happy days

Happy Martin Luther King Day yesterday!

Happy Inauguration Day today! It's been hard for me to focus on my work today as I have the TV on in the background. It's just so exciting and emotional!

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted. Christmas came and went. We were blessed with perfect weather all the days we drove between Montana and Iowa--pretty lucky since the weather before, during and after had been kind of treacherous. Christmas was fun and relaxing, but way too fast, as always. It was good to see family again, and it was good to get home to Bozeman.

Honestly, not a lot is going on here lately. Josh has been back at school for a couple of weeks now. I think it was a bit difficult to go back, but it seems mostly smooth now. I started my semester last week--I'm teaching another class online, this time it's creative writing. Starting to work on reading my exam list in earnest.

Josh and I are also taking some dancing lessons, which has been pretty fun. It's just basic ballroom, and so far we've learned the foxtrot. Ballroom dancing is yet one more thing that looks easy, but is actually pretty complicated to carry off well! A lot of men are like limp noodles and don't really direct very well (they're supposed to lead since the woman is always moving backwards and thus can't ever see where she's going). So I've crashed into quite a few people, thanks to the mens' lack of leading. I'm happy to report that Josh is a good leader, and I like dancing with him the best.

I think it's a little funny that we've completely missed all the frigid temperatures that so much of the Midwest has experienced lately. Here we are up in the mountains and we've just been having lovely, sunny weather. We went and did a little more exploring this past weekend. Nothing too thrilling, but maybe pictures are more interesting than my words.

We came across this old elevator in a little canyon:

I just couldn't get enough of that miniature horse on the left side of the picture. Too bad you can't see it better:

Also hard to see--a bunch of deer in the middle of a field:

Tra la la!

This looked like an old mine shaft in the side of a hill:

This is going really far back, all the way to Christmas. I took this picture because Josh and Scott (brother-in-law) were both napping the same way and even wearing the same outfit:

And here they're having a special moment together: