Idasnow

One thing I missed blogging about was our first Idaho winter. WE LOVE IT!!! It was verrrry cold in late November (-5 degrees one morning!!!) but now it is mostly in the mid 30s. It's plenty wintry, but it feels very manageable after that cold snap.  We've had a couple of snows and there's still snow around in patches.  That's pretty cool. I've never seen snow last for more than a few days before. I hope we get another big big snow storm.  Even if we don't, it's pretty neat to be able to drive a short distance up to the ski hill where there's lots of snow and lots of ways to play in it.

Here we are on our way to Christmas eve mass

Santa came!

This is a group selfie from a sledding trip.

Here Amy is holding an icicle she found. She is keeping it in the freezer inside. Is it fair to use your kid's icicle to make drinkies?

Christmas tree! In Snow!!. Yeah, these pictures are out of order.

This was a super cold night out looking at the lights at the Botanical Gardens with Jocelyn and Jacobi. It was an incredible display.

Amy's favorite snow activity is to make and follow footprints. Here, she's tracking cat prints. Probably a vicious snow tiger...or Orbit.

Snowy house with Christmas lights. Dan in the doorway.

Skiing down the street. I mean, come on!

New Year New Blog

The best way to come back from months and months of not blogging is just to jump right back in, right? Is anybody still out there?
We found that keeping the blog was a good way to keep up with what was going on ourselves, plus it was a nice place to post and share pictures.  It's like a family letter and a diary at the same time. I still don't have anything particularly profound to write about, but I do have Rob and Amy and all their antics, so I'll try to share that again.
Here are the pictures I took of Amy in October.  See, I was on top of things. Ahead of the game. Ready for adorable, fancy Christmas cards with pictures of my sweet girl on them. Instead, if you got a card at all, it was a regular store bought card with no picture. Gasp! How can we be modern parents without a card with a picture??? Because I didn't get around to it and it didn't happen. And it was fine and nobody died. Actually, it felt kind of good in mid December when Rob was working long days and weekends to say screw it, regular cards or no cards. Ahhhh. Maybe we will do a little bit more of that in 2014. This is Keeping Up With the Joneses afterall, and WE are the Joneses.

Back to the Lake

After the great Falling in the Water Incident of 2013, Amy was not so happy to go back to our favorite spot at the pond. I finally got her to go yesterday by allowing her to bring her tiny plastic parrot. Uh, I guess parrots are effective flotation devices. 

She got in, but stuck to the shallowest little spot. It went out about 10 feet and was maybe 8 inches deep. The water was super clear and there were good rocks at the bottom. She was satisfied. Rocks? Welllll, ok.

She sat just like this for a long time, rubbing her hands in the gravel and staring out at the lake. I liked the little ripple reflections on her face. It wasn't exactly a swim, but it cooled us off anyway.

Stormy evening

Summer is the dry season in Idaho. In July, we average a third of an inch of precipitation. That's like a half an hour worth of summer in Georgia. Nevertheless, it does sometimes rumble a little. The other day there was a fire in the mountains (run boy run!) that made a huge smoke plume over town all morning. I think it must have helped with moisture condensation because we had a pretty nice thunderstorm in the late afternoon. Classic bruisy sky followed by wind, then thunder and some good hard rain. I loved it. Thunderstorms make it feel like summer, although it is pretty nice that 95% of our summer days are blue. 

Look! There was even a rainbow!!

Check out this crazy sky. This is that magic moment right at sunset when everything is pink. It was amped up even more because there was rain in parts of the sky. Everything was gold and blue. 

Boise Zoo

 We have another small zoo here in Boise. It's a lot like the Tucson Zoo in that it is much smaller than zoo Atlanta, it is mostly full of toddlers, and it's in the middle of a city park. This one might even be smaller than the Tucson zoo, and certainly has more meager exhibits, but it's fun and they have a few cool things that Tucson didn't.
For example, they have a small boat ride! It's a small solar powered barge that takes you from the main entrance to "Africa" passing foxes, lemurs, and ducks. They charge a dollar to go on, but it's donated to conservation.

This is Ames right after our passage. It was pretty hot and she really only wanted to see giraffes.

When you are a toddler, wallabys are kangaroos.  Here are "Kanga, Woo, and other Kanga"

The primate exhibits are pretty terrible compared to the digs at the Atlanta Zoo, but ours has a tiny baby! The docent said this mama was very proud and always positions her new baby right up front where everyone can see it.

The zoo has a small butterfly garden in the summer months. You walk inside and there are bunches of flowering bushes and trays of fruit laying around. They give you a guide sheet so you can identify the butterflies you see. They told Amy that sometimes butterflies land on you and not to be afraid. She wasn't at all afraid and spent about 45 minutes trying to get butterflies to land on her. "Here butterfly! Look at my arm butterfly!!"

Here she is luring them with a leaf. 

Here she is trying to act like a tree. Note her branches. It sort of worked, one landed on her dress. 

Her favorite part of the zoo was the animatronic dinosaurs. These were all over the zoo. They're pretty huge, and they move realistically (I guess) and they roar. 

Rrrrrrrrrroar!

I'm all for conservation, but this is ridiculous. 

Wedding Weekend 2 (in which we drink a lot)

When Emily gets married you have to get up really early to start drinking get your makeup put on by professionals who will make you look as if you have not been up all night looking at old yearbooks.

We started with champagne at 8:15 when it was my turn in the makeup chair and Karinna's turn in the hair chair. When we ran out of that, Whitney brought out a bottle of UGA label wine from 2002, the year we graduated. It wasn't great or anything, but it was sure fun to see.

Congratulations Emi!

Flower girls don't wear makeup, but their mommies do try to get their hair to curl. This is attempt #1.

So much makeup!! (and wearing a robe made by Emily's mom that matches my friends)

The flower girls were so good the whole day. They got up early and watched the big girls get ready allllllll day. The wedding  wasn't until 5:30. They played outside, they ran around the basement, and they took turns on the ipad. The curlers are another attempt at getting curls in Ames' hair.

By this point, we've moved on to bourbon and have gotten ourselves to the wedding location. It's probably about 3 pm here.  Still 2 hours to go, no real bridesmaidly responsibilities yet, except picking on the groom across the hall.

Still not wedding time, but we've been allowed to get dressed at this point. All roommates are crammed into the bathroom of the bridal suite, drinking the bottle of champagne sent over by the best man. Thanks buddy! 

I would like to say we did not drink and giggle all day long but that would be a lie. 

Rob arrived before the wedding to make sure the cutest little flower girl made it to the show. So cute! (note: no curls whatsoever)

The bride watching people arriving.

This is after the ceremony and after Amy woke up from her little nap that prevented her from walking up the aisle.

beginning reception nap #2. Daddy didn't mind one bit.

Back at the house for the after party. Guess it's time for bed!

Wedding weekend

I have a bunch of pictures of Emily's wedding weekend. I'll split them up into rehearsal day and wedding day. 

It was at a pretty place called the Monte Verde Inn in Forest Hills California, just downhill from Tahoe and uphill from Sacramento. Whitney, Karinna, Charity, Emily and the flower girls stayed with us in a vacation home overlooking a really steep canyon down to the river. It was so much fun having all the girls back together again. 

Here we are taking a walk before the rehearsal.

Aunt Whitney showed Amy Gail how to select ripe raspberries along the trail. She LOVED it. All the raspberries you can eat???!!!!!! Hell yes!

We walked down to the stream and splashed around a little before heading back to get spiffied up for the rehearsal.

Amy brought her lizards with her so they would know just what to do on the big day.

Rehearsal? Pshaw. We're experts with lots of experience. We got this.

That night, aunt Whitney and aunt Karinna read bedtime stories and gave Amy some birthday presents. It was so fun to see my roommates taking care of my baby.

The view was pretty incredible. The house was a good find by Whitney. So much fun.

Arggh! Amy turned 3!

Amy's birthday was the day after Emily's wedding, so we were already in California. We drove to San Jose to spend the day with the Kunkels who had prepared a pirate birthday party on their boat. Amy pretty much thought she was in heaven.

Here "Lulu" is taking the birthday girl to see her cake and all the snacks. She ate just about a whole bag of cheetos herself on her "birthday ship"

We went out just a little ways through the harbor. Mostly the party took place in the marina.

Amy really wanted to spend the night in the Crow's nest. Alas, no crow's nest.

Thar be cake ahead!

Time to sing! Even Amy joins in with Daddy, Ray, and Reece. Happy Birthday!!

The cake was covered with pirates. Yay!

We partied until the moon came up. It was a super view of June's SuperMoon.

The marina looked really cool at sunset.

Goodbye party. Thanks for the swashbuckling fun!