Out West

Here's the last of the "catching up" posts!  We ended our trip to Idaho with Steven, Amy, and Hudson joining us in McCall for Labor Day weekend.  So fun!  We had been talking about having them join us some time, and how great to actually make it happen!  The whole family was anxious to meet them and wanted to come (minus Casey, sad), and they fit right in with the crew. 

The weekend was just about perfect, with clear, warm days and cool, crisp nights.  We did all the cabiny things that we like, such as fly fishing (Steven caught a fish on his first or second cast--unbelievable), four-wheeling, floating down the river, playing games, shooting (guns and bows, this time), hot tubbing, and, of course, playing Rock Band.  It was special to share our dear friends and dear family with each other.  The only bad part was that now that we have we said good bye to the Kings and sent them back to North Carolina, we don't know when we will see them next! :(

A nice side-treat to having Steven around is a plethora of fantastic pictures...and of course trying to find time to sort through them has delayed this post long enough!  Here are a few of our favorites:

Cole and Troy on an adventure

Apollo

88 candles for Gramps

A morning dip

Jason teaches fly fishing lessons

Steven's first catch!

Ice Cream Alley.  Just right.

Blue-faced Mason.  Again.

Rockin' with the band.

Kade and Auntie Kim

Quiet Sunday morning

Dangerous.

Chad and  Coop

The "big boys."

Fire-pit dinner

Conversations at dusk

Auntie Kim's awesome pancakes

C is for Cole

A walk in the wilderness

Peas in a pod

Fishing buddies.

On McCall beach

Post-river float reinactment

This picture makes me crack up.

Ticket to Ride

Roasting marshies

Jason and his buddy Hudson

Summer, according to my iPhone

This has clearly NOT been the summer for blogging, but this past weekend the weather was in the 60s (!!!), so I'd better get summer under our belts before we move on to the decidedly more pleasant fall.

As mentioned previously, we spent a lot of time behind desks this summer.  But as I was flipping through the pictures on my iPhone, I realized I had a lot of other moments (mostly food moments) I'd neglected to blog about.  So here goes, a picture essay of our summer.

Summer was very tomatoey.  Lots of BLTs.  Mmm.

Jason gave me French cooking classes for Christmas last year.  Bon appetit!

For a brief moment, our garden was everything you could hope and dream for.  Isn't this picture lovely?

The leftovers from Amy's party.  Peach cobbler it is!

It may look like 100 degrees, but it felt like 117.  July was the hottest in history.

Surprise favorite dinner of the summer:  Proscuitto and peach pizza.

We ate this cherry bread salad, like, once a week all summer.

Look how clean my desk is!  I love August.

Blackberry picking with Dawn.

A moment of missing Amy.

Sewing projects!  Finally made it past my multi-year backup and made this in a day!

Best things about recess:  We the Pizza and fro-yo from Sweet Green.

Weird albino trout at the Hagerman Trout Station (work trip).  There are also weird blue trout in that pool, too.

Idaho at Last

All year I have been working toward the reward of spending a good, solid chunk of time in Idaho. For the past four years my trips have been short and crazy-full of work, but this year I needed to just be in Idaho--to, like my boss said, wake up with a cold nose in the morning in the middle of August.  I get a real thrill at driving home from Shaanti's in the evening with the windows down and the old Country Gold Saturday Night radio program playing.

Idaho was just what I needed after the past year.  I worked for a week and then played for a week.  We did stuff like this:

* Went to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival with picnics in hand to see Taming of the Shrew.

* Casey and Kim came down for a short but great visit, and the three of us went to see HP7 again--so good the second time (but so sad that I didn't take any pictures, arg!).

* Had a Sisters' Night Out, complete with dinner, shopping without strollers, and shaved ice.  Classic.

* Read almost all of the Anne of Green Gables books on my iPad.  Pretty fantastic.

* Played with little boys.  A lot.

I think this is my favorite picture from the whole trip.

Somehow I can't get rid of Cole's evil eyes...

 

* Ran a ridiculous 10K Dirty Dash through mud puddles, over hay bales, and, most excruciatingly, up a ski hill.  It was one of those things I'm glad we did, and I was not glad to be doing.

The fear before the race.

The filth after the race.

* Went to dinner with my dad, which was so fun.

* Ate ice cream.  And lots of other food.

Mason, wearing his classic blue ice cream.

Last minute ice cream date with Uncle Jason.

It was SUCH a good trip.  I had been feeling so burned out and exhausted that I didn't think I could ever get back to "zero," but I came home and felt like my soul was very refreshed.  It was such a blessing to be able to spend so much time with my family--especially when they traveled down to see me or spent nearly every evening with me.  Such a happy trip.