Scrapbook Retreat

This past weekend my scrapbooking girlfriends and I held our own retreat. Rather than paying $150+ for a weekend we decided to have one for $30 at my friend, Anna's house. We all arrived at Anna's around noon on Friday including Stephanie, who came from Pocatello just for the event. We'll just say that our weekend started of with a bang. Just as we were all getting settled with our lunch we heard a frantic knock at the door and our friend Debbie burst in the door to let us know that the house across the street was on fire. We all ran to the door and this is what we saw. We could feel the heat from the fire and as Anna desperately tried to get a hold of her neighbor to notify her house was on fire. While we all stared in shock there was a huge explosion that we are guessing that it was from the car that was parked inside the garage. We were all so startled that I think we each stepped back from the door. Our next few hours rather than scrapbooking were filled with watching in shock as this family's home was destroyed. Thankfully all of the family got out safely and without injury. My heart is heavy and still swirling from all of the emotion that filled me through the event.
We did eventually have to move on with the weekend and as best we could and try to leave the chaos outside. After a couple of hours back in our "retreat" environment we were able to get into the groove of all of the scrapbooking fun. We had wonderful meals and more junk food soda than any of us really needed, but we needed the fuel to keep us going. I had so much fun with all of the girls and it was fun to have a weekend with out the hubbies and kids, even though I know they were all greatly missed. We had prizes and gave each other challenges to keep things going and interesting. We all took turns wearing the pipe-cleaner crown when we would finish pages. What a fun weekend filled with laughter, sleeplesness and lots of other emotion...definitely one that I will never forget.

Anna, Angie, Me, Stephanie, and Crystal
Angie proudly wearing the coveted crown
Anna with the OH So Yummy ice cream sundaes
Crystal kept herself going with her Pepsi
Stephanie always had a smile on her face.Lots of Yummy Food

Silver City

For the September Camp Out we went to Silver City. It is a really fun little town. It was a mining town in the 1800's and it doesn't look much different then it would of back then. Walking down the streets reminded me of the old western movies. While we where there we looked around at the building and visited the cemetery on the hill.

Rob, Brian and I were the leaders on this adventure. Sonny, Tyler, Nathan, David and Dallon came on the camp out. It pretty much rained all night and most of the morning. Around 10 in the morning it cleared up.

Saturday morning around 5 I heard some boys laughing and being boys. I decided well since they are up and I am up now they might as well get started on breakfast. They were getting started when it start raining again. We tried making breakfast in between rain storms and finally accomplished that task. After breakfast we had a fire building competition. We tied a rope 2 feet off the ground and the first one to burn it won. Due to the slight breeze it made for a interesting event. David took first, Sonny took second and Dallon took third. We also did a little bit of knot tying in preparation for our Rendezvous in October.

For Thy Bountious Blessings...

We give thee thanks Oh Lord.
It is sad to say that our garden didn't really take this year. But Matt's tomatoes always do well even this year when they didn't do as well as normal. We decided that despite the fact that we didn't get as much produce as usual that we were going to try out canning. We really haven't had an excuse not to can since Matt's mom let us have all of her canning stuff four years ago. We bought a bushel of peaches and canned sliced peaches and peach pie filling. Then we used the tomatoes from our garden and made spaghetti sauce and diced tomatoes. We also went over to a friend of ours to pick some jalapenos and I hope to do salsa this week. I even did some strawberry jam too. We have been busy... I am glad that weather cooled of for the week of canning. The house sure gets hot with all of the boiling water. One of our Tomato Harvests
Bailee helping Mom with the peach pie filling.
Peaches and Spaghetti Sauce
Yummy Peach Pie Filling.

Bailee is 3!!

Wow! Where has the time gone? We can hardly believe that Bailee is 3 now. She had quite the birthday week. Her birthday was on Monday this year and we started it off with a birthday breakfast. I let her choose whatever she wanted to have... she of course chose pancakes. I decided that I would make it special by shaping them into 3's. It took me a few tries but I got the hang of it and she ate several of them. We let her have a friend party this year and so on her birthday she got to have 4 of her friends come over for a "Cars" party. I wanted to do a princess party but she chose "Cars". We started the party off by letting the girls decorate their own cardboard car. Then we went outside to play "red light green light" and have some races. They all had fun with that, even though I am not sure they quite understand the game.

Then it was back inside for gifts and cake. Bailee isn't a big cake eater, so I attempted to make my own ice cream cake. She loved it.

Then on Friday Matt's parents, Steph and Kelly came to town for Family pictures and to celebrate Bailee's birthday. So we had a little family party Saturday too. Bailee got EVERYTHING she wanted. It was like Christmas, she had so many gifts.

Bailee just started getting into the whole Disney princess thing. My mom gave her a set of princess dolls and this cute lunch box along with a few other fun toys and games.
Matt's parents got Bailee her own digital camera. Bailee has been quite the photographer for about a year now. So now she has her own and it is just like her friend Rylie's

(but it is her favorite color, orange) so she loves it.

She also got a scooter from us. Her friend Julianna has on like it and it has often been a fight over who gets to ride it. Bailee was so excited when we gave it to her. She didn't say anything, just got on it and started down the walkway.

We Love our little Bailee and are so glad that she was able to have such a fun birthday. Now it is time to get rid of some of the old toys... our house is overflowing.