WICKED

On Wednesday the girls and I decided to take a break from school and go have some fun in the city!

We bought tickets!

Tickets to the musical Wicked!

We even got all dressed up! 

Curled hair, fancy dresses, and painful shoes. 

 

It was really good and the whole time I was just so enthralled in the story. 

It really explains the whole wizard of Oz movie. 

Now I want to watch the wizard of Oz again since its been like forever since I've seen it!

The actors and actresses all had amazing voices and the songs were so... catchy :) 

The only bad part.... 

Walking and driving through San Francisco at night. 

The traffic was bad, there signs were so confusing and there were bums in sleeping bags on the sidewalks.

We made it out though :)

Here's a group shot of all us girls :)

The theater was so awesome too! I would have taken a picture of the inside, but no cameras were allowed. 

Here is a picture of the outside though!

 

If you have a chance to go to San Francisco or anywhere else it's playing I would definetly recommend it! 

"Toss Toss" 

Black & White Wednesday

As I was driving home from my boyfriends house this weekend I couldn't keep my eyes on the road. 

Spring has come in California and the hills are all green and the flowers are blooming. 

Along this certain road that I sometimes drive, there are hundreds of these wind mills.

I am in love with wind mills.

I really like the old wood ones but these ones are awesome too.

I think they are just the coolest looking things. 

They look so big and powerful.

I wish I could have gotten some better pictures but its not very easy to take a picture while driving on curvy busy one way road. :)

To check out more Black & White Photos Go to The Long Road to China 

Beauty

 

"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart." 

-Helen Keller-

 

Black & White Wednesday

I really wanted to share some photos from my black & white film class, but the problem with the film class is that I have all the photos on paper but not on my computer. I don't have a scanner here at school with me :/ so I had to go digging through some old photos and decided to share some photos from one of my favorite vacations.

In August 2007, my family went to Alaska for a fishing trip. I was never much into fishing but we had soooooo much fun!

The guides did all the hard work (put the icky bate on the end of the hook) and all we'd have to do is cast and catch some fish!

The scenery and wildlife was also awesome!

We also had some wonderful weather. I guess it usually rains there during August, but the whole week we were there it was around 60 degrees! 

So here are some of the photos from the trip converted to Black & White

 There were tons of bears everywhere! 

In this picture, the bears were just having a good ole' time wrestling :)

Most of the time, they just kept to themselves.

 

My sister being silly with some moose horns

The view across the lake, before a storm.   

My sister and a fish she caught, most of the fish we caught were around this size.

I just wanted to share this last picture because this mountain no longer looks like this... 

I don't know if you remember, but last summer this Mountain, Mt. Redoubt, erupted.

To check out more Black & White Wednesday photos go to The Long Road to China

He loves me :)

I know this is a little late, but I just wanted to share the beauty with you. 

 

My wonderful amazing boyfriend got me flowers for my Valentines Day!

Today was a beautiful sun shiny! 

It felt like spring and my tulips decided to open up for the sunshine! 

 

and even without color their beautiful. 

I love these flowers. 

They just brighten everything up :)

Happy Valentines Day!

Where there is love....

There is Life.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

 Happy Birthday Daddy! 

Today, my daddy turns 53!

There is so much I could say about my dad I don't even know where to start! 

Thank you dad for always being there for me and giving me great advice. 

 

Thank you for never being boring.

Thank you for not growing up haha :)

Thank you for not raising me to be a girly girl. 

Thank you for teaching me how to survive in the outdoors. 

Thank you for teaching me to hunt. 

 

Thank you for everything. 

Thank you for being the best daddy ever! 

I love you! 

Ha Ha Friday

In June of 2007 my small senior class of 12, snuck onto school grounds sometime after midnight with a devious plan in mind.

I don't know if its really considered sneaking though when you use a key! :D
I guess that's the good thing about having parents involved with your school hehe

Earlier in the year, our principal said to me... "Katy, don't let your dad get hurt helping you guys with the senior prank" haha wow she know's my family pretty well. My dad didn't get hurt but he was the brains behind the whole operation :)

My dad had the great idea too....



If you can't tell what it is from the not so great picture... It's a huge boulder on a huge truck.

Yep, we hauled (or should I saw my dad's truck driver) a huge boulder onto school grounds in the middle of the night

And then decided to paint it, because after making such a great gesture of school pride... we had to let everyone know that the senior class of 2007 did this!

We also had to conquer the senior prank from class of 2006. Their prank was also pretty good.... They dug a big hole and stuck a huge log in it.
The log and rock will always be apart of the school. I think it would be to much work to remove them! I have so many memories from that school. I went to the same school from 1st grade to 12th grade. My sister will be graduating this year and it will be interesting to see what my dad comes up with for their senior prank ;)

Ahh I miss high school

Black & White Wednesday

Since it's almost Valentines Day I thought I'd post one of my favorite pictures of my valentine :)
I took this picture about three years ago on a camping trip in Eastern Oregon.
We took the guns out to a gravel pit to do some target shooting.
I love how the black and white makes it look rugged and really brings out the contrast.
He didn't know I was taking the picture, which makes it even better because it wasn't posed. I think those are the best kinds of pictures. 
The mountains also make for a great background.

I love my cowboy. I love you Trevor!

To join in or see more black and white photographs, go to The Long Road to China

Tahoe

Last week, my weekend started on Wednesday!

Why?

Well I don't have classes on Thursday and my school decided not to have classes on Friday :)

So I signed up (along with 70 other students!) to go on the Business Club snow trip to Tahoe!

So a few friends and I piled everything into my truck and headed to the mountains!

We went snowboarding at Sierra and I was a little nervous because it was the first time I had been snowboarding in three years!

The beginning of the day was a little rough but with a little help and inspiration from Jocey, :) I was on my way to being pro! haha ya right

 

( Me and Jocey)

(Me right after I crashed lol)

(Mik)

(Peace Out Jocey!)

We snowboarded most of Thursday and the weather was great! After that tho, we were exhausted and headed back to the cabins. We spent the night chilling in the hot tub and rented a movie to watch.

Friday morning we woke up early ready for another day of snowboarding!
The snow conditions were a little better on Friday because it had snowed overnight.
The sun was shining too!

I started to get the feel of snowboarding again and even tried a baby jump! I landed the first time but the second time (which we were trying to photograph) didn't turn out so well. The photographer (mik) also didn't take the picture fast enough and just captured the landing, or should I say the massive fall that resulted in pain in my neck and wrist.

We stopped snowboarding a little earlier on Friday because we were all so sore and tired from snowboarding two days in a row. As soon as we got back to the cabin we all napped for a couple hours. Friday night we ate dinner at the main cabin with everyone. We also had a nice worship service (which reminds me! I forgot to sign the worship credit list!).

We decided to skip snowboarding on Saturday and find some fun stuff to do in Tahoe!
The snow was coming down hard when we woke up and didn't stop all day!

For breakfast we went to this yummy waffle house. It was super cute and small. I like those good ole' family restaurants, where everyone knows everyone :). After breakfast we headed to the shopping center to get some coffee! Nothing like some coffee (with lots of creamer and yummy flavor stuff) on a cold day!

We really wanted to find some roads to go four-wheeling on in our trucks but that was a failure and we drove to the lake instead.

I had never seen Tahoe lake before, and I'm still not sure I can count our visit there because the snow was coming down so far you could barely see anything.

(An attempt at a group photo, minus me)

(Jocey and Mik)

  

(Amanda using my umbrella trying to stay snowflake free)

  

(The 3 girls and Klint)

 

(I had some fun editing this one :) )

After our adventure the lake we decided to go see a movie. 

 We watched Book of Eli and it was really good. 

At first I was confused because I had no idea what the movie was about, but it was good! It had a good message about the word of God. It taught that no matter how much we read the Bible the important part is that we apply what we learn from our readings and live our lives for God. I recommended this movie! 

After the movie we ate some dinner, got in the hot tub again, and played card games the rest of the night. 

Super fun weekend filled with awesome friends! Also, a very exhausting weekend...

 

Black & White Wednesday

I took a bunch of pictures last weekend when I went to San Francisco. I find bridges fascinating because I grew up in Oregon and we don't have any bridges like this. Every time I go over a bridge I'm just in awe.
It was such a gorgeous day and a awesome day trip! This is one of my favorites :)

This is the original


I edited this picture in Lightroom and used the aged filter on this


And here it is in Black and White!


Go check out more Black & White Wednesday photos at The Long Road to China

Would You Believe?

I'm taking a tax class right now and my text book has sections called "Would You Believe?"

Well this particular fact blew my mind...

Filing fake tax returns in popular in prisons. The Treasury Inspector General estimated that prison inmates received bogus refunds of nearly $15 million in 2004. The IRS managed to stop refunds on most but not all fraudulent returns. One inmate said that he used the extra cash to buy "shoes, a color TV, a jam box, and lots of drugs." (Wall Street Journal, "Tax Report," July 6, 2005) On October 15, 2008, the president signed the inmate Fraud Prevention Act, meant to curb prison tax return abuses.



p.s. If you have any questions about tax, feel free to ask :)
I feel like a tax expert after reading this text book
I've even been giving my parents advice on how to add up those deductions