Memorial Day

I was listening to a talk radio station and they were interviewing a Colonel who just came out with a book called American Hero's. What was interesting was that he conducted a little test that went like this:

Finish the name;

Britney....

Harrison...

etc..

What about these names;

Paul.....

Woodrow..

Bruce....

Jason L. ....

These names are a couple of the Medal of Honor recipients in 2007 and no one knows who they are. Why, most likely because of the media, the controversy of the war, and less than 2 percent of the American population actually knows anyone in the armed forces.

I just thought that it would be fitting that we take a little time and look at what these brave soldiers did that made it possible for us to enjoy our freedom. Many of these soldiers gave their lives and there families are receiving their medals. Visit http://www.cmohs.org/recipients/most_recent.htm to learn more about what exactly they did for us.

Thanks to Ben, Dad, and Stephen for doing what it takes.

A description of American Hero's if your interested:

What is a Hero? New York Times best-selling author Oliver North says, “Real heroes are selfless. Those who serve America in harm’s way in the war against radical Islam have that quality in abundance. And so do their families and loved ones at home. Yet, they rarely get the attention or coverage they deserve.

“Despite the way they are presented by too many in the press and politics, the men and women in uniform today are overwhelmingly good. I never cease to be amazed at the self-discipline of these brave young Americans. They can endure the adrenaline-pumping violence of an enemy engagement, and then, just minutes later, help school children get safely to their classes . . . No nation—ours included—has ever had a military force better than the one we have today. I’m proud of them. You should be too.”

Climbing and Refinishing

Right after Erich got home, he took the scouts up to the climbing wall in Moscow. I tagged along as the photographer. It was a very fun trip, some of the boys were pretty impressive climbers.

Last week was devoted to refinishing the wood floors. It was quite the endeavor ... lots of long, hard, late nights of work but it feels great to finally have them done.

We finally got some hot sunny days. We took a little break and headed down to the river thinking we would chill out on the beach. When we got there the beach was completely submerged so we hung out on the grass instead.

A little Road Trip

Erich got assigned to another detail down in New Mexico so I headed down to Utah to spend some time with friends. It was a long drive but very worth it. The first few days I spent with Di (my roommate and best bud from the BYU days). Then I headed up to Kaysville and spent a few days with the Law school crew. It's convenient that so many of my law school friends live within 1 mile of each other!

(Di and I on a little camping adventure. We tried to camp at Mount Timpanogas but there was too much snow still so we just headed up one of the lower canyons.)

(Di and I found this little waterfall to hike up to)

(Di and Chris tried teaching me how to play tennis. As you can tell it turned into more of a game of chase the balls!)

(The weather was absolutely gorgeous so I spent a lot of time in the park with the law school ladies. You can tell I'm the only one from Idaho as I am still brilliantly white with no sign of a tan!)

(One of my favorite things was going to the Bountiful temple with Lauren and Jamie. I went to the Bountiful temple open house several years ago but I've never been through a session. It's a very gorgeous temple and it's always special to attend the temple with close friends and family).

We're Lame I know

I feel like all of our blog posts are the same....we are remodeling such and such and we squeezed in a hike somewhere. Sorry for the repetition but that's our life these days, simple, unvarying, but pleasant.

So on that note, here's the house update:

After a year of remodeling, we finally contracted a project out--the carpet. We still tore out the old carpet and installed the padding and tack board ourselves, but we actually paid someone to come do some work for us. It was FABULOUS! I loved going to work in the morning and coming back to a completed project that I contribued nothing to!!! Our entire upstairs is now carpeted, which brings me to the next picture which is the beginning of the nursery (one of the rooms upstairs). As you can tell it needed a little TLC. Sorry no "after" pictures yet, we still need to figure out whether to add blue or pink before we can finish it all up. I had our ultrasound scheduled for next week but I postponed it because Erich is off on another fire detail. This one is in an inital attack assignment down in New Mexico with a 20 man smokejumper crew.

With no Erich around I took the liberty of sluffing off remodeling work this weeked. Instead of slaving away on the house I enjoyed Saturday biking with some good friends along the Lewiston River. It was a very fun little adventure and the day of sun and relaxation was much appreciated! I should have taken pictures because the trees were blooming and it was gorgeous.

(Erich's sheetrocking what used to be lovely wood paneling)

I've been trying to avoid the camera like the plague but because people keep asking me, here's a prego pic.

One snowy b-day

You might be wondering why I am posting a blurry picture of Erich, but it was snowing so hard that I couldn't get a clear picture. Erich hasn't had too many snowy birthdays so this is a picture of him and Libby celebrating his b-day in the snow! The weather here is crazy, it snowed for weeks straight then we had 3 sunshiny days that were 70 degrees and bam, back to snow again today...like 4 inches and still snowing kind of snow!
This is a hike Erich and I went on to get out of the house and to celebrate the sunshine. It's beautiful, steep country right off the Clearwater river (about 2o minutes from our house). We started from the base of the mountains you can see in the background so as you can tell it was a a pretty big, fun hike.
This is a picture from one of the viewpoints we stopped at so I could rest.

The Week of Surgeries

This was a much anticipated week for Erich....he finally got LASIK surgery!!! For those of you who don't know Erich is (or was) quite blind without glasses or contacts, which are quite inconvenient when you work as a firefighter. So he finally got the eyes fixed. We went down to Boise for the surgery and it was quite a fascinating process. The actual laser surgery took less than 40 seconds per eye. Erich was a little discomfortable the day of the surgery, but he could see pretty clear the morning after. The doctor says he has a blurry 20/15 vision (which is better than 20/20). It will take 30 days for his vision to completely correct itself, but so far it's been amazing! It's definitely very exciting.

Libby felt left out of the excitement so she jumped off the embankment and got a gnarly cut on her leg. We took her to the after hours vet, where they had a Pet ambulance. We thought it was pretty funny so we took a picture, but no, Libby didn't get to ride in it (Can't imagine how much that would have cost). The next few pictures are of Libby the gimp. We spared you pics of the actual wound since we already traumatized you with Erich's stomach. It's been pretty sad, hopefully she'll heal up quick cause we miss our little hiking buddy.

So we are back in G-ville now, but it was sure fun spending last week in Boise. We got to catch up with good friends and squeeze in some shopping. And I had fun looking at baby stuff :)

The sunny days of Boise were a much appreciated break from the snowy, gloom of G-ville. It was storming when we left and returned to G-ville but it was t-shirts and sun for a few days there in Boise. I just love having such a considerate boss who let me work from Boise last week so I could go down with Erich. It makes Erich's traveling a lot easier when I get to go with him!

The Week of Surgeries