First day of School

The kids went back to school today.  Kyle is a Junior this year and Hailey is a Freshman so they will leave first to head to seminary, and then school.

They both seemed to have a good day, they have some good classes, some hard ones too. They both stayed after school for sports so we didnt get to hear about their day until dinner.

Katie and Nicole catch the bus at 7:00.  They dont have any classes together this year, but they both liked their teachers and they had friends in most of them.  Nicole was most excited about pre-engineering, and katie was excited about art.  I think they will have a great year.

Lydia had to wait all the wait until 8:20, she was so excited, it felt like a really long morning.  But she came home saying how nice her teacher is, and they have a pet gecko in the classroom, and she got to be a lunchroom helper, so she had a great day.

Summer Vacation Week 10

The last week of summer.  It was a great summer, I have to admit that I am ready to start up school again, this last week was kind of a hard one, for everybody, I think we are all ready.  We had a lot of smoke in the air the first part of the week so some of the fun activities that we had planned got canceled and everyone was stuck inside.  Kyle had 2 practices a day for football all week, Hailey tried out for the volleyball team this week, she made the team.  Marc and I went to open houses at the Junior High and the High school, the kids got their schedules, they seem like they should be fine.  We had a ward Barbecue Friday night, which was fun.  Saturday we drove to Seattle so Marc could go to the temple with a new member of our ward.  We didn't want to leave the girls home all day by themselves(Kyle had football practice) on the last Saturday of summer so the girls and I went and we made a day out of it, we shopped and went out to lunch, and then walked around the temple.  We were in front of the temple and I heard someone say my name so I turned around and it was my Uncle Brent and Aunt Tauni, we had a nice visit with them, they took the girls and I out to ice cream, It was fun to run into them like that. Today we had fun looking at all the pictures from summer, and talking about goals for the new school year.

The girls put on a fashion show one afternoon

Summer Vacation Week 9

Summer is coming to a close, only one more week.  This past week was a good one, but I am starting to feel like the kids are ready to start school again.  We had a couple of visitors this week.  My parents came Tuesday afternoon and got fruit, and played volleyball and foursquare with the kids, it was a fun little visit.  Wednesday evening Rachel and Tyler and family stopped in for about a half an hour, they ate a quick dinner and ran around for a few minutes and then loaded back up in the car for the long drive to Utah, we loved the visit.  Kyle started football this week so he was busy.  The girls had tennis lessons, they are really enjoying tennis.  We also spent one morning at the doctors office getting sports physicals. The girls painted some beautiful watercolor pictures.  Friday we got pizza, went to the school and played tennis together and then came home and roasted marshmallows in the back yard, it was fun to sit and talk and spend time together.

Family Vacation Day 6

We checked out of our house first thing Saturday morning and drove to Spokane, the kids wanted to do some back to school shopping.  We got there before the stores opened so we went to another one of our favorite parks there.  I had wanted to take a family picture to frame and put on our shelf to go with our other family vacation pictures, so we took a picture at the park.  Shopping was good, everyone has shoes and jeans for school now.  It was the perfect family vacation for this year, we really loved that area of Idaho, it we loved spending time together.

family vacation day 5

When we were in Couer d'alene the girls had really wanted to play at the big playground at the park, but it had been too hot, so we decided to go back Friday morning and let them play.  There are 2 big parks with great playgrounds so we played at both of them.  Katie, Nicole and Lydia ran around and played on all the toys, Kyle and Hailey played frisbee.  Since we were right by the rocks that they loved jumping off of we decided to hike back in and do that again, we didnt have the rocks to ourselves this time, so it wasnt quite as fun, but still pretty great.  We ate a quick lunch and then walked up through town, we wanted to find a Christmas ornament and some good ice cream, we found both.  We went back to the house and Katie, Nicole,and Lydia wanted to swim in the lake one more time, so marc took them for 1 more swim. We spent the evening watching movies and enjoying our last night on vacation.

Family Vacation Day 4

We decided it would be fun to go for another hike today, so we decided to go to Farragut State Park.  It is a park on one of the other Lakes in the area, Pend Orielle Lake.  We did a hike along the lake that took us to a great little swimming hole, so it was nice cooling off in the lake before we hiked back.  We stopped at the museum at the park, it was a great little museum, the park was the second largest navel training center during WW2, so there were lots of interesting things to see and read about at the museum.  We drove back to the house, took a little break and then went down to the lake for another swim.  After dinner we decided to take the kids bowling, it isnt something that we do very often so we arent the best bowlers but it was a lot of fun.  It was so hot, there was no way we would be able to sleep so we stopped and got cold drinks and snacks and went back and played games for a couple of hours before bed.

Family Vacation Day 3

We started our day with a hike in Couer D'alene that takes you up on this hill that sticks out into the lake.  It was a great hike.  I had read that there were rocks along the lake that were perfect for jumping into the lake from, so after the hike we found some good jumping rocks, everyone had a great time, the water was perfect, The older kids did lots of jumping and Lydia played in the water, she loved it when the waves from the boats would reach her, she said she was surfing, it was pretty cute.

 There were wild turkeys everywhere, they were so fun to see, we saw several families with babies

We hiked out, ate lunch at the park, we went home and rested for a bit and then went down to the lake to play some more.