We Love Hiking in McCall!

After we went to church on Sunday we headed out to go hiking and exploring.

We saw a large tree that had fallen into the lake and so Joshua, Kenedy, Ryker and Avynlea decided to go and climb on it.

If you look closely in the picture with the kids on the tree you will notice that Ryker is taking a little pee break. I am not sure why boys feel the need to pee anywhere they want to but I think this kid is old enough he can try to be a little bit more discreet about it.! Honestly!

The fallen tree was pretty cool but Avynlea and Ryker quickly tired of that particular game so they climbed off and came back up to the rest of us while Kenedy and Josh ventured out further to take pictures.

While we were waiting Rylee decided to see how her stick tasted. This little girl will put anything in her mouth, it's kind of gross!

She tongued it for quite a while before I told her she had to take it out and stop sucking on weird things!

We finally got bored of waiting for Josh and Kenedy so we told them to get a move on or they were being left.

A little bit further on our hike I noticed Rylee had something else in her mouth.

this time she wanted to suck on a rock and see what that tasted like. She is a crazy kid!

My four little cutie pies!

Kenedy found this weird moss type stuff and gathered some up to make a wig for herself. She is a funny girl!

We passed a little random pond in the middle of the trail and the kids were so excited to see a couple little frogs swimming around in it. Those few frogs were kind of cute.

I found a small grouping of tree logs and thought it would be a fun spot to take some pictures of the kids. they each posed themselves and it was really quick and informal.

I don't even know where Rylee got her pose from!

Ryker needed a break from all that walking and hightailed it to the shade for a rest.

As we continued walking we came upon something that enthralled the kids but really disgusted me.

This was a ditch that was by the trail we were hiking on. Can you see what all those dotty things are? No? Here take a closer look...

Hundreds and hundres of little frogs. What was cute when there were one or two has turned really nasty with all the hundreds of them jumping around all over the place. The kids were wanting to touch them and were getting really close to them and it was really making me nervous and grossing me out. Joshua has it on video me begging the kids not to touch the frogs and then me telling them they will get warts if they do. I know that was a lie but I was trying to make them not want to touch those gross creatures. Up the road a little bit I noticed Kenedy and Avynlea huddled together talking and I was going to take a picture labling it how they looked pretty suspicious but they broke apart before I could do that. About 10 or 15 minutes later Kenedy told me that Avynlea had frogs in her pocket. WHAT!? I told Avynlea to empty out her pockets and she pulled out two frogs she said she had more but the other ones managed to jump out. that is what the two were doing when they were huddled together, I should have trusted my instincts. I was surprised at what Avynlea did but then not really. She is my animal lover and just wanted a frog pet. Soooo gross to have them in her pockets though!

So I have one kid stuffing the frogs in her pockets to keep them as pets and then I find Rylee stomping around and when I asked her what she was doing she said she was trying to smash the frogs. Seriously what is with my kids!? I like that Joshua's foot is in the picture with him trying to stomp on the frog smasher!

A fun family picture!

I really love my family!

Some panaramic fun. Can you see all the faces in this picture? Count them all!

So we were walking along heading back to the house with me leading the way. All of a sudden I saw that I was just about to step on a snake that was lying in the middle of the road. I didn't even think, I screamed and ran far away from it yelling "SnAkE!"

Of course everyone crowded around to get a good look at it.

Kefford had to pick up the snake so he could show the kids. When he tried to hand it to Ryker it fell and quickly slithered away. Not such a bad thing!

Look at this huge grasshopper/locust we saw lying on the road. There were so many grasshoppers/locusts jumping around all over the place they kept getting in our way. None of them were as big as this thank heavens!

After we returned to the McCall House Rylee had a breakdown for whatever reason. I kind of like taking pictures of our screaming kids. I think it is funny!

Kefford took this picture of us watching TV, not a bad profile shot!

Wer're in McCall!

Finally after waiting all summer we made it up to McCall. We got there pretty late Friday night so we put the kids and ourselves to bed and the next day we got up rested and ready for fun.

This was the view we had outside our windows Saturday morning. isn't that beautiful? All those beautiful trees and the misty fog rolling through them and over the lake. I love the mountains!

We headed into town so that we could walk around a little plus we needed to get some groceries. My four cuties had fun climbing on this four bear statue and they all posed next to their favorite one!

Rylee really wanted to show off how she could jump off this ledge. She started off a little higher up but really hesitated when she saw the drop (it was not that high but to this three year old it was enormous) so after trying to screw up some courage but not quite getting their she moved down to a smaller drop off and made the leap! Great job Rylee!!

While in the bookstore Kenedy found the current issue of TeenBop magazine and begged me to buy it for her. I owed her $5 for cleaning my bathroom anyway so I got it for her. We all liked teasing her about liking Justin Bieber although she says she doesn't. I believe her but it is still fun to tease her about it. Check out who she was reading about while at the grocery store! Ha ha ha! It came with some cool posters so now she has Selena Gomez, The Jonas brothers up on her wall. I told her she should send the Justin Bieber poster to her cousin Alyssa who also claims to hate the boy. I think it would be funny and Kenedy thought so too.

This store in McCall had the little shopping carts for kids to use. It was so cute watching Avy and Rylee walk around with their shopping carts putting things in them to buy.

Avynlea and Rylee had fun playing on this mechanical horse. I didn't have any change so we couldn't make it go but they enjoyed pretending.

YEE-HAW!

Silly girl!

My Mom likes to tell the story about when my older brother was about Rykers age and one day they were standing outside the supermarket when she lost sight of Jeremy. She looked around and found him scaling the store wall. He was pretty far up there and it scared her so bad. Watching my kids try this wasn't as scary because they did not get as far up. thank heavens!

Here I am waiting in the car for Kefford to get our Subway sandwiches. One of the Drs they do work for in McCall owns the Subway that is in McCall. He gave Kefford some coupons for free sandwiches and boy did we use those. We thought they were for six inch only but then Kefford came out with five huge footlong sandwiches. Wow did we ever eat good that night.

I need Kefford to make me a new pair of sunglasses. I love to people watch but I don't want said people to know that I am looking at them. I only figured out not too long ago that these glasses do not hide my eyes. How embarrassing! He better get on that one quick so I can go back to one of my favorite hobbys.

Before we left to go into town the three older kids played around in the hot tub. Rylee did not get a chance to and so I told her when we got back she and I would go in together by ourselves. She was really nervous about being in there and would only knell on the seat. I forced her to stand in the middle to show her it was not deep and so she became more comfortable with that. She did not like the jets though and would freak out any time I would turn them on. I have to admit I did it a couple of times on purpose because her reactions were so funny. Finally I told her they were only bubbles coming out and she seemed to be a little bit more OK with it. What a funny girl!

HotTubbing fun!

We had a perfect first full day in McCall and were happy to be together as a family away from the rest of life!

Chaparral Carnival!

September 10th was the annual carnival at Chaparral elementary school. It was also the first day of Dance class for my three girls plus the day we were leaving to go up to McCall. All three of these events were supposed to happen right around the same time so what was a girl to do? I decided that we would ditch the first day of class, go to the carnival and then leave to go to McCall. Phew! Problem solved!
I bought tickets the week before so that my kids could play games and go on rides. the day before the carnival I got a call from Rykers teacher telling me that he won a free ticket card in a drawing they held and that all of his siblings attending the school got a free one also. That was great but I already bought some tickets..man what is with the dilemmas? what to do now? Simple I sold the tickets to a friend who hadn't bought hers yet and we were good to go!

Ryker and Kenedy got their hair "dyed" first thing. Ryker thought his Blue and Orange Bronco colors looked really cool. Kenedy kind of liked hers, she thought the purple did not show up really well but she still looked really cute!

Avynlea and Rylee waited in a long line to get their face painted. Rylee got a pink butterfly with purple spots

while Avynlea got a sweet little Ladybug!

After his hair dye Ryker wanted to get his face painted also. So he got a rather funky shaped blue football. Kefford said it looked more like a blue blob and I tend to agree. But no matter Ryker was happy and that is what it is all about.

Avynlea plays ping pong bounce!

Playing this ping pong game proved to be really difficult for the three who played it. The game had mason jars set up and the child was supposed to bounce the ball into the jar. It was pretty hard.

Good try Avy!

Ryker took a turn but he couldn't do it either.

This is the part where I say that when Rylee took her turn she excelled and showed those balls who was boss. But, alas, she couldn't overcome the balls either. No worries they all got a candy for their efforts!

Almost as soon as we got to the carnival Kenedy found her friends and like a true tweener decided it would be more fun to run around with them. It's all good I totally understand!

Hannah, Kenedy and Natalia were in the same Kindergarten class but had a really hard time being a threesome. it was easier for them to act like girls and they seemed to always have two of them randomly pairing up and leaving out the third. It was a hard year friendship wise. They have not been in the same class since then until this year when Kenedy and Natalia were put in the same class. So far there have been no problems and I wonder if that is because Hannah is not in the same class. they are staying pretty good friends and I hope this continues!

The three of them showing off their dyed hair. I can't really see it but they feel cute so no worries!

As soon as we got to the Carnival Rylee wanted to do the blowup slide. She would not stop talking about it and finally we made our way over to the fun.

You go you little cute thing! She got two turns and loved every minute of it!

The train was the last thing the girls wanted to do and luckily they had enough punches on their ticket to do it. Ohh they were so excited to climb in and take their ride.

Such two cutie pies!

Ryker wanted to ride the train but he did not have enough punches. He was really disappointed but took it in stride and was cool with it. Isn't he so cute?

The three boys watching the girls. I love how Ryker in the picture above looks just like the guys in this picture!

This train ride was definitely worth the punches it took to go on it. They went in circles and went all over the grass, it was a long ride and oh so fun!

We had a lot of fun at our New Schools Carnival and were really happy to be a part of the fun. Great times and great memories!