Spirit of Boise

 We have been to the Spirit of Boise morning balloon launch one other time.  Ridge loved watching the balloons blow up and fly away.  We tried to go last year but missed it.  When I heard they were doing a kids morning with free tethered balloon rides I knew we had to get there this year.  As a bonus, my parents were in town on their way to Northern Idaho to visit Darci.  We almost decided against the tethered ride when we saw the lines, but then watched how fast they were moving and went for it.  It was so fun.  Due to the weight limits we had to split up for our ride, but we all got to go.  So fun.  Hopefully Russ can get there with us next year.

and...First Day of Preschool

 Ridge was nervous to start preschool with Ms. Laura until he found out Amy (Holly's sweet sister) was the assistant teacher for Ridge's class.  He LOVES preschool and is learning so much.  Plus he is exceptionally cute!

First Day of School

 How cute are these two?  5th grade and 2nd grade here they come!

Butterfly Garden

 Ever since we did the butterfly experiment on Kauai I have wanted to find a way to watch more monarchs make their great change.  We have a small flower garden area in the back yard that I thought might be a great spot to try to create a butterfly garden.  The only place a monarch caterpillar will lay it's eggs is on milkweed.  It turns out milkweed is a difficult plant to find.  I had to order mine from monarchwatch.org.  I planted it in the late spring.  It didn't look like much.  Actually, it died.  Then out of the roots of the dead milkweed new milkweed grew.  The new plants limped along all summer.  One day, out of the blue, I glanced down at my sad little plants and saw a caterpillar.  I pretty much started yelling with excitement.  Then, to make it even better, I spotted a second caterpillar on a second plant.  The caterpillars were gone the next day, but we found one of them hanging upside down under our table a few days later.  We watched it go from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. Good story until I found aphids all over my now beloved milkweed. I sprayed it to kill the aphids and it killed the plants.  Maybe I will get new ones out of the dead ones again?

First Peach Crop

Our first ever peach crop on one of the peach trees we planted last year.  The tree yielded 3 peaches. They were delicious. We were pretty excited.  Hoping for more next year.

Trick or Treating in August

One evening when I had the young women over for an activity Ridge asked Rusty to take him trick or treating.  Earlier in the day we had gone to a craft store and they had their Halloween stuff out.  I think that is why he had trick or treating on the brain.  Russ told Ridge that you can't go trick or treating without a costume.  Ridge disappeared and a few minutes later he came back with a costume on.  Being the Dad that he is, they went trick or treating.  Russ took him to a few people that we know well.  He ended his August trick or treat with two full size candy bars and an otter pop.  He was pretty excited.  We did have to tell him that the next time he would get to go is October.

Floating the River

Floating the river is one of our favorite summer activities.  We can make the trip from our house and back in about 3 hours.  Sometimes we take dinner with us and eat while we are floating.  We jump out and swim. We bring snorkels and watch for fish as we float by.  Occasionally we will stop and stack rocks at one of the stacked rock beaches.  Ridge has a little shark that we tie to the kayak.  His name is Sharky and he loves the river as much as the rest of us.  We look for the lights of Bronco Stadium and get excited when we spot them.  It is sad when floating season is over but we look forward to next year.