Trip to Boise

Cousin Emily with Minnie--getting ready to swim in the Boise River This is the returned-missionary--Anna--and her cousin Molly (Jumble is in the background)
Atom and Jet on the playground waiting to jump into the river.
Niles supervises Atom in the Boise River. Minnie and Jumble are farther out with cousin Erika.
All tired out--the next afternoon on the way home--Atom conks out.

The last weekend in June we took a very short trip up to Idaho where my brother Erick lives. When I say short--I mean very short! We left Saturday morning around 10:00 and got to Boise in the late afternoon. Then we left Boise late Sunday afternoon and arrived home around midnight. Boise is only about a 5 1/2 hour drive from our house, if everything goes well. Unfortunately, everything didn't go well--either direction. On the way there we promptly discovered that the new adapter we purchased for the portable DVD player wasn't the right kind and didn't work. Since we had packed nothing else to amuse the kids--didn't want to mess with toys, books, and crayons for such a short trip--we felt the need to stop at a Radio Shack north of Salt Lake City. We finally figured out something to make it work, but it took awhile. On the way home, they had I-15 closed to one lane for a few miles north of Lagoon and it took us an entire hour to travel about two miles. So we weren't thrilled with the travel time either direction but at least we got there and back safely which is the important thing.

The reason for our short trip was to be there for my niece, Anna's homecoming talk and open house. She just got back from spending the last 18 months on a mission in Armenia. It was great to see her again (I don't think we've seen her for over three years) and to hear her excellent talk in church on Sunday and to spend time with our family. Tim (my brother) went up with his four oldest kids and my parents also went up and took my niece Erika (my sister Shellie's daughter) with them. Then, of course, my brother Erick and his wife Liz and their two daughters live up there so it was great to have so many of us together. On Saturday evening we went to Eagle Island State Park and had a KFC picnic and went swimming in the Boise River. Then we went back to our hotel and Niles and the kids went swimming in the hotel pool for about an hour while I ironed our Sunday clothes and got everything ready for baths and bed. Sunday we went to church for Anna's homecoming talk and then it was back to Liz and Erick's house for a ton of yummy food and treats and more visiting plus a bonus musical performance by Anna (which she was coerced into.) Both of my Idaho nieces are incredibly talented and beautiful! This is the first time we have been back to Boise since we moved from there to Arizona over eleven years ago so it was fun to see a few of the places we remembered from back then (like the apartments where we lived) and to see how much Boise has grown since that time. We were afraid we weren't going to make it at all since we were plagued by a nasty stomach flu bug the entire week before. We are grateful that everyone recovered by Saturday so we were able to go.