Our tenth anniversary

For our tenth anniversary we went to McCall while grandma Reva watched the kids for us. We rented paddle boards for the afternoon and played on the lake. We found the paddle boards a bit hard to balance on but we had fun anyways. We checked into the Holiday Inn and changed clothes then went to dinner at Steamers for a wonderful meal. Then I surprised Mike with a sunset cruise on the "Idaho" that took us on a two hour tour of Payette Lake while listening to live piano music. It was a lovely evening. The next day on our way home we did a little shopping in Cascade.

After paddle boarding

Dinner at Steamers

Sunset Cruise on Payette Lake

Downtown McCall

Christmas in June

Well, our little pool finally had to many holes in it and the kids are all getting big so I decided to go ahead and order a new and bigger pool. Since getting a pool at Christmas is a little disappointing we are getting it early.. Of course since it is three feet bigger around we had to do some rearranging in the back yard. The kids didn't care that we got rid of the sand box but Ashley was a little disappointed about losing the swings even though they are falling apart. So we started with removing the swings and sand box. Then we needed to trim some branches off the tree and haul them to the dump. Then we got a load of sand and did a lot of raking to try to level the ground. We set the pool up but quickly realized it wasn't level, so we pulled it off and did more raking. Once we had it set back up it was dark and we just let it fill up over night. Twelve hours later it was filled and we realized that it still was not level but after putting in all the water we decided to leave it.

A week later the legs on one side where sinking into the mud on the low side so we had to drain it and Mike hauled in pea gravel to level it plus put blocks under the legs. It is currently set up level and ready for the 4th of July and a week of over 100 degree temperatures. Crossing our fingers that we can keep the water in it for a lot longer this time.

Taking down the swings

Ashley with the A

Tree trimming

Clean up

Almost ready

Opening the box

Laying out the pool

Putting on the legs

Pool is in place ready for water

Building the ladder

Owen ready to swim

Rockets, ice cream and bubbles

The kids went to their last 4-H day camp where they built rockets and then got to launch them at the park. We lucked out and the weather was perfect for it.

The kids made homemade ice cream in zip lock bags. They thought the best way to shake them up while they froze was to jump on the trampoline.

We found a recipe for homemade giant bubbles which turned out to be lots of fun.

Jurassic World

Owen has always loved Dinosaurs so naturally he would be super excited for the Jurassic World movie to come out. Man, it's all he has been talking about for months. He was counting down the days until June 12th when it finally came out in theaters. The day before he declared Jurassic World Eve. Unfortunately Mike was gone out of town that weekend on his annual motorcycle club ride so Owen had to wait even longer. We did watch the original Jurassic Park, The lost World and Jurassic Park 3 over and over to fill in until Mike got home. The day after Mike got home we made Jurassic pancakes for breakfast. At lunch Owen collected the tin foil that the chicken nuggets came in at the park then made them into Raptor claws. That evening we finally took him to see Jurassic World, which he absolutely loved. He is still talking non stop about the movie and has been making Lego dinosaurs and worlds, MineCraft Jurassic World and has his Christmas and birthday wish lists done full of Lego Jurassic World sets and Jurassic World dinosaur action figures.