Mackenzie Turns 14

The last day we were in Idaho Mackenzie had her 14th birthday. We celebrated Kyla's with since she wanted brownies and Mackenzie wanted to have homemade chocolate ice cream.

Other pictures from our trip to Idaho

This is an elk at a hunting reserve about 5 miles from Craig's parents cabin. Craig's dad said that a person can pay around $2,000 to $3,000 to hunt for elk there. Sounds like some lazy hunters to me! I was pretty amazed how close I was able to get the the fence.

Kaden and Poochie, Craig's parents dog.

The boy's on the 4-wheeler, the high light of the week was being able to drive them.

Rexbug Temple

Went down to Rexburg and dropped the kids off at Craig's brothers and went to the temple. It was gorgeous to say the least! They have done murals on the wall's like they are doing in some of the newer temples.



On a side note. I also went and saw my former Cosmetology teacher. Why does it seem some people never age. I'm pretty excited because I was able to find out that I can now get my license in WA and do not have to take the test!

Big Sky and West Yellowstone

This is a picture of the mountain at Big Sky. We took a trip up there one day. You can go all the way up to the top peak. We went to the base, it was about 7,500 elevation. Poor Kyla and Jensen were starting to altitude sickness so we headed back down, it was amazing how quickly they both started to feel better.

So I'm grateful for our "little" church. On the main road leaving from Big Sky we saw an LDS church. For those of you that have seen Baptist at our Barbeque the members have a single wide for a church...well that is exactly what this was! We saw several LDS churches during our trip that looked like they had smaller buildings that what we have.



This is Kaden and Craig's sister Christina, I thougt this was cute. The picture of Kaden looking at her came out perfect!

So they had these painted buffalo all over West Yellowstone so we took a few pictures. It reminded me of how in Portland they do the same thing every year except they paint cows.

Dress up at Grandma's

So this is a picture from 1998. The girls would have been 6 and 4. Jeanine, Craig's mom has had dress up clothes for the girls and even some for the boys (although I don't think that they enjoy it as much) for years.

The pictures below are the girls with their cousins Kira and Madison. These are Craig's brother Kurts daughters. Notice they are still wearing some of the same clothes. Mackenzie is wearing the same dress and Kyla the same hat.

Madison, Mackenzie, Kyla, and Kira
The girls actually went out in public dressed like this! They came across a few people and I think they got a few snickers. We were trying to convince them they should wear the clothes to church.
You can't really tell in this picture, but Mackenzie is wearing very sparkly stuff on her face, they went a little over board on the make-up.

Trip to Idaho

Not sure what we were thinking to take a 14 to 15 hour trip to Idaho the day after the fair when we spent every single day there! But to try and make the trip a bit easier we only went part of the way and stopped at my sister Paige's house. We left Sunday morning around 6:30 to try and beat the heat. We discovered our air conditioner had a leak in it somewhere and had no time to get it fixed before we left. We were ok until we crossed the mountains and came to around Ellensberg. Boy did it got hot! By the time we got to the Tri-Cities it was around 95 degrees and about that high of humidity. To make matters worse cloud cover came in and acted like a blanket and it was still 77 degrees when we left the next morning.



This is my dad and my sister Whitney in the car. My brother in-law Doug and Carson in the back ground. I like to think this car is my dad's second mid-life crisis. I think the jet boat that he got about 25 years ago was the first! Just kidding dad!
This is my sister Paige, we took picures of each other.

Poor Kyla had to celebrate her 16th birthday driving to the Tri-Cities. And finally the kids waiting for their cake and ice cream. Thanks Paige and Doug, we loved staying at the Knighton hotel....next time we need mints on our pillows!

The next day the only excitement was stopping at Cracker Barrel in Missoula for lunch, other wise it was just plan too hot. Some where between Missoula and Butte the temp reached 101 degrees. We gave in a stopped at Wal-mart in Butte and bought pop-cycles. Craig managed to find a box of 12 so we each got 2 (Brendon couldn't come to Idaho with us). But we had to eat them fast it was so hot.

Just before we got the Island Park where Craig's parents have their cabin we could see the smoke from 2 fires up in mountains. We found out later the one had started clear back around the 4th of July.

Kaden at the fair

Kaden is still in the Primary division for 4-H so he was not able to show sheep like Jensen did. But he did do what they call a public prentation. Here he is showing the judge how to draw a picture. It is a starting ground for when they later do more advance things. He got a free t-shirt for doing this.
Kaden's favorite of all things is playing on the farm equipment. If we could only afford one for at home he'd been on it all day!

Fair Week

So we have been so busy the month of August it seems like we've hardly even had time to breath. We spent the 1st part of the month preparing for the fair, the middle being at the fair and finally about a week in Idaho.

This is Jensen with one of his sheep that he took to the fair. Over all he got 2 blue ribbons, a red and a reserve champion. Not bad for his first year. I think that he learned a lot and is looking forward to doing it again.This is Kaden helping to get the sheep washed and ready. We learned how important it is to have a clean sheep for your first year showing.
This is Jensen helping the sleep to stand the right way. He was pretty lucky some of the sheep were not so willing to work with some of the kids.