July 2014 part 2

 The annual GAS reunion was up here as well. We definitely lucked out and had all our family come to us this summer. It was awesome! :) We should do that every summer, because really, Idaho is the bessst. 

Oh, before reunions got under way, it was Jenette's birthday. And I have these pictures that should be shared of that sweet and sassy sister of mine! :)
Prom 2008- we we're in the same date group and everytang!

And now pictures from the Gas reunion:

Thursday we just hung out and waited for everyone to come in.

Shooting bows

 David the jungle gym

 

Had a little surprise baby shower! It was so sweet and unexpected. 

My little helpers showing off these adorable onesies that Keri made: 

("I like big bucks" and "Idahome Boy")

 Handsome David

 

It ain't a secret that David is always the favorite. :)

 

Made ice cream and explored the property

We stayed at a cabin in Island Park and also had camp set up on my parent's property a few miles away from the rented cabin. My Dad certainly knows how to set up a camp in the middle of nowhere.

 

All the grandkiddos (except Josh who was sleeping)

Friday was spent exploring Yellowstone and West Yellowstone (again, but with different people this time, so it's all good). 

Old Faithful

 Grand Prismatic Lake- we hadn't been to this area of the geyser basin before. The contrast in colors was amazing!

 Babies babies babies!

^This picture of Wyatt could be made into some sort of meme.

And then we went to camp and had dinner and celebrated Spencer's birthday. The day before as gifts we're being brought out for the mini baby shower, Spencer was convinced that all those gift bags were for him...until he realized they weren't. Poor guy! So we really wanted to make sure to get him something special. When we were exploring West Yellowstone Spencer saw an orange camo knife that he really wanted. So when he wasn't looking we got him the knife. It was fun to watch him open it up.

^ And Nonnie got buffalo teeth necklaces for the kids. ^

Finally got to love on this ball of mush. Being so far away is hard after being so close.
And holy moly it looks a bowling ball is stuffed in my shirt. Ha! Being pregnant is weird. 

 Spencer trying out his birthday kite.

 babies in camp! 

The girls were so cute keeping Liv and Wyatt entertained playing Peek-a-Boo.

Camp bath from Liv. ^
Saturday we pretty much just packed up and headed out. It went by too fast! 

We went out to dinner at Big Jud's (where the burgers are bigger than your face!) and then Frostop for root beer floats in Ashton with friends one night after floating the river in tubes. (Idaho, we love you and your perfect summer weather! Not too hot, not too cold.)

And if your main squeeze doesn't know his way around a set of tools, then you should find a different man. JK. kind of. Tuesday night I showed David a picture of a bookcase made out of pallets that I want to put in the living room. Wednesday night- we have a bookcase!

Love it! and him.

We finally got the 2nd bedroom cleaned out and are now working on turning it into a nursery. Eeek! So excited! Goodbye July, hello August and baby preppin'!

June 2014

June flew by as I finished my internship, David kept up with online classes and taking care of the yard and garden.

We put in a fire pit! We love it! We went with the cheap way to put it together and used cinder blocks, that cut the price down about $100. :)

My garden!!!

Grass is coming in ok. Better than it used to look at least. :)

And the crab-apple tree is looking much healthier than it did last year.

After a day of boat inspections we ventured a little further north into Montana and checked out Cliff and Wade lakes. They are sooo beautiful! We decided to cook dinner at the lake and enjoy it for as long as we could. We will definitely be going back. With a boat and swimsuits next time. 

I made Uncle Klain's birthday cake! 70 years young!
We weren't really into celebrating birthdays, and we definitely never did chocolate cakes in the house I grew up in, so this was my first time making a chocolate cake. It turned out pretty good!

I finished my internship on June 14! It felt so good to come home and just be able to be home...until we left for another 3-day shift at the lake.

Floated the river with ward and my sweet visiting teachee took this awful photo! haha. I clearly didn't know where to look. David and I were the last ones in as we took our sweet time and fished the way down instead of paddling like crazy.

Headed over to Driggs for the Hunstman fireworks show.

Before the fireworks we drove into the Teton mountain range and hiked up to the Darby wind caves. It was great to be outside surrounded by beauty.

My sweet friend, Janet!
And oh yah, I'm 6 months pregnant!

 

Such a great show! One of the best I've seen. We definitely recommend it.

February 2014

February. We did some stuff. And if I didn't have pictures I wouldn't remember it. 

But first, a few things about the fun classes I'm taking this semester.

Here is one of my attempts at a corsage. Floral design is part of the required work for the Hort major, otherwise I don't think I would have taken this class, but I really love it. And I have complete and total respect for florists now. Wooza. So much skill is involved in seemingly simple things, I could never be a floral designer. 

Obviously, part of the class is flower i.d. Honestly, I could probably identify maybe 5 flowers before this class, but I'm getting close to the 100 mark now, and I think that's pretty cool. 

 

 

My second fun class this semester is clothing construction, but it is actually really hard and stressful. Here is my shirt pattern all laid out and ready to cut.

 

And here's a pair of PJ pants I made. This was our second project, the shirt is our third, and we'll be finishing the semester with a skirt. 

But seriously, the class is hard. The teacher looks at every stitch and measures everything and ahhhhh. Kind of takes the fun out of sewing, but I've learned a lot and that's what I wanted. 

  

David totally won at Valentine's Day this year. I don't care what your husband did or how much he spent, David still totally wins. The only thing we planned was trying out Chiz's- a small restaurant in St.Anthony. We drove up to St.Anthony to find that the place is beyond packed, duh, so we drove back to Rexburg and just went to Arby's. (But we did try Chiz's last weekend and it was glorious.) We went home and contemplated going to see Thor at the cheap theater. But then David whips out a treasure hunt for me! He had little clues hidden all around the house and shop attached to something- a stack of pallets he collected (I have a few projects on my to do list), a throw pillow (you can see some of it in the picture below), new boots that he got a stealer deal on (see RV photo below), and this sign that he made!

 

I was so shocked to see this and everything else. And then to see that he made this whole thing himself just brought me to tears. This is one of my favorite songs from the musical "Guys and Dolls" and I'll sing it to my mister every now and then. He found these boards, put them together, stained them, mixed paint until he had the perfect color, laid out stencils, and painted the letters in. Ohhhh my heart, my heart, be still. It is seriously so perfectly adorable and so well made. I love it so much. I should have been tipped off though because earlier in the week I texted him a line of this song (I love you, a bushel and a peck), and he responded right back with the next phrase (And a hug around the neck). So I texted the next phrase (and a barrel and a heap), and he got right back with the line after that one (and I'm talkin' in my sleep about you!). Because he'd looked up the words and was painting them totally under my nose. The other thing that totally surprised me about how he did so much, and I had no idea, is that he also had a chemistry test on Valentine's Day that he had been studying for all week. Not only was he working hard to do well on that (and he did sooo well on it!) but he was creating this thing of beauty for me. My oh my if I didn't pick a good one.  

Our friend, Janet, works for Bisch's RV, so we went to visit her at the RV show in IF on our Monday off. They had this darling little photo booth set up. My mind was BLOWN AWAY with how fancy RV's and trailers are these days. Holy moly. 

Speaking of our friends (yes, we made friends!), we tried to make an igloo in the front yard with Brandon and Janet. We got the snow all piled up in one place, and then you have to wait to let it "compact." At least, that's Brandon the igloo building expert said. And of course after we get our mountain built we don't have snow for 2 weeks and everything melts. Sigh. But it did snow all day yesterday, and it's supposed to be colder this week, so maybe we'll get to dig out our igloo after all.

AND THEN we had a spontaneous trip down to Utah. We really wanted to play with family, and we'd been thinking heading down there for a quick weekend for a while. And then Friday morning we got a text from Joseph saying that we should come down and pick him up from the SLC airport (as he had a job interview in Salt Lake that weekend). So we decided to go for it. And it was great. We finished classes and work on Friday and got to Provo around 10 that night. We played hard on Saturday and then just hung out on Sunday. And it just so happened that my brother, Daniel, and his wife, Tricia, were singing in sacrament mtg for their ward and I was able to be their piano accompanist on Sunday. No wonder we felt so good about bugging out of town. We got to see a lot of family and offer some of our services- taxi, child care, and piano skills. Pretty much, it's a really sad situation if we're not your aunt, uncle, brother, or sister. ;)

I got to hang out with these guys all day on Saturday as we rode the train up to Salt Lake and then played in the city. (David was grabbing Joe from the airport and they went to the BYU basketball game) Afterwards we met up with everyone for dinner. We got to see Daniel's family and Jenette and just enjoy being with the fam.

Krugh was beyond excited to ride the train, always saying things from Thomas the Train- clickety clack down the track....

And Jade is beyond adorable always. 

Just look at that face!!!! (not mine) She kind of looks like she's from Whoville in this picture. tehehe.

And we finally got to see this new little one. She is such a doll! Such a happy, happy, girl that just smiles at you all day long. (I didn't think to get a picture of her when she was actually awake.)   

Good gravy, I wanted to take her home with us.