Got a little sunshine today

Thor!

We had the flu. I didn't blog for a long time. Want to know what we've been up to?

Well, one night, Thor came by.  He left his hammer, Mjolnir. Amy loved it. It is good for flying, for nailing things, and for smashing frost giants, which often end up in her room.  The next day, Thor came by at night and left his cape, so that Amy could practice being Small Thor.  In these shots, she is using Mjolnir to smash holes in the earth.

Smash!!

dragon in hand

Do you see my cape???

Mjolnir! To me!

Smash the whole neighborhood!!

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.