The Summer We Tried New Things

So this was our 4th summer in Boise and there have been some things we've passed up in previous summers that we decided to try this year...with the kids! Sometimes we left thinking we are crazy and sometimes we left thinking that was really fun! 

And this first picture is an example of my photo situation right now. My camera got bumped in June and my auto focus hasn't been working since, so it's either iPhone photos or pictures I manually focused (which means only 1 out of about 6 turned out, ha!)

The Snake River Stampede Rodeo in Nampa

This one was a little bit of both "we're crazy" and "that was fun!". Both kids actually LOVED seeing the animals running and bucking and jumping and getting lassoed and chased. But there were also fireworks that went off right down in the arena after they shut off the lights and that freaked Ava out.
I'm having picture problems, so I'll just have to note that they had this awesome buffalo trainer come and show how he can get these buffalo to walk up a ramp to the top of a semi truck.
This was probably the most expensive thing on the list but also the thing we'll most likely do again and look forward to!

A visit to lil old Weiser

Garrett had been doing an accounting internship in Payette all summer long and so when Devin's parents came to visit him we decided to join and we all went to see the little town of Weiser, ID. We went to a cute (and yummy!) candy shop that is famous for their "velvet mints". Oh man, I'm usually not a chocolate/mint combo fan but these were indescribable and melt in your mouth delicious. They gave Ava a free lollipop and the kids loved spending time with Uncle Garrett, too!

The Western Idaho Fair

This was Ava's first time riding any carnival rides, which she got to do because as we were walking in, a family was leaving and offered us their tickets they weren't going to be using. It was just enough for her to ride on two rides, which was perfect! She did great riding by herself and she was thrilled to be "driving a car" by herself!




We didn't go crazy on fair food, we actually just split a piece of pizza because practically everywhere only accepted cash and we didn't have any. We were also rushing to get to the sea lion show which I have to note...it's always hard to get seats in the bleachers unless you are seated way before the show starts which is suicide with little kids so once we got there I parked the stroller under the bleachers and used it to hoist myself up to the seat that Devin grabbed for us. I know it's hard to picture, it was just funny at the time so I wanted to document it. The sea lion show was kinda lame though, we had seen an amazing show at Utah's State Fair after we were married so the long periods of talking and little sea lion performance was pretty disappointing. But the kids didn't know the difference and owen was clapping almost the whole time!

Horse Races

So this was the activity that I had been wanting to do for a LONG time. I've always been a fan of the Kentucky Derby and it's a really inexpensive thing to go do and I thought the kids would love to see the horses. Well, they did...for the whole 3 minutes that they raced. We decided this would actually be much more enjoyable without the kids because there is a 20 minute wait between each race while they rake the track and do who else knows what.



It was also incredibly hot so we'll probably time it to go earlier in the season, like late spring. They did do a fun little "kids race" with stick horses between two of the races, but the youngest age that they allowed was 5 so Ava just got to watch her friends participate and get prizes haha. She also got a little traumatized by seeing a horse that was having a really hard time breathing after its race and they had to get help. This was when we were right down by the track, so she asked me about that for WEEKS afterward!




After a boating outing we took the kids to New York Richie's - a cheesesteak place in Boise/Garden City and Chik Fil A (below) on Cow Appreciation Day. We've kind of done those things before but they were pretty stand alone events so here's to new traditions!
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