Year in Review Part Two: July ish - August

At the very end of the summer we took a week vacation and went to Southern Idaho. We were travelling for a week and a half and packed a LOT of stuff into our time! The reason for our trip was so that we could golf in a charity tournament that my Mom was planning to benefit a close family friend who had recently been paralyzed in a terrible car accident. We also wanted to go camping at Red Fish Lake for Dan's 28th birthday! Below are some pictures of highlights from the trip. Not pictured is the race we went to with my Dad in Twin Falls - where we got the extra special treat of watching "The Trailer Race of Destruction."

The Justin Kris memorial Golf Tournament. Planned and executed by my Mom and Aunt Jan, pictured below. Everybody got to spend the day playing in a really fun golf scramble, and all of the proceeds went to benefit Justin and his family. Even Dan's grandpa came from Idaho Falls to play. Below is a picture of Justin with my sister Rissie.

Dan's birthday dinner at the Texas RoadHouse with my parents.

Camping at Red Fish Lake - we spent most of our time on the lake in Dan's new raft. We really enjoyed parking our Subaru with the raft on the roof in the parking lot with all of the giant trucks and their giant boats. It made us feel young and poor. We did a lot of fishing, hiking, and mountain biking while we were there. At night we played cards around the fire. It was a very relaxing way to end the summer before school started for me in the Fall.

Going to the Chubbuck days parade where each of our nieces and nephews collected a GIANT bag of candy! This was a real parade where they are still able to throw candy. That's right, throw it. In Moscow you have to hand it out.

(Darci, Kyleigh, Mandie, and Katelyn)

Darci's brother Nate spent the summer working for a racing team out of Twin Falls. In early August the team came to race at the Post Falls Speedway - which was really exciting because this gave us an opportunity to see my brother AND go to our first race! Nate's girlfriend Shanelle lives in Moscow so she joined us for the trip. Dan is going to be a speedway fan for life! The day after the races Nate had some free time before he had to catch his plane home, so we all went to River Front park in Spokane. This is where they held the 1974 World Fair, which our Mom attended with her parents and one of her sisters. Nate did not know this, but after I told him we decided to take a picture with the memorial for our Mom. We enjoyed the scenic view of the waterfalls while we ate giant snow cones. It was a lot of fun - and helped convince Nate that he should move up North. Actually, I think his girlfriend convinced him, but I like to take partial credit.

(Darci, Dan, and Nate at RiverFront Park in Spokane)

(Darci and Nate at the speedway in Post Falls)

During the summer we decided to borrow Matt's little green short bus and take a group of our friends on the Bovill run. Basically, that is a drinking trip in which you drive from Moscow to Bovill hitting every bar along the way. There are a lot of bars between here and Bovill. Dan was our DD and we had an absolute blast!

(Bekah, Darci, and Renae on the Bovill Run)

At the end of July I took a trip to Orange County to visit my BFF Jenny. She moved there about a year ago to attend grad school, which is nice because now I have an excuse to visit sunny California when it gets too cold in Moscow. I went down in July because I wanted to see her prego, and she was due in August. It was a lovely trip, and we spent most of our time lounging at the pool, shopping, and catching up. We did go into LA one night for a comedy show, which was a very funny experience for more than one reason!

(Darci with BFF Jenny and soon to be baby Gus in Fullerton, CA)

Year In Review - Part one, January - July-ish

One of my new years resolutions (in 2008) was to start a blog, so I figure that getting it up and running in 2009 isn't really that bad! That is about how long it took me to convince Dan that it was a good idea to have a blog our friends and family could read and keep up to date on all the wonderful things happening in our life. Dan didn't believe me when I told him that people would read it, but now that we are having a baby he is convinced that everybody will flock to our blog to see pictures of our beautiful baby. So here is our first post - a brief review of the year 2008, complete with pictures. At least I hope so, I have no idea what I am doing so the pictures may very well be out of order.

(Dan standing on top of his igloo in East City Park)

The year started our FREEZING cold and our entire region was declared a national disaster zone because we had so much snow. One day in late January we had so much snow that both of our offices were closed for a snow day! So, naturally, we went to the city park to build a giant igloo. This is one of Dan's favorite winter activities. It took us an entire day, but when it was done it was tall enough for Dan to stand up in, and strong enough for Dan to stand on. Before we were even done building it dozens of people were coming through the park taking photos and asking to see the inside. We went back a few weeks later and there were paths leading up to the igloo from every direction of the park. It was a lot of fun, and something that the whole community got to enjoy!
(Darci poking her head out the top, right before we finished)

In March we took a quick trip to my parents house in Pocatello to see my nephews, and to celebrate Tucker's upcoming second birthday! Seeing our nephews is one of our favorite things to do and we had a really nice trip.
(Darci and Dan with nephew's Tucker and Payton)

On the way home we drove through Montana and decided to stop and enjoy a scenic tour of the old prison in Deer Lodge. It was actually a lot of fun, and we took some great candid photos of ourselves acting dorky in/on/around the displays.

(Darci being goofy at the secretarial display) (Dan, right where he belongs!)

In April my parents came to Moscow for a visit - but only because I bribed my mom with tickets to the Elton John concert!!! My parents were here for the entire weekend and we spent a lot of time playing with our new Wii having bowling tournaments.
(Wii bowling with my parents)

The concert was very exciting for both of us. Me, because I love to see a good concert, and my Mom because she grew up with Elton and looooves him. We had so much fun at the concert - I thought I could never see anything more entertaining than my Mom screaming like crazy when Elton came on stage. That was before she jumped out of her seat and started screaming like a twelve year old girl at a Hannah Montana concert when Elton started to play Crocodile Rock. She actually pulled me into the aisle so that we could dance like crazy women. It was awesome.

(Mom and Darci showing off their tickets)
(Mom, dancing like a crazy lady to Crocodile Rock)

The summer was filled with all kinds of great adventures for us. We kicked off the summer with a short camping trip to Laird Park where we enjoyed lots of hiking, sunshine, and eating.

(Dan at Laird Park)
(Darci at Laird Park)

One of the highlights about camping at Laird Park is that it sits right next to Camp Grizzly, which is where Dan spent all of his summers as a kid at Boy Scout Camp. We spent an entire afternoon hiking around the perimeter of the camp and I got to hear all kinds of stories about Dan's experiences at boy scout camp - which led me to believe that our kids should NEVER become boy scouts!

On the fourth of July Dan's friend BJ came to town from Alaska and we ended up going to a great party at his parent's house on Moscow Mountain. They put on a really amazing display of fireworks - the best that I have seen in years!

(Dan and Darci at the Garret house on Moscow Mountain)

Even though the party was great, the weekend was actually very frustrating for us. We were supposed to have closed on our new house the day before the long weekend. We had each taken an extra day off of work at the beginning of the following week to give ourselves four days to move into our new house. We had moved out of our apartment a full month prior, so we were living in a temporary place (a friends empty apartment, which had nothing but our mattress and clothes in it). Needless to say, we were VERY excited to get into a house! But alas, the guy who was supposed to fill out our title decided to leave early for the weekend and simply didn't do our paperwork, leaving us homeless for an extra weekend. It was very frustrating because we were lounging around with nothing to do and wanting very badly to have our house! But lucky for us we were able to close the following week and move into our beautiful new home. I currently have no pictures on my computer, so I will take some and post them later. We have been here for about seven months now and we love it! Dan has been very useful, doing sweet engineery things like installing radiant heating floors. Or something like that, I don't really know what he is doing when he's pounding around in the basement. But he is happy, and that is all that matters!