Oakley Reservoir Fishing Trip

We went to the Oakley Reservoir as soon as the weather cleared up for a day or two! The water was unusually high this year so we took our chances that we would even get any fish! We took a can of corn to put on the line with the worms, but Ellie kept reaching into the can and eating all of the bait!

Leave it to these two hams to smile for me! Chelsey likes to hide when the camera comes out, but these two will really put on a show for me!

One of Gary's complaints about taking the kids fishing is that he spends so much time redoing the lines on their poles. Someone always has a snag or needs more sinkers or something! He rarely gets to spend time fishing himself.

Along with having to mess with poles, he spent a lot of time taking the fish off the lines when they did catch something! None of the girls want to touch the fish, so he gets stuck with that job, too! He's not complaining that they catch fish, just that they refuse to take care of them once they are on board!

Mikayla didn't want to fish this time. She just wanted to lay on the front of the boat and work on her tan! She ended up quite sunburnt! I have a picture that I am not posting on the blog that shows just how badly she fried! When Gary had all he could take of redoing lines and taking fish off the lines, she started driving the boat so he could actually get a little fishing time in, too.

This made one happy daddy!

Our little fishermen! Ellie loved trying to put her pole in the water. She never did realize their was no line or worm on hers! She was happy just to lean over the side and drag it along the water.

You can see the beginning of Chelsey's sunburn along the straps of her tank top. She refused to wear sunscreen because she wanted to work on her tan, too. I don't think she will make that mistake again!

Treven loves to fish! If only we could convince him to leave the line in the water. he likes to cast and reel instead of leaving it out there for awhile!

We ended up catching 5 or 6 trout and 1 walleye that day. The boys came home and cleaned the fish and we ate them for dinner that night!

Shoshone Falls

Gary had been wanting to take a road trip to Shoshone Falls for a few weeks, but due to bad weather, we didn't get to go until the end of May. I can remember seeing the falls before, but never this much water pouring over the rocks. It was awesome! We walked to a look out platform that was surrounded by gates. Treven loved looking over the gates at the water. You could feel the mist from the water on your face from the platform. Mikayla kept freaking out because she was sure the platform would fall or the gates would come off or something...she wouldn't even walk out there!

Ellie tried walking part of the time, but it was just too far and too steep for her most of the way. We all took turns carrying her around!

There was a big rock wall by the platform so Gary had all the kids line up and he took about 20 shots (all of the exact same line up!) It's really weird now to have pictures of just 4 kids instead of 5. Still seems like someone is missing!

When you look down from the platform where the waterfall stops and hits the lake, there is the most beautiful rainbow in the mist! I tried to get a good shot of it, but my camera just didn't do it justice!

This is the view from the look out straight out and ahead. It seems like so much water and it comes down so fast! I would sure hate to think about getting caught up in that! I've never been a fan of water, so there's no way I would ever get closer than the look out! This last picture is from our walk back. Treven and I were lagging behind so he could look at every rock, every bug, every wild flower we could see. I looked up and thought it was so cute how everyone else was walking along together!

Mikayla's Sweet 16

I didn't realize that I hadn't posted anything from Mikayla's 16th birthday until last week when I was scrolling through some of my old posts! What kind of mother does that? We went with kind of a sweet shop theme and lots of hot pink, black, and white. We set the bar up to have lots of treats in her colors. We wrapped the Hershey bars and added the "M" labels and the "16" labels. We used the same labels on toothpicks in her cupcakes. We had hot pink buckets filled with Good and Plentys, black licorice, oreos, pink whoppers, and pink gummy rings.

Mikayla sure got spoiled for her birthday! She received everything from clothes, to shoes and jewelry, to candy and perfume! What a lucky young lady!

Gary's brother, Craig was teasing Mikayla at Ian's birthday party right after Christmas about her not inviting him to her parties. She told him she would be turning 16 soon and he said she had better invite him...so she did! He works a lot so we weren't sure if he would make it, but he showed up as promised and gave her $50 toward a new car!

I decided we needed some sort of sign for the goody bar so I made the sweet shoppe sign. I don't know if you can see it, but each of the scallops on the sign have a rhinestone on them adding to the "bling" factor. We also put the rhinestones on each of the labels for the candy bars and cupcakes. You can see a little bit of the pink bucket with black licorice and the stands that are empty held cupcakes. I didn't put them out too early as Ellie really likes cupcakes! I bought some glass-looking plates and cups at the dollar store and glued them together to make the stands. They ended up looking really pretty with the cupcakes on them.

Easter Invitation

These are the invitations that I made to send out for our annual Easter egg hunt. I had just bought the butterfly stamp and punch from Stampin' Up and I was so excited to use them!

Christmas Card

A couple of months ago, Robin held a crop for the March of Dimes at her new house. Mom and I drove down and I took supplies to make another set of Christmas cards. They turned out pretty cute and I now have 4 more cards for my collection!

Easter

We make the kids stay in the house while the adults hide the eggs They get pretty antsy and excited to get out there!

Braquel and Keven came up and enjoyed the festivities, too! I'm glad they still come and take part even though they are grown-ups now!

We were only missing a couple of the grandkids! This is the first picture with most of the crew that I've gotten in a long time! I'm so blessed to be close to my family and have these get togethers!

and the race is on!

Mikayla

Danisha

Cheyanne

Natalie

Ivy

Jovianne

Ellie

Sally

Sam

Kylee

Morgan

Ashlynn

Justice

Whitney