The Braces Adventure - For Carter!

 Back in March, Carter began his braces adventure. Much like me, actually! He had an expander put in, which is due to be removed in a month or so. He's very excited for that to be out of his mouth. So far, the progress has been amazing. I'm loving his new smile, and he is loving the different color schemes for the bands. He first did the Seahawks' colors, and now he has the Red Sox colors.

Blast! (off)

 Well, we have officially "gone club" with the girls for softball. It was a decision that took all summer to make, but we finally feel we are all ready to make this jump together. We did countless hours of research on all the club teams here in the valley, and were hotly pursued by a handful. Ultimately, we decided to go with Boise Blast. They are one of the two longest-standing teams here in the area, are very competitive, and have the best family-oriented feel overall. 

This week was our first week of practices, and we are having.....well......a BLAST! This group of girls is absolutely dynamite and I cannot wait to dig in and really get the most out of them. 

Camping!

Last weekend, we headed to the mountains for some camping. We started out just below the Warm Springs guard station at a great spot. We noticed as we were rolling through Lowman that there were some seriously dark, menacing clouds hovering. They looked far enough away, but let me tell you. We no more got the tent and shade canopy set up when those clouds unleashed a rain like I haven't seen since a tropical downpour in Belize a couple years ago. We huddled under the shade canopy - nobody dressed for the rain. Seemed to be similar to the last camping trip of last year, at Sage Hen, where we all stood under the same canopy to escape the rain. I sense a pattern? Anyway, the rain eventually subsided long enough to set up the rest of camp and get dinner made. When it started back up again, we decided to just call it a night and go to bed. There is nothing better than falling asleep with the sound of the nearby river. That rain was the only weather issue the entire weekend.

We did lots of rock throwing and skipping. 

We went on wood gathering adventures. 

The kids fished quite a bit. 

On Friday evening, the ranger caught up with us and told us we were camped in an unauthorized spot. We weighed the options of staying put and risking a hefty fine, or moving to a different spot. The latter wasn't exactly attractive considering we had an entire camp set up, but the fine was even less attractive. So, we packed up camp and moved over to the Ten Mile trail area. This ended up being closer to where my parents were camped. We kept good social distancing practices for everyone's safety, but it was sure nice to hang with family! 

I took the kids down to the original swimming hole and showed them all of the things we did as kids growing up there. 

Just because you are camping doesn't mean you skip out on softball practice! 

July's Literary Adventures

July brought some pretty good reads. I took my time with the James Rollins' book as his tend to be a little more complex and technical. Side Trip was definitely a great read with one hell of a twist at the end.

Hoping to get quite a few more books in for August!

4th of July Fun

It was quite the subdued 4th this year....... 'rona just won't let us do anything fun. What a buzz kill that chic is. 

We did make the most of it. Even though there wasn't the big parade with the water fight at the end, we still did our own little fireworks show, while taking in a TON of baseball the entire weekend, playing in the river, and then watched the Meridian Speedway fireworks display.