Idaho and Yellowstone!

 So I am way far behind in my posting . . . so I am just going to copy and paste what I posted on my Facebook/Instagram posts. (Maybe it's time I transition from my blog and use Instagram and Chatbooks . . . we'll see.)

MONDAY:

Love me some Idaho!! A fantastic day of running in one of the earth’s most beautiful places, hiking to the fire tower, hiking up the 90-foot tower for most (someone has to stay below to get pics 😉), floating the Henry’s Fork, seeing 2 moose, roasting hot dogs, and getting some down-time in, too.

TUESDAY:

A good day in Yellowstone = seeing animals, seeing weird yet awesome geothermal wonders, being with family, getting exhausted. Check, check, check, and check.

(Lucy was missing 2 weeks of softball, so she practice a tiny bit with Ben. :) )

WEDNESDAY:

Another great day in Idaho. It started off with Ben, Miles, and I encountering a bear on our morning hike. I don’t have a picture because I was too busy running the other way, ha. Then we headed south and visited BYU-I. We picked up our nephew/cousin Sam and made our way down to The Edge climbing gym - an extremely cool gym owned by Ben’s cousin. After climbing we ate at  a favorite place of Ben’s: Mo’Bettah. So good! And such another fun day.

THURSDAY:

Yellowstone day #2 critters seen: a bunny, elk, crows, a snake, a marmot, bison, and too-many horrible mosquitoes. Ben doesn’t joke when it comes to Yellowstone and had us all up at 5am to get going! We ended the day (at 11pm) with a fun and funny show at The Playmill in West. A long day, but a great day!

(Ugh, I can't get it centered and it sort of drives me nuts . . . )

We hiked to Lone Star Geyser.  It was a beautiful hike! Unfortunately, we didn't time it right (it's not a popular geyser and so we couldn't find any official times for eruptions - until we got up to it and checked out the log-book) and landed right about in the middle of its 3-hour eruption window. We missed it by 90 minutes . . . or were 90 minutes too early. Some of us would have waited, but others didn't want to. Next time, we'll bring a lunch and have a picnic if we have to wait. It was really cool - but would have been so much cooler to see it erupt! Next time!

FRIDAY:

Our last full-day in Idaho - boohoo. The big event of the day was the side-by-side we rented. The kids had a blast. The boys went on quite the ride together (2+ hours) and loved it. Ben and I and the girls floated the river again - and Emmy got to prove to Jonas that she, too, could do a black-flip off the rope. We had an epic rainstorm - but even that didn’t stop Jonas from riding the side-by-side. We ended the day with a delicious dinner and another funny play. Good times indeed!!

Girls' Camp 2021

 (My pictures are way out of order, but I am so behind and also too lazy to correct it . . .)

Emmy and I went to girls' camp from June 22-25th. We left very early (6am) on Tuesday morning and got back that Friday afternoon. Our ward was combined with the Cimarron ward and so that made it a lot of fun to have more girls and leaders. 10 girls from each ward, which was really perfect! We were lucky enough to get to use a family's cabin from our ward. I could have done with a bit more structured activities, but all in all it was great and I really think all the girls had a great time - and that's what counts. Oh, I did find a tick on me. Fun, fun!

This was a paint-by-number project that the girls did. The girls would take a rectangle piece that had areas drawn and labeled - and then get the corresponding paint colors to paint inside the areas. Emmy choose the solid-color blue ones only. :) It turned out super cool!

We went on a little "hike" one morning (more of a stroll) - it was really beautiful and I wished we could have gone further and longer. But silly private-property lines. :)

16 of the 20 girls slept in the wood shed on the left. 4 other girls (YCLs - we had six total YCLs and 2 were in the shed) slept in the dome tent.

Braiding time! That day we were getting ready for a "beach" day at the Blue Mesa. We had a good time, but had to cut it short due to thunderstorms.

Cute Emmy on the hike. She and two other friends had done cornrow braids the day before camp. They only kept it in for one day (what?! weirdos) - it was quite crimpy when they took them out. Cute.

Emmy's good friend Holly on the hammock with her flower crown.

After doing the paint-by-number activity, some of the girls went crazy with painting their legs. :)

Doing something . . . 

Here's the cabin. Us leaders slept in the top loft. The owners, Jared and Kat and their little 3-year old, slept in the room on the main floor. The leaders lucked out and got to use the flush toilet. Yay!

The inside of the shed/sleeping quarters. We had other tents for their "stuff" to be kept.

Having fun in the shed. We had karaoke one night and that was a blast. 

The girls and their finished Christ picture. So awesome.

I brought up our four hammocks and created a little hammock village. The girls all loved it. They got wild and crazy on them, too - flips and twisting and more! It's literally a miracle that no one got hurt, ha.

Another leader brought up this 4-square/volleyball set and it was hugely popular, too. 

Emmy gave the devotional the first evening there. She gave out bubblegum and we soon had a bubblegum blowing contest. :)

Working on the paint by number craft.

Millie blowing a pretty impressive bubble!

The Studebaker

Miles has been in love with Studebakers for a decade or so. I don't know how or why it began . . . But they aren't a dime a dozen, especially in our small town. So Miles has been looking and dreaming of buying other cars - junky cars to "fix." (Why he thinks he can fix cars is really a mystery to me.) But we'd told him he's not owning 2 cars at our house and would have to sell Delilah. He wasn't super excited about that . . . until he found this Lark Studebaker (his dream is more of the Champion studebaker, but this is close). And it wasn't even that far from us - in the small town of Eckert, about a 35-minute drive from our home.

Ben was with the girls one weekend in Utah (he doing Army drill stuff, the girls - and Reese - hanging out with my parents) and I agreed to drive up to check out the car that Sunday afternoon. The man selling it, Jim, was such an awesome man! He had great stories to tell and was just super-friendly. He works on classic cars and has the awards and trophies to prove he knows what he's doing. Unfortunately, he's getting old and quite blind and just can't work on cars anymore. We checked out his amazing garage (the boys were practically drooling) - which had the classic checkered flooring, a beautiful rambler (I think that's what he called it), vintage signs (actual real and vintage), car decor, trophies, certificates, etc., etc. It was even a blast for me and I'm not into cars!

I love Jim's story of how he ran a race (a fellow runner - yay.) and ended up running it barefoot - and it was the only race he'd ever won. Haha.

Anyways, Miles made the deal to buy the car. So later that week when Ben got back, the boys went back out to Jim's and picked up Miles' car.  

It's adorable.

Since having it, Miles has worked on a few things. He fixed the driver's window to make it roll up all the way. He replaced the carburetor so the car can idle without stalling (Jim told us about that and so we knew it needed to be fixed), and he placed a hose-clamp on something or other. He's driven it very short distances as it still needs seatbelts installed . . . :)

Oh, it's a 3-on-the-tree shifting thing. Check it out - crazy! But Miles gotten pretty adept at driving it.

We're still waiting for Delilah to be bought . . . 

Summer So Far

I know it's not officially or technically summer, but it's summer break for sure. While we haven't done a ton, I still feel like we've been really busy thus far! We have a bit of a reprieve this week, and then have a crazy next 3 weeks following that (well for Emmy and I because we have YW camp one week - after that the whole fam will have a fun week at Mack's Inn/Yellowstone and then camps for the kids at OFY (boys) and BYU gym camp (girls)0. Bring it on!

The girls are busy with hanging out with friends, gymnastics, and Lucy just started softball. The boys are busy with work (Jonas at the pool and Miles at Crash Burger) and school work for Miles. Jonas and Emmy have lawns to mow each week. Ben's busy with his calling, work, on-call, drill weekends, etc. I am busy with a little bit of work and lots of driving and managing the household operations.

However, the most exciting thing of our summer so far was our trip to Littleton. Miles and Jonas hadn't seen their Maxwell family for almost 2 years. It had been almost 1 1/2 years for Ben. A bonus for us was that Ben's sister Debbie was there and that made it extra-awesome. It was a quick trip - we arrived in Littleton a little after midnight on Friday/Saturday (we had to wait for Jonas to get off work) and then left Sunday at 1:00. But it was worth it.

On Saturday we went on a hike with Debbie to . . . Maxwell falls! Ha, cool. It was a nice, little hike and great to get outdoors. Bella was embarrassing as she tried to bite all the other dogs. Sheesh. Brigham just did his typical thing of sniffing the other dogs - yet pulling us to make sure he was always in the lead.  

Here are a few pictures from the hike:

The Ben Maxwell family at Maxwell falls. (There were bigger falls down below . . . we just didn't get any pictures!)

Brigham loving his birthday day hike! Yep, this guy turned 6!

Ben and Debbie.

That afternoon our kids went and swam where their cousin, Nicholas, works. Nicholas works at the snack shop - so cool. It was a hot day and so it was perfect for swimming. Jonas was glad he didn't have to yell at any kids. :)

That evening we had dinner at Ben's house with his parents, of course, and Debbie, and then Joe and Brittany and Nicholas came as well. It was so good to be with them all!

We sang "Happy Birthday" and Brigham scarfed down his cupcake. (Bella had a mini-one. :) )

Then Sunday was pretty much church . . . Our Sunday school lesson was taught by Ben's favorite (I'm guessing on that) seminary teacher - Brother Okoren and it was awesome. Our three eldest were taught by one of Ben's very favorite non-family person: President Mel Sabey (the father of the amazing Sabey clan . . . past bishop and stake president to Ben as well). They had a wonderful lesson and told us all about it. We got some nice pictures before we headed back home:

I love this one!

All of us with Ben's parents.

Two girls and Grandma Diana. :)

Ben and his lovely parents.

This one was taken at their church. Fun, fun!

One last one with our Sunday crew. :)

Then it was back to real life . . . And summer isn't quite summer without a lemonade stand . . . Lucy and a friend did one and made the most ever - $80 total, so $40 each!!!

How cute are they?! Lemonade stands really restore my hope in humanity. :)

This past weekend, Ben went to Utah for his drill weekend (leaving on Thursday) and took up the girls and Reese (Emmy's best friend). It sounds like they are all having a great time - my mom took the girls to the mall, Costco, thrift shopping, swimming, etc. Plus, they are watching a bunch of movies that my sister gets to pay for, ha. Ben has had a pretty good time, too, I think. The drill weekend was a little disrupted due to a shooting-ban because of fire danger. 

The boys and I have spent our time at work and mowing lawns - oh and checking out a new (but older) car that Miles is going to buy . . .