boise trip (july 24-26)

In our new house, I wanted to dedicate a shelf to Russ's mission memorabilia; it was an important time in his life so I wanted that to show. However, most of Russ's mission stuff was still in Boise with the rest of his pre-marriage things, so since we've been slowly moving all of my pre-marriage stuff to our house from my parents' house, we decided it was time to do the same with Russ's stuff. Plus, we hadn't been to Boise in ages, and Lacey (Russ's sister) was going the weekend we were thinking, so everything was basically telling us it was time for a Boise road trip!

We had a really fantastic trip. On Friday morning, the girls went to zumba and the boys worked on fixing the boat. The boat-fixing took longer than just the morning, but in the process there was a water fight between Lacey, Russ, and me, so that was quite exciting. I kinda felt like a little kid again, which is always fun since adulthood can get so serious.

By the time we finally got out on the boat, Mom couldn't go because of a prior commitment, but the rest of us--Dad, Lacey, Chantry, Russ, and me--went out. Shortly after we got out there, the boat overheated, so we basically just used the boat as a dock and spent some time in the water.

I spent the afternoon asking everyone what they would do if they had two wishes--1. something that could potentially happen, and 2. something more impossible. I wanted to know because I figure that people's wishes show a lot about that person's greatest desires and aspirations. I don't want to share everyone's wishes, since I think wishes can be considered personal, but I'll share mine: 1. Russ could find a job that he truly enjoys & we could get pregnant (I know that's two wishes, but I really couldn't pick just one and since the whole thing is hypothetical anyway, it doesn't matter!) and 2. To have the perfect bod but still eat whatever I want. Haha vain, I know, but seriously, if we're going into the realm of impossibility, heck yeah I'd want that.

At one point, Russ, Chan, and I were the only ones left in the water and Dad wanted to start moving the boat back toward the dock. We tried a series of things involving the three of us water-folk hanging onto the tube in three different ways with the boat pulling us, but all the ways ended up failing miserably, which made it even more fun. I just remember a whole lot of laughing :) Then, when we were like 20 yards (that could be totally wrong, since I'm a terrible judge of distance) from the dock, we joked about someone having to push the boat the rest of the way to the dock. Though it was a joke, Russ decided to actually do it! That crazy kid :) he was complaining about aching legs for the rest of the weekend haha :)

On the way back to the house, Chantry and I sat in the bed of the truck so we got to chat a bit. Chan isn't normally a super chatty person, so I enjoyed that time of getting to know her a little better. She told me about how she has always felt pretty close to Russ, so that was cute :) Also in this whole boating trip, we kept telling Chan she needs to move down to Utah and try it out. We offered her our guest bedroom for a 1-2 month trying-Utah period, so we'll see if she ever takes us up on that :)

That night, we ate pizza and started going through Russ's boxes. It was fun to take a trip down memory lane. I found super cute baby pictures . . .

And little-kid journals! Russ had journals from when he was like 5, 6, 7 . . . His grandpa used to pay him (1 penny) per journal page, so he kept a journal even then. Sometimes he wrote really great stories, like this one ;)

"One nit 20 gosts came on Hollaween nit. They were ril. It was 12o"clock"

On Saturday morning, Mom, Dad, Russ, and I ran a little 5k race. Since I haven't been 5k training since I ran my 5k in April, I just decided I'd run for about 20 minutes, which is what I've been running lately, and then I'd walk the rest. Well, I ended up only walking for a minute or two after my 20 minutes, and then I resumed running and finished with a 29:56 5k, which is ONE SECOND better than my April 5k time. I thought that was pretty crazy but also awesome since I hadn't even trained for this one! Haha :) Russ killed it--he ran it in 22:19, which is about a minute and a half better than his April 5k time :)

Following the 5k, we went to the stake Pioneer Day breakfast (Chan and Lacey joined us) for food and for a lot of waiting for pie! There was a pie contest, so we had to wait for them all to judge the pies before we could eat any. It was kinda chaotic!

That evening, Russ and I went on a date. We checked out Freak Alley and walked around downtown Boise. We also got dinner at Big Jud's and concretes from Freddy's.

While we were in Idaho this time, we had to take a picture of us that would work in the shape of Idaho for a project that I'm doing that is like this one:

via

Though we've been to Idaho many times together, we had no pictures that worked for that weird shape! So I'm happy to report that this one from Freak Alley ended up working out great :)

don't mind the harry potter books . . . I'm just trying to flatten out the map :)
also, though we've been to california several times, it's a tricky state as well.
hoping for the best on that one in our upcoming september trip to yosemite!

And on Sunday we just went to church, ate lunch, and headed home after packing all of Russ's stuff in the car! Haha it was a pretty full little Toyota Corolla!


And since we've been home, that Portugal shelf is all set up and I'm lovin' it :) It includes a Portuguese hymnbook, a tile and scarf that Russ bought there, and a missionary pic and his missionary tag :)