Summer Days

well, summer has been alot of fun for us. We've gotten to do some fun things and visit with alot of family. Now that things are starting to wind down I thought I'd share some of our adventures.

The second half of June the kids and I spent almost 2 weeks up at the cabin for the Halford family reunion. Halford is Brad's mom's side of the family. We spent alot of time just relaxing and visiting but we also went to Yellowstone a few times, we went driving around looking for moose, fed the fish at Big Springs, swimming at the river and ate way too much!

After the renuion, for the 4th of July weekend, Brad and I went backpacking in Idaho's Sawtooth range while Rich and Donette took care of the boys. We had alot of fun but didn't get as far as we'd planned. When we reached about 8000 feet, there was snow! Since about 1/3 of our planned trip was well above 8500 feet, we ended up staying at a gorgeous little lake the last 2 of three nights before hiking out the same way we came. The scenery was magnificent, there were wildflowers in full bloom and the weather was perfect. It was a little hot (about 90 degrees) hiking in the first day, but as soon as we got up high in elevation it cooled down quite comfortably.

When we returned from backpacking, my mom was waiting for us at our house. We spent about 10 days with her just doing fun things around home. We took the kids swimming, went to the park, got to see Gabe and the day before she had to leave my mom and I hiked the Indian trail here around Ogden Canyon. Since we only had one vehicle we looped back to the trailhead we started on by walking down through the canyon on the road- that was a frightening adventure! The road is very, very narrow with a cliff on one side and a river on the other and extremely windy, so you can only see until the next turn ahead. We made it though, and it was fun in spite of the torturous uphill march in the blazing heat at the end.

We've had a great summer - lots of fun, lots of sun and good times with family.