More fun in Boise...

Wednesday started out pretty mellow; hanging around the house, riding bikes, and taking naps. Then in the afternoon we headed up to the river to meet up with friends and go rafting.

The family that owns the raft company are old friends of Keith's and have become dear family friends. They all have kids that stagger between ours and for once I'm not able to say that mine are the blonde ones.

More to come on our rafting trip, with pictures....

Thursday was a busy day! We started out by going to Planet Kid, a giant indoor play place with things to climb, crawl through, slide down and bounce around on. You can get lost for hours in the structure! The boys loved it.

After some lunch and a run to the grocery store we headed back for naps. But before we could rest, the boys had some work to do.

Helping Grandpa mow the lawn...

After naps we stared at the sprinklers, finally ran through about once and gave up on that idea.

After an early dinner it was time to head out to the Snake River Stampede! We were excited to get to go to the rodeo with Gramma and Grampa, as well as some other friends.

Indoor arena...

The first of the horse shows...

Mutton bustin was a big hit, especially since most the kids were 5 & 6 years old.

The second of the horse shows, all in the dark.

First up we saw the bare back riding...

Then the calf wrestling...

(having picture issues)

Then some team roping...

The saddle riding...

Calf roping...

Barrel Racing...

The rodeo clown was as goofy as you can get, plus he had a mike, so he told some pretty funny jokes...

Finally, the bulls came out to play...

The boys had a blast and we will have to add rodeos to our list of things to catch when they come in town.

First few days in Boise...

The drive up was okay, with the Jetta being nice up until the last 3rd when it decided to act up a bit. But we made it in and it's been fine since! We have been able to see family and friends and just slow down and enjoy the time.
Monday we went for lunch at one of our favorites, Papa Joe's. They have the best hot roast beef sandwiches I've ever tasted and we crave them all year until we can come up and enjoy one. Then we headed over to the Discover Center to see what exhibits they had going on. It's a hands on science center for kids and we all had a good time. Afterwards we crossed the bridge to the park and noticed the paddle boats while we were walking. So after a short play we went searching for the boat house and went on a 30 min ride.

Captain Ty...
Fun watching the ducks as we were going.

There were also some really big fish in the pond, someone has dumped a few koi in there and they really like the environment!

Tuesday we went down for the Buckaroo Breakfast that is part of the Snake River Stampede and was hosted by the local 4-H. They put on quite the feast and we were able to go inside and see the rodeo grounds, can't wait to go watch the show on Thurs.

The boys and I found some lunch and headed over to Settler's Park for a picnic and play time. What a cool place, and huge!

They have this cool pirate ship play structure...

Giant musical instruments to play, and a bunch of climbing boulders...

Then there's the splash area...

Tyler looked around and decided that his goggles might come in handy, but took them off after a while.

Playing with the tail sprayer...

Cody was having a lot of fun getting water dumped on him, the shock of when it would dump was pretty funny to watch as well...

Tyler was taking the more cautious approach and waiting for it to dump then running through.

Best part was they had a snack place with shaved ice snow cones, yum!

Along with all this fun, we've been trying to keep up with our running schedules and I've hit the gym for a yoga class, strength training and a swim. With any hope, I'll come home without a big vacation weight gain!

More fun is schedule for the week, so we'll keep you posted!

More crafty going on: Check it out

Crafty!

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Camping at Boca Reservoir...

This past weekend we had a very successful camping trip! It was cooler, in the mountains, green and sat next to a beautiful reservoir.
So we packed up Saturday morning and drove up, arriving a bit early for our camp site, so we headed over to one of the day use areas to set up for lunch.

Beautiful!

The boys played in the water off and on while we hung out.

After a while it was time to go check in. Here are some of the views from our site.

While I was cooking a bit of dinner....

the boys were hard at work setting up the tent...

We had a nice evening, staring at the lake and watching the boaters go by.

Once it was finally dark, we lit the fire and roasted the marshmallows.

We all slept relatively well, even with the bachelor party going on next door. (Seriously...)

We woke to this in the morning...

and this...

After a bit of breakfast, we packed up and headed out for a walk around...

Going down in front of where our tent was...

Walking all around the water's edge, looking back at our site, to the left of the tallest tree...

Cool black sand...

Wondering over to where we had lunch the day before, then headed back up into our campground...

After making sure we had everything, we headed into Reno to check out a couple of store we've been hearing about. Then we snagged a bite at In-N-Out before heading for home.

We will be putting this on our yes list for sure!