Trekking to Boise every summer has definitely become a tradition. Our summer in Parker thus far hadn't really felt "relaxing" per se-- we'd been bouncing from baseball practices to Cub Scout Camp, to Activity Days, to various playdates with friends, to birthday parties. We'd had various visitors in town to entertain, and to add to all of that, I picked up 3 more classes to teach at the YMCA in Littleton. Needless to say, I think we were all feeling a bit run ragged halfway through July.
Lucy actually flew out a few days before the rest of us to get to the cabin earlier, and had the opportunity to see Great Grandma and Grandpa Morris who are around and still kickin'. My Grandma is so cute-- she remembers everyone's name, what grade they're in, what they like, and what their hobbies are, and just loves talking to her great grandkids.
The cousins with my sweet Grandpa before heading up to the cabin.
Boise came as a perfect escape to finally slow down summer and just relax. It may not be the most exotic vacation location, but my kids LOVE being at their grandparents house. Sarah P was in Canada with her family, so there were no cousins, but we still had plenty to do, including walking over to Delsa's and eating huckleberry ice cream. Yum!
We also had our annual girls' tea party. Lucy and Leah totally look forward to getting dressed up and drinking from Great Grandma Gabe's fancy tea cups. Taylor was on Zach duty, so they got Mc Donald's for lunch and then hung out downstairs watching "Justice League" cartoons. It was Zach's man's date dream come true.
Here's our yummy spread of sandwiches and finger foods.
Thursday night we visited the Boise Town Square Mall to check out the "Monuments of America" Lego series. They feature all of the major historic monuments from US history and the kids got a kick out of seeing how everything was made from millions of tiny legos!
Friday was my favorite day, as we found a beach to relax on. We drove over to Eagle Island, which is really just a nice sand bar on the Boise river, and also features a waterslide. We had perfect weather.
Miss Leah, most likely reminiscing about her former beach days in North Carolina. Man! I miss the beach.
That night we ate at the West Side Drive-In, which was recently featured on Food Network's "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives." We had some amazing hamburgers and even better fry sauce. I feel like Colorado needs to jump on the fry sauce craze pronto.
My kids had never had an ice cream potato, which is locally famous of course, so it was high time they tried one.
It's really just vanilla ice cream rolled in cocoa powder to look like a giant Idaho baked potato.
What a fantastic way to cap off our fun beach day!
Saturday was probably the kids' favorite day, was we headed to the Snake River Stampede out in Nampa. They'd never been to a rodeo, and it had been a long time since I'd been to one too.
Thankfully it was indoors at the Idaho Center so it was air-conditioned, and they had some fun acts in between the different events. This was a drill team that performed all lit up along with their horses. Lizzie loved it.
Our favorite part of the rodeo was hands-down the bull riding. That is some crazy and intense stuff! Yeeha! Gotta love America.
Family selfie out at the rodeo! I bought the kids hot dogs and popcorn, and they were happy as little clams and didn't want to leave even when the rodeo was over. They watched for almost 2 1/2 hours!
Of course they cooled off one last time in Grandma's pool after the rodeo. Lucy always clocks in the most pool time of anyone, but we all spent quite a bit of time swimming as it was really hot in Boise the whole week we were there.
That night just the adults went to dinner and we got a babysitter for the kids (hallelujah). We tried the Sockeye Brewery and had some delicious salmon in our entrees, and shared this poutine for an appetizer.
It was sure nice to be out kid-free as I'd been single parenting all week with Jon home working!
We decided to make the long 12 hour drive back home to Colorado on Tuesday. We drove through Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, and almost had rain the whole way! How unusual is that? Thankfully my mom was able to drive it with us, and all things considered the kids did awesome! Especially Lizzie. She was so wiped out from our week of fun she napped for almost 4 hours which made a huge difference and we got a lot of road under us in that time. My mom stayed until Saturday morning, so we took her to Dion's for dinner Friday night.
She was also able to catch Zach's second to last baseball game and we were so thankful she was able to drive back with us and stay a couple more days! We had so much in Boise, and the kids are already planning things for their next trip in Summer 2018.
