October!

We had a busy start to the school year and October kept pace with September.  Early in October we went down to Salt Lake City for an Anberlin concert.  Anberlin is one of Kyle's favorite bands. In fact for our very first Valentine's Day together, I got him an Anberlin t-shirt.  Which he proudly wore at the concert.  We invited Katelyn to come with us, so that was a lot of fun.  The concert itself was interesting.  I am not a huge fan of big crowds, and once those big crowds start jumping around and pushing on you, then I become absolutely terrified.  We were right up front by the stage, but as soon as Anberlin came on and the pushing and crowding started, I ditch Kyle and Katelyn and headed back to a safer location.  Overall, it was fun.  Kyle and Katelyn really enjoyed themselves. I just ended up feeling old because it was too loud and too crowded.  Here are a few pics!

Waiting in line outside.

Oh my, look at all the people!

Kyle and I also had the opportunity to go to a dinner theater. Several of his classmates in his program worked at an event and they were given tickets for their work. We got to see a local theater perform the play Les Miserables.  The food was yummy and it was a lot of fun.

And the last event to blog about... We had a Niatec Fall/Halloween party.  I helped to organize it.  I had found online that there is a pumpkin patch/corn maze close by.  We ended up having dinner in a church near the corn maze, then heading over together.  The corn maze was a ton of fun.  It was the type of maze where it gives you questions to choose your path.  There was also a huge pumpkin patch where we picked out pumpkins.  It would have been better if we had gone a tiny bit earlier so we could have some sun, but it still worked out great and I'm glad we got to do it.

Crazy start to the school year!

Well, if you didn't figure it out from the last post, I broke my foot.  We had just gotten home from our trip to D.C.(literally home for maybe 30 minutes).  Kyle had gotten up in the loft to get down our fans (it was so hot!) and he asked me to throw some bags of stuff up to him.  In a perfect combination of events.  I jumped, threw the bag, landed wrong on the cement/carpet in my flip-flop, my foot twisted to the side and I heard something pop.  I wasn't in too much pain, really just astounded at finding myself sitting on the ground. I had scrapped up my knee and the top of my foot in the process.  Kyle, of course, looked dumbfounded at my blunder.  I stood up and hobbled up the stairs to the kitchen. As soon as I stood in the light from the kitchen (the garage light had burned out while we were gone), I could tell that a bone was sticking out in a way that it shouldn't be.  It was at that point that I told Kyle that I had thought that I had broken my foot.  He seemed slightly panicky as he rushed down from the loft. I just went into the kitchen to sit down. Again, not much pain.  So we debated whether or not I needed to be taken in.  Kyle decided to feel my foot to see where it hurt.  I registered no pain as he pushed on the bone, but in the process almost passed out and had to lay on the floor. I think that was the scariest part for me.  I hate the passing out feeling and obviously my body was registering that something was wrong.  Well, we decided to go into an urgent care clinic. They x-rayed my foot and it was broken.  The doctor also proved what I had been telling Kyle for years, that I had a high pain tolerance. He said that it's been scientifically proven that red-heads have a higher pain tolerance.  That's what I thought!  Anyway, I went home with a nice big boot. It was hard to sleep because of the boot but also because my foot hurt. I took ibuprofen to help with the pain.  That happened on a Sunday evening, and I started school on the following Thursday.  My students came back on the next Tuesday, so I started the school year hobbling around on my boot.  That afternoon, I had an appointment with a podiatrist.  He x-rayed my foot again, and since there were two small breaks, connected to a tendon, it turned out that I actually needed a cast.  I got a nice purple cast, and a scooter to get around on.  Of course, my kids loved it.  They wanted to put a motor on it and bling it out.  Luckily for me, I was only on the scooter for two weeks.  But that two weeks sure made me grateful for having two feet that work.  After two weeks, I went back to the podiatrist. My foot was healing nicely, so I was put back in the boot for two weeks.  It's been two weeks since I got the boot off.  My foot is still sore sometimes, but it seems to have healed nicely.  So that was the start to my school year!

I was not excited about getting a cast!  But at least I got to choose a nice purple color!

Trying out the scooter for the first time.  It was amazing how fast I could get down the halls at school. 

Kyle had a good time on the scooter, too!

Since we've been home...

And then this happened no more than 30 minutes after we got home.

This is my artistic way of showing my crutches and the only foot I'll be wearing shoes on for a while.

Iowa Visit!

We spend a week in Iowa visiting family before heading back to Idaho. While visiting my family in Chillicothe, I was still in the sight-seeing mode, so I asked at dinner one day what we could go see in the area.  Dad mentioned some pyramids, so we loaded up to go check them out.

We headed out in Dan's minivan to see to the pyramids that are in a cemetery

The biggest one has a tomb on one side that is open.  Mom was the first to go down to look in.

Dan and Kyle also went down to poke their heads in.  Right after this picture was taken, Mom, standing behind us, screamed. We all jumped, you should have seen the look on Kyle's face, while mom giggled.  We're used to her shenanigans, but Kyle's not yet.  

Examining the pyramid.

Selfie in front of the cool pyramids!

After we stayed a few days with my family, we headed to Cedar Rapids to see friends, Casey and Amber.  We stayed with them one night then went to Galena, IL the next day.  Kyle has always talked about Galena to me, so we decided to take a day and visit.

We had lunch at a funny place called Durty Gurt's.  

We went to the Grant Museum.  This is General/President Grant at a pretty young age.

Outside the Grant Museum. I got the coolest owl coloring book ever!

Outside the Grant House, but it was closed, so we didn't actually get to tour it.

So cute! Love these guys!

Climbing on a canon.  Proud moment.

We also went to a park.  The weather was gorgeous, this picture is from a bridge overlooking the main tourist strip in Galena.

After Galena we headed to Manchester to see Kyle's family.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from that visit.  We enjoyed our time there celebrating Terry and Teresa's wedding anniversary. We went kayaking and ate lots of sweet corn, well Kyle did.

Instead of heading home on Friday like originally planned, Kyle had a surprise for me.  On Friday morning we headed up to Dodgeville, WI to see The House on the Rock.  This guy named, Alex Jordan, built his crazy house up on a cliff.  He didn't do much planning, just built how he felt it should go.  The house was cool, but weird.  But then we also got to see his many collections.

Beautiful gardens at The House on the Rock.

He built a room that extends out of the house, called the Infinity Room.

Obviously, it looks like the room keeps going forever.  Really neat.

He had a lot of collections, but my favorite was his collection of doll houses.

They were so beautiful and perfect.  With tiny furniture and everything looked so real, just miniature.

Part of his Circus collection.  A pyramid of elephants.

A doll castle!

Jordan also has the world's largest carousel, a collection of model boats and ships with a giant replica of a whale.  There was one room that was huge and dimly lit with all sorts of stuff in it.  Like giant bells, parts from a steam boat and a giant chandelier made out of smaller chandeliers.  There were music machines, actual instruments that he made mechanisms for to play them. Pretty cool. I'm glad we took the time to go see it.
Here's a video of one of the huge music machines.  Sorry the camera doesn't focus very well, it was pretty dark in there.

Katelyn!

At the last minute, we decided to have Katelyn come and visit too!  She flew in on a Monday and then drove home with us on Saturday.  We had done a marathon tour with Kyle and Jess so we decided to take it easy and see a few things everyday she was there.  This was a pretty big deal for me, since I learned to conquer the D.C. metro.  I rode by myself to collect her from the airport, and then we would catch a bus and head downtown while Kyle was working. If he could, he'd meet up with us at the Mall.  Here's some pics!

First stop, Great Falls!

Kyle is dedicated to getting a really good picture.  Here we are outside the D.C. Temple.

Inside the Capitol Building Rotunda

We also met Washington and some Native Americans at the Native American Heritage Smithsonian.

Meeting the Wright Brothers outside their house at the Air and Space Museum.

Outside the Smithsonian Castle

 We are so glad Katelyn could come hang out with us.  We saw new and different sights with her, including the National Art Museum. So Fun!

Kyle and Jess!

We were so lucky to have Kyle and Jess Hansen come and visit us while the family we were staying with was out of town. It was great to have friends come and we loved showing them the sights.  We did so much more with them then we would have done on our own.  Here's some pictures of our adventures!

Kyle and Jess flew in early afternoon on a Thursday.  Since we were pretty gungho  about seeing as much as we could, we came up with a few places to see that afternoon.  I had heard about the Clara Barton house from Jana, and thought it would be a good idea.  Kyle wasn't too sure, but once we were there, we were so glad we came.

Clara Barton was the founder of the Red Cross in the U.S.  The house was built for her to be her office and house herself and her volunteers.  It was really cool architecturally.

Outside the Clara Barton House.

We also went to the Capitol Building.  Kyle, Jess and Kyle went on a tour.  

We also visited the National Botanic Garden.  We even snuck in a trip to Hawaii! 

The Children's Garden

The Orchid Garden

Next stop was the Air and Space Smithsonian Museum.

We really wanted to show Kyle and Jess as much as we could, so we decided to rent bikes for a day.  This was pretty awesome, because it meant we could go all the way out to the Jefferson Memorial and just get across the mall quicker.

Martin Luther King Jr Memorial 

Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial. Kyle has a personal picture with every life-sized statue of a President.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

We had the opportunity to get tickets for a Washington National's game.  We thought it was a lot of fun, though neither of us really watch baseball on t.v.  There's something exciting about being at a game.

At the National's game!

We also went to Ford's Theater, the Great Falls, the D.C. Temple, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Korean and Vietnam Memorials, American Museum and of course Potbelly's.  We had so much fun and were so glad they could come out!