Bill and Tammie's Family

I know there is some stuff later in the year than what I've posted, but I thought it fit here good before I get started on fall.  I'll post some of Abbie next.

Skiing, gymnastics, meeting the Author of Farworld books at Barnes and Noble, Hanging with Lady Liberty at Red Robin, Hanging with Willy at Walmart and watching the Croods.  Can you tell she loves to pose with things?

 Hailey and Cierra love to get together and bake, cake is their specialty!  Giant Ding Dongs and random cakes.

She took a picture of herself with a q-tip in her mouth and ice bag on her head and texted the picture to her dad in the basement because he's paranoid of sick people.  She likes mowing the lawn, selfie queen and getting a fluoride treatment.
 Like I said she loves the selfie!!! Or any picture of herself actually!  The one in the sand is over by Sandy Downs, watching her cousin play lacrosse with some strangers dog, being bored at Volleyball, a new haircut and a golf picture.

Seriously the best trip ever!!!  We had so much fun and it was so cool!!!  So here is a few of the things we saw to and from Northern Idaho.  The bikes in the back of the truck, Grandpa and Grandma in their car, Cierra with Abraham Lincoln, Marks Famous Hot Dog Stand (we ate there on the way home it was awesome) and the Lazy Bear Lodge.  The house that we rented in Kellogg.

The bike trail opened at 9am and we were there by 9:30 ready to ride. It is a 15 mile bike ride one way over train tressles and through tunnels.  The first is the longest at 1.7 miles, you have to have a headlamp on your bike to be able to ride. Its a relatively easy bike ride on a 2% grade, we went down hill, but I think it would be fun to start at the bottom and ride up then back down again.


We stopped at Lookout pass and bought our tickets and got Coleens rental bike. Then we head 5 miles down the road to the trail. It was chilly when we got there and through the tunnels, but warmed up as we got through the first tunnel.
 Here we are in the Taft Tunnel, its pretty wet and drippy if you go too fast you get mud splashed up your back.
 These are pictures on the other side of the Taft tunnel (forgive the helmet hair!!)
 The rest of the pictures are self explanatory candid shots!  Fun Day for sure!!!




 This was at the bottom, if you get this ticket it includes the bus ride back to the top!

After our bike ride, Grandma was tired and wanted to rest, so the rest of us went to the Crystal Gold Mine in town to check it out.  It was a fun little tour.

 After doing a little panning for Gold we headed back to the house to pick up Grandma, then went and bought tickets to ride the Silver Mountain Tram...longest tram in North America.  We ate dinner at the lodge on the top of the mountain.  Beautiful scenery...I'd like to go skiing there!
 At the bottom of the tram there were shops and a place to warm yourself by the fire and play a little cornhole!

I didn't take many pictures, so I will blog some events together.  Sometimes there are a lot of things packed into a week.  Most of this will be words though.

In one week, we had a golf banquet, a boating accident, a family reunion, a farewell and then another Family reunion.  The golf banquet get its own blog post.

As for the boating accident...Bill and his dad, Bruce, and Uncle Jim from Kentucky borrowed a drift boat from a friend and took off on the South Fork to do some fishing.  They planned on being on the river all day and docking at Byington.  They missed the ramp, this was where the truck was parked, they were able to get to the edge and Bruce got out so he could drive the truck to the next boat dock down by Heise...that was the plan anyway!  Bill and Jim stayed in the boat.  They ended up getting caught up in some logs and branches.  They called Bruce and he flagged a motor boat down and they went to see if they could find them.  In the meantime, Bill and Jim made a plan to get of the branches, it wasn't a good plan apparently because they ended up dumping the boat.  They were not wearing life jackets and Jim got sucked under the boat as it rolled.  Bill was able to pull him out and as he was gasping he said "grab life jackets".  Bill was able to grab the kids jacket and get it around Jims neck and he was able to get a seat cushion and clamp it under his arm while holding on to his uncle and trying to hold the rope of the boat. (Boy Scouting teaches stay with the boat...this may be true in a lake...not in a swift moving river.)  They ended up losing everything...coolers, cameras, wallets, phones, and fishing gear.  Bills phone was in a ziplock with his wallet and he heard it ringing as it floated by and there wasn't anything he could do about it.  They floated down the river probably close to a mile and half to two miles and 45 min. It was impossible to swim and they were yelling help.  Some fisherman on the bank had called 911 and search and rescue was on its way.  By the time they got to the Heise bridge they were exhaused and Bill knew there was another diversion dam just down stream.  He was able to get stopped in a rock bank in the middle but was hard pressed to hold on.  Search and Rescue got there about the same time the the jet boat Bruce had flagged down had caught up with them.  They got them in the boat and out of the water.  Those men were there just in time to save their lives.  1/2 mile more down river and they would have been dead.  As for me on my end Bill said he'd be back around 5 or 6 and his dad and Jim were heading back to their campground. At 8, just when I was ready to head out the door for Zumba, I saw his dad pull in and Bill and Jim get out in Search and Rescue blankets.  I made light of it and said "wow you dumped the boat!?!"  Bill was in shock and Bruce told me the story.  Such a scary event.  I am grateful to search and rescue and to my Heavenly Father for sparing these special men in my life!

You can't really see the dents and cracks and holes, but they are there.  We ended up with another angel helping us retrieve the boat.  Our neighbors tried to help us with their propeller boat, but it just wasnt' strong enough for the river.  We found a guy at byington who knew where the boat had been tied and he took Bill down to get it.  It was a total loss though and we ended up having to buy a new boat for Bills buddy. (Well Bills dad bought it)

The next day we went to Utah to Bills mom and dad's house for a family reunion and visited with Bills dads side of the family. Raeda and Booth were there and so were Stan and Mary along with a few of their kids. It was a nice visit, but it was pretty much focused on the events of the preceding day!
We came home and packed for our week long family reunion then headed back to Utah for Darcie's Farewell.  Chuck and Diane had just moved to a new house and Chuck had carved bears into some dead trees at his old house.  He cut them down and needed help putting them in his yard.  He used the man power of the day.

After church we packed up and headed to the cabin.  Its not normal to go on a Sunday, but since we were all going to be together because of Darcie's farewell we figured its just as easy to leave today. I got a couple of pictures of kids in the pool and playing a game, but that's all the pictures I got. Chuck, Diane and Darcie came up for Sun and left mon...she has stuff to do before heading to the MTC on Wednesday.

The end of July and we headed out for a 3 day camping trip to Grand Teton National Park with the Renfro's. What a Blast!!!  Me and my two girls, and Mindy with Kelby and Kiara!  It was a great Adventure.  Packed with hiking, biking, kayaking, and just plain fun!!!

After setting up camp we took off for our hike.  My kids were still pretty wary of a hike so we only walked up to the Phelps Lake overlook.  Just short of a mile up.  The hike was fun and the girls like climbing the trees.



We stopped at the Roosevelt Preserve and looked at the visitors center there.  It was pretty cool, but not a ton to look at.  We needed to buy permits for our kayaks so we headed over to the main visitors center and looked around there. But we couldn't buy the permits there so we headed back to camp for dinner.



We camped at a campground on Jackson Lake (I wish I could remember the name!) It was beautiful and the kids had fun playing in the lake.  We saw a deer running through camp and we were right by the bathroom...bonus!

They liked trying to catch the minnows in the water, Kasey even came for dinner and played at the lake too! He was working for NPS for the summer.
The next day we went over to String Lake to kayak.  We had to run up to Colter Bay to get our passes then back down to the Lake.  It was kind of a cool lake though.  You could walk a really long way out into the water.  I don't think you go walk the whole way, I wouldn't let the girls try, but it was a great play time lake. We had lunch there and played most of the day.
 After the lake then we drove to the top of Signal Mountain and took some pictures.  It was cool to do some things that I'd never done before...even though I have driven through there hundreds of times!!!Then went back to camp and they played in the lake there some more.  It was way colder in Jackson lake though.

Boy this was a long, long day! We got up and on the road by 5am.  Nancy and her crew met us and we headed to Driggs.  We were on the trail by 7 am (ish).
 We started out as a group. Nancy and her son Hayden, Michelle and her daughter Kaylee and her friend Lizzy, and Lyndi and Hannah.  Then Abbie, Hailey, Cierra and I.  We were much slower than the other group and I think they got tired of waiting for us.  So they reached the top of the mountain much earlier than us!
 Do you like the look on Abbie's face?  That was about 1 mile into the hike and she was done, she'd had it!  She stopped and demanded that she wasn't going any further...needless to say...she did go further.   We all made it to the top and she was happy by the time we got there!
 After the first mile the climb became much easier.  This part was heaven!!  There were wildflowers everywhere and a little stream!  Beautiful!!!
 More...beauty of the earth!!!
 At this point it started to get steep again.  Where was a huge rock field that we had to climb over.  It was our game to find rocks in shapes of various states. As we were climbing, the girls decided to go out and walk on the snow.  From our angle it didn't look too bad, but from up above where Michelle took the picture you can see that it probably wasn't the best idea!!!
 Here we are on the top.  The others had been there for 1/2 hour longer than us and were pretty much ready to leave.  We tried to hurry and eat and catch up but we never could.

So when we got to the bottom of the switchbacks on Huckleberry there was a spring coming out of the hill, the girls were tired and we hadn't caught up and we were still hungry so we stopped to go to the bathroom and play in the water and eat some more.  I even got the water purifier out so they could taste the spring water.

The rest of these pictures are just fun candid shots of our hike!  It was long and hard.  We were so tired by the time we got back to the truck, which I think was between 5 and 5:30, and back home by a little after 7.  I am not sure I could ever get them to hike this with me again.  I do know that I would not EVER want to hike out Huckleberry again.  I'll take sore toes and knees from the steep 1 mile of the face trail than the beating 7 miles gave us!!!