What a summer!

School just started yesterday so i thought i would take this time to write one big post about all summer and then try to do better about keeping up to date.

June

My sister and her 3 kids, Keli, Trevor, Nikki, came to visit in June. We had a great time. We had a sleepover at Grandma Nichols' house. The kids made "Grandma's garden" rocks.

Grandma's Garden Rocks

On Saturday, we went to Lone Pine Nursery, which is just South of Rexburg because they had stocked their ponds with fish and had a free fishing day and had free lunch and door prizes and stuff. It was pretty hot, but a lot of fun. After that, we headed on up to Rexburg and went to the new spray park at Porter Park. Bo had a great time. He almost couldn't run fast enough to go back on the slide each time.

We also got to go to the airshow in Rexburg. It was a perfect weather day for it and we had a lot of fun. We have a really cool airplane museum in Rexburg. There were also several military rigs there to climb around in. There was a black hawk helicopter there and it took off right at the end of the airshow. a large crowd had gathered to watch it take off and so we all got a good dusting.

July


We had our friends the Searles, Copleys, Sessions, over on the 4th of July and had a barbeque and set off fireworks once it got dark. The kids had fun with the sparklers and snaps.




On the 21st of July, we went to the Pioneer Day parade in St Anthony. Bo was soooo excited because he got to ride in a HUMMER with his Uncle Paul. He even got to throw candy, although Paul put an end to that after about the 1st block because apparently Bo was being very generous.

August

For Ryan's mom's birthday, we gave her a 5 gallon bucket of primer and told her that was part of her birthday present. the other half was that we would take the wall paper off her living room walls and paint the room for her. During the 1st week of August, she and Jana went to Canada to visit her Mom and other family. While she was out, we got to work doing the project. Luckily the paper came off pretty easily. but we got the room all torn apart, stuff masked off, ceiling painted, walls textured and painted and everything put back together before she came home. It was a lot of work, but it turned out sooo nice. Unfortunately i don't have pictures of the progress. i will have to remember to take pictures of the finished project. We also redocorated. She had a bazillion pictures and stuff all over the walls. We simplified quite a bit. They also took the heavy gold drapes down and put up the Faux Wood blinds. Looks great! Now i want to do more....like the hallway, the bathroom, the dining room and the kitchen. Might take a couple more years and a few more trips to Canada to get it all done.

We went to the spray park with cousins Valerie, Brittney, Alex, Abigail and Parker. It was a beautiful day and the kids had a lot of fun together. We had a picnic lunch and just enjoyed the afternoon.

Kaylee, Brittney, Bo, Alex, Abigail

One Saturday, we took off in the afternoon. We went to St Anthony and got lunch at Big J's. then we headed up to Island Park to Macks Inn, where we played in the river for a while. When the kids got tired of that, we went to Big Springs and fed the fish. It started raining so we left there and headed up to West Yellowstone. I've lived in Southeastern Idaho all my life, and i've never really got to the city of West Yellowstone. It has all kinds of fun little stores and shops up there. It has a cool train museum and also the discovery center.

Inside Discovery Center Souvenier Shop

Outside Grizzly Discovery Center

Apparently August is our month to camp. We went on our first camping trip of the summer in mid August. We went up to Teardrop Lake. Our friends bailed on us so it was just our little family. It has been a long time since we went camping alone. Makes you realize what items you forgot to take when there is no one else there to borrow from.

It was kindof overcast and rainy much of the time, but when the sun did come out, we made the most of it. We went for walks around the lake and Ryan and the kids swam. We had a great time though. Just as we were packing up to leave, a hail storm hit. It only lasted a couple of minutes, but the hail stones were marble size and they hurt.

One Happy Camper

Two Happy Campers

Five Happy Campers

Then the next weekend, we camped at Wright Creek Campground. We were the only ones in the whole campground. It was great! Once again, our friends didn't make it so it was just us again. The weather was much better than the weekend before. Saturday night was a ward party there. We had a great dinner and Glenn Rawson came and told stories. He tells inspirational stories on the sounds of Sunday. He is a great story teller. The theme was "remembering our pioneer heritage." He even told one of my family's stories about the Hole in the Rock. It was awesome.