ahhh...to be spring again

Today I received three emails from my dad--the great white hunter as many of my male counterparts call him. They are all worthy of a little "blog time."

#1: The first was in response to some quotes I sent him from To Kill a Mockingbird [Brent and I are in the process of reading this together at night, on the phone--- which my students think is the weirdest thing ever]. These were the quotes I sent him [if you haven't read this book...go to your local library, check it out, read, and send me your report--you will love it!] :

--Scout: "I had recieved the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had."

--Atticus to Jem: "I wanted you to see what real courage was, instead of getting the idea that courage was a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

Dad sent me back this one from John Wayne [sigh, another American classic]:

--A hero isn't any braver than any other man, he's just braver five minutes longer.

#2: He took this picture in our backyard...he said they eventually counted 32 deer! I find this completely insane and almost a little bit creepy: [kind of hard to see, but all those black dots, DEERS! -- yes I know the plural form of deer is deer, but the s was added for comic relief]

#3: To understand this email you have to know I took a trip to Glacier Park, Montana with three other girls last May [after school]. We DROVE all the way and CAMPED for a week [I slept in the car because I was afraid of da bears!]. It was absolutely stunning country and it was a pretty decent time [sometime, you'll have to ask me how I raised money for said trip if you do not know, because it is an interesting story]. A few pictures now to share this trip with you before the email from Dad:

I was very proud of how we loaded the trunk. This is the luggage of four girls AND camping supplies AND food for a week-- I think we loaded and reloaded this thing 5 times a day!

After a very long day/night in the car, me and the chicas arrived at 10 am-ish. We really did not want to put that tent up! But it was beautiful surroundings!

Absolutely stunning: the view, not so much the girl standing in front of the view who had been in a car for 14 hours.

We got pretty creative with meals while we were there [by the way, did I mention these were "primitive campgrounds"-- which meant no showers froa week...check out the nest of hair on my head!]

At night it got down to the upper 30's/lower 40's. We slept with a lot of layers on-- and prayed we didn't need a "potty" break in the middle of the night.

All in all, it was a good trip with beautiful surroundings [check out the TEAL water behind me...apparently the water runs off the rocks which are this blue/green color and ends up making the lakes the same--our guide for white-water rafting, which we got a discount on because the water was barely above freezing in May!, told us this information.

All in all, like I said, it was a good trip and I was happy --- except when I saw the occasional RED SIGN!

Which brings us back to the email my dad sent me today [remember, the great white hunter?] Well, the email said the following: These pictures are from a guy in Montana, he came across a dead deer while hunting, so he set up a trail cam to see what critters might show up...he was rather surprised when he downloaded the photos.

I don't think I would have wanted to wake up to those brown eyes!!! You should all be thankful I'm still alive. And I'll leave you with that as this was a rather long post today...sorry!