Happy Birthday Niece #3

While in Utah, we celebrated our nieces first birthday.

Here she is opening a gift. She got books and stuffed animals and toys. Favorite gift: a bucket and a bottle of bubbles.

Most kids love cake and on the first birthday they take a minute or so to figure out what to do with it. This reaction, though, was not what I expected.

Christmas in Utah

This year we spent Christmas in Utah with Jens family.

Jen got a nice new, hand made, hat. Really neat.

We got to visit and meet our new nephew.

Congrats Katie and Stephen on your new family member!

Our nephew got a nice fuzzy soft lamb for Christmas. It makes comforting noises, such as rain. This is the sound of the heart beat.

Merry Christmas

We hope you have a great Christmas. Here is a beautiful picture of our tree that we finally put up last week.

Jen's New Toy

After working for the City of Boise for one month Jen used the money she earned on a piano.

We have been wanting to get one for some time but up till two months ago we lived on the third floor of an apartment building.

The final videos of our house

This is the last of the videos of our house. The first one is the garage and the second one is the back yard.

Almost done.

Here are two more videos. The master bedroom and the laundry room. Enjoy.

Now videos of the inside

Here is our living room.

And this is our office and guest room. We will have to post pictures of the office when it is finished.

Here is our kitchen again. Tile floor, planter shelves, and a clean counter.

Real Videos

Jen decided to display our new house through video instead of pictures.

Here is the first video showing our front lawn. The trees and bushes will need to be replaced.

This is our front porch and future pond.

Outside?

This is the outside of our house.

From the front

And from the Back.

Finaly some Pics.

Well, ok here is what I have right now.

This is the kitchen. It has tile floor, a large pantry, and a messy counter.

Our house has three bedrooms. This one is the guest room. The other spare room will become an office after we are done paining over the bright yellow.

There is more to the house....

Pictures Coming Soon

Just a little update for those that don't know. We are buying a house today.

Mud Lake

This years annual friend campout was at Mud Lake, next to Anthony Lake in Oregon. We arrived late Friday night and it was very wet and foggy. Our friends arrived Saturday evening and we stayed until late Monday evening.
We ate a ton of food (mostly dutch oven food ), hiked around Anthony Lake, and played games. Fun fun fun. :-)

This is a view from the road on the way to Anthony Lake.

Here is Jen and I at Black Lake, one mile away from Anthony lake.

Black Lake

Here we are at Lilly Pad Lake

The Old Penitentiary

Last weekend my family came to visit. While they where here we went to the Old Idaho State Pen. Some people find it to be a creepy place. I though it was neat.

This is the front entrance.

I love the old sandstone buildings. The prisoners actually did most of the construction.

This high tower is part of the entrance building. Not a place that the prisoners could go.

A riot in the 70's left some of the structures in ruins. This was a cafeteria that was designed by one of the prisoners.

Or in other words, GET BACK TO WORK.

This cell building is four stories tall. One of the prisoners decided not to let the State of Idaho execute him so he did the job him self via swan dive from the 4th floor.

This cell building is also four stories tall. You may notice the addition of a ceiling above the second floor. This is to prevent suicide attempts.

The 4th of July

For the weekend of the 4th. We went to Utah to visit Jen's Family.

This is Jen's sister on the water slide. To make it faster we tried different things such as dish soap and cooking oil.

Here is Jarom before the awesome sunburn.

David (Jen's Brother) also got a good burn. Though we had a lot of fun.

And a random photo of the flag.

We went up to a lake and hung out with Jen's dad. The weather was great and the water was cold.

Ducks!

Willow Creek

After two nights in the wilderness we started back for Boise and took some cool pictures on the way.

This part of the river was very shallow.

We found a ton of butterflies.

This is a hot spring that was very very very hot. Not for dipping.

A little further down the road we found our friends and went camping with them for two nights. It was a load of fun. Here we are playing Ninja.

The game Ninja is a lot of fun because you get to slap your opponent.

This is a secret message that Jen left for Jarom.

We did find a hot spring that was nice enough to dip in.

And we both went fishing.

Days 2 & 3, The Sawtooths

Day 2 we backpacked up Little Queens River for about 6.5 miles before we where both just plain tired. On day 3 we backpacked up to the trail head for Browns Lake and found that there was too much snow to find the trail, so we headed back about 2 miles and set up camp. The next day we backpacked back to the car. We discovered that it's a whole lot faster to hike BACK than to hike TO. Funny how that works.

The trail head for Queens River Trail.

Jen taking one of many breaks

This river crossing was suposed to be ankle deep. It turns out that early in the year it is knee deep... for me.

The Shire in ruins.

Nap Time.

Some very scenic views of the sawtooths.

On our way back to the "ankle" deep forge, we found a log bridge about 100 feet up stream. We didn't get wet this time around.

Here we are after two nights and three days of backpacking.