At Our Place: Niagra Springs and Mother's Day!

Last weekend, we went back to Ritter Island to try to catch some of those big fish that I saw.

They ended up being gigantic sucker fish. :) Not so great for eating. We threw them back. Barry did catch a couple of DELICIOUS rainbow trout though. They were not stock fish and they were sooo good. We spent the morning at Ritter Island and the afternoon we went to some fishing ponds in Hagermen. We were completely skunked there, but we watched our neighbors pull dozens of fish out of the water.

Miss Emma, caught once again, throwing rocks off the bridge.

Lauren found some frog eggs, she thought were pretty cool.

The next weekend was Mother's Day weekend. So I asked the family to work in the morning, and then we could play in the afternoon. Barry got up at 5:00am and put the first coat of paint on our sunroom. It's some color between green and yellow. (this is the primer coating)

Lauren donned some appropriate "paint" clothes and helped her Daddy. I slept in because I had a TERRIBLE belly ache from eating too much caramel popcorn. Let that be a lesson to ME. ;)

Then we were off to Niagra Springs. I love to just look at Google Earth and explore around on it. A week ago, I noticed some waterfalls up on a cliff pretty close to our house. So I googled mapped it, and it said it was Niagra Springs. There is a lovely State Park there and everything. Of course we had never heard of it. I showed it to Barry on a map and we were off on another adventure.

View of some pelicans on the Snake River across from the Lake.

The actual Park was actually closed for the season, but we were still able to go fishing at Crystal Lake

It was super green and beautiful. We could see lots of little fish. Unfortunately, the water was soo clear, they had no trouble seeing us too.

There were about 6 Kingfishers flying around. They are such beautiful birds, and amazing flyers. We could hear tons of different bird calls, and I saw several birds I didn't recognize. I wished I had a telephoto lens, or at least some binoculars to see them.

No I didn't take this. Kingfisher.

The girl's and I sat on the deck and played cards, while the boys fished. Emma won!

It got quite warm and muggy ....and then it started to rain. We decided to go on a walk in the rain.

The girls tried desperately to climb this tree, but I was no help and they finally gave up. :)

We came back from our walk and Barry was trying to fish from the river, but his first cast got his lined snagged.
Oh well. It was a pleasant day in a beautiful place! We came back, and Barry drove us all into Twin and took us out to eat at restaurant for Mother's Day.

My Mother's Day presents.
Barry made me a delicious chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. YUM!

by Eleanor

By Lauren

The kid's and Barry totally surprised me and gave me a pair of my very own binoculars! They are AWESOME! I like them even BETTER than Barry's (which cost the earth ;). I am so excited to take them to Yellowstone with us in a couple of weeks.