First two back to school

 Back to school day is always a bitter sweet time for our family.  We absolutely LOVE summer and the fun things there are to do, but school is a more structured, progressing time for our family too.  It's good to have the schedules and the discipline and the learning, otherwise we would just play all the time!  So, today I sent Evan off to middle school (7th grade) and McKinley off to elementary (4th grade).  They were excited.  They are ready.  They will amaze me again this year with their intelligence, their kindness, their generosity, their drive, their talents, their eagerness, their everything!  I know they will do great, but more importantly, I know they will BE great!

Bear Lake 2013!!

 

Another amazing Bear Lake vacation with the Smith family!

 This year our family did back-to-back Bear Lake vacations with both sides of the family.  Luckily we made the first week more about adventures and exploring the area and enjoying Raspberry Days, so when we headed to camping and beaching at Bear Lake we were ready for it! 

It's always a lot of fun to be with the big Smith family.  All the kids and adults enjoy visiting with each other.  One of the neatest things that you see at Bear Lake is different groups of kids playing together.  You really see everyone play so well with everyone else.  This year we were missing our  missionaries...Ashlee, Andrew, and for the last 3 days...Zachary.  We also didn't have Darla and Brady with us, as they had to work.  But we had everyone else there!

At the end of last year, we decided that we wanted to stay an extra day at Bear Lake now.  We decided that we wanted 3 full days of beach fun and so we made our reservation for 5 days.  That includes arrival and departure day, so you end up with 3 full days.  It was nice.  We ended up leaving Thursday night, but it was nice not having to check out Thursday morning.  I think we decided to do it that way again last year.

 We also moved to the group site this year and we loved it!  We had our own big pavilion, a fire pit on the beach and a ton of room for our tents.  We hit the jackpot with the group site.  We hope we can get it again going forward!

So many memories are made at Bear Lake for our family.  It is truly the best tradition we have.  Our children look forward to it every year and every year it turns out to be amazing!

 I saw a sign as we were driving around about for an Ice Cave and so I looked it up online and figured out where it was.  We headed out towards the cave and had to travel down a really fun, bumpy dirt road to find the "cave".  Grandpa Dick made the drive with us and we found the cave after a 40 minute drive to no where. 

 The ice cave is more of a hole of rocks from outside and when you go inside it, you discover that the water has made a cave back behind the hole.  You have to crawl through a tiny opening to get into the "cave" part of the place.  And yes, there is ice.  Ice on the ground and dripping water everywhere.

 We found some places that had huge icicles that you could climb on.  Of course it was very dark and all we had was a cell phone light, so it was a slippery skating time getting around in there.

 It was a pretty neat natural phenomena that there was ice in the cave in the 90+ degree weather, but we read on the sign that the "cave" is only accessible in July and August because the ice doesn't melt until then.  I guess the whole thing is filled up with water/ice most of the year.

There was a group of rock climbers there too and it looked like a great place to do some climbing as it was a steep, long way down.  Luckily there was a trail around to the side that didn't require any climbing gear!

 Saturday was our beach day at the North Shore in Bear Lake.  Dave and Jim, and Austin had joined us the night before while we all went to the rodeo and then we wanted to have a beach day.  We scoped out a good spot at the VERY busy North Shore and really enjoyed a perfect beach day all together. 

 The girls enjoyed playing in the sand and burying each other!  Vicky and I enjoyed a nice walk down the beach where we scoped out all the different toys, and shelters, and set ups that the various beach goers had.  We got some great new ideas and saw some serious beach goer setups!

 We all swam in the nice, turqouis waters of Bear Lake and enjoyed a little sun and shade.

 The boys were there as well, but we didn't end up with any pictures of them.  We were having too much phone and they were not wanting to be photographed like the girls were!

Raspberry Days Parade

 The first week Vicky and I and the kids were up at Bear Lake, we made sure it was over Raspberry Days.  We wanted to have lots of things to do and we did!  There was a cute beauty pagent the first night there and then the next day was the Raspberry Days Parade.  The kids all caught and collected candy as the various cars and "floats" went by.

 There was even costume animals and at the end a petting farm of animals, including llamas, buffalo, and goats.  The kids loved the parade and the craft fair booths that were just next door to where we watched the parade.  All in all...a great time!

Minetonka Cave

 Our first day trip from Bear Lake (Fish Haven, ID) was Minetonka cave.  It was a HUGE cave near Paris, Idaho that was accessible by guided tour.  We showed up at 12:00 and got on the 12:30 tour.  This tour is strenuous, with 888 steps all together, with 77 down (and then up) at once!  It was very worth it though as the cave was simply beautiful.

It was a nice 40 degrees and dark inside the cave the whole time.  One of the rooms in the cave was longer than a football field and 2 1/2 stories tall!  Wow!  It just kept going and going!

We really enjoyed all the formations and the different rooms inside the cave.  Well worth the hike in and then back out!

Celebrating Pioneer Day at Draper Days Parade

It's hard to believe that it's already Draper Days again this year!  This summer is absolutely flying by and I don't like it.  We've been able to do a ton of fun stuff, but it's just going by too fast.  We love Draper Days and the parade is the highlight of the fun.  We gather first thing in the morning and get our traditional spot for watching the parade.  This year, McKinley and Evan were asked to be in the parade, so we only had Ethan there with us.  That was strange!  But we had lots of other family members there to watch with us and gather up all the candy!

 It's always a good time to catch up and visit while we watch all the different entries go by!

Evan and McKinley were about half way through the parade.  I was worried they wouldn't like being in the parade as much as watching it (not getting candy!) but they both said they loved it and can't wait to do it again!

 

 Ethan and Mayceleen joined Grandad in the shade this year.  I kept throwing candy I gathered back to them, but after Ethan refused to get out of his chair to gather it up I stopped enabling him!  I think they enjoyed talking better than watching the parade. 

After the parade we gathered for a nice BBQ at Nana and Grandads and then Dave and I went to the Real soccer game, while the kids went to fireworks with their cousins.  It was a great celebration!