At Our Place

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Fence project

Emmie's best friend. He even lets her bounce him on the tramp. I've never met such a tolerant cat.

Barry is fixing our fence. It is a huge project and it's going to take awhile! We all have to help. Emmie can carry fence slats and tools over to Daddy. James and Ellie use the drill and take off the old fence slats, so we can reuse them. Lauren is pretty good at weaseling her way out of helping at all. :P. I sit on my rusted folding chair out in the garden and direct operations. As I eat countless Otter Pops. On rare instances, I am called on to hold up a board while Barry levels it, or nails it into place ....then I return to my chair. Some of the posts are rotted and broken. Some are set in concrete. Barry is resetting all the posts and replacing some of them, and putting in all new supports. I am very excited for it to look oh so much better! He is doing a great job!

I told the kids I would buy them doughnuts if they were good while I was voting. They were good, and I was hungry, We got a few more than we needed, but they disappeared all the same. :)

Monday, May 16, 2016

Blue Gill Lake

(I would just like to point out that Ellie made her own cut-off shorts, she is wearing in the above picture. She cut them off and sewed them. It was a learning process, but I think she did a great job!)
School has ended for the year. I think it was a success!
We had a big graduation party with 4 loaves of banana bread, a HUGE batch of caramel popcorn, and a chocolate cheesecake. The kids made up games, and even a little play. I let them do whatever they wanted all day long, and that night we went to a party at CSI. They had a grand time playing with their friends there.

This weekend for our adventure. We went to Blue Gill Lake. I had read an article on it in the local paper. They said they had too many fish, and nobody fishing there. :)
So we thought we'd give it a try.
After a bumpy drive down the Snake River Canyon, and a LONG hot walk (no motorized vehicles allowed), a serious lack of signage or clear directions, I understood why they didn't have a lot of people fishing there.

We saw tons of pelicans. Tri-colored black birds. I saw a beautiful Kestrel up close.

Kestrel. (No Mom, I didn't take THIS picture either, but I wanted you guys to know what this beautiful bird looks like. )

We also saw tons of yellow-headed black birds. They are the birds that make the sound of electricity.
It's not really a pleasant sound to me, and apparently not to Emma.
She was walking along the path with me and covering her ears as she walked, she said.
"Oh!! I shut my ears to that bird noise!!"

There were wild yellow irises growing all around the lake.

Watching the pelicans, land and take off.

The article was right about the fishing. They caught no less than 25 fish in a very short time. Every time they threw out their line they got a bite. They were all a bit too small, so they threw them back. I think they were mostly Large Mouth Bass. I don't really know....

I was sitting under a tree ....in the shade, suffering from the first stages of heat exhaustion.
Oh I was sick.

So I made everyone leave early, and felt horrible for the rest of the day.

BUT

Barry and the kids are excited to go back in the month when the fish have grown and catch a ton of yummy fish!

Barry spoke in Stake Conference that evening. I heard he did really well. I was still not feeling well and stayed home.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

No worries

Today, as Barry was walking out the door to work, I burst into tears. He came back inside, and sat me down on the couch.
I continued to cry, as he put his arm around me and asked what was wrong.

James, happily munching on a bagel in the kitchen, over hearing our conversation, calls out, unconcerned,

"Don't worry about it Dad, she does this all the time when you're at work. She'll be done in a minute."

I looked up at Barry through my tears, and he was desperately trying not to smile.

It was just so absurb, I started to laugh. ....and laugh and laugh.

Barry and James preceded to have a conversation about how crazy pregnant woman are.

...and they were absolutely right. ;)

I am feeling much better now. :D
...until tomorrow then. ;D

Monday, May 9, 2016

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.