One Year Anniversary!

Kyle and I have been married for over a year :)
For our anniversary we planned a road trip to Boise. The road trip was centered around about a dozen disc golf courses. We would drive a little, stop and play a course, drive a little more, stop and play another course. We drove to Boise and stayed 3 nights there. Then we drove to Lake Walcott state park in Rupert, ID and camped for two night. Finally we ended in Pocatello for a couple of nights. So here is a little about what we did in those places:

Boise
Of course played a few disc golf courses. We also made it a point to eat at a couple of the local places where the Man Vs Food guy had visited.

at Rockies' Diner (you can see the man vs food photo behind us)

and at the Flying Pie Cafe - REALLY good pizza! When Man Vs Food went he ate the spiciest pizza - but we played it safe. We got to fill out comment cards
which they had framed all over the place - we tried to make ours good
so they would make it into the frame :)

We also got shakes from Fanci Freeze, not because man vs food when there,
but because Mark and Natalie had told us they had the best shakes. And they weren't exaggerating. Yum! Dad, you would be jealous.

We also went to Zoo Boise. It was a pretty small zoo but it was fun. When we first got there we were at the marsupial exhibit. There was this one lady who was calling out the baby marsupial's name (which I can't remember.. we will call her Bouncy) "C'mon baby, c'mon Bouncy, get on out so we can see you..." Then when the baby would peek his head out of mom's pouch the lady would get really excited and run to go tell the different clusters of people, "Hey guys, Bouncy is poking her head out you should come see." . . . Kyle and I were a little confused by this ladies enthusiasm. We pictured her visiting the zoo everyday with her season pass and giving all the animals names she liked for them. Well, we came to understand her enthusiasm when she ran over to Kyle and I to tell us that the leopard (again, she used he leopard's name) was "sitting really pretty in a sun-beam right now" and we had to go to get a good view. She then followed us to the leopard's exhibit and gave us a 15min history of the leopard's life and explained to us how she was a Zoo volunteer! So she was actually using all of the animals real names. That made it kind of a cool Zoo experience - whenever we ran into her we pretty much got a detailed tour of the particular animals. I have never even imagined such an enthusiastic zoo volunteer before - she knew the names of all the goats in the petting zoo and Everything. It was cool. One of our favorite animals were the meerkats.
Initially, I was where Kyle was and he was where I was. When the meerkats noticed me they got really scared and split in every direction - this gave Kyle a good laugh. So, I stepped away for a little bit and then Kyle and I traded places so I could see the meerkats run off. . . . Well, Kyle must have a way with meerkats because they were just chilling. And when they noticed him they didn't even care. Hehe. I promise I wasn't even trying to sneak up on them or anything. Oh well. While we were staying in Boise we also took a day trip to Idaho City- an old, abandoned, touristy "ghost town." It was just an hour or so away from where we were staying.

Idaho City

don't I look cool with my camera :)

Idaho City seemed pretty cool. I guess we got there a little late to really get a good understanding of it's significance though. The visitors center was already closed and pretty much no one was around. So we just wandered around the old buildings and I practiced my photography by taking Lots of pictures of Kyle, hehe.

this was on a little stage set, so i guess they have performances sometimes.

And here is a photo of what the buildings kind of looked like (taken on my new camera- it turned out quite nicely I think) Everything was really dusty. When I would have Kyle sit down for a picture he would stand up and be dusty, and when I would sit down for a picture I would stand up and be dusty. But it was neat and the drive to get there was through a really scenic canyon. So that was fun.

Lake Walcott

Kyle selected this place for us to camp because it has a disc golf course. :) It was a really pretty area. We were one of just a few campers. We ran into these scout leaders one night who gave us their tasty leftover homemade french fries - so that was cool. It was a little bit chilly the first night. Thank goodness for our winter-weather-ready sleeping bags (compliments of Mitchell - thank you!). The second night wasn't really that cold.

so here is the view from our campsite! our tent is right behind me.

We also tried to go fishing. We didn't catch anything :( But Kyle got to go out on the dock and practice his fly fishing! He has to cast a line back behind him and then kind of whip it to make the fly 'dance' on the water in front of him.
Do you see the sunglasses he is wearing? He got those at a kiosk in the Boise mall. The guy selling them was Asian. I felt like he was Chinese. He tried to make sales the same way I remember the Chinese people would try to sell me things "Oh, those look Very Good! Make you look very handsome/beautiful," hehe. So I asked him where he was from and I was right! I got to tell him about how I taught in China. It was fun. And of course, he gave Kyle like a $10 discount on his sunglasses. And then after he had bought the sunglasses the guys told us he was also Mormon and that he wanted his daughter to go to BYU! That was fun. Chinese people are cool.

Disc Golf Adventures
There were so many photos of disc golf from this trip that I had to combine them all into one. We took a picture at every disc golf course sign, or if there wasn't a sign for the course, at the basket, etc. We also have pictures with views of the neat areas we got to play in. And pictures of me knee-deep in mud trying to rescue a disc Kyle threw across a creek. . .that was fun :) But I got a disc stuck high up in this bushy tree and Kyle had to try for 20min to use this long PVC pipe to poke it out. Overall we ended up losing one disc :( But in the adventures to recover our discs that we threw off-course, we ended up finding two new discs! So we came home with one more disc then we left with. Pretty cool.


And that pretty much sums up our recent adventures! In Pocatello we just relaxed, played some disc golf, and Kyle took the GRE. It's his last semester and he will be applying to graduate schools in a few months. He got a great score for the physical therapy schools he wants to apply to. He's really enjoying his internship at Rexburg Rehabilitation. I'm still working and am now also having fun doing photo shoots for people :) Still for free so I can build my portfolio but one day I will bring home the bacon with my photography! Well, maybe not but it can at least be a 'hobby job' :) That's all for now!

Snow Adventure Galore

We got in one awesome adventure this winter . . . Kyle and I went with Mark and Natalie to go cross country skiing for a day! Neither of us had gone before but Mark and Natalie had and they were excellent teachers (and I suppose we were pretty good students too. . . hehe).

The trails were pretty scenic - we got to go around a big lake (which i thought i took pictures of but i guess not...). We stopped to eat our packed lunches at the "warming shack" where we met a cool old couple who were cross country skiing enthusiasts. They taught us that back in the day people used to x-cty ski in their Levis . . . this meant that when they fell their Levis dyed some of the snow blue. To this day they call the spots in the snow where you can obviously tell someone had fallen a "sit-mark" (cause it used to look like someone had been sitting in the snow. . . i actually just looked it up it is a "sitzmark"). Pretty cool, huh? Well, between the 4 of us we made our fair share of sitzmarks. But we had a lot of fun. No Major crashes. . .
UNTIL. . . Suddenly. . .
Kyle took a spill. He was fine (thank goodness!!). But his rented BYU-I ski boot was another story. The binding broke making it impossible for Kyle to snap into his left ski. We all used our creative juices to try and tie his ski back to his boot - at one point we thought we had it, too. But to no avail - whatever we tried would just slip off when he tried to go again. SO, Kyle had to go the last couple of miles on the BLACK DIAMOND (forgot to mention that earlier...) trail with one ski. Pretty much, he would put his left foot down, which would then sink about knee-deep in snow, and then some how push off so he could glide a little on his right ski. Crazy. But, he made it!! I don't think I would have made it... And at the end of it all Kyle said he wanted to go again! What a trooper. And, as for the boot, the rental place said they weren't going to charge us because the SAME THING had happened a few other times . . . Um, why were the still renting those boots out if they knew they were faulty? . . .