Hey folks, 34 days until classes start!

This Summer has gone so fast, and it’s hard to believe that in a month I’ll be at ERAU.

I think I’m more excited about this school year and consequently the three after that than I have been about anything for awhile. Second to getting to fly helicopters every week, I think I’m looking forward to Army ROTC the most. I know it will be challenging but I really enjoy pushing myself physically, and I think it will be a great way to get to know people really well while learning some great skills. I’ve always liked backpacking/hiking/climbing, running, and shooting stuff, so it should be a good fit.

Once after spending two weeks building trails and backpacking in new mexico my crew spent the last day by getting up at 3:00am, and hiking over 7 mountains, and then making brownies 🙂 it worked out to about 32 miles, I don’t think I’ve ever slept better than I did that night, even though I was crunched up on a rock on the top of a mountain.

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, we had a big family reunion, I played a couple of softball games, took a defensive driving class to dismiss a speeding ticket I got (what a way to spend a saturday) and spent almost a week at my grandma’s house with one of my cousins from Denver.

The softball team had our first big loss last week when I wasn’t there, so I guess I must not be completely useless out there. we have a couple tournament games tonight that should be fun, even though only 4 of us showed up for practice this week.

Spending a week at my grandma’s house was a really fun time, we played a lot of games, went fishing, and searched through some of the large collection of stuff my grandpa accumulated in his shed over his lifetime (he pretty much filled up a 50’X100’ steel building) He has boxes of books that were published well before 1900, several of them dating back to the early 1800’s and before, so it makes for some interesting reading.

My cousin Nate and I went up to my Uncle Gary’s Lake house one afternoon and spent a few hours out on the lake, I got some good wakeboarding time in,and Nate did some tubing, and then we just hung out for awhile.

                            
The next day we went fishing with my grandma, we were talking about it and realized it had been about 9 years since the last time the three of us had been fishing, it was kind of slow, but still fun.

Here’s Nate & Grandma with a couple Catfish and a Bass.
     

And then toward the end of the week Nate and I drove out to Lincoln, NE and I showed him around there a little and he got a few things from the university bookstore, then we got together for dinner with three of our other cousins. We didn’t have any idea how big of a deal it would be to our older relatives that family from our generation was getting together on our own without our parents or grandparents making us, they were extremely thrilled, so much so that grandma made copies of the picture we took and ended up giving a copy to each of our parents, and several other relatives.
                               Nate, Jamie, Me(Jonathan) Matt, & Dave

Now I just need to start doing some clothes shopping before I move down to Prescott, I just ripped the knee out of my favorite pair of jeans this morning 🙁

I’ll see you all soon!
PS: Aren’t we supposed to hear about roommates and all that pretty soon?