Update

Hello all. I am trying to kill time for a few minutes. BYU-Idaho is hosting an alumni concert for anyone who ever played with the Symphony Orchestra, which happened to include me. We had a rehearsal this morning, this is our break for lunch, and we'll have one more rehearsal and then a concert this afternoon. It won't be anything stellar, but it's fun to play again.

Let's see - what's new? We decided to stay in town for the Fourth of July parade this year. (Last year we drove up to Rexburg's parade) The Idaho Falls parade was bigger, but kind of lame. Except for the fact that we got there about 1/2 an hour before the parade began, and with only two adults, were able to find a tiny spot in front of a local church. The church was offering free hot dogs, popcorn, cookies and punch!! FREE! and THEN as we got toward the end of the parade, they walked around with trays handing it out. And then we didn't even have to get up to get our free food! That was pretty awesome. I felt a little guilty that I had no intention of joining their church/congregation, but they didn't seem to care. But I'm not sure we'll be so lucky to get that spot next year. If we are in a parade-going mood next year, we will probably go back to Rexburg's. But anyway. After that we came home and took a nap, went to a neighbor's barbecue (where everything was delicious!) and then headed downtown. We walked around the greenbelt for a few minutes before realizing there wasn't much of anything there besides food - and since we bought tickets for dinner/fireworks later that night, we weren't in an eating mood. We went over to the Shilo and stuffed ourselves full of salad, cole slaw, veggies, fruit, rolls, hot dogs, brisket sandwiches, baked potatoes, soda, water, brownies, pie, and all the ice cream you could want. Plus we had a nice place to sit while we waited for the fireworks to start. We went last year after spending the previous year camped out along the greenbelt (just ask Mollie) only to find that we couldn't actually see anything from where we were. It has been totally worth our money. It's supposed to include a live orchestra concert before/after dinner, but you can't see anything from our table. After the fireworks show, we thought we might be sneaky and wait out the traffic. We walked over to Denny's (along with the rest of the crowd) and waited about 1/2 hour for some chips and water. P.S. - the chips and dip was gross... We got back to the car, and traffic had not died down at all - in fact, it might have been worse. Next year we will definitely skip the Denny's trip. We're better off just getting in the traffic and heading home as soon as they're over (what we did the year before). We finally got home around 12:00 or 12:30 and then spent an hour looking for my cell phone (which included searching the local park in our bathrobes with flashlights) until we eventually found it behind the couch on vibrate. It was a late night, but still fun.

Since then, not much has happened.

Random thoughts:
1. I wish I looked definitively pregnant. I am just fat enough that acquaintances wouldn't know if I was pregnant or had just put on some weight. I am glad I am not a whale, but the in-between stage is kind of awkward all the way around.

2. Pumping gas on a hot, dry summer day reminds me of being on vacation with my family. I felt like I needed to give myself some snack money. Which made me remember the time Evan ate the honey bun with wrapper attached, thinking it was frosting. "Honeybun, coming back!"

3. I remember when "Maverik" was the weird only-in-Utah gas station down the street from grandma's house. Now I get gas at the one by my house. Weird. Whatever happened to Citgo?

4. When people ask me what I'm "up to" these days, it is weird to say "nothing" and really mean nothing! Uh... just sitting at home growing a baby. What are you up to these days?

5. Apparently the church is more "strict" (as far as following the handbook/rules) in Connecticut than it is here. You would think it would be the other way around. Maybe just because local wards (ours, in particular) have been around for so long that they just kind of do things however they do them. When new wards are formed, they're probably more careful about following the rules.

6. I am counting down the days to my 3-foot long giant eclair from the Big E.

7. On Wednesday, Chad commemorated 10 years since he got back from his mission. He pointed out that he has a wife, house, full-time job, dog, baby on the way, and a current temple recommend - so that's doin' pretty good. I guess it is.

8. We built a shed, and it's almost done. We hung the doors on Wednesday and now Chad just has to shingle the roof. Once that is done, he will move a lot of his stuff out of the basement and into the man-shed, and then I can put kitchen stuff/non-baby stuff in the basement. We also dug up most of the yard that was weeds and have tried to plant grass. We planted our garden a couple of weeks ago (last week!?) and have little zucchini plants popping through the soil!!! It's pretty exciting to go out and see your seeds growing up into little plants that will eventually overtake us with zucchinis.

9. Rexburg has changed a lot even since we moved just a year ago. There is new housing going up everywhere, they're demolishing a bunch of stuff and changing names on things. Even campus is different with the new Manwaring Center and BYU-Idaho Center.

10. Time to go back to rehearsal.