Final installment of Boise Trip!

I can't remember exactly what we did Wednesday and Thursday.  I know swimming was involved both days, probably some raspberry picking too.  Michael came back on Thursday afternoon.  We were all excited to have him back.  Oh, it was also Thursday that we made the homemade raspberry ice cream!  So yummy.  Friday involved more swimming and a trip to Costco and watching little Cannon for a bit while Ben and Nikki went out.

Saturday morning we made jam Saturday we decided to head back instead of waiting for Sunday because our car was having some issues and I felt better about driving on Saturday if we were going to have to deal with car problems.  Luckily we didn't get too far though...not even out of the neighborhood when the car made an awful sound and the A/C was shot.  The brakes were also squealing more than normal. So, we turned around switched cars with my Mom because we will be going back in just a few weeks when my brother Chad is coming to visit from DC.  My parents in the meantime took the car in to be looked at....brakes fixed $400....A/C not fixed...needs a new compressor for $1200.  Not worth it. So looks like we'll be having to drive through the night from now on.  At least until winter. Thankfully summers are pretty mild here in IF.  I've tried driving around in my Mom's car without the A/C and rolling the windows down to see how it will be.  I think we'll be able to handle it.  Now we just pray that the car will last without anything else major going wrong until we can hopefully afford a car in the spring.

Nine kids in a boat.  Don't worry, the water is only about waist deep.  This is the pond on Gregg and Kami's property.  The kids had a great time exploring and finding rotten goose eggs. Since it is so shallow in the winter it usually freezes over for at least a week or more and they go ice skating on it!

Porter and one of the rotten goose eggs.  When they break they smell SO nasty!

Saturday morning Emily, my Mom and I made raspberry freezer jam.  It was so easy and so yummy!  We used Emily's new gourmet kitchen to whip it up.

My nice cheesy pose.

Doesn't it look delicious!

Sisters...sisters...

This is Emily and Mike's new house.  So beautiful!

We decided to stop and see Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls on our way home on Saturday.  Of course the kids fell asleep about 10 minutes before we got there.  We woke Carter up to see them, but decided it wasn't worth it to get Emory up.

The last time I had seen them was during the 7 year drought and there was just a little water trickling over one side.  This wet spring made them pretty spectacular.  Definitely worth the stop.

When Emory woke-up she was content to see the pictures and video I shot. 

Boise Trip Part 3

Monday was possibly one of the best days of Carter's life!  It was garbage AND recycling day.  My Mom and I took the kids out for a walk and ended up following the garbage truck around for a bit. The garbage man stopped on our street to talk to someone and so we asked if Carter could get his picture with the truck and he even let Carter wear his hard hat.  Carter was very excited about it all.  Later that day the recycling truck came too.  He also went swimming with Emory and Cannon, Nikki and I and played on the trampoline.  What a great day! That night after the kids were in bed I went over to my Emily's to watch the Bachelorette.  It is a little embarrassing that we watch the show, but it is rather entertaining.  Then we stayed up way too late chatting, but it was worth it!
Tuesday involved more swimming and more cousins!  Emily and her boys and Kami and their 6 kids all came to go swimming in the afternoon. Carter had such a great time playing with all the cousins.  He and Mack and Brock are such cute little buddies.  Brock just turned 5, Carter is 4 and Mack just turned 3. I swear I took pictures...but I guess I didn't because there aren't any on my camera.  I hate when that happens! That night after Carter was asleep, but Emory didn't cooperate so she stayed up with my Mom, I went and played tennis with my brother Ben. We played down at BSU so we could play with the lighted courts.  It felt so good to play tennis.  I miss being about to play more often. Just for the record....I won the first sent, Ben won the second set and we called it good!

Out for our walk.  Carter was on his bike.  That is his helmet in the lower right watching the truck.

In the garbage truck!!

The truck...and the garbage man who made Carter's day week month  probably year.  :) Such a great garbage man!

After our walk we stopped by the park for a bit.  

We did yet another round of raspberry picking.  I tried to get the color accent to get Emory's shirt and the berries, but the berries were too shaded to really show.  Bummer.

Emory carrying in her pick to show grandma and grandpa.

Emory was a little more into Cannon than Cannon was into her.  This picture just makes me laugh.  He looks like he is wondering why she is standing so close to him.  She wanted to give him hugs and kisses.  He wasn't interested.

Cannon and showing his adorable Mario Lopez dimples!

Cannon was so cute on the trampoline.  Such a good little jumper.

Watching the recycling truck that afternoon.  Again I was playing with the accent color  feature.

Tuesday morning: watering the flowers with grandma.

The next day all the cousins came to swim.  After swimming we caught this butterfly and it liked Carter.  It crawled all over him.  There were SO many butterflies and dragonflies in the yard.  Way more than normal.  Maybe the cool wet spring brought more out?

Playing in the rock pit.

Swinging on the old swing set.  This is the same swing set my parents had while we were growing up!  My Dad replaced all the old broken plastic seat with wooden ones.  He can fix anything.

Boise Trip Part 2

Saturday started off with another raspberry picking, Michael mowed the lawn and we got the yard and house ready for Cannon's birthday party that afternoon.  The party started around 4 with swimming and then pizza, cake and ice cream, presents and a pinata!  It was a lot of fun.  My parents have been serving in the Boise Temple Presidency for the last 2 1/2 years and this Saturday was their last day because they closed the temple for at least a year to do some renovations.  They have mixed emotions about being done, but I can say  us kids and grandkids are all pretty excited for them to be done so we can spend more time with them!  They spent about 40 hours a week there...so it was like a full time job.  When they got home that night around 11pm Michael and  I made a victory tunnel for them to run though! It has been such a great experience for them and our family has been blessed for their service, but like I said, we are all excited to be able to spend more time with them!

Sunday we went to sacrament meeting, then home for lunch and Michael had to head back to IF to work for a few days.  I made Carter's house with a trash chute in it.  Took naps and then headed to Mike and Emily's for dinner. It was a nice relaxing Sunday.

Carter and Emory eating raspberries.

Michael takes great pride in doing my parents yard...I'm excited to see  him in action when we have a yard of our own!  This was his job last summer when we were staying with my parents.

This was Cannon's first time with water wings.  He LOVED the freedom they gave him too.    That is one happy Birthday Boy!

Emily's oldest, Braxton, is so good with the little kids.  Emory LOVES him.  Yesterday she was walking around with a picture that he's in and talking about Braxton.  When he would leave try to leave the room she would scream "BRAXTON".

Carter taking his turn with the pinata.

Emory decided to go with the poking technique.  I thought it was pretty funny.

Braxton busted the pinata wide open!

The points from the star of the pinata made perfect party hats!

Cannon has the cutest little dimples!

Carter with his trash chute house.  We didn't bring any of his garbage cans or dumpsters...so he had to settle for a cup for a dumpster.

A few days later we added windows and painted it blue with a tree and grass. This was such a fun little project.

When Michael came back on Thursday he brought some of Carter's garbage cans and dumpsters and truck.  That made it so much better in Carter's eyes.

After dinner at Emily's the kids played in the front yard with all their bikes and scooters. Did I say yet how excited I am that the Riches are in Boise?!

Boise Trip Part 1

We just had the best trip to Boise ever. The company was great, the weather was perfect, and we just did so many fun things. I am going to break this trip into a few posts because I have so many pictures.  I uploaded all my pictures yesterday for July so far and I had almost 300 and that was after deleting almost 100.  Don't worry, I won't post ALL of those. 

What fun things did we do in Boise you ask? Well, here's a list: picked raspberries, swimming, watering flowers with Grandma, saw Cars 2, watched the garbage trucks, played at the park, played in the rock pit, jumped on the trampoline, went for walks, PF Chang's picnic downtown, made homemade raspberry jam, made homemade raspberry ice cream, played tennis with my brother Ben, watched the Bachelorette with my sister, went to Anthropolgie with my Mom, had my bangs trimmed (little thing that makes a big difference), made a house out of a cardboard box, celebrated Cannon's 2nd birthday, spent a morning at Uncle Gregg's farm, lots of cousin fun, trip to Costco (we really miss Costco :), swimming, swimming, and oh, did I mention swimming?!  It was seriously such a wonderful week.  Thanks family for all the fun! Here are pictures from the first 2 days.  

We drove up Wednesday evening, the 6th.  We left shortly after 7 thinking the kids would sleep most of the way.  We were WRONG!  Emory hadn't had a nap all day so she feel asleep 5 minutes into the drive, but only slept for about an hour.  Carter didn't sleep one wink.  He was too excited to sleep.  Luckily they were both really good still.  The iPad is a life saver.  We discovered it wedges perfectly between the front seat so the kids can both watch it. So, we got in around 11 with 2 excited kids.  They were in bed around 12:30 I think!  Thankfully they both slept in which they never seem to do no matter how late they are up.  

Thursday we picked up my sister Emily's 3 boys around 11:30 so they could get some unpacking and settling in done.  Their furniture had just arrived on Tuesday, so we were glad to help!  We all went to see Cars 2.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it but Emory....she was done when her popcorn and treats ran out.  Then we went back to my parent's and everyone went swimming.  Then Mike and Emily (for those of you who don't know/remember my sister is also married to a Mike) brought some pizza over for dinner that night and just hung out and cleaned up the yard. We had a big wind storm blow through that knocked a few large branches from our neighbors huge maple tree and one from our maple tree down. When the first branch fell from our neighbors tree we decided we should move our car into the garage because it was parked on the street.  A few minutes later a pretty big branch feel from our tree right where our car had been parked.  We can't decide if that was a blessing or a curse.  We still have our Altima and thought maybe the insurance pay out would have been better. :)

Friday morning we did our first round of raspberry picking, went swimming, and had a picnic downtown.

Emily's 3 boys.  They are all getting so big!

Porter hanging out in some tubes.

We tried water wings on Emory!  She did so great and LOVED the freedom.  She just looks too tiny to be swimming around like that I think.

This is from Friday's swimming.  This picture "cracks" us up!

They loved playing "Ring Around the Rosies" together in the pool.

I wanted to play around with the accent color feature again on my camera.  The daises were so pretty while we were there.

I told her to smell them...that wasn't very nice because Daisies do not smell good!

Emory's face shows you how good they smell!  :) Her nose also got  a nice coating of pollen which also contributed to her making this face.

Watching Carter and Daddy while she dried off and warmed up.

After a full day of swimming we worked up an appetite that could only be  fed by PF Chang's (another place we miss in IF).  We got it "to go" and took it to Julia Davis Park downtown by the river for a picnic.  The weather was so nice. 

After we ate we walked to the bridge for Carter.

It was such a beautiful evening.