Sightseeing in D.C.

The White House !

Nick and I are lucky enough to be on an 'after summer' vacation right now. Our friend Cam, is getting married in a few days in Richmond, Virginia so we flew out to be here for that. My Aunt and Uncle live just outside of Washington D.C. so we got here yesterday and spent today with them. Cam & his fiance Sheri, and his brother Blair & his wife Kassidy, came up from Richmond so we went and saw the sights in downtown D.C. today. It was such a blast, but boy are my feet tired! It was great to get back to John & Brenda's house and have a delicious BBQ out in their amazing backyar, topped off with a bonfire and s'mores. I am going to sleep great tonight, I'm sure!

The beginning of our LONG walking day!

Eager tourists...

The Washington Monument

The Captial Building

I LOVE the architecture and all the beautiful columns on all the building in this city!

Outside of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
The boys doing their best poses...


Sheri, me & Kassidy

Orangutang & GIANT Sea Turtle

Nick & I inside the Smithsonian National Musem of Natural History (Isn't the column and railing beautiful?!)

World War II Memorial Fountains

The Washington Monument & reflecting pool

The Lincoln Monument

The Vietnam War Memorial

Guess what we bought...

A HOUSE!!! Whoo hoo! We are so excited (can you tell from my amount of explanation points?)! We are first time buyers, so this has been a pretty exciting decision for us. I am so glad to be finally through with paying rent (well soon anyways). We get possesion of the house on September 28th and it couldn't come sooner! My mind is just reeling with all the decorationg possiblities, and the setting up and organizing I will get to do. It is a 1300 square foot bungalow with a mostly unfinished basement. We are actually glad for that as we will be able to develop it as we need it and how we want it. In the meantime we get to enjoy our 100% renovated 3 bedroom mainfloor. Woot woot! The best part is the huge kitchen, wood burning fireplace, mainfloor laundry room roughed in for stackable washer/dryer, and a big master bedroom with 2 closets and an ensuite full bathroom. (Okay, so I pretty much just described everything - but that really is the best part - EVERYTHING is fabulous). Yay! I will attach a few pics, but there will be another post to come in October once we are moved in and somewhat decorated :) Right now there is just a bit of furniture in the pictures from what the sellers had staged the house with.

Front door/front entry

Front Entry

Main floor spare bathroom

Master bedroom

Living room (I will be painting the brick and adding a mantle)

Dining Area

Last but not least, my beautiful kitchen - with an older fridge (you can't win 'em all right ;) )

Flathead Lake 2009

Well, another Schow reunion has come and gone. It's crazy how fast the time flies by. We look forward to these reunions for two years, then when they finally get here they are over before we know it! We found these great cabins on Flathead Lake in Montana, and we rented all four of them (which was totally necessary since there were something like 45 people there this time). We had beautiful weather for most of the week, and everyone had a great time relaxing on the dock, swimming, tubing, boating, playing cards and of course eating lots of great food. A couple highlights of the trip would have to have been all the fun us young marrieds would have in the evenings. Whether we were showcasing our (lack of) breakdance moves, moon walk skills, or paper bag grabbing technique, we were constantly laughing our butts off. My family truly is great and we had such an awesome time. So thanks to Grandma Betty and to all of our parents for funding this vacation and providing all the great food and fun memories. We can't wait till the next reunion!!!

Our first night at the lake - we were the only brave ones to go for an evening swim (And yes, Steve is actually wearing a swimsuit, he was just trying to trick you - and his face is classic Steve for ya ...haha)

My Aunt Sopi is the one looking very Vogue and reading a magazine.
She is so cute.

Jane has some pretty awesome skiing skills ;) And Jill is obviously
doing a great job of helping her!

Tauri and baby Ella

Nick managed to stuff 28 giant marshmallows in his mouth.
I always said he had a big mouth....

Nice worm Alex

Luke doesn't look like an awkward dancer at all.....right....

My sweetie and I sure had a great week together

Jane and I spent many hours in the boat taking the boys for some pretty harsh tube rides. I felt bad when they'd have some pretty bad wipe outs and get launched off. No, no I actually didn't feel bad at all...

This was our "rough and tough" girls tube ride. Kate was the bravest of all ;)

Now this is what a real tube ride should look like! I think Kenny and Luke were the two victims in this particular instance.

Nice hair Levi!

Shane & Jennica and their kids on Luau night

Playing some good old fashioned Rook. (I'm pretty sure
Grandma and I creamed them!)

This is what kids look like when a piniata of candy explodes. Chaos!

Jane, me and Ashley working on making some pendants. So fun! (Thanks Kate for all the great crafts)

Ry Zanako!

Aka 'My dear daughter' My greenie (and former mission companion), Brittney, flew up from Utah this past weekend just to hang out with little old me! I love her SOO much and am so grateful she made the effort to fly all the way up here to visit me :)We seriously had the funnest time ever just catching up, reminiscing, staying up way too late, and laughing A LOT! She got here Friday around 11am and we were laughing within the first few minutes just because we could not find eachother at the little old airport. We literally must have passed eachother in the corridor and not even noticed. Hilarious (okay, so maybe you had to be there...). Friday night we headed up to the Capital Ex fair, and enoyed a fabulous evening of walking around eating mini donuts and commenting on all the crazy outfits (or lack thereof) and white trash people. A seriously good time had by all. We sat front row to the 70s/80s performance of the "TimeBenders", and you better believe that we were hootin and hollering and singing along. This picture below would be of the "Pointer Sisters"....right..... and if you don't recognize their name, I can guarantee you know their songs forsure. Google it.

After the show, we went inside to check out all the booths and displays. This was us getting settled in a Native American teepee. Saaah too wicked...

Saturday around noon Brittney, Shay and I drove over to the Ledge for some suntanning and frolicking in the fountains. So did half of the city's population (check out the throngs of people in the backround...)

Shay and Britt. And unfortunately there are no pictures of me that are appropriate to post ;)

Example of the throngs of people... and does anybody notice the creepy man on the left side of the picture? Why is he sitting there staring at the kids?

Our Saturday night photo shoot with the Jeep

And last but not least....here's us picking the plethora of raspberries from our back yard. Yeah, I had two bowls of vanilla icecream with raspberries in one day...