Summer is a time to de-stress and relax after the constant work both students and teachers have to do over the year. Christi Virts plans on spending her summer finishing and moving into her new home — which she built.

Virts, who teaches med-prep classes, has spent the last six months constructing a house with her husband. With the experience gained from building the house she currently lives in, she hoped to fix all those things they did poorly in the process of building their current house.

“We talked about it years and years ago, because we built the house we’re currently in, so we thought […] we knew what we did wrong.  [We were questioning if we should] build another house, and then opportunity presented itself, and we didn’t make the decision until December,” she said.  “So then we started coming up with some house plans and now it’s almost done.”

Now that she’s about ready to finish with the huge workload of building a house and the school year, she plans to de-stress over the summer with the outdoorsy activities she loves to do.

“For just me de-stressing, we have kayaks, and I love to go kayaking,” Virts said. Her ideal place to kayak is in Glacier, she said, though since that’s not always in reach, she is totally cool with an evening kayak on the Missouri, which she described as “super, super relaxing.”

Virts also treats her summer as a time to go on camping trips with her family, where she says she spends quality time with her kids playing board games and other activities. She said her daughters don’t share her love of relaxing on a kayak. They prefer a more thrilling experience, like being pulled fast on tubes.