August Happenings

Just a few little extra "happenings" this month...Bryan and Miles got to camp overnight at the ward Fathers & Sons outing.  For Friday night, they are responsible for their own dinner, and then the ward provides breakfast on Saturday.  So Bryan let Miles pick the place and they grabbed Burger King on their way up.

They've taken the trailer in past years, or even slept in the van, but I told Bryan that was lame and that they need to sleep in a tent!  So here is Miles, all bundled up to sleep.

And one more silly Miles pic: he was using his old firefighter helmet string to create a double-chin and asked me to take his picture.

And finally, Bryan took the kids on a Jeep ride up to Inspiration Point.  I usually go with them, but I was home doing a painting project.  Bryan didn't want to stay home on a beautiful summer day, and I didn't want "helpers" on my project, so it worked out well!

(Although when I see their pictures, I kind of wish I had gone!  Fun times.)

Bear Den Activities

We've had some more fun activities in the Bear Den.  The required badge "Bear Claws" is one that my partner and I have been dreading a little bit, just because it is the knife skills badge and we were a little nervous to hand sharp knives over to these crazy 9-year-olds.  But we finally did it and it went really well.  After spending a week on basics and knife safety, we spent this week carving our 2 objects for the requirement.  First we did marshmallow roasters...easy-peasy because the boys just had to sharpen one end of the stick.  No stress there.

Then we gave them each a bar of soap to carve whatever they wanted.  Miles ended up with a Mickey Mouse head.  It turned out great.  And we survived the activity with no band-aids needed.  Yay!

Also, for Pack Meeting this week, I couldn't make it because I had class, but I told Bryan that Miles would be getting a lot of awards.  Well, our cub master accidentally read the wrong name and awarded Miles his whole Bear Award!  Bryan didn't know any different so he didn't say anything about it (the award was supposed to go to another boy in the den who just turned 10 and is moving on.)

For that award, they told Miles he had to go in the "bear cave" (a small tent) and fight a "bear" (another scout armed with a red marker), and when he emerged he had his wounds to prove that he fought the bear.

From what I hear, Miles was quite the ham (as usual) and made a big ruckus inside the tent, screaming and yelling and thrashing around.  That kid is a goof-ball.

Here is Miles pinning the "mother's pin" on his father.  Ha!

After I heard about all this, I looked in my records and Miles actually is all done with his Bear requirements--I just hadn't realized it!  So, he can go ahead and keep his award and then they'll get the other boy his award correctly next month.

Back to School 2017

It's Back to School time again...where did summer go??  Tess was really excited to start Junior High this year at Roy Jr.  She had a faulty locker lock which had to be replaced, but eventually it got figured out and she was ready to rock this morning. She didn't seem too nervous at all.  The poor gal has to leave our house at 6:40 to catch the bus!

The other two had mixed feelings--Miles was glad to be going back to see his friends, but the actual school part bummed him out.

He has Mrs. Widdison for English...

...and Senior Yamashita for Spanish.  (Tess had him in 4th grade too--in English of course--and he was wonderful.)

Bree was really excited to meet her English teacher, but when she met her Spanish teacher at Back to School night, she just burst into tears!  I was really surprised--she's never been one to be nervous or teary in new situations.  It broke my heart.  But I know her Spanish teacher (Miles had her) and she is fantastic so I just knew she would be fine today.  And I'm happy to report that she did just great.  Now she said she likes both her teachers.  Whew!

Here is Mrs. Meyer for English...

...and I didn't get a picture of Seniora Loya-Baca because she is only there in the afternoons.  But she's terrific as well.  Lucky kiddos this year!

Total Solar Eclipse!

Everyone knows about the awesome total solar eclipse that happened today.  It was amazing!  I knew that from our house in Hooper we'd be able to see almost the whole thing, but Bryan suggested we try to get a hotel in Idaho and see the totality.  I am so glad we did!  Right after church we headed up to Idaho Falls.  There were lots of dooms-day predictions about how insane the traffic would be...some people were saying we'd be stuck in Idaho until Wednesday and that we needed enough food and gas for days.  People were getting pretty crazy!  We had no idea what to expect but luckily it ended up being just fine for us.  We did bring a cooler full of food (for Sunday's dinner and enough for lunch and dinner today.  But not much else), and we also brought a 5-gallon gas can.  We passed some people on the road with 20+ gallons of gas strapped to their mini-vans!  Ha!

Sunday evening we went for a long walk along the falls and to the temple grounds.  Idaho Falls is a really pretty town!  

We stopped in the visitors center for a look around.

At the hotel pool we met people from all over who had flown here just for the big event.  People from California and a couple from Florida even!    At the temple grounds we met a man who came from England!  Wow!

This morning, we staked out a great spot on a grassy hill outside the hotel.  We had everything packed and ready to rock as soon as the eclipse was over so we could beat traffic.  (We had Back to School night this evening, so we were hoping to get back for that!)

Of course we were all wearing the eclipse sunglasses, which worked perfectly...

Bryan put an extra pair of sunglasses in front of his phone camera and they sort of worked...(I've seen photos from other people who had amazing cameras and telescopes with special lenses that had much, much better pictures than ours, but we're ok with our little phone pics). :)

The minutes of totality were absolutely worth the drive to Idaho!  It was so incredible...in our glasses, the sun got smaller and smaller until everything was completely black.  So then we knew it was safe to take off the glasses and look around.  It was so super cool to see the sun look like this:

(I admit I totally stole this picture from a Facebook friend who had a great camera...)

You could look right at it and it didn't hurt your eyes all.  And it was awesome to see it "turn into night."  First of all, it got really cold!  Bree and I were snuggled up under a blanket by the time totality hit!  And the streetlights all turned on.  We could even see stars! (or at least Venus, which is so bright.)  The animals were acting weird too--birds chirping like crazy!

We all loved it!  After our 2 minutes of awesome, we watched with our glasses for about 5 more minutes and then quickly hopped in the car.  I'm glad we did!  We left Idaho Falls by about 11:45 and got home around 4:00.  Our friends, who were in Rexburg, just about 20 minutes farther than Idaho Falls, didn't get home until nearly 8:00 tonight!  So I think we hit just the perfect window to avoid the worst traffic.

I absolutely would love to see this again sometime!  It was well worth traveling to!

Museum of Natural Curiosity

I think we have a new tradition.  Every Tuesday in August is $2 Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point.  We are cheap, and Thanksgiving Point is kind of far away, so we sure cannot pass up a chance to get into their awesome Museum of Natural Curiosity for 2 dollars!  We went last year and thought is was really neat and we went again this year, this time joined by our friends the Ashbys.

Here are the girls trying to see how long they can hang upside down like a sloth...

Bree tried out the little climbing wall...

Here are Miles and Spencer checking out wind and water experiments...

Bree in the wind tunnel...

...and the magical "Floating Heads!"

Outside in the garden area, the girls made some new friends...

It was a great night!

First Lost Tooth!

Our cute Bree has had a wiggly tooth--her first--since her birthday almost 2 months ago.  Finally when she was playing downstairs today with Miles and his buddies, she was rough-housing just enough to knock it out.  I think she was jumping on bean-bags or something and kind of knocked her mouth into her knee.  At first she started freaking out when she saw blood, but when she noticed the tooth she got pretty excited.  Here are some pics of the excited-yet-still-freaked-out girl.  Congrats Bree!