Why I love Boise in the summer: New friends at every event Daddy pulling the Burley to activities all around town The fountain in downtown Boise (this photo taken at Alive After 5 during the week of Jaialdi, a Basque celebration in Boise)
Anyway, despite being decorated in foil wallpaper stolen from 1974 (and matching my family home before my parents remodeled it), complete with bright yellow sink and counters, it was a comfortable place to stay.
Last weekend we had our friends Becca, Ryan and their daughter Gracyn over for dinner. Gracyn and Belén are both in the “ones” class at daycare so they know each other and our “friends,” but at this age, they don’t really play with each other so much as around one another. After we were finished eating dinner Belén and Gracyn started “playing” which consisted of some sort of activity where one would play with a toy that would then in turn make the other one want to play with that toy and then the adults stepping in encouraging them to share with each other. After getting tired of the one year-old drama, we directed them towards an activity they could both partake in and enjoy.
Throughout 2003, we did so many fun things together including trips to the beach, wine nights, salsa dancing classes, shopping, spin classes and so so much more. And she helped us out when we got ourselves into pickles and was even there on the scariest night of the big earthquake after we had just arrived in our new city.
Mid-February is the time of year when parents with babies and young kids too young to ski or go sledding catch cabin fever. Unfortunately, the Hoobing Family is not exempt from this generalization and the President’s Day three-day weekend was a excuse to get out of town and visit our friends in McCall.
When we lived in China, we went out of our way to find a bar that was showing the Super Bowl and even missed a half a day of work (on Monday) to partake in what we thought was our duty as Americans to watch the popular game. It has not taken much time back in the US for our excitement level for American football’s biggest day to plummet to the ranks of the noise. For this reason and also because we do not have a tolerance level built up to more than a dozen kids in a house at once, we decided to decline the Super Bowl party invite we received and have dinner with friends instead.
Our friends and co-workers Chinese wedding photo.
Once they were asleep, we ate dessert, watched “Four Christmases” and then tried to decide if we wanted to share our first minute of the new decade with Carson Daily orRyan Seacrest. Upon careful consideration, we chose Ryan Seacrest in hopes of being able to see Dick Clark.
Andy took this photo this morning when he dropped Belén off at school. The improved cell phone photo quality is due to the fact that he is now the proud new owner of a Droid phone. So now it is Droid versus iPhone in our household just like the phone has Belén in a face off with her classmate, Drew. Drew was born within two days of Belén’s birth date, but you can tell he is really getting close to crawling.
“Rejoice” is, in my opinion, an underused word in today’s day and age. I was reminded of this word yesterday at the wedding of Jill Aldalpe and Xanti Alcelay. The ceremony was at the remodeled version of the same church where Andy and I were married, St. Mary’s on State St. in Boise. It was a packed house full of people excited to “rejoice” in the union of two of Boise’s awesome citizens with Basque heritage.
