Summer Days

Everybody needs a post of random summer fun days. This is ours.  Lake Owyhee Reservoir is about an hour away from us in Ontario.  The drive takes you through farm fields, hugs the Owyhee river, and then goes up and over the dam.  It's such a lovely drive until you get over the dam and it turns into a cliff hugging one -way road.  I have a stomach ulcer by the time we park, but thankfully the day we went there were no Ford F-250's towing their boat behind (that always makes me hold my breath and close my eyes).  In fact, we had the lake all to ourselves.   

This little rocky shore looked like the perfect place to skip rocks after our picnic, and while we had a great time the spiders were a little disturbing.  The rocks were crawling with spiders!  Seriously.  They were quick stone colored spiders that avoided us as much as we wanted to avoid them, but it was pretty gross.  Every time you took a step or picked up a rock you could see a handful of them scatter.

It wasn't really very warm in the water, but that didn't stop Joe.  It never does.

Joe got some great photos of a lizard he and Rosy snuck up on.  

Lizard and Rosy.

Rosy and Lizard.

Not pictured is the adventure Rocky and I went on while Joe and Rosy were hunting lizards.  

 We went climbing across some rocks and found a little shore and private beach accessible only to those in search of a landing with no spiders.  We found it and it was a memorable time.  He is the funnest 3yr old to go adventuring with.

Our picnic at Lake Owyhee was a top 10 memory of the summer!

We do a lot of running through the sprinklers.  

On the 4th of July as we were waiting for it to get dark, there was a neighbor kid up the street that literally couldn't wait one more second!  At 7pm, when it was still light out he invited us up to his driveway.  I have never seen such preparation for an amateur fireworks display.  He had a diagram that displayed where each of his fireworks went and in what order they were to be lit.  He was a great host for the evening!  Rocky was nervous about the loud ones.

and decided to take a back seat to the production at one point. 

Rosy was not sure what to think of it at all.  She held on to dad the entire time. 

We've been lucky enough to see Aunty Ashy a few times this summer already.  Now that she's moved back from North Carolina and is only in Utah, it's fun to call her up and tell her to come visit for the weekend!  Rocky loves her, and her long board.

Baker City, Joe's hometown, throws a Miner's Jubilee in July.  It used to be a big gold miner's town  so I guess that's where they get the name.  I LOVE IT.  We have been 3 times so far and even though Joe had to work this year I took the kids to the parade.  I don't know what it is about it.  Maybe because there was nothing small town about where I grew up, and we didn't have parades or acts of patriotism like this. The music and the flag and the kids scrambling for candies is so fun for me.  

These guys aren't twins, or even related.  They are Joe's good buddies from high school.  Too bad he had to work!  

This girl was a cute little thing that day.