Chambers Family Reunion

Daniel's mom's side of the family had a reunion the last weekend in July. We headed down to Park City and Wasatch National Park for the festivities. We were especially excited that two of Daniel's sisters were going to be able to make it.

Initially we planned on camping all three nights....but we were kinda wimps. Two of the nights we ended up in the extra bed in Marci and Alan's hotel room. I cherish my sleep greatly so it was definitely worth the additional thirty minutes drive between the reunion and the hotel. We were able to hit up the outlet malls for some shopping and dined on some delightful meals.

Reunion day we met up with everyone and basically hung out for several hours. And that's truly the beauty of family reunions--whether you have one every summer or once a lifetime you can stick dozens of people together and expect to have a great day simply passing the time. There were lots of kids so they kept themselves entertained with waterguns and balloons. The older kids played cards and the oldest kids played the most intense game of Pit I've ever seen. There was lots of screaming and occasional accusations of cheating, but that's typical family fun. We played a family trivia game that was quite cute, and very informative for someone such as myself (so new to the fam). Dinner was delicious and dessert was just divine--dutch oven cakes and ice cream. Hugs and kisses and everyone parted ways. Until next time....

Grandma Jensen even made it up from Richfield to see some of her many, many great grandchildren she hardly gets to see. She is always fun to talk to. She and Colter enjoyed dessert together.
Norma, Brent {Lara's Husband}, and Alan {Marci's Husband}

My and Daniel's new love. Our nephew Calvin captured our hearts. How can you resist that face? Calvin particularly became fond of Uncle Daniel.

The Chambers Siblings
Loretta, David, Rhonda, & Norma

Chambers Goofy Picture

The before-mentioned Pit Game. I now see where Daniel gets his competitive drive.

A little game of bean bag toss.

Alan & Andy

Everyone was very impressed that Daniel put Calvin to sleep

A rather interesting game of Bonzana {more commonly referred to as the Bean Game at our house}. It was quite fun.

My attempt at playing badmitton with a bunch of young boys. Basically I watched them swing and miss eighteen times in a row only to finally make contact and knock it clear into the trees. You have to admire the heart of these kids though. They were persistant and positive the entire time. I, on the other hand, may have been less so, but it sure was entertaining.

**Love this baby**

**Love this boy**

With her dad's assistance, Ally was very successful at luring the geese nearer and nearer to herself with leftover sandwich pieces.

Great weather the whole time we were there.

Thanks to everyone who made the reunion possible. It was so great to meet all these news faces and people I had only heard of. I am very blessed to have a great extended family in addition to my own. Park City was just beautiful, and we would do it again in a heartbeat. We'll get our own hotel room this time. Tents....well...they're tents. :)

This weekend we are off to see more nieces! Yay! We leave for Arkansas on Saturday and we will be out there for a week. Thank goodness those insane three digit temperatures have cooled down out there...

Graduation Photos

Voila>Some Graduation Photos:

My beloved Ricks building: where I studied all of my history and political science class. I probably spent 80% of my college career here. Many naps were taken on the comfy couches, and occasionally, on the floor.

Just after receiving my "diploma"--The real one has yet to come. I was happy to see some of my favorite teachers at graduation: Bro. Lewis {Early American, Far East, and Modern China}, Bro. Pigott {Renaissance & Reformation, Africa, French Revolution/Napoleon), Bro. Johansen {Constitutional History, Technical Writing}, Sis. Passe-Carlus {French}.

I love this picture of us, but I think my eyes are half closed. Any friends with exceptional photoshop skills....Here is your next project.

Hello World!!

Congratulations to me! :) I am officially certified to sit around and talk smartly about history. Graduation was excellent. I think that most people lost interest in the speaker about halfway through, but it still felt like this was a much more significant event than graduating high school. I am excited for future prospects and what lies ahead for Daniel and me.

Let us recap this past semester that I so poorly documented:

• Daniel's 24th birthday! For his birthday he got a new smashing suit from his parents, a little shopping money, and lots of little goodies from me. (a bobblehead of a Red Sox player, decals for the car, movies, and.....a fish tank). Oh the fish tank, we were just shopping in Wal-Mart and walked by the fish. Daniel decided he really wanted to be a fish parent. So piece by piece we have assembled our own little ecosystem, but it has not come without its trials. We slowly built up to ten fish and then had a sudden epidemic. Over several days we lost five fish. Not fun. Currently we have a fish that disappeared while we were at a family reunion, he is no where to be found. Anyways, for Daniel's birthday we went out to lunch, the Museum of Idaho's bodies exhibit, a movie, and to my parent's house for a bbq. It was an extra fun weekend.


• School! Lots and lots of school. I enjoyed my last semester. I took a tennis class for six weeks and absolutely loved it. This was my first time going to school during the summer. Not my favorite. Daniel did well too. We are currently in the market for an internship for him for this January. It's going to be fun.....wherever we go.


• And... that's all.

Nothing too exciting or adventurous, just doing our thing. We have done many more exciting things since school got out, and pictures to come.

Still Here...

We are still alive, promise.

I even know I still have a blog.

I still check everyone else's.

And I get mad when there isn't something new and interesting to read.

So you can be mad at me.

We have actually been doing stuff this semester.

But its almost over.

That means finals.

Which for me, means my final finals.

Also, it means I still won't have a "real" post up for a while.

Hope this keeps you in suspense.

Seattle: Part Two

Here are some random leftover pictures from our adventures. We hit up all the usual Seattle sights. The city center plays host to the Pacific Science, Experience Music Project, and of course the Space Needle.

Apparently this makes a six foot tall person feel like they are three feet tall. Oh, to be little again.

One misadventure was our dinner at the top of the Space Needle. Sure it was fun and all, spinning atop the Space Needle. Food=not favorite. And SUPER expensive. I'm picky though, so perhaps I don't have the refined palate required to partake in such food. It was a fun experience though, definitely. Occasionally accompanied by dizziness.

EMP was probably Daniel's favorite. Seattle is notorious for produce popular grunge musicians and rightfully so. Who wouldn't want to sing punk/rock after weeks and weeks without sunshine?

EMP allows the visitor to not only see cases and cases of musical memoriblia, but to participate in making their own music. We were able to play with the switch board in a sound booth, record our voices, and learn to play a variety of instruments. (Might I say that my rythmic skills are far better than Daniel's.) :) Some people do sports, and others rythm. We both bought awesome band t-shirts in honor of Seattle. (Foo Fighters & Rage Against the Machines)

And here's our hotel. Did I mention how enormous it was? So crowded, but pretty cool to swim on the 35th floor.

So everything else we did:

• Shopped at an enormous Nordstrom's Rack where Daniel picked up $80 jeans for $30. And I got some Nike Shox for fifty percent off. (Whoot!)


• Ate at Red Mill Burgers (another Man vs. Food sight) and ate the most amazing burgers and probably the best onion rings we will ever eat.


• Talked to some French people, kind of. There were tons of French speakers!! They stopped Daniel to ask "What means "shoplift"?" They had been staring into a closed shop and were concerned about a sign that said "Shoplifters will be persecuted." Daniel explained that it simply meant don't steal. I almost wish they would have stopped me so I could pluck up the courage to speak french with them, but no loss.


• We ate (again) at an Italian restaurant where we were greeted by a small Italian man who reached out to give me a hug and a kiss. Luckily I slid into that smoothly or that could've been super awkward. The food was tasty and the dessert was AMAZING. Loved it.


• We took a cruise of the harbor. It was somewhat informative and relaxing.


• Breakfast is so much better in the city. All these little bakeries make my favorite meal of the day a delight!


• We drank lots of hot chocolate.


• Our Garmin became our best friend. Pretty sure we would have died without it.

We drove home via Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, and Montana. As beautiful as that drive was I swear I was dizzy the whole time. We crossed four states and two mountain ranges. Crazy long, intense drive.

We made it home.

Seattle: Part One

After the beautiful wedding, we decided to travel north to spend three days in Seattle. We had used up our one sunny day, so the remainder of our trip was spent in either a light mist or full-on rain. Which was alright. We spent a lot of time shopping and eating. Our favorite vacation activities. We stayed at the Sheraton in downtown Seattle. The largest hotel either of us have ever stayed at. The lobby was constantly roaring with activity and elevator rides took ages. But our room was great (although they gave us one with two beds) and quiet. We were able to walk almost everywhere we wanted to go.

Our first stop was the Fremont Troll under the bridge.

The view out our window. And I constantly peruse travel books before, during, and after vacations. And I was displeased with this one and it has added "writing travel books" to my list of to-dos.


Our first stop was the Seattle Art Museum. Possibly one of my favorites.

Who decides what art is anyways?

Then we went to the Seattle Aquarium.

Then we had the thought "let's go to the zoo while it's not raining..."

Guess what? It started raining. Hard. Harder than we ever experienced our whole trip. Excellent. I think we saw five animals and were soaked through by the end of it.

Pike's Market

If we lived here, pretty sure I would need flowers every day. They were gorgeous! And infinitely cheaper than anything in Rexburg.

The original Starbucks.

Being big Travel Channel fans, we had to hit up the Man vs. Food spots in Seattle. First stop: The Crab Pot. Basically they dump a bowl full of food onto your plate, hand you a bib and a mallet, and you get to have at it! Excellent fun.

Seattle & Coffee...of course.

On our trip through Pike's Market, purchased a hand draw picture of the Space Needle from a nice little Asian man. We bought a cup of fresh raspberries to munch on while we scanned the concourses of shops and bakeries. All with the most fascinating collectibles, hand made everything, and cheesey tourist types of knick knacks. I don't normally enjoy seafood, but the Crab Pot was really good and delightfully fun.

Part two to arrive shortly...

Question: Blogger posted my pictures a million spaces apart, took me hours to post this (hence the division to two parts), am I doing something wrong?