunshine, Snakes, and Settlement Canyon

I spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning hiking in the woods with my daughter Jessica. It’s fun to have someone to go do those kinds of things with, and it’s been nice for me on occasions when she happens to be home to get to know my daughter as the woman she has become. 

We’d only gone about 400 feet….well maybe 6 or 8 (math and distance here you know….but that’s my 

guess) when we heard what I thought was an insect off to the right. Jessica yelps, jumps back and asks me if I see the rattlesnake about 8 inches off to the right in a bush.  DANG!! Apparently I hadn’t because I was giving it a very close up, delectable look at my leg. It’s funny...I have been in areas numerous times in my life where there are rattlesnakes but I’ve never run across one.  I was fascinated in a horrific kind of way.  One of us came very close to being bit this morning.  A little bit later we ran across a baby rattlesnake that someone had stepped on……Jessica was leaning down to look at it when her sunglasses fell off and hit the ground.  It startled her, and because she was looking at a snake that she wasn’t sure was dead, she screamed…. I screamed (not sure why except she startled me) and we had a good laugh. 

It was hard to take time out of my homework today and yet it was exactly what I needed.  I’m trying to take time to smell the roses, enjoy life and the people around me, while trying to avoid getting bitten by snakes along the way.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

~Thoreau

This is How We Roll on the Way to College

Long story short, I decided to be a fabulous mom this morning and help my daughter get started on her way to college and adulthood.   In true Kristin and Ashtyn style it did not go smoothly.  You’ve got to understand something here. EVERY TIME Ashtyn and I head off somewhere she needs to be, we never know where we’re going even though we’re both sure we do.  She tells me where we need to go, I think I have the general idea, and then we get there and it’s not where we’re supposed to be.  EVERY SINGLE TIME!!  Yes, I’m a slow learner.  Google, Google, Google the directions.  (We even had a conversation about doing that last time we got lost).  Apparently we have short memories or enjoy being lost and frustrated. 

So Ashtyn’s taking a concurrent enrollment class at SLCC this summer.  She has a couple of r e a l l y long days as her bus ride into Salt Lake from Stansbury is around two and a half hours one way.   When she signed up for her class, neither of us realized that the bus schedule would be so uncooperative but she’s sticking to her decision to still take the class and I give her props for that.  

Ashtyn is a small town girl at heart, not real comfortable in cities and certainly not comfortable on the city bus by herself.  I thought my taking her to school and getting her to where she needed to go would be a fun thing to do together. We both ended up frustrated. I ended up mad that we were driving around lost yet again (I’m the driver, I should have known where I was going) and she was late for her first college class.

Ashtyn, I’m proud of you for taking this step into the big, “scary” world of adulthood.  I think this will be your summer of growing up and preparing you for your last year in high school and life after.  I love you.  You’re an amazing young woman and despite our bumping heads at times I hope you know I love you to bits and pieces.  Because I do. 

Now go out there and take on the world!