Sweet Girl

I sure have missed Hailey... the second she walked into the bridal shower this afternoon (they came straight from the airport), Hailey ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug and told me that she's missed me while she's been in Michigan.  Well, Hailey, I've missed you while you've been in Michigan too.  Looking forward to playing with this sweet girl while she's here over the next week!

Beki's Bridal Shower

Yep, my little sister is getting married.  Crazy, right!  And right behind her is my little brother... he just proposed to his girlfriend Rachel.  I am excited to have both Bryce and Rachel join the family - they are both great!

Anyway, today was Beki's bridal shower.  She had one with a few of he close friends a week or so ago, so we had one today with mostly family (and some close family friends).  We kept it simple, with a couple small activities and food, and presents, but it was definitely an enjoyable afternoon!

Beki opening presents - she was pretty excited about receiving food :-)

The spread - brownies, vegetable pizza, fruit, caprese salad on a toothpick, cupcakes, and meatballs...

Hailey, me (I look super tall with my 5-inch heels!), mom, Beki, Mandi

Fun at the Western Idaho Fair

It has been years since I've been to the fair.  I am pretty sure the last time I went was in 2002, just after I graduated from college, and all my friends wanted to do was go to one of the concerts.  Well, tonight just may have been my favorite night ever at the fair.  Going with Kylee made the fair so fun - the look of joy on her face and her squeals of delight on the rides made my night.

We started out at the petting zoo area.  Kylee loved feeding the sheep and goats.  They ate right out of her hands.

One of the best parts of the fair is the food, right?!  I actually ate dinner before I left for the fair, but I still enjoyed a frozen chocolate covered banana :-)

After dinner, we hit the rides.  Matt and I took turns going on the rides with Kylee, and we finished the night with a ride on the ferris wheel all together.  Definitely a night I will always remember :-)

Twin Falls Temple

With the Boise temple closed for renovations, it now takes a little more planning to go to the temple.  I was grateful for the chance yesterday to attend the Twin Falls temple with my family as Beki went through for the first time in preparation for her upcoming marriage.  Congrats Beki - I am seriously so proud of you.  I couldn't have asked for a better day, surrounded by family and friends.  I think this was one of my favorite days this summer.

On our way home, we decided to stop and look out over the gorge.  It was so beautiful... definitely an incredible site!  An extra thanks to Matt for joining us for the day... and for doing all the driving :-)

My sweet sister Beki with her wonderful fiance Bryce

Out With a Bang

Friday was my last day in the Registrar's Office.  Your last day is supposed to be filled with wandering around saying goodbye to people and cleaning your office, right?  Well, good thing I cleaned my office Thursday and that I'm not really going very far, because my last day was nothing close to enjoyable or relaxing.  In fact, it's safe to say it was my worst day in the Registrar's Office in the six years I worked there.  Not only were we trying to make Summer grades official, but we ran a new process and it didn't turn out as we were expecting.  Technology is wonderful, but it really sucks when things don't go right.  There were a couple times when I was pretty close to tears.  I won't go into details here, but suffice it to say it was horrible and there were ten of us who stayed until 7:00 at night trying to clean up the process.  I'm just hoping we did everything we needed to.  I am so thankful to wonderful supportive co-workers who went above and beyond to help dig us out of our mess.  I sure am going to miss seeing them every day.

I did take a two minute break to get a picture with some of my favorite people in the Registrar's Office.  I will miss these ladies.  Good thing I can smile on command, because this was just after we received the horrible news that our process didn't work and that we had tons of manual cleanup ahead of us :-)

Kris, Jami, me, Mandy, & Brooke

Thanks to Jen, David, and Matt, my evening cheered me up.  We went to the drive-in movie theater in Caldwell and watched Transformers.  I haven't been to a drive-in movie in years, and I had a lot of fun just being with them... and it got my mind off my rotten day!  Thanks guys :-)

Slowly But Surely

My garden has seemed a bit pathetic this year.  Normally by this time, my tomato plants are out of control - not only giant and taking over my garden, but producing hundreds of tomatoes.  I'm not sure if it was just the fact that I had to plant so late, or that my soil is tired of me planting tomatoes in the same spot, or that my green thumb when it comes to tomatoes has somehow disappeared after 7 years, but I have the three wimpiest looking tomato plants in my garden right now.  We won't even talk about the rest of my veggies!

I guess all I can do is try and be patient... and maybe keep up with weeding a little better.  Perhaps my tomato plants are being stubborn this year because they felt I had neglected them?  It's true that I haven't been out back much and, until Wednesday when I cleaned them up, the weeds had pretty much taken over the bed :-(

Needless to say, I did have a little joy last night.  I picked the few tomatoes that my plants had produced, along with some basil off my basil plant, and I made caprese salad for dinner.  It was completely fresh and delicious.

All That's Left

My mom called me this morning to share some sad news - the playground equipment in the park in the neighborhood I grew up in burned to the ground last night.  All that is left is the metal frame; all the plastic is completely gone.  My mom went over to the park this morning to snap some pictures.  There were little children crying and adults talking about how the park was the reason they moved there - so their grandchildren could play on the equipment.  I am sure there will be an investigation of sorts to see if there was foul play involved.  So sad!  Anyway, here's all that's left of the park.  I hope that they can get some new equipment in there soon!

Changes...

I am usually okay with change, but when it comes to ward boundary changes, I haven't really had a good track record.  Having had a major stake reorganization that left me devastated in June 2006, followed by another stake reorganization in December 2010 that was kind of rough, I wasn't looking forward to tonight's stake meeting where we knew there would be new stake and ward boundary shifts.  Basically what happened is we lost two wards to a stake to our east (the Boise North Stake), including my parents' ward, and we gained two wards from the stake to our west.  In addition, they did some new ward alignment within our stake... I'm still not sure of the complete affect these changes have on my ward.  I'm waiting for the final boundary changes to get posted online, but it seems we may have had some significant shifts, losing some families and gaining others.  The changes go into effect Sunday, August 28th, so I guess I'll really understand the whole of the changes at that point.

Regardless of the changes, I surprisingly feel completely at peace.  Maybe it's just because I'm at a really good place in my life right now.  I guess what's important is that I have the faith to know that these changes were necessary and inspired, and I will do my best to embrace them and move forward with a positive attitude.

Fun Weekend!

I have had the best weekend!  So even though I'm exhausted from a couple fun-filled days, I'm going to sacrifice sleep a little longer to blog (I know if I didn't blog now, I would probably just lay in bed thinking about how I wanted to blog).

I had a vacation day from work yesterday - my group of friends had all originally planned on going camping, but that fell through, so Matt planned a little adventure for us so that my vacation day wasn't a waste.  We drove up to Idaho City, and after a tasty lunch, we headed out to do some shooting.  I have been shooting before, but it's been a really long time since I shot a hand gun.  Matt was a great teacher.  He taught me about the different guns (i.e. single action vs double action) and then taught me how to hold the gun and gave me some pointers on shooting.  I started off a little rusty, but got better as I went along, even hitting the target with most of my shots :-)

We went on another adventure today - Matt and I joined Brandee's family to raft the South Fork of the Payette River.  I had always thought it would be cool to raft Staircase (the main rapids on that stretch of the river), but I was too nervous to go with an inexperienced guide.  I always seem to have flashbacks to when some friends floated this section of the river, and how scared people got because they couldn't manage the boat.  So... we booked our trip with Cascade Raft and Kayak, had an amazing experienced guide, and had an awesome time!  We even all managed to stay in the boat through the Class III and Class IV rapids.

Rafting through Staircase - check out our expressions!

Me & Matt - we made it down the river in one piece!

Finally, tonight we went to Merritt's to celebrate David's birthday and because Tyler was in town this weekend for his triathlon.  Mmmm, cinnamon sugar scones.  And some great tunes on the jukebox.  I couldn't have asked for a better end to the night :-)

New Job, New Adventure

Interview Day

After literally months of anticipation, I accepted a new job on Monday as the new Director for Student Systems at Boise State.  This new position was created to serve as the voice for Student Affairs on our three-year campus roadmap project.  This roadmap consists of about ten large, enterprise-wide projects ranging from implementing a new document imaging system to creating a unified student web experience with a portal to rolling out our data warehouse system for all areas of campus for improved reporting capabilities, etc.  I am really looking forward to this new adventure... I definitely have a lot to learn, as I will be involved with planning and leading projects much larger than the projects I've managed in the past.  I hope that the experience I already have under my belt from six years in the Registrar's Office, plus the relationships I've built with faculty and staff all across campus will help me feel comfortable in my new role.  I hope that I can adequately represent the voice of the areas I will be representing on the project (mainly Admissions, Campus Community, Financial Aid, and the Registrar's Office).

Even though I'm joining a great leadership team, filled with people I have previously worked with on projects, it's a little bittersweet.  Over the last six years, I have made some amazing friends in the Registrar's Office... people I look forward to seeing every day.  They are my go-to people when I need to vent or want to share exciting news or need advice.  We even like to hang out outside of work - working out together, vacationing together, scrapbooking, making freezer meals, watching movies...  I know I will remain friends with many of these people, but it will just take a little more effort since I won't see them every day (although I will be working closely with them on the roadmap projects).  Needless to say, Mandy and I are already planning standing lunch dates and vent sessions :-)

So, I start on August 22nd... kind of an exciting way to start the first day of school!

Grilled Eggplant

One of the things I love about my Bountiful Basket is that I get to try new fruits/vegetables that I haven't had before. Like the week we got a diakon radish. Or the week we got figs (although to be completely honest I ended up throwing these out before I ate them because I just wasn't brave enough). But the challenge comes in trying to figure out how to prepare this not-so-common produce. Like last week we got an eggplant. I only remember having eggplant once before, but even then, I wasn't the one who prepared it. Thank goodness for google! I ended up grilling my eggplant for lunch today, and it was quite tasty! I thought I'd share this quick video I found... I followed the directions to a tee and they came out great.

Video: How to Grill Eggplant - FineCooking.com

Creatures of Habit

You know those things in your lives that you do over and over again, and you feel the need to do them the exact same way?  Take church on Sundays.  We all like to sit in the same spot every week, right?  I remember how Jen and I confused Bishop Sager one Sunday when we switched from one side of the chapel to the other... he even commented on it over the pulpit!  I always wonder, when I visit a new congregation, who I have just displaced from their seat.

Well, much like having a favorite "spot" in church, I have a favorite treadmill at the gym.  It's the one pictured below - in the middle with the tv (I like to watch HGTV while I run).

This is the treadmill I always run on at the gym.  I have been going to Fitness 19 now faithfully since January when Brandee came back from maternity leave.  And when I say faithfully, I mean sometimes up to 5 or 6 times a week.  Sometimes I go in the morning before work.  Sometimes I go after work.  I somehow always get the same treadmill.  It's like people know when I'm coming and they save it just for me.

Well, this morning I went to the gym to get in a quick cardio workout before I had to go pick up my Bountiful Basket.  And guess what... someone was on MY treadmill!  I wasn't quite sure what to do.  I double checked to make sure I wasn't seeing things, and then just wandered around aimlessly for a minute trying to figure out what treadmill I should run on since mine was taken.  I did end up picking another treadmill (which somehow just wasn't as nice as my treadmill) and managed to get my workout in just fine, but this experience just reaffirmed in my mind that we are definitely creatures of habit!

Note: I had to wait until the lady got off my treadmill, then I ran to my car to get my camera so I could get this picture!

High School Musical

Jen, David, Me, and Matt

I haven't been up to Starlight Mountain Theater in a couple years, so it was definitely a treat to head up last night and enjoy the beautiful theater setting in Garden Valley.  We watched the play High School Musical and I thought the actors did a great job of portraying the story.  We even got to watch Matt's sister Michelle play the role of Ms. Darbus - she was fantastic :-)

August Already??

Wow, this summer is really flying by.  I can't believe that in just a few short weeks, school will start back up and campus will be crawling with students.  Oh, and FOOTBALL!!!  I can't wait.  One month and two days until our season opener.  Go BSU!  Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Anyway, I realize it's been over a week since I last blogged... what have I been up to??  Just more of this:

Me, Matt, & Aaron up at Black Canyon Dam

I've also been having fun watching movies, having BBQs with friends and coworkers, and floating the Boise River.  I really do love summertime.