Kyle and I just got back from the Dairy Days parade in Meridian, ID. It was definitely a different thing to do here. The parade lasted probably about 45-50 minutes--we left right before it was over because it was HOTT!!! The sun doesn't set here until about 10pm so the sun was beating down on us at 7:30pm still. We also wanted to leave before the crowd decided to leave...I do believe the whole population of Meridian and Boise was out there on the street to watch this parade. The theme, of course, was dairy and so all the cars and floats had cow creations on them--tails on the back of the vehicles and black/white splotches. I would post pictures but they aren't very good mainly because I couldn't get a very close shot. We stood near the back. Oh well. The parade wasn't as exciting as we thought it would but I think it's because it's not a major holiday--it's probably just a yearly tradition that they must have. Tomorrow night, we'll go to the carnival hopefully and have some fun. I haven't been to a fair in FOREVER. My family and I used to go to the Fayette county fair every once in awhile when Chris and I were young. Those were so fun!! Now, the fair is probably all ghetto and whatnot (if it even happens anymore).Gotta go now...we're gonna go rollerblading before it gets dark!
We bought rollerblades yesterday. I wanted to buy them so that we could blade around the town possibly and around the greenbelt for as long as we live in that area (probably about 2 months until we buy our house). Hopefully we don't fall down a lot. I haven't rollerbladed since I fell down a steep hill on the golfcart path in PTC. Believe me, that was not a fun day. I'm getting my courage up to try again though.
I called my dad today just to update him on the house-hunting and then he told me the sad news...Peaches, my cat of 13-14 years, had been ill for a few weeks now and my parents noticed she wasn't eating hardly. Even when I was last home, I picked her up and she felt a little skinny but I had no idea what was going to happen. I guess it was Tuesday when Dad said that he couldn't find her and he noticed that she was hiding in weird places--places where she usually didn't go. Then, yesterday he found her up on the grill (which was unusual --how the heck did she jump up there if she was looking really weak). Dad saw a puddle of wet and saw that it was blood. He then wiped Peaches' mouth and the blood had been coming out of her mouth. He took her to the vet this morning and the vet looked and said that it looked to be an infection in her mouth--possibly impacted teeth or cancer. Antibiotics were a solution to the infection, but if it were cancer, the vet said that he probably wouldn't do anything since she was already so old. So, the vet said he would do a blood test to find out what the problem was and Dad left the office after signing the papers for a possible euthanization. The vet called later today and said that her kidneys had failed and that there was no hope for her. My dad gave the ok for them to put her down. My dad said that he got tears in his eyes while he was leaving the vet earlier today. Peaches was such a good-spirited cat. She was so nice and she let us do just about anything to her (i.e. drag her around, wrap her in a blanket and whatnot)...she was my baby. I'm going to miss her terribly. I will always remember her.
We went house-hunting again today but it wasn't nearly as long as the first trip we took. We only went to 3 houses--2 were ones that we had already seen and wanted to see again. We looked at the 2 houses for imperfections that might make our decision a little easier. There were some things that we saw today that we didn't see the last time. Unfortunately we saw more things wrong with the house that I really liked originally. Oh well...that was made up for when we went to another house that we hadn't seen yet. We walked into the new house and it had a better layout of rooms than the previous one. The downstairs was really spacious than the other one. The outside of the house was a little plainer than the other one and Kyle said it looked like a rollerskate (don't ask me what that means, cuz I have no idea). There was a place for a formal living/sitting area in the entrance of the house and it was separated from the kitchen by a wall. The kitchen was really open and nice and it had an open eating area. Then, there was a HUGE family room. It was HUMONGOUS! I liked that--plenty of room for our STUFF. The backyard was beautiful--they had already landscaped it so all we would have to do is add more plants or flowers as we see fit. The stairs were to the left of the front door and they went straight up to a guest bath with guestrooms to the left and the master bed to the right. The master bed was big with its own bathroom and closet. So all in all, I think this house made up for the imperfections we found in the previous house that I loved. We were going to look at a townhouse today but we decided against it because we drove out last night to where that house was located and it looked HORRIBLE. The area almost looked like Norcross but less "ethnic" and not as dense. There were rundown houses everywhere and we just were like...NO. Kyle still wants to check out some stuff closer to Micron but I'm afraid we won't find many houses over 1100-1200 sqft. We had a little disagreement about living in townhomes. I don't want to because I don't want to share any walls with anyone anymore--I'm tired of apartment style living! Anyway, I think my reasoning is working on him. I mean, I don't even think townhomes are easy to resell. Does anyone have any experience with that? I would think that more people would want houses than townhomes. Oh well...we're still hunting and we'll see what happens.
We arrived around 11:15pm on Sunday evening after a pretty emotional send-off from my parents. Although, we weren't as bad as I thought we would do in the airport. Just a few tears. We got to the rental car counter and tried to pick up our car. The lady said there wasn't any reservation under Kyle's name. We tried to look up the email on Kyle's laptop that said that there was a car available, but of course, the laptop died and wouldn't start up correctly. We finally just rented the car from our own pocket in hopes that Micron would either take over the charges or reimburse us--which they did (take over the charges). We get our personal cars tomorrow at some point in the afternoon. Hertz rented us a pimp car...the dodge magnum. It's a horrible car to drive in--SOOO many blindspots and poor Kyle can't hardly park the thing. It's a monstrous beast. We're living in a furnished apartment for now until we can cough up the money for a down payment on a house. The apartment is actually really nice (pictures to come later). It's located on the greenbelt in town and it's beautiful. We're only a hop, skip and a jump from the Boise river. I want to go floating on it sometime soon. OOH! Today we saw the most hilarious thing! This guy in a business suit had a CAT on a LEASH!! I thought I was going to die of laughter. The cat seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole leash idea, although the owner said that at the beginning it was a bit of a struggle. I want to train a cat to walk on a leash! The cat's name is Rendy--just in case you wanted to know. And it was a fat cat. lol.Anyway, things are going good so far for us except for a little bit of arguing with each other at the start of the trip. We've reconciled. It's ok now. I think it was a result of all the moving stress. We're so exhausted--maybe it's because of the time difference of 2 hours? I dunno. Oh well, Kyle starts work on Monday so I've gotta figure out what I'm going to do with myself for all of that time. We'll see if I go crazy or not. I'm going to try and meet people somehow through the weightwatchers meetings that I'm planning on attending because all of this stress has gone to my waistline and I don't like it. Enough about weight. Bring on the adventures of summer vacation!
So, the apartment was packed up on Wednesday and loaded on the truck on Thursday. We checked out of it this morning and we were so relieved to finally be out of our place of misery--no more vacuuming and stomping, annoying children!! Now we're just mentally preparing ourselves for the final move (us getting onto the plane and flying away). We're so tired right now that we can't hardly stand it. There is so much stress related to moving, as most of you may already know. We've been going nonstop and it's taking a toll on our physical and emotional health, I think. I know I've gained weight. Kyle says he's gained weight (yeah right). We just aren't eating the right things like we used to and it's showing. Once we get out there, hopefully everything will balance out and get back to almost normal. Sunday is the day. It's going to be an interesting day for us all. Kyle's parents are coming down and going to church with us and then we're going to eat lunch together at my parents' house until time for the airport. I can just see us now...tears flowing and lots of hugging. It's going to be an emotional day and everyone at the airport will be watching us pour our emotions out. *sigh* here we go...we can do it.
(These charming people were there to great us as we walked up to the visitor center of Idaho City)
(I think this machine thing has to do with gold mining. Idaho City was founded because of the Gold Rush)
(This the town strip. There were a lot of tourists there, including us!)
(The town courthouse)
(The main drag once more)