Summer.

I wish the Winter months would fly by like Summer months always do!  My last blog posting was in June and I was at the Oregon Coast...and here it is August already?!  And, while I am really looking forward to more beach time this Fall (including a trip up to Seattle and into the Olympic National Park and then more Oregon time!)...the Summer has mostly been spent closer to home. 
We left the beach and made a detour to Washougal, WA, to watch Mike and his brother, Shawn, along with thousands of other crazy people, compete in a Spartan Race!  If you've participated in one of these races before, good for you!  If you've thought about it, watched the videos, studied the courses and decided against it, even better for you!!!  It was crazy and intense, and I was just a spectator!
Shawn is an amazing competitor, kind of a BEAST, and he killed the course in under an hour!  I am pretty sure he's hooked now...I hear he's going to do another run this fall!  And Mike did great!  I will be honest, I kept an eye on the ambulances that were standing by, a little bit worried...but he did really well ("for an old guy" he would say)!  He got hung up in a pack for awhile on one obstacle, which the participants aptly nicknamed "Cheese Grater Hill" (imagine crawling uphill for about a hundred yards on a thin layer of mud over a cheese grater [a rocky hillside]...ouch...oh, did I mention you'd be crawling under barbed wire?!).  But, he finished it with a smile on his face...I think that was a smile, it might have been mud...?!  Mike says he is really glad he did it, but don't be looking for him on another course any time soon!

The brothers; before and after...still smiling!



The weekend after we got home we packed up again and headed south to Mack, Colorado for "Country Jam", a weekend outdoor music festival which takes place in a giant dust bowl in the middle of nowhere!  Luke Bryan (who was an amazing performer!), Jo Dee Messina, Trace Adkins and, my favorite, the Zac Brown Band, were among the long list of performers over the weekend.  We did a lot of people watchin' in and around the concert grounds (plenty of crazies!), wandered into the cute little town of Fruita, and spent one morning exploring the Colorado National Monument, trying to stay out of the heat wave!  We got to have a fun, unexpected breakfast with my Aunt Sally and her husband Mike, who were passing through...and then saw them again a few days later when they came up through Wyoming to Pocatello. 

The Colorado National Monument...if it looks really hot and really dry, well, it was!

We spent a pretty quiet 4th of July, watching the local fireworks show from our deck, headed to the mountains for some kayaking, and then spent a couple of weekends in Boise helping Mike's parents move into their new digs. 

In between our travels we, of course, got in lots of Harper-time! She is growing so fast and has the cutest little personality developing!

I could do this all day...!

Tummy time!

Momma at work!

Seriously, how cute is this face?!

So sweet!

Reading stories!

5 months young!

They make cute babies!

And then, finally, Allison & Stephen arrived!  Oh, I sure do miss her when she is away...and she has been away for awhile!  They've been having adventures of their own, in Alaska, California, Alabama and Florida!  We headed to Jackson for some great kayaking (minus the crazy storm that literally chased us off of String Lake!), have had a few dinner/bbqs with both our girls and their hubbies, missed out on our camping/hiking trip because a stomach bug infected our house : ( ...but have enjoyed spending a quiet week just kind of hanging out.

Harper time with Aunt Allison!

Floating the Snake River, near Oxbow Bend.

Leisurely float down the Snake River.

See those thunder clouds coming over the Grand...

...yep, chased off the water by rain...and thunder...and LIGHTNING!

Triangle Rock!  String Lake.

Clouds cleared away...beautiful day on the lake!

Considering...

Making the leap!

Mid-air!

Splash!

They like each other a lot.  :)

Up next, well, Allison is packing up the rest of her things (we've had fun going through all of her childhood stuff...I didn't know I had that many stuffed animals in my house!) for their move up to Seattle!  Stephen starts school again next month and Allison will be settling in, making a new home and looking for work...and we'll get to see them soon with a truckload of their household stuff!

We're all headed to Boise for a Hawks baseball game and a birthday celebration (Happy Birthday to Venita, my sweet mom-in-law, who will turn 74 on Sunday!).  And then, a kayaking trip in the works, a trip to Boise to do some senior pictures with my beautiful niece, and then...finish out the summer with a trip to Washington and then Oregon!  The beach is calling!

Spring in the Tetons?!

The interior roads opened up in the Tetons a couple of weekends ago so we thought we'd take full advantage and spend a couple of nights in our mobile "Yurt."  Ya know, Springtime...  We had visions of baby animals out in abundance, Spring flowers in bloom, warm days and cool nights...  Well, we might have been just a few weekends early, as it snowed.  Not only did it snow, but there was a lot of snow, particularly in the North end of the park.
We did catch sight of some of the park's notorious creatures; bison, elk, coyotes, moose...and lots of birds, like these, trying to shake off winter!
Looking forward to our next trip up to the Tetons...surely the flowers will be blooming...?!

Idaho's State bird...the Mountain Bluebird, and...

...a Western Meadowlark.

Mother Nature.

It was so nice of Mother Nature to provide my favorite color in the sky on Mother's Day (kind of a purple-y haze)!  Okay, so I probably would've prefer it not to be in the form of a crazy, blowing snow storm, but hey...it was pretty cool nonetheless!  



Yellowstone in early Spring.

Some of the roads opened up in Yellowstone this past weekend, so we took the opportunity to get away from our computers and to-do lists and headed up and into the park to see what, if anything, was waking up from winter!  Hard to tell, in some sections of the park, if there were any critters roaming about as the snow level is still really high in places...in fact, in those areas, it was a bit like driving in a snow tunnel!  But, we saw plenty of bison, deer and elk, several coyotes and even a few wolves.  We also spotted a good sized grizzly heading out along a foothill (sorry Travis, that we couldn't find one for you in the Tetons)!

The best part was trying out our new rig, which we call the "Yurt".  It's our new home away from home, and I kind of fear our retirement digs...!  It's a really cool conversion van...called a Sportsmobile, with most of the creature comforts of home!  If you see us around, be sure and say hi!

The ability to fly...

It was kind of a birding weekend, last weekend.  We saw plenty of four-legged animals in the Tetons (everything but a bear!) and we saw lots of feathered creatures waiting out what is hopefully the last bits winter...  (It is snowing like crazy right now, so maybe the end of winter isn't quite in sight yet....?!)

Have you ever asked people, if they could "come back" as any animal, what animal would they be?  A lot of people say some kind of bird, right?  I am sure it is the idea of flight...what an amazing kind of freedom that must be...  My husband, for example, always answers that he would come back as an eagle...in the United States, of course, as eagles are a national symbol and therefore protected from human predators!  It doesn't hurt that eagles live in incredibly beautiful places, like the Grand Teton National Park, or Alaska...either of those places are where he would choose to live! 

In any case, thinking about eagles...makes me think about freedom...and makes me think, again, about the Karen people we met, the IDP's of Burma...many of whom have never known freedom...  Imagine that, never knowing freedom...in fact, knowing only a life of oppression, terrorism, fear...

Tomorrow I will write more about those amazing people...today I am appreciating my freedom!

I went to the mountains...to breathe...

I am a lucky woman with pretty fantastic opportunities…

One of those came this past weekend, the chance to head to the hills, or rather, to the mountains, the Grand Tetons to be specific, to hang out with some wildlife and nature, and a couple of wonderful guys (my husband and my nephew)! Another great opportunity came when my husband, who was driving, was turning the car around so that he could get a nice photo of this red-tailed hawk… Well, his camera (he has a really nice, long lens) was resting in my lap as he turned the car around, and the hawk was getting kind of jittery…so, I caught this as he flew away…

Serendipity! Thanks honey!

For Mike.

About every other day my husband asks, "did you post any pictures to your blog today?"  He seems so disappointed when I say "not today!"...so, today, this post is, mostly, for him!  Hi honey!

We have a lot of images on our computer…I mean, a lot…in the 10's of thousands, easily…  Sometimes when we get home from a weekend getaway we barely have the time or energy to unpack our dirty clothes, let alone to download our memory cards…so the images sit, in wait…and they wait and wait…  The good news is, when we finally make time to review our images, it's kind of like an opportunity to live the moment all over again.  It's that "oh, I forgot about these" moments that inspires you yet again!  (And, in truth, makes you want to pack up and go once more!)

Such is the case with these…I took these on a fun day trip with our niece and nephew up to the Grand Teton Park, earlier this winter.  We did our best to dial up every animal they could think of to see…from big horn sheep to bull moose, coyotes, eagles, mountain goats, deer and plenty of elk, on and off the refuge…all in one day…and, we even threw in lunch!  We do love our backyard playground…and we love to share it with our friends! So, if you are ever in the mood for a wildlife adventure, give us a call…have empty memory cards, will travel!



Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year in one of our favorite places, again…Jackson, Wyoming. It was frigidly cold, well into double digit negative numbers, but oh, so beautiful. The critters were mostly tucked away and not many people were venturing out into the cold, so we enjoyed a serenely quiet day amidst the grandeur of the Teton Range…watching the sun move across the sky, listening to the sound of crunching snow under our snowshoes, dancing to my own absurd songs in an effort to thwart the cold (not an easy task, by the way, dancing in snow shoes) and enjoying immensely our heated vehicle!

And there, in the calm of the sun setting upon the mountain landscape, I decided upon my resolution for the New Year…to seek and appreciate simplicity. It truly is, after all, the simplest things which give us joy in our lives…not the hustle & bustle, nor the to-do lists, nor the objects we acquire…but the purest appreciation of our own lives, the people in it, and the moments we share.

Peace, to you and yours in 2011.

It's starting to feel like Fall...

...what was with that sleet storm today?!  Granted it lasted about three minutes, but it sure got gloomy quickly!  So, maybe it's Fall finally? 
I love Fall.  It usually is way too short in S.E. Idaho...as the snow will come far too soon for me...but I love the crispness in the air in the morning, the cool evenings with homemade crock-pot dinners that make your whole house smell like comfort, and all of the rich, warm colors of Autumn.  Fall makes me want to retreat, dust off my cookbooks and cook & bake, to read those novels I collected in my travels over the Summer, and to finally finish those little projects that piled up throughout the year.  Maybe I will actually get to that unpainted laundry room?!  I am thinking maybe a warm chocolate color...
So, if you're in the neighborhood, stop by and say hi...I'll be the one in my cozy sweatshirt!

Tetons in Fall!

There is no better time to visit the Grand Teton National Park, than Fall...well, unless it be Summer, when the temperatures are warm and the days are long, that's nice too...or Winter, when the mountains are white and the animals are visible...or Spring, when the wildflowers are in bloom...  But I digress...  Fall is really spectacular! 

Photo-a-Day! Springtime swim.

We were fortunate enough to get to spend a really lovely Spring weekend in the Tetons last weekend (before the rain and snow returned!)...and we had a morning snack on the river bank at the Oxbow (Oxbow Bend of the Snake River). We were a little remorseful that we hadn't loaded up the kayaks, as the river was so pretty and calm...but we enjoyed a little bird watching all the same.

Photo-a-Day! Spring has Sprung?!

The first day of Spring, according to my calendar, already occurred...in fact, months ago?! It, however, hasn't felt much like Springtime out my door...until today...and, it seems, this weekend the nice weather will continue! Yay! Flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, the days are getting longer and sweet little babies are popping up everywhere!

Enjoy the sunshine!!!

Photo-a-Day! Black bear encounter!

This is a bit of a preview... As I mentioned in an earlier post, my husband (Mike) and I will be featured next month at Marigolds in Pocatello...and this is one of the new prints we will be showing! ...a beautiful, healthy black bear we encountered in Yellowstone this past winter.

We are launching our new website soon...check back for more information!