blue and orange weekend.

Jason and I finally took a trip to Boise this past weekend with Rex, Jessica, and Jessica’s sister - Chelsea. We left Thursday night after classes and work and drove four hours to the nearby city of Mountain Home where Jessica’s parents live and where we would be staying for the next few nights.

Friday morning, we woke up to the smell of pancakes, sausage, and eggs made by Jessica’s parents. We headed to Boise early to pick up tickets to the BSU game on Saturday that Jason bought from Craigslist.

Jason and I had collected some information about a “Boise Art Walk” earlier in the week. The city is home to a surprising amount of public and historical art that can be found in the form of murals, postcards, bus stops, graffiti, statues, and interactive displays. We printed off the exact locations of 43 sites that could be found in downtown Boise. After we visited Boise’s’ City Hall, we started out with the goal of finding them all, but it ended up taking too much time so we only rushed to our favorites.

Hospitality at the Nez Perce (Lewis and Clark)

George Washington

City Hall and Abe Lincoln

While on our walk, we passed an alley filled with graffiti called “Freak Alley”. There were so many different paintings on the brick walls and doors and anything else that could be painted. At the end of the alley, we took a break for a slice of pizza at Pie Hole and quickly continued on our way. Side Note: We were surprised to see how many people were walking around with Blue and Orange on the day before the BSU game. 

Entrance to Freak Alley

Kilgore Trout

Penny Postcard: A Hometown Greeting

One of our favorite art sites was Patrick Zent’s “Homage to the Pedestrian.” This site is an interactive display of four lanterns spaced between a walkway in Grove Plaza. As people move along the walkway each lantern lights up and greets the passerby with rhythms of drums, bells, cymbals, and chimes. Rex, Jessica, Jason, and I each took a lantern and tried to dance to the corresponding sounds. We looked ridiculous to the actual pedestrians, but we had a good time making fools of ourselves.

Homage to the Pedestrian 

Alt. 1867 aka The Miner - made out of 2 Miles of barbed wire!

For dinner, we met up with Jessica’s parents at Tucano’s. I’ve never eaten at this restaurant and all I knew of it is that it involved a lot of meat and pineapple. I knew at least the boys would be happy for the meat. Me – I just wanted the pineapple. Tucano’s is an all-you-can-eat Brazilian restaurant where you are constantly served different types of food. At your table you have a wooden cylinder that is green on one end and red on the other and when you flip it to green, servers will bring you different kinds of meat that you can simply yay or nay. The meats vary from sausage, ham, teriyaki chicken, bacon wrapped turkey, steak, and chicken hearts. If you flip bthe cylinder to red, it means you need a break. The food was great and almost too filling. I suggest you go for lunch instead of dinner – the price is about 6 dollars cheaper for lunch.

Saturday was my favorite day! We woke up and began on our way back to Boise for the Boise State vs. Texas Christian University football game. Being a cheerleader through high school, the football stadium felt like a comfort zone. I hadn’t been to a game in a few years so I was very excited. We were all decked out in our Boise attire and super pumped. We didn’t have seats by Jessica and Rex because we had only recently bought our tickets and we were looking for the cheapest ones. Jason’s seat was actually right in front of mine, but we were still close enough to enjoy each other’s company. The game was so much fun! The fans were so into the game and had so much team spirit. I loved it! During time outs we bobbed our heads to The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army and sang along to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. Our side of the stadium chanted “Boi-se!” and the other side of the stadium responded with “State!” It’s funny how you can go to a game and sit by complete strangers and end up high fiving them after every touchdown. Both teams played great throughout the entire game, but sadly TCU came out on top by one point when BSU failed to kick a 20-yard field goal at the last second – there goes Boise’s undefeated record. The game was still a blast and totally worth it! As a pick-me-up, the four of us went to Goodie’s nearby Hyde Park for some ice cream.

Sunday we headed back to Rexburg and on our way we stopped in Twin Falls. Entering the city, we drove over Perrine Bridge to see an amazing view of the Snake River Canyon that reminded me of The Land Before Time. We continued down the road stopping at a viewpoint to take pictures of the beautiful bridge and drove on to Shoshone Falls. Shoshone Falls is considered to be the Niagara of the West and is actually 45 feet higher than Niagara Falls. Of all the waterfalls that Jason and I have seen thus far together, I think this one is definitely the best. It was absolutely gorgeous, especially with a constant rainbow that connected the bottom of the falls to blue sky like a sideways smile. I loved peering over the ledge at the waterfall you could feel the mist from the falls on your face.

Overall the whole trip to Boise was a lot of fun and we are grateful for our friends Rex and Jessica for making it happen. Jason and I are already talking about when we can visit the city again.

halloweekend fun.

  For this Halloween, Jason and I dressed up as characters from one of our favorite films The Life Aquatic. Making the “Team Zissou” outfit was especially fun because we had to get super creative in making it in a cost effective way. We bought most of the items from thrift stores and dollar stores locally and altered them slightly to be in line with our costume.

The pants and shirts were easy enough to find. I glued blue ribbon on the sleeves of the t-shirts and the sides of our pants to give better detail to the costume. I also cutout white, royal blue, and yellow felt to make the official Zissou patch. Jason spray painted purple toy guns black to look like glock pistols. We used baby socks as holsters and a dog collar as a strap for the guns to hold around our thighs. And then we capped off our uniform (no pun intended) with red beanies.

Zissou Pathch

Glock in a sock :)

Friday night I was busy participating in a surprise birthday party for my friend Brooke while Jason was working at his new job at Melaleuca! I’m so proud of him! Anyway, our party was SO fun! Brooke had no idea. I’m only disappointed that she didn’t cry, but we still had a fabulous time at Red Robin.

We were so nervous for Brooke to come

She was so surprised!

Cake :)

Oh the things you must do on your Bday

The gang (minus Jason)

After that party, Brooke, Betsy, Laura, and I got ready for a Halloween party/dance. I felt silly because they looked cute, and I looked more like a boy, but I was still proud of what I created. We went to a dance in the basement of a building. . . already it doesn’t sound like a good idea. It was so hot and crowded with a ton of people. A little while after Jason got to the dance, the fire department came and said that they had to count how many people were there to see how many more they could let in . . . so we left. It was still pretty fun.

Laura, Me, Betsy, Brooke

The rest of the weekend Jason and I wore our “Team Zissou” outfits with pride even though not a single person in Rexburg knew who we were dressed up as. It was satisfying giving people confusing looks though.

Yeah, we went to the park and took pictures

Saturday, I made Halloween sugar cookies with the stuff that Jason’s mom sent us! It was a lot of fun to make, even though I gave away more than I ate. I also made pumpkin muffins a few days before that were delish! Even though we didn’t do a lot for Halloween per se, we still got into the holiday spirit! 

perfect day for a picnic.

     Again, for the sake of running out of days before it becomes a winter wonderland here in Rexburg, we took advantage of a nice day and went on a picnic. We invited our friends Rex and Jessica and drove to Idaho Falls to eat on the foothills of the giant wind turbines. Before we left, Jason and I made amazing sandwiches with French bread, Swiss and Emmental cheeses, butter, and freshly cut honey ham. We were worried that we might be trespassing, but we walked up a steep hill anyway, found somewhat of a flat spot in the tall, golden grass and ate our lunches. It was a perfect day for a picnic with a beautiful view and the silent hum of turbine blades making electricity.

He's Cute

Rex and Jessica

Our Food!

Wind Turbine!

pumpkin traditions.

Jason and I have been determined to make this Halloween season more special since we’re now married and can start fun family traditions. We drove to Idaho Falls with the intention of finding a pumpkin patch to buy giant pumpkins for carving. We found a red bard standing in the middle of several pumpkin fields. The barn was called U-Pick Red Barn. We got a wagon at the front of the barn as some of the employees directed us to the backfield where the biggest pumpkins were grown. I’ve never seen so many pumpkins of different shapes and sizes. It was cool to see some of them still attached to their vine.

Jason and I easily took 30 minutes walking through the orange fields trying to locate the biggest pumpkin with a smooth surface for carving. We finally chose two that Jason carried yards away back to our wagon – we also chose two smaller pumpkins for decorations in our apartment. After paying for our pumpkins (4 for $20), we got our picture taken with the hay and the pumpkins.

These pumpkins were SO heavy!

So strong!

Later that night, we cleared our kitchen table and completely gutted our pumpkins. It took us a while to decide what we wanted to carve on our pumpkins. Eventually, I decided on Perry the Platypus and Jason decided on the Road Runner. We printed out the stencil of each and taped them to our pumpkins. We then took push pins to trace which lines needed to be cut and then started carving!

Our Outlines

While we were working hard to get our designs perfect, I made roasted pumpkin seeds. They weren’t the best, but they were fun to nibble on while we continued working. After two hours, we finally finished our pumpkins! We were pretty proud of our creations. We lit the pumpkins late that night – even though no one would see them until the next day.