Dave's Birthday and Moscow so far

Dave's birthday was last Wednesday and we decided to go to Coeur D'Alene and look around for the day. We went and walked on the board walk and kicked ourselves for not bringing swimming suites. We watched some crazy folks jump off the cliffs and we watched a water plane land in the water! It was pretty cool!

This is us on the dock at Lake Coeur D'Alene. We both want a cabin on the lake some day. It's so beautiful!

Dave loved this boat! It was made in the 1950's! It was absolutely gorgeous.

We had a great day exploring the city and the farmer's market. We also went to Dockside restaurant and had a delicious dessert called a Gooey. It is this huge ice cream sundae. Amazing! Hope Dave had a good birthday! It was fun to spend the day with just each other!


Last Saturday we went for a drive and found Spring Valley reservoir. It's about 30 minutes east of Moscow, past Troy. It was such a cute little pond and had lots of people swimming, BBQing, and fishing. It was beautiful and we'll definatly go back and swim some time!

Here is a part of it. It was so pretty with huge lodge pole pines all around.

Dave had fun fishing. Didn't catch anything, but we had fun people watching and getting out!

A family playing on the dock. It was so fun!

It was so nice to drive around and chat with Dave. I loved it.

Moscow has been a different experience for us. We're not in Rexburg anymore. People are a lot different, school is way different, even church and missionary work is different! But we are growing accustomed to the change and starting to like the people. Everyone in our ward is super nice and we've made a few friends already!
I miss Southern Idaho very much but I am enjoying the time that Dave and I have for it to be just us! We're definitely on our own now and relying on each other has brought us closer together.
Dave enjoys school and loves his tennis class. He's really going to like it here, I think.
I've been applying for jobs like crazy. I'm up to about 6 or 7 applications now. I had one interview, but didn't get hired. We're not too desperate for a job yet, but we will be in a month or two.
We've made our little town home a home and I like it here in my home. But we do have snakes living on our front porch and we're going to have to do something about that...

We're starting to like it here and we like exploring the hills. Once and a while we'll get a crazy hair and drive all the way to Washington, just for fun! (Ok, the Washington boarder is about 5 minutes away from our house.) :)

We're here!

Well, we're alive and breathing! We're in Moscow and I just have to state this for the record... I'm bad at moving. Bless my poor husband's heart for dealing with me for the past week.
We finished packing up our home in Rexburg at the 8-Plex, our home since we've been married, on Thursday. We drove out of town around 4:30 in the afternoon. We made it to Drummond Montana at 9:00 with our slow moving truck. My aunt Kim and uncle Chris kindly fed us and put us up for the night. Then at 9:00 Friday morning we left for Moscow. We made it there at about 2:00 pm and got checked into our apartment. We have a cute little two bedroom town home that has a little patio and lots of nice windows (but a TINY kitchen). It's also subsidized, so that means NO RENT!! Until I get a job...
I had called the bishop earlier that day to see if we could get some help moving in. He said that he would try to get some people. So while we were checking into our apartment, the bishop showed up with 4 other guys to help! We got our truck unloaded in about half an hour with all that help! It was amazing!
But our living room was PACKED with stuff then... It was a disaster. But we got the essentials organized (the kitchen, the bedroom, and the TV... haha) for now and the rest of it will come this week. My goal is to have it all organized by Dave's birthday on Wednesday.
We met some of our neighbors who are LDS and they seem very nice. It's a bit of a culture shock for us up here... lots of tattoos, drinking, smoking, piercings, tiny shorts and tiny shirts. It's also different that not everyone in our complex is LDS... our ward is actually spread out to different complexes and even houses. Weird. We're not in Rexburg anymore!
I think we'll grow to like it here. So far, it's been a little rough, just getting used to a new place, so far away from everything I've known. But the town is cute and there's lots of nice people here. Once we start making some friends and getting to know the area, I think it will be great!

I'll post pictures of our place and what the area looks like as soon as I find my camera... I thought I saw it in a box somewhere around here....

Our Wonderful Summer Vacation!

Welp, we're back from Oregon! It was so fantastic! I was so sad to leave!
We left on Saturday, July 25th and traveled to Boise to my Grandpa and Grandma's house. It was so fun to see them! Then on Sunday, we went the rest of the way to Lincoln City, Oregon where my dad rented a Beach House for the week! We went through Portland and on the way there, we stopped at this beautiful waterfall! I can't remember what it's name was (Shannon, Shawnee... can you help me with that?) but it was so fun to hike up to the top bridge and take a good look at this awesome place! Here are some panoramas of it. Click the picture for a better look!

Dave and Me at the waterfall

We finally got to Lincoln City around dinner time and had enough time to run down and check out the beach before sundown. The boys in our family tried skimboarding and Lucas got really good at it! It was fun to watch them fall down in the freezing water! haha!!
The next two days we started going to lots and lots of beaches! Some of them were sandy and had warmish water, some were rocky where we found tons of agats and some of them we found some cool shells! I wish I could remember all the names of the beaches, and which days we were to which ones, but I can't. All I know is that we probably explored almost every beach from Tillamook to Newport!

Cute picture of me and Dave on the beach!!!

Way cool bridge that we got to drive over to get to Newport

Toesies!!!

I love the feel of the waves on my feet... and the sand...

I love this picture of Dave

Dave thought it was funny that his toenails didn't have sand on them.

The next morning we started out at the Devil's Punchbowl.

Funny picture of us at the Devil's punchbowl... it was bright outside.

We went to a beach that had a ton of fossils but Dave was more excited about this slug... It was huge.

The next day we went to the Tillamook Cheese factory! Delish! We sampled Banana Cinnamon ice cream and it was... eh... ok. There was so much cheese and ice cream! Probably that's what heaven is going to be like.
On the way back we stopped at the Haystack beach.

My adorable mommy and sister!!!

Daddy on the rocks.

The next morning we went Deep Sea fishing!! OK so the next picture is pretty bad, but in our defense, it was like 6:30 in the morning and pretty cold on the boat. Also, it's the only picture of Deep Sea fishing that we have. It's not a very conducive environment for photography.
We didn't catch very many fish, sadly, but we threw some crab pots in and we got lots of crab! It was quite a feast when we got home!

The next day we went to the Newport aquarium. There were so many fun things to see.

One of my favorites was this little family! The momma fish just had these babies (the little white specs) at 10:00 this morning! Both the mom and dad gaurded their little specs and if one of the other fish swam too close, the mom and dad would chase them away! Also, if one of their babies swam away, the mom or dad would go find it, suck it up in it's mouth, swim back over to the group and spit the baby back out! It was so cute!!

This was a HUGE snake! It's a 15 foot anaconda!

AHHHH!!!! Dave's in with the Paranas!!! Well, at least he's happy about it...

Gorgeous Jelly fish. Look, don't touch...

Dave! I said don't touch!!!

Way cool star fish

This fish wins the ugly fish award.

Oh my gosh, Dave!!! WATCH OUT!!!!

This is the only semi good pic I got of the shark tank. These leopard sharks were amazing!

We think this is one of the fish Dave caught while we were deep sea fishing! But we had to throw him back... Kinda pretty, though.

 

The next morning we woke up early to look around at low tide! It was sooooo cool! This is Dave trying to get on this big rock. 

closer.... closer....

Ahhh!!! abort, abort!! He had to go back and get his swimming suit on... haha!

Low tide star fish

I found a starfish on the beach and rescued it! But when I picked it up, it left this cool mark in the sand.

We found tons of sea snails. Some of their shells were so bright with orange and white and purple! I really wanted one, but I didn't want to make a poor little snail homeless, so we searched for ones that were empty! We found some pretty good ones!

This starfish couldn't decide if he wanted to be orange or purple. Kinda cool!

We had such a fun time! It was so nice to relax and have a good time with my family! 

In between all these adventures, we went shopping, out to eat, drove through some amazing country side, played uno, ate, talked, laughed and had such a great time! 

Thanks Mom and Dad for such a wonderful vacation!!! We love you!!!