Kiddo's

Well, I did get some pictures of the school kiddo's while Brianna was here because it was the last week of school and I will be changing schools next fall and won't be seeing some of these kids. Don't usually share much of my work on the blog, but just had to "scrapbook" some of these. When we are missing kids from this year, I can always log onto here and share with the kids I do get to move with. :)

(Ignore the bare walls, boxes everywhere & messy surroundings - not only was it the last day of school, but the entire room was moving to a new room, besides those kids that were moving to new schools. It was a crazy end of the year!)

This adorable, lovable little munchkin is one that I won't be seeing - and he's been with me 2 years - not as much this year, but all of last year. Brianna adores him as well, as you can see in the last picture. One of my absolute favorite pictures!

These 2 are buddies - have been for 5 years - and now will be going to different schools. Makes me sad.

Love this dude! (and his haircut - he was getting pretty shaggy!)

And this dude! Gonna miss him lots.

The trio of boys that are moving with me. :)

Not many girls in our room... She is a sweetheart!

Trying to get a group picture - I never did get one with all of them looking but can't pass up this picture anyway - C is so happy, the best attitude ever!

"My" boys!

All the kids adore Brianna as much as she adores them, but this little guy is something special!

Scuba Diving

Tiffani's birthday present was a hit. They all loved the 1st lesson of scuba diving and they all want to do it again. We met a guy named Steve there (the class had 6 people in it) and he was an experienced scuba diver already but he was coming to bring Stanley on an adventure. (For those who don't know Flat Stanley is a character in a kids book who gets to go on all kinds of adventures. There is even a website where you can make your own Flat Stanley and take him on adventures and then post about it.)  A friend sent her son's Flat Stanley to Steve from Washington, I think, so he could have some Idaho Adventures.We totally obliged and were happy to include Flat Stanley in the group and the pictures.

One of the instructors took pictures with an under water camera and we get a CD of those pictures this week sometime. I'm sure those will be awesome pictures, and am not sure I can share them on the blog, so you all will have to get by with Kelley's and my non-professional pictures. We bought the tickets for this lesson through Groupon and it was a limit of 3, so it made sense for Tiffani, Brianna & Les to go. Then decided we'd do it this week while Brianna was here. Unfortunately that meant Kelley didn't actually get to scuba. She did get to watch along the side with me but she would have loved to actually do it. I wish that part of it would have worked out better!

Kelley & Brianna were able to go to Kuna Caves & Bouldering at Swan Falls on Monday. Tuesday they went Rock Climbing with the normal climbing group that Les climbs with weekly, Wednesday they spent part of the day at the school with me (& the kiddo's of course) and then went to youth group for a BBQ in the rain, Thursday was Scuba, Friday was movies at the Drive In and Saturday was heading back again. Busy week at home. :) No pictures of anything but the scuba...



Waiting for the rest of the group to show up - just a little excited!



Les getting his gear on.



Brianna getting her gear on.

Tiffani getting her gear on.

By the way, the older lady helping Tiffani had never had her head underwater and her husband told her if she learned to scuba dive he would take her to Jamaica. She is now a certified instructor! She did the demonstrating while the other instructor did the talking above water and took pictures underwater.

Learning the ropes... Flat Stanley is floating around in the group somewhere...

Les, Brianna with Flat Stanley, Tiffani and Steve

The whole group

Getting more instructions

Les underwater.

Brianna underwater.

Sitting on the bottom of the pool.

Brianna & Tiffani on the right. Both instructors on the left. Tiffani had to demo a technique to the instructor and the other instructor was taking pictures underwater.

Tiffani underwater in the deep end - 12 feet

They were all underwater at this point, playing games in the deep end. I've got several pictures but it's kind of hard to tell who's who and what they are doing! But I can tell you they all had an absolute blast!

Brianna has Flat Stanley with her. :)

Flat Stanley had to retire early from the Scuba lesson as he had a tear and was getting a little wetter then a piece of paper should! (He was laminated, but the tear was not a good thing for him).

This was rather comical to watch from our angle outside the pool - they were all trying to sit on the ledge in the pool for an underwater group picture. A few would get down, then one would go up as another got sat down. Finally they all did get in the picture. I can't wait to see that one on the CD.

Not sure what this picture was about, but it was cute! :)

Aww, there's my smiling girls!

My girls and I. :)

Kelley laid the pen on Flat Stanley's hand and pointed it at the paper. Cute. So we decided that we needed the girls signature along with Flat Stanley's so Brianna is helping him sign a piece of paper. :)

Told you, we got into helping Flat Stanley along in his adventures!

Today my "baby" turned 17! Wow!!

Brianna decided that she wanted to surprise Tiffani for her birthday at which ever place Tiffani decided to eat for her birthday dinner. So this plan has been in the works, I think, since Brianna was here over Spring Break. Amazingly enough Tiffani never caught on, even with all my almost slip-ups, just talking about stuff. Whew! But today we had to really drag it out to get into the restaurant. Brianna and Kelley drove down from Sandpoint, leaving there at 6am. Brianna texted me when they got to Grandma J's house so they could get cleaned up and changed. By this time we had been to Penney's and Wal-mart and Les decided that maybe we should check for phone covers for Tiff's phone at the My Bullfrog store and killed a few more minutes there. And well, that wasn't long enough, so we went to Best Buy and wondered aimlessly around in there pretending to be looking at stuff. Finally went back out to the trailblazer and didn't see Brianna's car near Olive Garden yet, so we took a l o n g time opening the package of stylus' that we got to use with our phones. Then drove around the parking lot looking for THE best place to park. Then took forever getting out of the trailblazer. Tiffani finally got out and started pulling on my arm & I refused to move. She's laughing and can't figure out why on earth we are making her wait so long to go eat her birthday dinner, she's starving after all! Finally I see Brianna's car on the road tell Les to get her in... He pulls her in the car, then picks her up and carries her to the back and puts her in the rear window of the trailblazer. She's going crazy trying to figure out why we can't go in. I finally see Kelley and Brianna go in the door. And say ok let's go, but we have to walk slow...

So here's Les "dancing" circles around me to keep Tiffani from running into the restaurant.

One more stall - need a picture of the Birthday Girl outside the restaurant (while Les goes in to make sure Brianna & Kelley got seated and where).

I didn't have the flash on so it's kind of a blurry picture, but this is seconds after Tiffani realized it was Brianna sitting in the seat. (At first she thought it was Tracy and couldn't figure out who was with her and why we had been keeping that such a surprise.)

Just reminiscing about how well this little surprise was pulled off.

Tiff learning her other surprise is a beginners Scuba lesson later this week. :) She's just a little excited about that!! (Les & Brianna get to go too.)

Finally remembered to turn the flash on - wish I'd done that earlier!!

One very happy excited ecstatic birthday girl

Tiff, Bri, Kelley

Bri, Tiff, Kelley

Happy Birthday Sunshine!

I love you.

Cabin Search & Road Trip

Last Saturday we drove up to Idaho City area to search for a cabin that us girls were going to possibly rent this summer for our girls getaway. It was only $86/night. And the cabin itself was very nice, but the winding single lane dirt road covered in pine needles was enough for me to say nope - don't think so! Plus the fact that one of my friends is leaving her 3 teens home alone during our outing and there was no cell service up there! So it was a nice drive & a great way to get out of town for a few hours, but not an overnight (or 2 or 3) stay. So here's our adventure for the day. (It has been confirmed by my husband & daughter that I am not a country girl - although they did admit that this was "back country" and that definitely isn't me. Tiffani said we weren't city girls either, so I guess that leaves us with small town girl?! )

This is the corner of Highway 21 and Grimes Creek Road. We followed this creek for a few miles before turning off again.



Grimes Creek Road - at least it was 2 lanes & paved.



We pulled off to get a closer look at the creek. It was full and moving very fast.

This is moving on up into the single lane dirt roads.

The owners of the cabin actually have two cabins up here. This is the start of the driveway up to the main one. To the right is a shorter driveway up the rustic cabin!

The rustic cabin...

A small portion of the main driveway up.

The cabin at the top of the driveway.

It was a very peaceful spot, secluded and very lovely to just be out there in the fresh air. But, oh that driveway!

The inside, upstairs of the cabin. There is a bedroom on either end of the bridge. Les & I had to tilt our heads sideways to walk across the bridge.

The owner was there cleaning up the yard when we went and he had his 3 dogs with him. Just behind the dogs and down the "hill" is where the rustic cabin sits.

You can kind of see the rustic cabin here. There is a slight path you can walk to it if you so desired.

Photo by Tiffers - This is the surroundings, nothing but trees (and beautiful blue skies at that moment).

Idaho City

Just loved the white picket fence and the boardwalk.

Another neat area in town.

A pretty cool looking flower shop. It just looked so inviting.

This was a really neat looking yard. Loved all the daffodils, bench & creek. Just out of the picture at the bottom, along the road side, was full of daffodils, too. Looked very peaceful and inviting.

Another neat location for a house. Steps right down to put your feet in the water. It would be fun to stay at a place like that for a day or two, but I don't know that I could live there!

A pretty neat mailbox set up on an old wagon wheel AND it spins around!

Just a couple of shots of the Wilderness Ranch Area.

A very low Lucky Peak - the docks aren't even touching the water!

Well, that was our little day trip to explore. It was fun, but I do believe our girls get-away is going to be more towards the Tamarack/McCall area. That's the current plan anyway.