Mesa Falls

It's been over 2 years since Michael and I have visited Mesa Falls. So we decided to go one more time, just the two of us and savor every bit of the time together, uninterrupted by children, that we can. Lucky me, I really enjoy his company and lately our schedules have been pretty dumb. I work days and he works nights, meaning I stay up really late every other night to spend time with him and try to catch up on the sleep the days between. It's dumb and I'm sure not the least bit healthy, but you do what you can. It's pretty crazy thinking how close we are to having our lives change forever. I know marriage has changed us, but adding something we created to the mix is something else. And for future reference it is not ok to tell people that are about to have a baby how much it changes your life and how hard it is and that you should be scared. Yea, I've had people tell me that. Thanks, like I'm not already freaking out in my head that this is really happening, and soon, but you want to add all that to it too? Crazy! Anyway, here's our trip to Mesa Falls with Michael's parents and Brenda back in July 2009 when I came to and help him move to Tennessee.

What a handsome man! 

Let's take a moment here and appreciate how skinny I am. Best shape of my life right there. 

I told you Brenda was with us!

We were a bit more adventurous that time and climbed all the way down to the bottom. This is the lower falls that are in the background of the first picture. Look at how uncomfortable we are on that rock! Can you tell we were getting engaged in a month and a half?

So what I liked most about this last trip to the falls was the spontaneity of it. Michael and I both had the day off and spent most of it sleeping and laying around. Finally Michael asked if I would like to go to Mesa Falls and of course I said yes. By the way, every time I go to type Mesa Falls I want to put Mesa da Falls instead.  Ok, so here's pictures from this time around. 

The view on the drive up.

 Upper Mesa Falls

Lower Mesa Falls

In other news.... I am 38 weeks pregnant. We're having a boy and will probably name him Tyler, but we're a little unsure at the moment. To my knowledge, he has never had the hiccups, which I think is weird. I haven't had any contractions yet, but have experienced the whole back labor thing and that sucks way bad. I had morning sickness my entire first trimester. It went away with the second but sadly came back with the third. As far as cravings go, I haven't really had any. Well, other than mountain dew... 44 oz almost every day for a while. That's gotta be healthy right? And nachos from Taco Bell. Not any other nachos, Taco Bell nachos. For a long time I didn't want any sweets. And if you know me, you know that's a big deal. Here lately I've been wanting a lot of ice cream. But just this past week. Oh, there was one time that all I wanted was peanut butter M & M's and red grapes... At the same time.... One of each in every bite. Awesome. I've done a pretty good job of staying busy and feel that I'm still very mobile, even though every time I get off the couch Michael makes a bear growling noise at me. I worked at Bambino's until the middle of July. I started my internship in August and now I'm working at that clinic. And I try to go walking after all of that too. My house is super clean... I suppose that has something to do with nesting. Let's see, what other questions are there about pregnancy.... My feet are huge and so are my ankles. They swelled about 2 weeks ago and haven't been their normal size since. I've gained about 50 pounds and went from a 26 inch waist to a 40. I weigh more than Michael and I'm bigger around than he is. I don't own a single item of maternity wear, yes I'm still squeezing into pre-pregnancy pants (lucky for me I like low rise pants). Although, I only have one pair of jeans that fit, but that's why I work at a vet clinic so I can wear scrubs. Most of my shirts still fit me, but I got some Down East basics shirts and they have been a life saver. I can't see my feet when I stand straight up, but I can reach them. Most importantly, I'm ready to be done being pregnant. Who knows if I'm ready to be a mom, but if I'm ready to go through labor.... That's gotta say something right? So here's a picture of me all huge, and here's to hoping my next blog will include a cute little baby!

I'm huge. 

Taut... Tauf... Tautafanus... The Zoo

I've always wondered why the zoo in Idaho Falls is called what it is. It's the Tautphaus Zoo, a place which children love and want to visit, so let's make the name as difficult to read and say as possible. Dumb.
And we're starting over. Craig and Janet (Michael's parents) asked me Friday night if I would like to go to the zoo with them and Christopher (Michael's brother) and Jane and Megan (Chris's kids, well 2 outta 3). Laura (Chris's wife) was on vacation and we had to do something to keep those kids entertained! So the zoo it was. I hadn't been there, it only costs 6 dollars, and I'm trying to get all the exercise I can lately so maybe this baby will happen a little sooner. How could I say no?

Jane loved having the map. She was pretty good at navigating. Notice how many ponytail holders she has? Apparently she wanted 3 pony tails and settled for 3 pony tail holders instead. 

This is a serval and they are super cute! Probably about the size of a cocker spaniel. I had never seen one of these before!

Pelicans! It's really not fair to have them at the zoo, since you see them all over the place here, but since I'm not from here... Awesome!

Something that really impressed me about this place was just how close all the exhibits were. Not just in walking distance, because we really didn't walk that far, but the cages weren't super deep and all the animals were really close to you. That really impressed me. I'm sure it's just a space issue and that's the most logical way to set it up, but bigger zoos seem too concerned for the well being of the animals to be worried about what the customers want. 

On another note, with all these pelicans there were loads of ducks, some with blue bills, and swans and fish in the water. Jane wanted to feed them, of course. So she took the food from the gum ball type machine, threw it in the water and immediately went to see if she could get more food out. She didn't care a bit about watching the ducks and fish eat the food, she just enjoyed turning the knob for the food!

See what I mean about close? Craig asked one of the zookeepers how the animals handled the winter. The response was lengthy, but something like this: The lions and tiger have heated dens that they sleep in, but are open. They often go out and spend a lot of time outside though, even in the snow. The zebras and all the other animals that are from warm climates don't get any help with staying warm. They have adapted and do just fine being outside all winter. That's pretty cool. 

Jane wanted to sit on the tiger, but only if her dad would sit with her.

Isn't that a cute face? Megan loved that goat. 

Aren't they just so weird? I was actually really surprised with how nice these goats were. Maybe I just have a predetermined mindset that all goats are evil....

Megan taking her turn leading us.

River otters! They are so cute! Megan absolutely loved them. They were super active and kept jumping in and out of the water, it was quite entertaining. 

Lemurs! Chris and I had a conversation about how cool it could be to have a tail. Then we discussed what kind of tail we would like to have. He chose a monkey tail. I chose a lemur tail. You get all the balance and ability that you would with a monkey tail, but the black and white stripes will never go out of style!

Lack-o-motivation-itis

Haven't blogged in a long time. And I probably won't blog again after this one for a long time. Let's face it, I'm no good at this and I definitely don't have the motivation to write out everything that happens. I'll do my best. This isn't the end of blogging.
In other news, we went to the Eastern Idaho State Fair yesterday. It was awesome. But I worked that morning, had a doctor's appointment and a WIC class, so let's just say I did a little too much in a day. We went to the fair with the intention of getting awesomely bad for you food and people watching. Michael immediately went to the Aberdeen Education Foundation booth, not because he knew everyone there, but he wanted fish. Not just one fish, not even just two fish, but three fish! The lady even asked him what he wanted and his response... the most I can get! Good thing his fish came with fries! Then we walked around for forever and found all the animals. Which to be honest, ended up being the highlight of my night. There were Clydesdales and huge chickens and a cow with HUGE horns and a buffalo and a goat with curly horns and goats and sheep. The goats and sheep really aren't that exciting, however, there were baby pygmy goats and they were the cutest dang thing ever. The petting zoo stuff is all free, but you can pay 50 cents to feed the animals, but enough people had dropped the food that I just picked that up off the ground and fed it to them. It was so cute! The little baby goats just licked it right out of my hand. Best day ever. There was a sheep there, he was actually quite deformed. It was a boy, that's for sure, but he also had very well developed girl parts... attached to his boy parts... I didn't get a picture of that, figured it might be a little inappropriate. So use your imagination. Oh! There was this other goat that had 4 horns! After the animals we walked around some more, got a Tiger Ear, which kicks the pants off funnel cakes any day. It's a fried scone with cinnamon and honey butter and is the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, technically Michael is because he introduced me to them. Then we people watched for a while. That's always fun. And here's some pictures of the evenings frivolities.

Do you see the emu in the background?!

These are the people we went with. Michael, of course, and our friends Katelyn and Jenny. Don't worry, Katelyn doesn't always look like that, she was just standing up. Oh look! Michael's smiling, he enjoyed this part too! And now he wants a miniature toy teacup pygmy goat.

Baby Buffalo! He was kind of angry. 

I'm gonna go ahead and add a tiny section of pictures of things I really enjoy. We take drives sometimes, and spend time together and it's really fun. Our latest, most common destination has been to the elk ranch just outside of town. This inspires us to learn more about having an elk ranch.... And there's a bunch of muskox too. We don't want those, but they still look cool, kinda like buffalo with big fluffy tails. 

Muskox

Elk

And this is the cutest puppy in the world  that we should have adopted and let get away.... In Michael's defense, he was a little terror. But super cute. 

Finals Week?

Pretty sure finals are my favorite thing ever invented. I mean, who doesn't like having a comprehensive test for each and every class you are taking and taking these tests all at the same time? Well, let's just say adding packing, moving, unpacking, painting, fixing up the house, and being super pregnant didn't make this a good experience. And I'm actually gonna take that back about cleaning. Our house is always the cleanest when we have tests coming up or a ton of homework to do. Michael and I just really like procrastinating and pushing the things that stress us out to the background, what better way to do that than to clean? At least that means our house is clean, right? This time around, I needed a bigger distraction. And Amber Holshouser knew exactly what I needed! She is like my best friend ever! And she's a recreation management major at BYU-I and one of her finals for a class in her program was to organize an end-of-the-semester barbecue for her class and to invite people to come. So we went. There was bobbing for apples, a sweet ring toss game, cotton candy machine, dancing, a cake walk, and a rope swing that went over a canal full of water! Too bad we didn't know about that last part til we got there and I thought it would be a bad idea to take a dip with white shorts on.... I won a cake on the cake walk! And Michael officially had the biggest cotton candy ever made in the history of man. Seriously, it was huge. And we ended up know quite a few of the people there too. Funny how small this place is. But it was a nice way to relax and not worry about finals for a little while.

Michael had a final in all of his 6 classes. His online class which is CIT something, basically an intro to Excel class, his final consisted of this huge final project that is like a fourth of his grade or something ridiculous. He had done well all semester, other than doing all his assignments the day they were due, so his grade was awesome. I think it was a 98. So he spent some time debating whether he should just skip this last assignment and take a lower grade so he could spend the time saved from doing that on something more important like his business class or accounting. At first, he thought not doing the assignment would only drop his grade a couple of points and he would still get and A or A-. Thank goodness he checked that again because not doing it would have actually brought his grade down to a B- and it would really hurt his GPA. Right now he has a full tuition scholarship, cuz he's awesome, and a B- could take that away. That wasn't an option for him. So he spent probably 10 hours on this assignment, turned it in not completely done the way it needed to be, but to the best of his ability. Did I mention that Michael's computer died the week before finals? Yea, completely dead, wouldn't turn on or anything. It had done this a week prior to dying and I did a system check on it and it said it worked right and passed all the tests. Well it worked for a week and died! So he's stuck with using my computer, which is super dumb, and isn't set up the same way with excel and doesn't have any of the previous assignments that Michael had done. Poor thing. So he spent forever on this assignment and when he checked his grade, it said his class grade was a 81 and that he got a 12 on that huge assignment! Let me tell you, not a happy guy.... And it's a good thing I wasn't around to hear what he had to say about it.... Michael's teacher hadn't graded any of the assignments that hard before and it was totally unfair since Michael had done much more work that 12 percent worth. So he emailed the teacher and found the problem. My computer is dumb. The end.

Somehow, my computer decided it was only going to save the first of 5 pages of Michael's project under the correct title in the right place. So the one Michael turned in didn't include all that he had done. He found the completed version, turned it in and got a 98 on the assignment and a 98 in the class. Thank goodness!

As for me, my finals weren't all that exciting. Other than the fact that I'm an angry person. My teacher challenged us, a class full of girls, that if we could eat a whole raw egg, shell and all that we could be exempt from taking the final for our Zoonosis class. Well, apparently that sounds like a good idea, even though we just learned about Salmonella and all sorts of bacteria and diseases you could contract by doing so. Fun. 5 girls took the challenge right away and succeeded. Then the teacher kept pushing the rest of us to do it, well I wasn't going to. I'm already nauseous all the time anyway, why push it. So a few more girls took the challenge until two thirds of the class had done it. So the day for the test came and some of the people that succeeded in the challenge left so the rest of us could take the test and a few of the girls decided they wanted to stay in the classroom. Awesome. I'm taking this test, which was fairly easy and I ended up getting a 98 on, and these girls start talking. That's nice, let's talk while most of the people in the room are taking a test. So I politely shhh'ed them and they kept talking. Now I'm stressed out, this being number 4 of 6 finals and number 4 of 7 tests I would take that week. And I'm pregnant. And my name is Amanda Wampler and I'm an angry person. So since no one else was going to say anything, I sure was. I already don't like the girls that were talking, so hurting their feelings sure wasn't going to make me feel bad. I said to this girl something along the lines of "Excuse me (which I thought was awful polite of me) but all of the rest of us are really quiet when you're taking your test so we would really appreciate it if you could be quiet while we're taking ours or leave the room." I didn't raise my voice or say it with an attitude, which took a whole lot. And this girl turns around and says "Oh well I didn't think I was being that loud." And keeps right on talking. Now I'm pissed. I'm not sure what my blood pressure was, but my heart was pounding so fast and so hard that you could see it move my shirt sleeve. Obviously if I have to say something then it's distracting. And why don't you just leave the room? What makes it so cool to be in the room with everyone taking a test that you feel the need to be in there? I mean, maybe she just felt the need to boast the fact that she can eat a whole raw egg, but really, is that something you're going to list on your resume when you're looking for a job as a vet tech. Um, yes my name is Blah Blah Blah and I'm an idiot, but I can eat a whole raw egg! Yea, I'd rather take a test so that I know I'm learning the material and then I can say, I'm super smart and I have good grades to show for it and I don't try to back out of things expected of my by taking short cuts. I couldn't just leave it at that, and all of these things, and many much more hateful things were running through my mind. So I said something back to her "Did I not make myself clear? I said stop talking or leave, you're being extremely rude and no one appreciates what you're doing right now." I yelled this, almost at the top of my lungs. I was shaking I was so upset, and honestly, I'm not sure what kept me from jumping over the tables to punch her in the mouth for being so rude. I know it doesn't seem like much, just talking while I'm taking a test, but I really don't like this girl, and if the teacher had been in the classroom, she would have been so quiet you wouldn't have known she was there. She's such a suck up and a teacher's pet, but only because she doesn't want to have to work at getting good grades or actually learning anything. And I'm pretty sure that if it hadn't been the last day I would see her for 5 months that I would be kicked out of BYU-I for kicking her butt! I'm so angry!!!! Actually, reading over this again, 3 weeks after it happened is cracking me up. I was totally right in saying something to her, I didn't cuss or use violence to get my point across and the rest of the people in the room appreciated what I said. Totally justified, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Coming soon: Stress relief or labor inducer? What did you do to your house? Cedar Ridge Animal Hospital! and When's that baby coming?

Adventure of a lifetime

See what I mean about the scenery here?

Since we're well on our way to making our own family, we decided not to spend the Fourth of July with either of our families. Just me and Michael, and we were headed on a road trip! School has been super busy, along with work and trying to exercise and get ready for the baby, so we really haven't had much time to spend together. Not quality time anyway. I don't know about you, but I don't count doing homework in the same room as spending time together, sorry. So this trip was well deserved and long awaited. We knew we wanted to go camping, well I did. I love, absolutely LOVE camping! And I really wanted to sleep in a tent and it not just be in our back yard. (How cool is it that we actually have a backyard!) So the requirements for the trip: sleeping in a tent, camping somewhere awesome, and seeing wildlife. I think seeing wildlife is a prerequisite for most adventures we have. And pretty much anywhere is more scenic than here... So we set off with the intention of camping in Stanley, Idaho, which is mostly central Idaho and has a few really big lakes by it. Lakes mean more people, especially for the Fourth, but it also means more wildlife. Plus neither of us have been and it would be fun to see. We were on our way there and Michael says, well we might as well head up to Missoula, Montana and see what's up there. What a great idea! So we did. We went through Salmon, Idaho going north to Missoula.

This is Salmon, Idaho

Still Salmon

Once we got to Missoula, we wanted to know what Coeur d'Alene, Idaho looked like, so we kept driving.

Here is Missoula, Montana, it really is a big place, but I figured I'd get the more scenic view of it. 

On the way to Coeur d'Alene

On a side note, we stopped at a rest stop between Missoula and Coeur d'Alene and found some rather friendly ground squirrels. I just so happened to have a whole bag of trail mix and made sure to keep them friendly.... Something about feeling wild animals is just so fun! But I wanted to see if they would eat out of my hand... And I got bit. Dang thing had some really sharp teeth too!

I also saw this Sterling Jay at that rest stop. The only other place I have ever seen these birds was in Yosemite National Park. I was super excited to see this guy!

Once we got to Coeur d'Alene, which is the most beautiful part of Idaho I'll probably ever see, we looked for a campsite. Our handy GPS couldn't tell us where any campsites were so we drove through the city and stopped at a hotel to ask the locals where to go. Sadly, there isn't any camping in Coeur d'Alene. Seriously. Not a singly campground in the entire city. There were a couple RV parks, but nothing as backwoods as what we wanted. So we drove around some more looking for campsites and found 2 that were about 20 minutes away from the city. One was full, sad. And the other was right off the interstate, stupid, and cost $22 to stay there, not to mention there were a TON of people there and a TON of kids and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten any sleep there. So we didn't even check if there were any open campsites. We left.

This isn't quite Coeur d'Alene yet, but almost there.

Coeur d'Alene! 

Michael called his brother Christopher, who so kindly looked up campgrounds for us and confirmed that we found the only 2 that existed anywhere near there. Darn lack of preparation had caught up to us! So we found a National Forest service road and went for a drive on the hunt for a campsite. We figured it's national forest so you can camp anywhere you can find flat enough ground, right? The only thing is, there isn't any flat ground in Coeur d'Alene! We drove for about 40 minutes looking, saw a family of skunks, super cute, some deer, and a really really dark elk. Finally we found the perfect spot. It was too good to be true! No really, it was. We started to set things up and our awesome tent, it really is awesome (no sarcasm involved) has two poles and everything else is just staked into the ground. Michael used the hatchet as a hammer, clever guy, and got the stake about and inch into the ground and hit nothing more than solid rock. Awesome. (that one was sarcastic)

This is our almost campsite. Pretty!

It's an elk!

So we debated on moving the car and strapping the tent to the car somehow or maybe moving the tent to a softer spot or just giving up and leaving altogether. Well, my ideas of strapping the tent to the car were ill-conceived and the ground wasn't any softer anywhere else. So at 9:30 at night we packed it all up and called Christopher again. He's so nice to help us! We knew we weren't going to find a campground anywhere close and it was already dark, so we searched for a Marriott anywhere close so Michael could get us a sweet deal on a room. The closest one ended up being in Spokane, Washington. So we drove there, had a fun time on the crazy, poorly laid out roads in Spokane and finally found the place. Now Michael had already called ahead of time to make sure he could use his discount card and to get an idea of how much the room was going to be. With the discount, it would be about 40 bucks. Not bad right? Especially because Marriotts are pretty dang classy if you ask me. Well it was Fourth of July weekend so the discount didn't work. They block out certain days so they can make more money since they're gonna sell out anyway. The regular room price was not 40 bucks. So we went searching for somewhere cheaper. As it turns out (thank you Lisa Colman for that awesome phrase) Spokane is not a cheap place to stay.... We found a couple places with pretty reasonable rates and chose the least dirty of them to sleep in. The Motel 6 was super fun. . . No free breakfast, super dumb layout, and the lady made us stay on the second floor! Rude. The room was clean, for the most part, but it looked really run down. So I made Michael get the sleeping bags and we slept in those instead of in their blankets. I felt much cleaner. I didn't feel safe enough to take a shower there though, not to mention they didn't give you any free soaps or anything! That's like the best part of staying at a hotel. And we were planning on camping the whole time and didn't bring any of those things anyway. So we didn't shower, don't judge us! But we did watch the women's national hot dog eating championship! It's kind of a big deal I guess. We were going to watch the men's championship, but they took way too long introducing all 10 competitors and I really wanted to explore Spokane. So we walked around the city and saw the waterfalls and were on our way.

Spokane is a huge city! There are 3
universities there and a TON of people!

 Just over the border in Idaho is a town called Post Falls. They had a Cabela's and I really wanted to see all the awesome taxidermy displays. So we stopped and got hassled by this old guy trying to sell us a credit card contract for like 15 minutes. He was so persistent! I learned that elk don't have upper incisors, they just have a dental pad like cows do. How crazy is that?! And there were 5 or 6 wolverines there even though they are like super endangered.

Taxidermy is so cool!

Wolverine

Look it's having a baby! Name that movie.

 When we got back on the interstate headed towards Coeur d'Alene again, Michael caught a glimpse of why Post Falls is called Post Falls. So we stopped and got to see this awesome waterfall! And we kept driving. On the way to Washington we kept seeing all these signs for the 50,000 silver piece collection. It looked interesting, and was in Montana, so we stopped. It ended up being this really awesome bar and souvenir shop. And it really did have 50,000 silver coin fifty cent pieces. It was kind of weird though, it had some really different souvenirs. I'm talking like mugs and bracelets and post cards, but also walking canes with swords in them and woven baskets and I dunno, it just seemed like a weird modge podge of very different things.

We decided we were going to camp that night, so we looked for something near Missoula. Nothing was all to close to there so we camped just outside of Clinton, Montana. It was absolutely beautiful. On our handy atlas, there were little triangles that told us there were campsites there. So we drove down this gravel road basically in the middle of know where and passed 3 or 4 campsites until we decided where to camp. One site was called Grizzly Campsite and it sounded quite adventurous, but that's what everyone else thought too and it was no where near the creek that ran along the road. Then we found Henry's Flat Campground. It was absolutely beautiful. We found a campsite that had a bunch of firewood left in it and nobody was there, so we took it as a contribution to us. And we kept having deer walk around our campsite. There was a bathroom nearby and it was almost right on top of the creek. It was perfect! We had a nice quiet evening of cooking our tinfoil dinners, roasting starburst, and burning marshmallows. It was relaxing and quiet and I loved it! Too bad we couldn't have found that place sooner. Oh well, we added it to our GPS so we can go back to the exact same spot whenever we want. And that was our trip!

 We left the Tuesday morning and came back to Rexburg, unpacked, and I went to work while Michael went to a study group. Yep, we sure didn't have a problem getting back into the swing of things with school.  

MY own LITTLE garden

There are a few blogs out there that I follow. One of them just happens to be written by someone who I admire lots and lots. She is super creative and I always get super inspired when I see all the cool crafts she does. With that in mind, I miss home. I miss the weather (and it actually being summer in June). I  miss my family. I miss playing soccer every day. I miss almost everything about being in Clarksville, Tennessee. I miss my dad and his incessant yard work. I miss my mom and her billions of house plants. So, I wanted to do something to bring that home to me and to make my home feel more like my own home. This is where I belong at this point in time and nothing could convince me otherwise. But it doesn't always help me not miss everything. So I made my own indoor garden. I got the idea from Janae, the awesome blogger I mentioned earlier. Michael and I went to Lowe's in Idaho Falls to look at siding for our house and I found what I was looking for.

I knew that I wanted plants that I could actually keep alive. And since we live in a desert, these little succulents seemed appropriate. So with the plants picked out, I had to find something to pot them in. I really liked the idea of an old, antique looking waterer but since everything from Lowe's looks so new, I didn't have any luck with that. So we tried Walmart. No luck there either. We did find this super cute dish, the brown one behind the plants in the above picture. Now this is meant for use as a serving platter or something like that. I found it in the section with all the dishes. It should be able to hold water and not leak... right??

Anyway, here's the idea. The plants go in the dish and the dish holds the plants. Cute right?

Here you can see I added dirt. Looks just like a garden! Derek Zoolander would want it to be at least 3 times bigger!!! I thought it was still a little plain, and if it was going to live inside, it needed to be much prettier.

So I added rocks, that I found outside.... And these little gem things that I found in my car. I LOVE it!!! It sits on my kitchen counter, getting all the light it needs all day long. This little thing is so cool. It helps me feel like I live somewhere exotic, like an actual desert that's actually warm! Yay for little things that make me happy. 

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Thanks Janae for all your inspiration!