I was enjoying a routine lunch with the kiddos when Noah says,
"What the heck? What is going on here?"
I of course, inquire as to where he learned that.
His reply ladies and gentlemen was "I have cable tv."

Some of you might think we dropped the ball on this one, but I think we took the cake. That is if by cake I mean the time, money and energy we saved by being unique.

Once upon a time, Luke surprised Dani on a mundane Monday night with a phone call that went a little like this:

Luke: Get the kids ready and fed by five. Pack them a bag for overnight.
Dani: Ok?? (She doesn't want to ruin the surprise so she doesn't ask what's going on.)
Luke: You need to wear clothes you wouldn't mind being seen in public in and you need to pack, a hat, gloves and scarf.
Dani: What about my moon boots?
Luke: I love your moon boots. Wear them.
Dani: Will I really need them? I don't want to wear them if I'm going to be inside the whole night.

Folks, I wore the moon boots.

After dropping the kids off, and a suspicious stop at a dollar store, in which I was told I could stay in the car, we drove to downtown Boise. Arm in arm, he lead me to the Knitting Factory, a venue we've been lucky enough to listen and see Josh Ritter and Andrew Bird in. He walks us to the will call booth, signs for the tickets, being careful to keep them hidden from my view. We go inside and look for seats. All the tables are taken. I don't know what's going on. The next conversation goes as follows:

Luke: Dani, I'm sorry, I guess the concert isn't for another couple hours.
Dani: Well, I still don't know what's going on so we'll just have to try and have a good time until whatever happens happens. Did you bring ...
Luke:...the ipod is in the car. There is no re-entry.
Dani: Bummer.
Luke: I know I'll make something for you out of this program. What do you want?
Dani: (She thinks of something outragous and impossible.) A frog.
Luke: Laugh laugh. Mmm. No,

I visited the ladies room and when I returned, there was a paper rose waiting for me, stem and leaf and all. What a charmer. I'll keep it forever.

So we killed time by being gushy and in love, listening to a 13 year-old make political jokes on stage, a cowboy want-to-be singing with his pretty guitar, and then we migrated down from our bar stools to right in front of the stage. At this point, I still don't know who we're there to see. Then they have a live auction, that doesn't go very well. Finally, the announcer welcomes Ingrid Michaelson to the stage. I turn to Luke and say:

Dani: Who's Ingrid Michaelson?
Luke: Oh you'll like her. She plays the girlie music you like and wears thick framed glasses like you.

She gets a thumbs up from me. She came onto the stage with a flowy orange scarf, aqua fuzzy boots, a purple hat, and a head cold. She was very entertaining and super sweet. And it turns out that Luke had given me a foreshadowing of this, the day before. He had played one of her songs while studying and asked me if I liked it (I didn't remember this part) I said yes.

Anyway, the concert ended and I was very inspired by her talent and we walked back to our car in the chilly winter air, me in my moon boots, hands in our pockets. We got in the car but instead of driving down the parking garage, he starts to go up. At this point, I'm thinking, "Maybe he's taking me to blow bubbles again!" After driving to the very top, I proceed to put on my cold weather gear, his gloves, his scarf, and a silly hat. We do blow bubbles. The sky is foggy and beautifully lit up. At this point, my memory starts to faze out and my feelings start to take over. I remember he started telling me how important I was. And then we hugged. And before I know it, he is down on one knee.

Luke: Dani, will you be my wife?
Dani: Crying crying, nodding nodding, crying crying nodding nodding.



After I've slightly composed myself I ask him to put it on me. He opens up a 25 cent plastic bubble and then slides a ring onto my left hand. He says something like:

Luke: I looked everywhere for you for a vending machine ring. They don't make them anymore. I hope this will work. I found it at Salvation Army for $2.50.
Dani: Its PERFECT!!!!!

Promptly after some more hugging I get the urge to tell everyone how real this moment is, that my dream came true, that it happened to me. So I shouted from the proverbial mountain top, "I'M ENGAGED!!!" Luke later says that was his favorite part.

So there you have it. We are to be married. I'm going to be his wife. Cry, cry, nod nod.

Did you know that Luke Felt is an anagram of Flute Elk? Me either! To think, all this time I've been using the phrase flute elk (Sir, your flute elk is un-tucked. No, the glue won't hold it, try using flute elk.) without the slightest clue.

So the ball has been in Dani's court for awhile now. She wrote a post, and saved a draft instead of posting it, hoping to add to it later I think. Either way, until she gets that post up (dealing with birthdays and such), I'm going to take a moment to advertise my new blog. So Scared So Sleepy. Having noticed that none of my posts about writing get commented on over here, I deduced that no one really cares. So I moved them into their own blog, where I will solicit a new, more expanded, audience.

In this blog, I will post something every weekday. I hope. Might be something new I've written just for the blog, or something old that no one has seen. Or something someone else wrote that I find to be exceptional.

Either way, if you care, you should follow it.

Love,
Luke

So both Luke and I celebrated our birthdays at the end of November and typical for us, they were awesome! Luke's not really into showboat celebrations, (he was totally the kid who opened his presents in the sly, taped them back up, and then feigned surprise when the time came) so his birthday was as low key as possible. Mine, however, was a classic, planned in advance sequence of coordinated surprises, an operation including breakfast made for me in my new cozy sky blue robe, dare devil ice skating, cake decorating (a childhood dream come true!) dinner at a fabulous chicken serving establishment, a dessert picnic party on the floor of our friend's new house and last but not least my favorite bottle of wine. Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of anything but the finished product of the cake.

As we've posted about earlier, the deadline for this years Fiction 101 contest has been bumped up. I know, I post about it a lot, but it's a fairly big event in our lives this time of year. We love writing for it. I'm posting the call for entries here in case anyone else wants to try it out. You don't need to be from the area, and you'd never know it, but trying to pen a story in exactly 101 words is a blast. So I'm doing a call for entries, in addition to the BW's already adequate call for entries.

If you choose not to enter, then wish us luck. There are always some great stories published and competition should be fierce.

Transaction from last night's dinner:

Noah (from under the table): Hey! Your table is talking! You have a talking table!
Luke: My table is talking?
Table: Yeah!
Luke: Hey table, what is the meaning of life?
(pause)
Table: What did you say?!

We voted, did you?

No hassle, no lines, just helping to make history.

So, as planned, On Halloween night, we went to the NaNoWriMo Insanity All-Night Write-In (we didn't come up with the name). It was at this cool little independent book store in Boise. So we got all dressed up (an event in itself) and headed out.

Dani went as an environmentally friendly fairy. She made this entire costume out of grocery sacks (to be recycled later, of course):



I like my costumes to be a bit more on the traditionally scary side. I tore some holes, spilled some blood of the innocent, sliced a gash in my face, and went for the zombie look. Zombies are very in right now:



When we arrived at the party, we had missed most of the get-to-know-you games. That's good, neither Dani or myself liked kindergarten the first time. When midnight hit, we started writing. Two hours straight. As the name might imply, it was insanity.



Afterward, we hit up Merrit's country cafe for a world famous scone. The place was filled with the usual creepy Merrit's folk, only...you know...dressed up as horrifying ghouls and such. We downed a cinnamon sugar scone, and headed home. It wasn't much, but it's nice to be out sometimes and remember that we're not quite in our sixties yet.

Tonight is the kickoff of NaNoWriMo, we'll be attending a kick off, halloween extravaganza this evening after I get out of class, and it should be a blast. If everything goes well, I'll be dressed as a McCain/Palin supporter, I find them terrifying. Once that gets out at 2 a.m., Dani and I have plans to be twenty-somethings again and find something rambunctious to do in Boise.

In other writing news, they bumped up the Fiction 101 deadline for submission by two weeks, so that only leaves us a couple more weeks to finish up our short short short stories. Look for Dani's story near the top of the page, her tale about Moses in Sin City is totally awesome.

This weekend we have nothing planned. That's exactly how we like it, I'd love to finally get some video editing done so I can show you guys all the excitement happening around the Faeb household.

In other news: We got moved. We have a few pictures and stories of stress and transmission failure. It's coming soon.

We're three days away from moving and the stress has hit level 11.

On Saturday morning, the Staeb family will be here to help us haul everything out (thanks!). On top of that, we have the following going on:
* Luke has a moderate length English paper on body image perceptions among undergraduate males due this week.
* Luke has a moderate length Anthropology paper on kinship rituals among the Omaha due this weekend.
* Packing! Oh, so much packing.
* Football game watching party on Friday night (Go Broncos!)
* Both Dani and Luke have 101 word stories to get finished. We're sweeping it this year. Count on it. Or don't. That's a lot of pressure.

Also, that last blog post is a link. We've had some trouble with our readers on that one, click on it. It's a cool word phenomena that is sure to tangle your brain in knots.

Buffalo.

Today, on our daily walk to the mailboxes, I wished I'd wore a scarf and gloves. It was sooo cold! So when we got back I put a hat on Sissie and put my winter coat on. They looked so cute in the crisp October air, I had to take pictures. But you can see by the look on their faces, I as the inspired photographer, was an unwanted interruption.

Tonight, I took a break from the kidums and the kitchen clean up (Luke's the after-dinner-hero) and was perusing the web for interesting articles. When low and behold I came upon an article written about a man who read the Oxford English Dictionary, in a year, for fun. WALLLA! I said to myself, there are more like me. When I was 16 I attempted to devour the dictionary alphabetically and got to the letter D. I still hope that I have the time to finish it before I die. In the mean time, one of the words displayed in the article was psithurism. I'll give a million dollars to whoever can guess the correct definition of this word. No Cheating.

I'm going to put this on a T-shirt.

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say, I like every American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– helping the — oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade -- we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity -- all those things under the umbrella of job creation.

This bailout is a part of that.

We're moving! No more Nampa! It's all going down on Oct. 25th.

We're headed to Boise. B-town. The C.O.T.

Our new home is the Reflections apartment complex. Full sized gymnasium! Work out facilities! Swimming pools! Free cable! And, the major selling point: free use of their tanning beds. Seriously.

Dani and I have decided to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. I signed up a few years ago, but have never actually completed it. It should be a blast. For those that don't know about NaNoWriMo, I'd encourage you to check out http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano.

Essentially, the idea is to write a novel (50,000 words) in a month's time. That month is November. You don't get anything for "winning" but a cool printable certificate and the pride of calling yourself a novelist.

I'm going to try to figure out how to put some cool widgets in the sidebar with our progress. If there are any aspiring writers in our presence (cough*Melanie*cough), perhaps they would like to try as well?

This past weekend was the Disc Golf Idaho State Doubles Championship. We were pretty pumped. We probably shouldn't have been. Look, we didn't care about placing, okay? We just wanted to have a good time, throw some frisbees, and make fun of some hairy backed dudes. We managed to pull this off with a 50% success rate.


This is Dani preparing for Day 1. She's foaming at the mouth, hungry for competition.

On Day one, there were two formats. First: Best Disc. Both team members play the hole, but only records the best score. Sounds easy enough, and it was. Dani and I both played quite well, and ended up twelve over par. This isn't too bad considering the course was made longer and much more difficult by the tournament director.

Second format: Worst shot. This sucked. I mean sucked. I mean really really sucked. It works like this; both team members tee off, and the opposing team gets to pick which shot you are forced to throw from next. Repeat this process every throw, ad nauseum. So you're always throwing from your worst shot, get it? Well, we had some really bad shots, and it got frustrating really fast. Dani was killing infants, seriously. Okay, well she would have if there were infants. We shot a 119, par for the course was 63. Ouch. Oh yeah, and I lost three discs to reeds and water hazards.


Us on hole thirteen, after Luke had just come out of the river, searching for his lost driver.

Okay, time to recuperate. So we didn't shoot so well, so what? We still have another days worth of action, we're still in this thing. Truth be told, neither of us wanted to come back for more pummeling, but we convinced each other it was for the best.

So day two. First format: Best shot. Same concept as worst shot, only instead of our opponents picking the worst shot, we were able to choose our best shot to throw from. It went very well, we improved on our previous score and shot a 73.


The player's table after the first format. The land of lost and found discs. Mine never made it here.

Last time 'round: Alternating shots. Plays like it says, we take turns throwing from the tee to the hole. Again, we sucked it up. Which all in all, wasn't bad, but then grumpy moods found their way onto hole 16, and our afternoon was all downhill from there.

Overall, I'm not sure Dani would ever do another competition that includes the worst shot format. I'm with her. But you'll hear more from us, or at least from me. We're frolfing maniacs. Besides, each evening was capped off with yummy food and beverage (thanks Stans! Best hot dogs in the northwest) and some episodes of The Office. There are worse fates.

Dani and I (Team Word Nerd) will be competing in the annual Idaho State Doubles Disc Golf Championship this weekend at Ann Morrison Park. There will be water bottles, metal baskets, and shirtless hairy dudes galore.

Needless to say, it's a rockin' weekend. We will fully document our weekend flinging fantastic frisbees, frivolously on Faeb's Faebles.

Also expect muchos blogging action this weekend. Promise.

I'm big on DIY projects. Recycling tickles my creative fancy as well. So it's easy to see how I've been busy the last two months with an assortment of endeavors. First I pilfered through Luke's unworn t-shirts. Next, I feverishly began seam ripping, button borrowing, and the likes. Did I forget to mention that I finally got my sewing machine? It works charmingly. Here are a few examples of shirts that I gave new life to. (A great amount of credit should go to the book of inspiration and instruction, 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt.)

This was my first try. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, considering I never wore either of t-shirts before they combined for this tube top number.


Numero 2. Its a peel to get on and off and its much more formal then I was anticipating, but all the same. The sash and neck were cut from a pair of gray slacks with very thin blue stripes.



First game of the 2008 BSU football season required our presence and our support via Bronco gear. So I borrowed a thing or two and made my own. I also made a matching head band to go with it. It took the whole day before the game, (Luke never blamed me for us getting sky high seats, but it was I who made us late because of my project.)

Next I took two of his t-shirts and fused them into a comfy and stylish tote. The handles are crisscrossed (I'm not sure how I feel about that look, but oh well) and had to be reinforced to prevent excessive sagging. I sewed a t-shirt front pocket (not shown here) on the inside as a selective compartment.


Just two days ago I decided to turn a t-shirt into a skirt. And this is the result. Its very VERY fitting, but uber uber comfortable.




My favorite project yet. I found a pattern on the internet and then measured,drew, and cut it out myself. Again I used two of Luke's old dress shirts for the outside and lining fabric. The button is one that I covered myself and attaches to the bag via velcro. Very cute. Very cute. It attended the Bronco game with me too.




Also, Luke would like me to tell all you viewers out there, that he has not been slacking as you probably assumed, but instead has been working day in and day out on his new Mac, in iMOvie to share more delightful details of our most recent happenings. Please, be patient with him, for he knows not what he's doing. That's not true, he does, it just takes some poking and prodding around the new program to create a work of art. Did I mention that he refers to his computer by first name, and also cites it as his new best friend?

We play disc golf. We play a lot of disc golf. I think Dani has hinted at this obsession in a previous entry, but it's due time it got its full due. What is disc golf, you say? Well, it's just like normal (ball) golf, except that you throw specialized flying discs (can't say frisbee due to trademarks) toward metal baskets instead of balls toward holes.

The goal is the same, throw your disc from the tee to the hole in the fewest amount of strokes. How hard could that be? Harder than you'd think. Just like in ball golf, there is plenty of specialized equipment. There are drivers, mid-range, and put and approach discs. I know, right?

Anyway, it's a lot of fun, and our weekends have been consumed by its pleasures. I've decided to share some photographic evidence of our excitement.



Tee sign at Westpark Disc Golf Course.



Luke driving from the tee.



Dani sinking a long one at hole 9.

Stay tuned.

While shopping at Albertson's on Saturday night, a camel pulled up next to our car. We decided it was necessary to take pictures.

Let me tell you, this camel was huge. Like 15 feet tall with his head up. Apparently even camels like great savings.

Last night was Noah’s birthday party! Our little monster is the big oh-three. We invited some of the younger crowd, but no one really showed up but my brother and sister (uncle and aunt) T.J. and Maya. We toyed with the idea of inviting the grandparents, but Noah doesn’t hang with the geriatric crowd.



No Noah! Don’t eat the candle! The cake, the cake!



Yes. Better.



eww! Danimum!



This is the cheese face. His – not mine.



Noah is convinced this is a book. It isn’t. It’s a CD. When he figures out what a CD is (Dani is stuck in the 70s and has our home stuffed full of old 45s), we’re positive he’ll love it. Thanks Gram and Pop-pop! Noah’s words, not mine.


Now he gets to rock out with Daddy. With annoying electronic beeps and boops and assorted distorted noises. Great idea, Daddy. Great idea.



Dani and I were convinced that this would be the highlight of the party. Noah got on, posed for a photo or two, and then promptly hopped off and started for the guitar. Someone needs to teach this kid about price tags.

We took some video, too, but I want to edit it and make it nice and presentable. When that happens (soon!) I’ll get it up here.

There was a time in the not so distant past when Dani played Zuma. Lots and lots of Zuma. If it weren’t for the intervention close friends and family staged, it’s possible she’d still be glued to her mouse.

It’s a puzzle game. You control a frog that shoots colored balls from your mouth. You spin around and spit balls at other balls of the same color. When you get three in a row, they explode in sound effect happiness. Dani was stuck on level 9 for the longest time, we’re talking months. So I surprised her with a Zuma survival kit. I was determined to marathon it, all night video gaming.



Dani with fresh kit and celebration cider.





North American instruction manual and introductory letter.



Trying out the shades (that monitor glare can be harsh!)

So. How did it go? She didn’t need the kit at all, and beat it on her first run through. I like to think that at least I contributed to her moral support.

Here are a few shots of the Shakespeare festival that Dani and I went to awhile back. We had a splendid time. You’ll have to excuse the minuscule quantity, we weren’t allowed to have a camera and I had to get creative.







This outdoor amphitheater is truly beautiful. Be jealous.

For more description of the festival, Dani’s post has more info.

So, the undeniable truth is that Dani and I are horrible at blogging. We’re sorry. Here are some updates to make up for our lack of being here. I know this sudden burst of photographs and words will never be enough to fill the hole our absence has left in your hearts; for this we are remorseful. Nonetheless, the show must go on.

Without further ado, I present random photographs of the family that prove we are still alive. Or were at the time the pictures were taken.