In memory of Blanche Dibb (May 1997 - June 2008)

A day of mourning and rememberence





Well today was a very sad day for the Dibb Family. Today our well loved family dog, Blanche, returned to the heavenly father who created her. Blanche was an Australian Sheppard and she was getting pretty old as dogs go. 77 in dog years. And the years were beginning to wear on her. As of late, she lost all use of her back right leg. It was extremely sad to see her limping around avoiding the use of that leg as much as she could. She has always been a very active dog and a joy to be around. Luckily I was able to see my furry friend for the last time yesterday on our most recent trip to Salt Lake. We sat on the front driveway as we often did and I scratched behind her ears for the final time. Today my parents along with my little brother took her to the vet in order to end her pain. Because I am not going to be around for the memorial service my parents are holding tonight in their back yard, I thought I would share a few memories of Blanche seeing its the only thing I can really do.

(Me and Blanche most likely the spring after we got her.. do you like my styling bowl cut?)


Blanche joined our family entirely on a wager between my older brother Alan, my parents, and myself. In the summer of 1996, my brother and I began pestering my parents about the idea of getting a dog. We hadn't had a dog since I was extremely young (so young I don't even remember him) and one day while driving in the car amongst our never ending prodding, my parents cracked!! This was pretty amazing seeing my mom was dead set against getting a dog. But, it came on two conditions. First off, I had to get over a "B" average for my entire 7th grade school year. This was of course coming after some pretty pathetic grades in 6th grade. Second, Alan had to keep his room clean and his bed made for an entire year, which comes after the fact that we were both utter slobs. We agreed and our quest began. Amazingly, we kept our end of the bargain and after a year we went dog shopping. We knew exactly what we wanted. We had done extensive breed research and came to the conclusion that the Australian Shepard was the perfect fit. We found some for sale in the news paper and went to check them out. Blanche seemed to be the most docile of the litter so we picked her. I'm guessing she must have just woken up or something because she turned out to be extremely hyper! Regardless, we loved her. She had such a fun and almost goofy personality. Her hobbies included rolling on her back in the grass, barking (she was very protective of our house and would bark and chase anyone walking past, which, needless to say, scared a lot of people). She also loved chasing deer. One night in the winter she chased a group of dear all the way over the top of the mountain behind our house. She was gone for about an hour and in my fear I began hiking the mountain after her in about 2 feet of snow. I had made it about half way up the mountain when she came trotting down towards me with the biggest smirk of accomplishment on her face. She loved going hiking with Alan and especially enjoyed it when there was snow or a river involved. She loved eating snow, hot dogs, and of course dog biscuits. Blanche and I also began rollerblading together.. mostly I would just stand in my Rollerblades and she would pull me down the street at extreme speeds!! I fell a few times at the beginning, getting some vicious road rash, however, when I fell Blanche would just come over and lick my face. She seemed to really like rollerblading and would get extremely tired afterward. I will be forever impressed by her herding instincts. As a puppy she would try and push us where she wanted us to go and even as an adult if there was a group of some kind of animal she would spring into herding mode. All in all, Blanche was a great dog. She was always very excited to see us. She didn't have a tail to wag, so she would just wag her entire rear end. She will be sincerely missed and I hope she is in dog heaven chasing a herd of deer in a large field right this second. Until we meet again Blanche..... thanks for your friendship.

(Blanche on a hike in the mountains behind our house)



I know this is a huge post but I feel it is appropriate for the occasion.

It's June-uary

So Im starting to think that it's never going to get warm around here!! Today is June 11th and it has yet to feel like summer.... In fact I am wearing a sweater with a jacket on top today...the same outfit I would wear in the dead of winter!! Its getting quite annoying. The only bonus is the fact that it makes my lawn nice and green. Anyway I just wanted to vent a little bit. Oh and an update for our crazy neighbors is that YES they HAVE moved!! We are extremely happy.

Can it be true?????

So, we don't want to get our hopes up too much but a miraculous event may have taken place this weekend..... The crazy neighbors to the south of us may have MOVED!!!! We aren't totally sure yet seeing we haven't seen a for rent/for sale sign put in the yard. All we know is that they have been loading a lot of stuff into their truck and coming back with the truck empty. Plus, I peeked into the backyard and pretty much all their crap is gone! Man, that would make us soooo happy. Mostly because we won't miss all the garbage they throw onto their lawn, which tends to blow over into our yard. Oh, and we wont miss the fact that they never mow their lawn. Oh, and we especially won't miss the fact that sometimes we wake up to them yelling profanities at each other!! Man that will be nice.... of course unless another crazy moves in next door..... oh well at least we can hope someone nice will move in. Now all we need to do is get rid of the crazies that live across the street!

The start of a life long goal

Well I did it. After years and years of daydreaming and playing with flight simulators on my computer, I took my first flying lesson last week. I've always wanted to get my pilots licence and hope to one day have it under my belt. Sadly at the rate I'll be going, it will probably take me a year. But oh well, no real hurry I guess. Its pretty funny in the fact that when I moved up here, I looked into flying lessons, but was sad to find out that there weren't any offered in Twin falls. So once again my dream of flying went onto the back burner. But early last week I started to really want to take lessons again and even got to the point that three nights in a row I dreamed about flying. Low and behold I got to work the next day and flipped to the front page of the newspaper only to find a whole article about a guy who was opening a flying class here!! IT WAS A SIGN!!!....... or at least that's what I told myself. So I called him up, made an appointment and went for a fun little flight last Wednesday! How was it you ask? Very fun...and nerve racking to say the least, because this guy's style of teaching is saying "OK, your flying the plane, I'm just here to fix it if you do anything wrong." Needless to say my many hours on flight simulators meant nothing except for the fact that i knew what all the little gauges meant! Well I'll try to keep you posted as to my progress. Maybe some day in a year or so I'll be able to take you all on rides and be able to get to Salt Lake in half the time!! WONT THAT BE FUN!!!!

my new FAVORITE room in the house.

First off we apologise for not updating our blog as of late. we are A class slackers. But anyway we will try to be better. As most of you know, when Kimmi and I bought our new house we slowly but surely began to take upon ourselves a series of remodeling projects. Probably the biggest to date was the basement!! Below you will see a slide show of our progress from uninhabitable dungeon to my favorite room in the house. It was quite the job. we ripped down all the wood paneling. we replaced all the 70 year old wiring, insulated, drywalled, painted, re-carpeted, and the list goes on and on. More then anything I wanted to have a TV room with a big flat screen. While we remodeled we kept our old TV in the guest bedroom and watched TV in bed. we grew tiresome of this arrangement...mostly because we bought a really comfortable couch that took quite a bit of work to get downstairs in the firstplace and we weren't even using it!! anyway I just wanted to show off our wonderful work. all that is left to do in the room is trim around the doors, put up some shelves that we still need to buy from Ikea and finish decorating. YEAH for making progress!!

J-E-L-L-O

So Kimmi and I are on quite the kick at the moment.....Jello. Its extremely weird. I probably went all 24 years of my life without making any and now we cant even go a day without having a bowl of jello in or fridge. The other day Kimmi was at the store and they had a big sale on it so we stalked our shelves. Jello's a great dessert. its easy to make but I'd have to say the only downfall is the fact that it has to set in the fridge for 4 hours. we try to speed up the process at times by sticking it in the freezer but you have to be careful with that because if you let it sit in there for too long it starts to freeze. I think Ill go read the side of the box to see if it has any addictive properties because at work all I can think about is "man I cant wait to get home and have some jello!" Plus on top of that, for heavens sake I'm writing a blog about it! anyway I just thought you should know that yes my name is Mark Dibb and I'm a Jelloholic.

AHHH FRIENDS!

So I just thought I'd make a quick mention as to how nice it was to have some of our good friends visit us here in Twin Falls over the last few weeks (not the Aspers however cause Kendall is lame!!) First off the Bischoffs came up with cute little Easton. It was a fun short visit but it was awesome to catch up. Dan even brought me a sign from his work "Protection One" that makes it look like we have a security system when we really don't!! hopefully it will sway any of the crazy's in our neighborhood from even thinking about breaking into our house and thus saving me from having to bust a cap with my gun I got from Kimmi's parents for Christmas! While they were here I got to practice my BBQ skills while making dinner and we all played one of my favorite board games. "Ticket to Ride" Then two weeks later (last week) our best friends Tim and Ashley came with their little dog Poodie. Can I just start by saying that Poodie is one of the ugliest dogs in the world (as seen below) . I really think she could have a chance in the ugliest dog competition. Its funny because she is soooo ugly I kind of think she's cute. And dont try to sugar coat it just because she has bows in her hair! SHE'S UGLY. Anyway yeah its just nice to visit and catch up with our friends. Moving up to Twin Falls has been a great opportunity for me and I don't regret it at all but I miss all of you. Thanks for your continued friendship. Anyone and everyone is invited to come and stay whenever you want.