Thursday, August 26, 2010

$50 Anthropologie Giveaway!

Jessica at Breakfast At Gigi's is giving away a $5o Anthro gift card AND a cute bracelet because her blog reached 200 followers. I love her blog as well as her sister's blog Tricia's Take! Go check them both out and enter to win!!!

Monday, August 23, 2010

Mt. Borah

As I mentioned, while we were on our berry hunt, Allan was hiking Mt. Borah with some of our family. In this picture the first two people are some friends of Shane's family, then it's Josh, Allan, Justin, Jared, Jason, Rob, Austin and Chelsie. Shane must have been taking the picture.
Here is Shane hiking up the mountain with Allan and some others in the background.
This is Allan with his nephews Jared and Jason.Here is Allan going along the snowpack. Some dumb guy tried to run across the snowpack in a place where people hadn't already packed it down and he fell and broke his leg while our group was up there. Another week, a boy scout fell off the mountain and was lost for a couple of days. I am just sharing because this is a pretty serious hike these guys went on!
Here is Allan at the Summit. I am really impressed that he did this hike, although his muscles were sore for a week after! Someday I want to go and do this hike with him. There are a lot of things I have to miss out on because I am either pregnant or breastfeeding (which is Allan's main argument for not having any more kids) so I always tell Allan he will have to do it all again when I get the chance!These are the ones who made it to the top, Chelsie, Rob, Austin, Allan, Josh and Shane. At one point (it's called "chicken out ridge") there is a spot you have to basically scale the side of a big drop off and a few of the people decided to stop there and wait for the group to come back.
On the way down the mountain Allan's shoe broke, they were pretty cheap hiking boots, but at least they got him through his two big hikes this summer (the first was Table Rock at scout camp) and he didn't get any blisters on either hike so mission accomplished!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Going on a Berry Hunt!

Last Saturday Allan, his brother Rob, brother-in-law Shane, and a bunch of the kids: Chelsie, Josh, Jason, Austin, Justin and Jared hiked Mt. Borah. While they were gone Rob's wife Robin called up to see if I wanted to go and pick some huckleberries up in Kelly Canyon.
Robin and I took my 5 kids and 2 of hers and they all did great! She helped me by carrying Brayden around. Hailey and Ashlyn were good little pickers, they kept saying they were going to make huckleberry juice, but in the end Robin and I convinced them that wasn't the best thing to do with the berries.
The kids worked really hard, I don't know if it was because their cousins were there or what because I took them to pick raspberries with me the other day and they helped for about 5 minutes and were done!
Natalie wasn't the biggest fan of looking for berries, so she occupied herself with Max.
Lilly spent about 1/2 the time in this pack and 1/2 the time out of it, she couldn't really decide what she wanted! She would ask to get down and about two minutes later she would say, "My Seat!" and want back in. There were also a bunch of cows around where we were picking and every time she would hear a cow she would say, "I hear moo." and point in the direction of the noise.
Ty and Ally looking for berries and Lilly one of the times she was down, she was actually really good at finding berries. They are very tiny little things, they look a lot like a blueberry but they are about half the size. There is one on the bush that Lilly is looking at in the corner of the picture, can you see it?
Hailey and Ally were annoyed that I was making them stop looking to take this picture.
Here is one of everyone going down. We were still picking berries the whole way. We were up there for about 4 hours, including the time we were eating lunch and picked 4 cups of huckleberries all together. There is a reason these little treasures cost about $30 a pint to buy! But the huckleberry pancakes we had for breakfast the next morning were sure yummy!
I had so much fun going on this little hike. I had never been up Kelly Canyon before. It is beautiful up there and there is a hot springs I told Allan he has to take us to soon! I have decided we need to start going on more hikes and adventures!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Reed's Dairy Days

It's that time of year again...Last Year we went on a wagon ride and visited the petting zoo (it seems crazy how much my kids have changed in the last year) , this year we headed straight over to ride some ponies (and by ponies I mean big horses)!



We of course got ICE CREAM and we had to get balloon animals because that was one of the things we didn't do last year and my kids have been talking about getting them for a whole year! I LOVE REEDS DAIRY! They have the best milk and ice cream and cheese, plus they do super fun things like this to show their appreciation for their customers.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Splash Park Day!

As the days of summer are coming to an end I am realizing how much I am going to miss days like this one!





Sunday, August 15, 2010

Family Reunion

I took it upon myself to be in charge of planning our Staker family reunion this year. We had originally planned on going over to Boise for a weekend, but one of my nephews is a very dedicated baseball player and the couple of weekends that he didn't have anything other people in the family were busy and it just wasn't coming together. Anyway, I was talking to my sister-in-law and we decided it would be fun to camp out in Allan's parent's back yard and do some stuff closer to home this year. I was all for it because it saved money and was lots of fun!
We started out Friday night with a bar-b-que and fireworks.
My kids thought that was great because we missed out on the 4th of July festivities because we were driving home from Arizona.
My kids love spending time with their cousins!
Amber is always a big help with Brayden!
After the fireworks we roasted S'Mores and camped out in the trailers.
The next day we went to Ross Park. It was so much fun I forgot to take pictures, but here is a view of the kiddie area with the lazy river and water slide in the background.
I love spending time with Allan's family, we are lucky to have so many of them close by! You can imagine it's a little different than coming from being an only child (Allan is youngest of 6). I love that we get the best of both worlds.