McCall Get Away

In February, Matt was named the January MVP at work and was given a one night stay at the Whitetail Club (Shore Lodge) in McCall as well as a dinner package for the Narrows restaurant. After a few scheduling troubles, because of our crazy schedules, we finally got our night booked for Friday, October 10th. Matt took the whole day off so we could go up early and play.
My friend, Krista, watched the kids for us all day until my mom could come and watch them for the remainder of the night. Krista takes her kids to a home school co-op on Fridays so Bailee got to go with her friend Julianna to pre-school. She was so excited. We packed her backpack with the supplies she needed and bundled her in her coat (it was a cold morning) and then we sent her to her "first day" of pre-school . She is growing up too fast. After the kids were on their way, Matt and I headed up to McCall. On our way there we stopped in Cascade for lunch. Near Donnley we stopped at some hot springs. It was a great day for getting into hot springs. It was cold out side but it made getting in them that much nicer. We stayed there for and hour or so and then drove the rest of the way to McCall.

We weren't quite sure what to expect when we got there, so we were almost expecting them to charge us for something at any time. Lucky for us there were no added charges. When we got there we checked into our room and hung out until our 7 pm dinner reservation at the very nice restaurant there at Whitetail/Shore Lodge (they are in the process of changing the name back to it's original name "Shore Lodge") called the Narrows.
Our Room
The view from our patio. It was cold and windy that night so we didn't spend any time out there, but it was beautiful.
Just before 7 pm we got dressed for dinner. The restaurant was very nice and had a dress code. We felt a little like fish out of water there, or maybe like hicks in a big city. We were expecting that our dinner package was worth a certain dollar amount, but to our surprise it was good for any two appetizers, entree', and deserts. The only cost to us was gratuity. We were so surprised and ended up ordering the two most expensive entrees on the menu. One of the waiters had recommended the rib-eye, saying it was the best steak that he had had in all of the restaurant he had worked in. So that was what Matt ordered. I have never seen my husband enjoy the food he was eating as much as he did that night. Even now if you mention that rib-eye he smiles and says that he would go back and pay the $45 to eat it again, it was that good. Coming from Matt, it must have been good for him to be willing to pay that much. Eating there was so exciting for me, I love to cook and have always wanted to go to one of those fancy restaurants that have "fancy food". You know, almost to pretty to eat. I loved it when they brought out our appetizers and Matt's prawns were standing up on little dollops of mashed potatoes and my mushroom and puff pastry appetizer was decorated with asparagus spears and garnished all around the plate. It was so fun. At the end of the night they brought us the check, it totaled $127 and all we were responsible for was the gratuity. Which was about as much as we would ever spend at any normal restaurant for our whole meal!
We had such a great time while we were there. We left early Saturday morning so we could get back in time for our friends wedding, but it was nice to have a little get away just the two of us.

Rendezvous 2008

In October we had our first Boy Scout Rendezvous. It was a great event. Troop 423 along with Troop 433 went to celebration park for our camp out. Upon arriving we set up camp and made dinner. The leaders made pizza in these handy little cast iron molds you put in the fire for a couple minutes. As far as the boys one patrol had hamburgers the other patrol had dutch oven pizza. After dinner they played capture the flag for a little while. At ten o'clock Brian put on a fireside where we discussed our rights as US citizens. The next morning we got up at 6:00 made breakfast and got ready for the day. We had a flag ceremony then we started the rendezvous. In the first three events they learned about animal tracks, plant identification and how to sharpen a knife and axe. The boys where able to find the tracks and urine spot from the coyotes that we howeling during the night. They took a quick break and then we started the second round of events. Each pair of boys had 30 minutes at each station. There were six stations consisting of fire building, knots, compass course, lashing, height and width of objects, and first aid. We had 10 boys competing and they were paired up as follows Tyler/Nathan, Sonny/Brandon, David/Ben and 4 boys from troop 423. They earned points based on how accurately they completed each station. Neils ran the lashing station, Rob was in charge of fire building, Dan headed up the compass course, Jeff was the knot guru, Caleb took care of first-aid and Brian took care of height and width. It was a very successful event. We hope to have another one next fall. David/Ben won 1st place, Brandon/Sonny took 2nd and Troop 433 placed 3rd. The prizes were multi-tools, head lamps, soda, candy bars and small flashlight. It took a lot of planning but the boys had a lot of fun competing. Thanks to all those that help make it a SUCCESS!

She DIDN'T!

She did. Bailee cut her hair during General Conference on Sunday. I about cried. I know that it is just hair and I am fine with having to cut her hair because I know that most kids do this at some point or another and her hair will grow back. But I just wish that she had waited two weeks until after my friend Amy's wedding that Bailee is a flower girl in. Oh well, I guess that all I can do now is make do with the hair she has left. She cut about four inches off in two spots and of course they are near the front of her head. I guess that it could have been worse.

Here is my attempt at masking the damage. I would like to keep her hair long at least until after the wedding so I tried putting it in rollers to see if it would hide it. I did a pretty good job and you couldn't tell unless you looked closely. I think she looks really cute with those curls in her hair.

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.