January 09

As many of you know, on January 20th the rental house Sara was living in had a serious housefire. Thankfully everyone was okay (unfortunatley everything was not but things are replaceable right!!!). Sara and her roomate Kevin were at work when the fire started. Her other roomate and that roomate's boyfriend were asleep in the house (scarry!). The fire started in the attic and thankfully a neighbor saw the flames (at around 7am). He immediatley called 911 and then started banging on the door of the house to see if anyone was home. The two in the house threw on some coats and shoes and ran out of the door. Thankfully right as they got out of the house the fire trucks arrived. Firemen are awesome! These next two pictures were from local news channels.


This pictures below is from the back of the house with the firemen trying to contain the fire that was then trapped between the layers and layers of roof and inside the house.

Below is the South side of the house. They worked on containing the fire from early morning until mid afternoon. Apparently these types of fires are very scarry and complicated because it was such an old house with layers and layers of roofs and insulation. You can easily be decieved that the fire is out when it is actually still burning and contained in a layer somewhere.Below, Sara and a friend are clearing stuff off the front yard and putting it temporarily into the detached garage. The firemen were an awesome help. Sara and another roomate are both graduating art majors and when the firemen entered the house and saw all the artwork they started hauling it out onto the front yard. Then they asked if there was anything else that anyone really needed or wanted and they kept going back into the house to save more things! They really are heroes in so many ways.

A few days later Sara went back to the house and took a couple pictures of some of the damage that she could get to safely. Right now a few of the walls of the house are still standing, but most of it has been torn down and is waiting to be rebuilt. What's left standing has big tarps covering it and it just looks like a giant crime scene.

Sara was incredibly lucky and most of her things were saved. We are especially gratefully that her artwork and all her clothes were saved. Unforunatley her couches and her bed had to be thrown out because of smoke and water damage. Thanks to all you wonderful people who helped contribute to my little surprise... we have replaced Sara's bed! Thank you all so much for your help! It was a huge load off her mind.

For now, she's going to stay living with us until she's out of school. It's been nice having her here. She's plugging away at school and spending most every waking moment of time in the studio at BSU. Chad and I have helped her a bit on a couple of her projects (dipping heavy molds) and it has been fun. We can't wait to see the final projects.

SAVE THE DATE: Sara's senior show is on April 10th from 6pm-8pm at BSU.

We hope to see you all there! Otherwise her artwork will be on display from April 10th until May 5th so check it out!

December 08 - Chad's Birthday Party

Besides going to Chicago, we also celebrated Chad's Birthday by having a party here in Boise. It was a theme party and it was a blast! The theme was "Dress for your Drink". It was a BYOB party and each person was to stereotype whatever they were drinking and dress accordingly. It was awesome and people got very creative. We're definitely going to have to have another one of these parties in the summer though. Here are a few pictures.

Chad (Guinness Man) Hydee (Pirate with Rum and Coke) Jerry (no costume ;-P)

Nicki (Red-headed slut) and Chad

(I don't really own very slutty clothes but it was fun!)

Shelly and Zane (Two Below Beer by New Belgium)

Chad and Sara (The Dude from the Big Lebowski drinking White Russian)

Sharene (Greyhound) and Chad

Matt and friend (spiked tropical drink)

Abbie, Brad, and Kristy (Menage a Trois wine!)

Among other things were hot cocoa (dressed all in brown with white scarf for whipped cream), a Lumberjack (drinking cheep beer), a lifeguard (drinking water since she was the DD!), and a 'Tallboy' (drank by a very tall coworker of mine). It was awesome to see what people came up with and I must say I was very proud of the idea.

December 08 - Chicago!

For Chad's Birthday (Dec 6th) in 08 Chad decided that instead of gifts he wanted to take a trip to Chicago and go to a live Blues Club; so that's exactly what we did! We very much enjoyed our time there and can't wait to go back someday. We stayed right in downtown Chicago, walked the Magnificent Mile, went to the Blues Chicago on Clark Street for live music, ate at a few Irish pubs, and visited the Navy Pier and the Smith Museum of Stained Glass. Of course, we also went to the Observatory at the top of the John Hancock Building. We visited this at dusk in order to see the city during daylight, sunset, and all lit up beautifully at night. It's such a cool view of everything including the Sears tower! Because we went in the month of December all the Christmas lights were up everywhere in the city. It was really beautiful, but also really cold! We even manged to fit in finding one geocache while we were there! It was a very quick trip but we had a blast!

At Blues Chicago during a fun night drinking.

(To give Chad credit, we'd both had a few... he just looks worse for the wear than I do)

Chad with the John Hancock building in background.

Me!

Us!

Smith Museum of Stained Glass:

Incredible!

View of Chicago - Sears tower on right.

At Sunset.

Us at the top of the Observatory with the audio/visual boxes.

During this trip Nicki learned that she loves Chicago and would go back in a heartbeat, but that she totally hates revolving doors! (Claustraphobic feeling!) And they're EVERYWHERE in Chicago! Owh well...

All in all great trip. But next time we have to go back to see a Bear's game for Chad.

November 08

November was a fairly mellow month for us. Below are some pictures of a trip to Pine Burl Hot Springs north of Crouch, Id. We took a day trip there with our friends Sumer, Tanya and Jeff. It was a bit of an overcast and rainy day - perfect for hot springs! We had the springs all to ourselves (passed a Boyscout troup on the way out thankfully) and spent most the day in there. It was perfect.

Sumer, Tanya, Chad, Jeff

For Thanksgiving we went out to Roz and Dale's house in Sweet for the day. It was just immediate family members of Mom and Dale's, so not too many people which made for a nice relaxing holiday. So relaxing in fact that I apparently forgot to take any photos (oops!) A few days later we went over to Nancy and Larry's for delicious turkey soup since we weren't able to spend the day with them.

A nice mellow November!

October 08 - FLOORS!

Two days before we left for Michelle's wedding we decided to have our hardwood floors refinished while we were gone. This meant we had two days to pack for the wedding and to move everything we owned into the kitchen and garage! We took our plants to Chad's mom's house and Grandma and Grandpa Morris watched Nali while we were away. It was a lot of work at the last minute (literally), but it was absolutely worth all the work and the money! Have a look:

Before - Corner in one of the bedrooms

After - Corner in one of the bedrooms

Before - Hallway

After - Hallway

Before - Livingroom

After - Livingroom

Sara - showing off the beautiful floors.

Out of all the projects we've done on the house this is the one and only one we've paid to have someone else do for us. We debated beforehand about weither or not it was going to be worth it, but after coming home and seeing the beautiful floors (and smelling the intensity of those refinishing chemicals - yuck!) we decided it was well worth every single penny (and really nice to have a break from at least one of the projects...)