Time flies when you're cooking in the sun

I can't believe how quickly the blog posts grow old. It seems like just a few days ago when I posted the McCall wedding pictures. Time flies when you're cooking in the sun - we've been busy and hot. Here's a one-post update of the last couple of weeks.

The annual Twilight Criterium is always a fun Saturday night. Once again it was a 100 degree day, but by 8p it had finally cooled down enough to be enjoyable. The main had over 100 riders, so it was quite a pack whizzing by every few minutes. Highlights of the evening included pitas from The Pita Pit and meeting lots of people on the street that we hadn't seen for months or even years.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the lake with Con and Heidi, Sienna and Remi. Again, ridiculously hot, so even the frigid waters of Lucky Peak were a welcome relief. The kids did great with the boat (Heidi wasn't sure what Remi would think) and the water. Last year Cooper would go ankle deep at most but he is much more adventurous this year to the point you gotta keep your eye on him because he 'thinks' he can swim for real. But he can't.

This weekend we had two birthdays and a potluck to go to so that was pretty much it. One of the birthdays was at Roaring Springs so the whole family went. It was a lot of fun because Mia is just tall enough, and just barely bold enough to go on most of the rides.

All for now. -Sam

Rith this wing, I whee thed....

We had a great time up in McCall last weekend for Nicole and Jeremy's wedding. We stayed in our favorite rental 'cabin' again , this time with Brad and Patty and Mark and Brenda. The kids were in the wedding, so we went to the rehearsal on Friday night as well. Took the boat and went fishing with very little luck, but as usual it's just nice to be out on the water. Not sure why my fish locating skills have been so poor lately, but if I don't have a good outing soon, Shanna's going to start to question my manliness.

Kickin it with the sunset at the rehearsal

Cooper getting wild on the bunk bed
Dual flower girls and ring bearers looking really cute
With the lovely bride. All the kids did an excellent job standing up front in the sun during the entire ceremony.
A job well done deserves a little pool time
They had an interesting cake table, where friends and family baked a little something to add to the small wedding cake. All the goodies were a big hit with the crowd - a heck of a lot better than the usual mints and pretzels.
The ladies getting the cabin ready for Lori's 50th birthday
Running from the waves at Cascade lake

Family schmamly

Rob and Andrea drove over the other day, which is no small feat considering that they live in Illinois. So we did what any family would do in this situation.....fish, eat and take pictures.

Is it a fish? No, just a big long weed that is a lot of fun to play with, especially since Uncle Sam can't actually find any real fish.

Anthony was really excited to drive the boat. Then he discovered how easy it is to fall asleep at the wheel.

Grandma had Carson and Wyatt over to play with the boys...and girl. Unusual situation for Mia, as she almost always has girls around and it's Coop that's left out. Here is a link to the first picture, which I couldn't use because Cooper beat me to the punch.

And of course on Sunday, you'd better take a picture or twenty while everybody is cleaned up. In front of the corn field is kind of funny. Further perpetuating the Idaho/Iowa mixup that people seem to have.
..and Shanna's side of the family too! How lucky we are to have such a nice bunch of laws and in-laws!!

Our New Coffee Table

Rick sent me this link to a new product by Microsoft called Surface, that looks like a PC-enabled coffee table that....well, just watch the video.

May catch-up

Shanna and the kids stayed very busy while I was gone in Baja, and one of the activities was a trip to Oregon to see family. They stayed a night with Aunt Julie, who is helping her husband run a ranch, and a night with Grandma Carol on the coast. Here are some pictures. I'd narrate more, but they are all in bed and the details escape me. Even though I was nodding my head and saying uh-huh uh-huh I must not have been listening.....

Cooper's been wearing his rubber boots ever since. I'm serious - it's 90 degrees outside and he wants to wear camo shorts, a bass pro shops t-shirt and black rubber boots to school. And I let him. He finally had to quit because they were chafing his shins.

Baja Info - new blog

As most of you know, Steve and I took a 3 week fishing trip to Baja last month. I didn't want to clutter up this site with a bunch of Baja junk, so I made a new blog just for the trip. It is about one-third complete right now, but has quite a bit of junk to read so you can check it out now if you'd like.

http://spudnutsbaja.blogspot.com/

Back to Bass fishin

Went out to Lake Lowell with the crew and Grandpa Scott. Had a good time catching plenty of largemouth and one big old catfish. Kids did great - Mia caught the first fish of the day, and Cooper enjoys swimming a lot better this year than last. When we were driving home, they actually wanted to go again, which is an improvement.

I'm not dead.

Shame on you for thinking I was dead all this time. Actually spent the last three weeks sitting in line at the Tijuana border.



Will post pics and a link to a new trip blog shortly!!

Good weather = Less posts #2

Later in the week it warmed up nicely, so Dad and I took Friday off and went to Lake Owyhee. Was just a beautiful day, and we caught plenty of fish...couldn't seem to find any bigger ones but the quantity made up for the quality. Probably 80 crappie and 20 bass between the two of us.

Had to go waaaay (32 miles) uplake to find the warm water, but it ended up making a big difference. There was a 15 degree difference and we caught zero fish on 3 spots in the cold and 100 fish on 3 spots in the warm.

Dad got out to stretch and take a pic at the Honeycombs area.

This is the not-so largest of the day! (objects may be closer than they appear)

Good weather = Less posts

Must have had good weather around here because I see a lack of blogging going on. Well, I'm sure we can catch up real quick here.....

Great Grandma Carol came to visit for a week, and we all really enjoyed having her around. Went for a day-camp near Anderson Ranch on Saturday....had some little snow storms blow through, but it was still very nice.

Panoramio Test

Trying out this tricky little feature discovered on the Panoramio web site......oh the wheels are turning now!!!

Smoothie Operator (I stole that from Max)

Sally and I thought we should have a little contest involving blenders while she was here, and it turned into a great, big smoothie contest with 5 teams vying for the coveted dollar store trophy.

The basic idea of the contest was to have 2 people per blender come up with a smoothie drink using whatever ingredients they wanted to bring, steal or borrow, followed by a tasting by all teams and an anonymous voting process to determine the smoothiest winner.


The criteria for judging were:
Nutritional Value (ranked 1 to 5)
ColorAppeal/Presentation (scale of 1 to 10)
Taste (scale of 1 to 10)
Texture (scale of 1 to 10)
Most points wins.

Here is a picture of most of the ingredients that were up for grabs. I say 'most' because some people insisted on keeping their key ingredients in a brown paper bag (Mom and Cooper).

Brian and Amy creating the Aloha Sunset.

Max and Amanda even brought team jerseys for their Raspberry Truffle entry.

Cooper and Grandma whipping up a Mello Banana Peanut Butter Frapp. Mello as in marshMello. Not much of a nutrional score on that one, I'm afraid.

Sam and the Shanna Cabana.

And Mia guarding her and Sally's Summertime Creamsicle.

Time for the tasting!!! Cooper can barely sit still he's so excited about 'THOSE TROPHIES' and Mia 'just wants to win'.

As you can see from the scorecard, Max and Amanda ran away with the prize by scoring a perfect 40 on Taste. It really actually did taste like Raspberry Truffle, even though Max swears that this was the first smoothie he ever made.... Note the '2' that Mia gave Mom and Coop for Color Appeal because 'it's brown-yuck!!' that really sunk their battleship.

All the smoothies were great - I'd gladly pay $$ for any one of them. Couldn't have been a more fun group of people to blend with either, if you know what I mean.