Mel's New Job!

I finally got a new job!! I am so excited about it and I get payed a lot more!! I am working at the Christmas Box House which is a shelter for victims of child abuse and neglect. I will be working in the crisis nursery with the children and give them lots of love! I am really excited but I am also sad to leave my other kids at school!

X-Terra/Snowbird Trail Race

Today, we went to Snowbird for my second of 4 X-terra Trail Races. This one was much harder than the first, we were about 4k feet higher in elevation that I'm used to, so that made it pretty interesting. We did a lot of climbing but it was pretty fun - once we finished anyway! I got first in my age group (16th overall) so I got an X-terra medal to add to my wall of fame at home. After the race we hung out at the resort with our friends (Eric, who ran with me) and his family for the afternoon. It was a beautiful day and not too hot up in the mountains. It was 85 degrees up there and 105 degrees down in the valley where we live...little bit of a change once you get into the Mtns. We have 2 more races to go, and depending on how I place in those I may get invited to go to Lake Tahoe for the X-terra National Trail Race Championship. We'll keep you posted on that.

Trip to Moab

After running the Ogden Marathon in May, we took Mom and Daddy down to Moab, UT to check out the scenery down there. It's like being on a different planet. This is in Arches Nat'l Park where we spent most of our time. There are over 2,000 natural arches similar to this one in the park, some have only been discovered in the past few years. We also went to Canyonlands Nat'l Park on the way back home. Canyonlands is the most unexplored region of the United States, so we didn't get too far off the beaten path. We had great weather (it was actually kind of cool), and I'm sure Mel was glad we didn't have to stay in the Best Western like we did on our first trip to Moab. It was a fun trip, hopefully we can take a few more of these in the next couple years!

Packing up to move

We're packing up our house and getting ready to move on base 9 August. We got the absolute last house available on base and are looking forward to being closer to most of our friends as well as me being closer to work. We'll send you updates and pictures as we get them!

Welcome to our blog!

Hey! Welcome to our Blog. Melanie and I are still out here all by ourselves in Northern Utah. We're missing the Southeast lifestyle, but we are having a lot of fun exploring the new places out west and making new friends. I am still working in the 649th Munitions Squadron at Hill Air Force Base; it's a lot of fun so far, so hopefully it stays that way. We will probably be here for about 2 1/2 to 3 more years before PCSing somewhere else - possibly Boston or down by Ft. Walton Beach in Florida. But, we've got a while before that happens. Melanie is going to be working as a nanny for a family she met out here and she really likes them and their kids, so now she can get out of her job in the daycare. It's definitely a lot different out here than anywhere else we've lived. We live right between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountain Range of the Rockies (about 2 miles from each); but, we are also only about an hour and a half from the desert so there are plenty of places to go tour on the weekends. Our door is always open to friends and family, so let us know if you want to come out to go hiking or skiing, or if you just want to come because you miss us so much:)