Nursery Fun

In March my mom made a special trip to Moscow to help Dan and I get the nursery ready for the baby! I wish I had a before picture of the bedroom because then you could all ooh and aah over what an amazing difference we made with just a little bit of paint and some carpet! Our second bedroom used to be a very putrid color of olive green, with very ugly hardwood floors. Now it is a beautiful yellow nursery with soft carpet that the baby can roll around on and never worry about slivers.

As you can tell from the pictures, Dan and I wanted to do a jungle theme because we thought it would be lots of fun and inspire our baby to grow up and be an adventurer. We painted the entire room yellow, and then striped the bottom half of the room with a second shade of yellow and white. I have posted pictures of some of the items that we worked especially hard on! After we finished painting the walls Dan made me lay down on the floor so that he could trace my body onto the hardwood. I think that he enlarged my belly on purpose! The carpet layers came two days later when nobody was home, so I would like to know what they thought about the odd artwork on the floor. We carpeted not just this bedroom, but our bedroom, and the back hallway as well. It was an excellent upgrade for our house, everything looks much nicer and feels homier. My parents gave us this dresser because it was sitting around in their garage. They actually bought this when my brother Nate was born, so it is almost as old as I am. The first time it got painted my Grandpa Graves did it as a favor to my Mom. This time Dan painted it and my mom and I made special pulls for the drawers. I also sewed the dresser scarf, and covered the lamp with fabric to match the theme. I also spent a ridiculous amount of time gluing rick rack onto the shade, but I think it turned out very adorable.

Dan and I bought this crib at a used store and then Dan spent several hours sanding it down and painting it. I think it turned out lovely! The crib set is the only thing in the room that we didn't sew - my mom refuses to make crib bumpers because they are such a huge pain. That's OK with me though because this bedding set is really cute and Dan and I both loved it.

We bought these shelves and painted them to match the trim, and these are just a few fun jungle items that I have found here and there!

My mom and I made curtains and bought these little animals to attach to the window frame. I think that they turned out really adorable. My mom found the tin giraffe at a craft shop in Boise and hand carried it with her on the airplane.

And this is the finished room! I got the rocking chair at a craft store and Dan painted it to match the rest of the furniture. I sewed the pillows out of leftover curtain and lamp fabric to match the room. The little brown rocking chair was mine when I was little, and we are excited for our baby to use it! It was a really fun project and we couldn't be hapier with how the room looks. My little sister is working on some artwork for the two bare walls in this picture, so when the whole thing is done I will put some more pictures up and everybody can admire the finished project.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who don't already know, we found out the gender of our baby. I know that we swore we wouldn't - but it was really an accident! We had to have a 3-D ultra sound and those things are incredibly lifelike. They leave very little to the imagination so it was impossible not to find out the gender. When I tell people that they automatically assume that we are having a boy because we couldn't miss a little winky in the picture! But alas, not so. It was more of what we didn't see - we are having a girl! Both of us are very excited and we have already decided to name her Alma.

26 week Ultra Sound

This week we finally got around to having our 20 week Ultra Sound - even though we are almost at 26 weeks! It turned out to be a pretty big hassle, our appointment was at 5:00 at the hospital and we had to wait until 6:30 to see the technician. They told me not to go to the bathroom before we went in, so waiting until 6:30 was a pretty awful experience. I actually thought I was going to die mid ultra sound when he started pushing directly on my bladder. But all was well, and we ended up getting this really fantastic picture out of the deal. It is such a clear picture - you can really see the baby's face! Of course we think it is the cutest baby ever, but we are not exactly unbiased!

We have decided not to find out our baby's gender, but everybody is welcome to make their bets based on the facial features. So far, about half the people guessed boy and the other half guessed girl. Let us know what you think!

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!