OK! We have had a crazy month of August. And we barely got the internet installed at our new place, so we're behind (again) in posting. Here we go!


First weekend of August--we went camping with my family, the Harpers, in Idaho. As you can see, it is actually a beauuutiful place. It is a really nice hike in (not too far), too.




We had a great time, but by the time we were done, I had about 20 mosquito bites, and I was kinda miserable because it rained every day we were there. I usually have a great time camping, and we like to go, but I was kinda ready to come home to running water, no bugs, no stuffy/sweaty ponchos, more food than just breads and meat and junk food (although it is kind of fun to just eat junk food for three days).

Ah. . . I don't think we've had a kissing picture like this (especially not with such a great background) for a long time.




Here is the whole Harper troop minus Ikey. After a little recuperation, I'm looking forward to next year already.


In the week following our camping trip, I had finals week at BYU for summer term and we were cleaning our apartment and packing up and then moving to David's Grandpa's basement in Salt Lake.

Here is a shot of me with the last bits of our stuff before we left. It was sad to leave, but we have now moved in to our new home, and we love it. We had to do a little cleaning and unpacking took a while, but we had some great friends (big thanks to Mike Barber and Ryan Kelly) to help us move down and unpack. We are also happy to be living next to Mike and Annie, and Dave's family. Living with Grandpa is fun, too--he is pretty funny and I like listening to his stories. He keeps me company when Dave is at school.

YES! It's true--David is a Ute and I am a Cougar. I start school at the Y on Tuesday, and I have been taking online classes during the break, and David started dental orientation two weeks ago. It hasn't affected our marriage. Much.

VS

After we moved in to Grandpa's, we went back to ID for a Harper family reunion. (With my brother Derek and his wife Talane here visiting from (stinky) Texas, we wanted to get together as much as we could.) We played at the river, did barbeques, had a surprise birthday party for two of my brothers Garrett and Greg (whose birthdays are in Sept and Aug, respectively), and an awesome badminton tournament in the spirit of the Olympics.




This is us while we were doing family pictures with my family that weekend. We don't have any copies of the whole family yet, but we are looking forward to seeing them!


And finally, during a recent weekend, David and I went on the classic date of dinner and a movie. Thanks to Dave's parents for a movie pass in payback for recently installing windows at their home, we went to the movies, and decided to go to The Dark Knight. I knew everything that was going to happen (thanks to wikipedia and friends at work), and closed my eyes during nearly all the scary parts, so I wasn't as scared during the movie as I normally would have been. We both liked the movie, but agreed it was pretty dark.

Thanks to my parents for a gift card to a restaurant for being the "Most Improved" award for the badminton tournament, we went to "The Cheesecake Factory" and we loved it. I think it is one of my new favorite places to eat. The food was delicious. I got a lemon-chicken pasta, and Dave got the hamburger, and we split a lemon-raspberry cheesecake. YUMMM!

And here we have Idaho . .

So last last weekend, David and I went to Idaho because we were registered for the Burley Spudman! I did the race in 2 hours and 43 minutes--the exact same time as two years ago--but I felt twice as good afterwards. I felt great, besides my feet, because when I set my tennis shoes out the night before the race, they got soaked during the night . . . so I was running with damp shoes and it tore my flat -footed arches pretty bad. David was going to finish the race as a team, doing the swim while my brother Garrett did the bike and Greg ran. However, my brother Greg got sick that morning (perhaps from the spaghetti dinner from the previous night . . .?) and David ended up doing the running leg, too. He had never run six miles since last Pioneer Day for the Salt Lake races, but he finished the leg in great time! In fact, they placed first in their division!! (Mens, combined ages less than 75). . . . . (We should probably mention that they were the only team that showed up for that division . . . ) But David might be getting a trophy of a Spudman to show off. Not only was the race day great, we also had the best time being with my family, on the river and going to the open house for the Twin Falls temple. Here are some pics. And I wish I knew how to upload videos, because I got some good ones of David wakeboarding and finishing the race.

David and I went to visit the falls at Twin Falls--it was beautiful . . . and very bright. We went there and also to Disney's WALL-E. We loved the movie. I thought it was ingeniuos how the producers were able to make such a large part of the movie with very little script. For the first good chunk of the movie, there is no talking at all. I also thought the romance between WALL-E and EVE (or was it EVA?) was darling. The plot was a little weak, but I still liked it. I thought the references within the movie were fun to catch--especially the autopilot resembling HAL from Space Odyssey: 2001, and the different ages of art during the credits. Thus Spake Zarathustra when the captain of the ship was standing up was a little cheezy, but it still made me laugh.

David is ready to take on the Snake.

David and me after the race. Phew!

While we were boating with my family, we stopped at a friend's house to play on their water trampoline and other inflatableness-fun. Here is a picture of David trying to slide across this blown up appendage to the trampoline.

Me, my nephew Ike and his mom (my sis) Marissa