Trip to McCall

We decided a while ago that we wanted to go to McCall's Winter Carnival this year. We invited some friends and family and finally hooked my parents (Oma and Opa). I think they were going through some Nathan and Sarah withdrawals after not having seen them over the holidays and not since early November. Needless to say, we were very happy to have them join us. We drove up Thursday afternoon with near perfect road conditions. We got to the Farmer Cabin about an hour before my parents but found that the cabin's heat was not on. We turned the heat on and got unpacked and tried to stay warm while we awaited Oma and Opa's arrival. We soon found out that we didn't have any running water and were concerned that maybe the pipes were frozen. When Oma and Opa showed up we learned how to actually turn on the water to the cabin and were able to get running water in the house. However, we also discovered that it sounded like there might be a burst pipe or something under the house because when we turned off the faucets we could still here a mysterious running/gushing water sound. We phoned some of my Uncles (Jim, Warren and Rick) to get some support but were concerned that this wasn't something we could fix or diagnose this evening and we needed to stay in a place with running water. My Uncles Jim and Warren and my Aunt Peggy offered for us to stay at their cabin, so after we finished eating dinner we headed over there. We stayed at their cabin for the rest of our stay at McCall and enjoyed their company while they were all there for part of the time. Thanks so much Jim, Peggy and Warren for your typical hospitality, kindness, warmth, space, conversation, sleds, and beds!


Here are Sarah and Nathan enjoying bedtime rituals with their Oma and Opa on Thursday night at Jim, Peggy, and Warren's cabin. I think all were content with their individual roles (including Mary and I!)

The kids enjoyed spending time with their grandparents and vice-versa and we all just enjoyed being in such a beautiful place together. When the kids slept (and sometimes when they didn't) I was pretty persistent in getting us together to play some games. We had purchased Alhambra, which is a new fun game that we learned about from some friends, and I was anxious to break ours in. Oma and Opa really liked the game and we played it a number of times. We also played Ticket to Ride: Europe. Mary had a disastrous gaming weekend, not winning a single game and generally getting wasted until we played Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (she absolutely dominates as this game!) on Sunday night and of course she won. I'm glad she won the game otherwise the trip home may not have been as pleasant as it was (tongue in cheek!).
Anyway, see below for the fun festivities of our long weekend with Oma and Opa in McCall for the Winter Carnival. I tried to do the posts so that they would be in order for your reading pleasure!

p.s.- this is a total binge-blog which is the result of cancelled church due to the amount of snow we got last night. It's snowed every day since we got home from McCall, but dumped a lot last night.

Winter Carnival Sculptures

So one of the biggest highlights and traditions of the McCall Winter Carnival is the amazing snow/ice sculptures that they do. This year's theme was "Wild, Wild West", which is pretty obvious from all of the sculptures. The Carnival essentially runs from the last weekend in January through the first weekend in February. On Friday the 25th, we went around and saw some of the sculptures. We didn't make it to all of them (there are over 40 at least), but we saw some pretty cool ones. They are spread throughout the town as they are sponsored by different stores, restaurants, hotels, etc.and are built in their parking lots, which makes it kind of hard with kids being in and out of car seats, but it is worth the trip. . Below are a couple of the cool ones that we saw and I'm sure we missed many other great ones. This is like the first day that some of them were finished and some were probably completed after we left. If we go next year we'll plan it better, but this year we ran into Nathan's nap and he was getting tired and cranky and we needed him to nap so he could be happy and have energy for his party later in the day. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Some of them we just drove by and looked at from the car but below are the ones that we got out of the car and took pictures of. I hope you can realize how huge these are. Unfortunately with the sun out and all the whiteness of the snow the clarity of the pics is not as good as they are in real-life. Sorry.





The five pics above are all from the same display, which was definitely one of the coolest. It was huge and had like 5-6 huge cattle, two cowboys on horseback, a cave with two Native Americans carved into the side of the cave (see difficult-to-see pic above of me and Nathan in front of one of the Native Americans). This one was huge and really neat!

This was the front of a train in front of "My Father's Place" the diner we went to for lunch for Nathan's birthday. The kids enjoyed seeing this one and we all enjoyed the chimes of "Choo Choo" from Sarah and Nathan.

A prospector mining for gold in front of the old Burger Den that apparently is no longer.

The three pics above are obviously from the same one of a bunch of wild stallions going through a river or some kind of body of water. There are 7 horses that are ornately carved with really detailed manes and tails. It's really cool how they make the water look so real.

Well that's the last of the snow sculpture pics. We'd love to have some people come and join us for next year's carnival. It's worth the drive and there is lot's to do, besides just enjoying being together and playing in the snow. We were fortunate to be there on Friday as it got really busy on Saturday and Sunday and we were able to avoid the crowds. However, we wished we would have planned things better and gone to participate in some of their other events or seen more of the sculptures. By the time we were leaving on Monday some of the sculptures had already melted or been covered somewhat in the snow. The people try to gently sweep the snow off, but it is hard to re-do anything that is melted by sun or fluctuating temps.

Sledding in McCall

McCall is just beautiful in the winter, particularly when you're surrounded by trees and it's been snowing so much. On Saturday we took advantage of the snow and took the kiddos out for some fun. Although Nathan screamed while we got him dressed, he loved it once he was outside. Oma and Opa joined us as well and it was nice that Jim, Peggy and Warren's cabin has a driveway that acts as a mild kid-sized snow hill. It was easy just to walk outside and sled on their driveway.

Here's Nathan and Sarah on the porch before they embark into the white snowy bliss!

Jim and Peggy had this sled that works great for kids because it has a back and you can just sit them down and send them on their way. It was great to have!

Here'sNathan and Opa on a trip down the driveway. They ran into the snowbank, which turned out to be a somewhat frequent occurrence for everyone that tried the hill.

Daddy and Sarah squeezing onto a saucer-sled.

Nathan and Daddy trying to avoid the snow bank

Sarah piggy-backing on top of Opa, she was squeeling the whole way!

Nathan on a solo trip down the hill, always smiling!

Nathan and Oma after a sledding trip where they were backward most of the way!

Daddy and Nathan on one of our trips down the hill, with Opa supervising.


Daddy and Nathan preparing for a trip while Sarah and Opa look on.


Sarah on one of her solo trips down the hill.

Sarah and Daddy pulling Nathan up to the top of the hill for another trip down. The cabin is in the background.
Sarah wanted to help Daddy give Nathan a good pull down the hill on one of his solo trips. She forgot to let go of the rope the first time, this is the second (successful) attempt.

Nathan at the bottom of the hill after a solo trip.

We had a great time sledding and when it was time to go in, after at least an hour or so, the kids probably would have been happy to stay out longer but they were also content to be done and get into the warmth. It was a really fun time and I just realized that Mary isn't in any of these shots. I hope Oma and Opa took some pics of her because she did take several turns down the hill with the kids and the four of us used Jim and Peggy's large tobagan to take a trip down. I'm sure Oma and Opa will put the photos on their blog soon enough (hint, hint)!

Visit to SLC

Before we decided on a date for me to begin my job in Mtn Home, I was insistent that we take a week off for some kind of a fun family vacation. We couldn't have had more fun! After getting "settled in" to our temporary living situation in Mtn Home we headed for SLC, Utah to visit our good friends Kari and Adam and their two kids. Adam, who was starting his second year of residency, was remarkably able to get that week off at the hospital. On our way down we stopped for a brief visit at the Salmond's residence outside of Logan. It was great to see Bishop Salmond and his wife Patty and hope that we can drop by some more in the future. We just spent about an hour or so there and enjoyed catching up with them and seeing their new house. Sarah and Nathan went into their toy room downstairs and we hardly heard a peep out of them until it was time to go. Patty enjoyed feeding them plenty of cookies : * ) We then continued our cruise down to the Sugarhouse area outside of Salt Lake and began our visit with Kari and Adam. It was really great to see them and spend time with them. We spent every evening playing games (primarily Ticket to Ride: Europe) until around midnight and then did various trips or visits during the day. We spent a day on Temple Square and enjoyed walking around there. We took a trip down to Provo to see our friend Eric as well as Mary's brother Kris. We went to the zoo in SLC and enjoyed doing that. Mary and Kari took a shopping trip up around Park City and Jeff and Adam played tennis a couple of mornings. It really was a vacation reminiscent of old times in this fun friendship of ours! Before heading home we went to another park (the name escapes me) that has a bunch of sprinklers and Nathan and Sarah just got SOAKED! and we weren't even planning on them getting wet so it was pretty funny. While there I met up with one of my old mission buddies, Corey and his wife Rebecca and their two kids. It was fun to catch up with them and hang out for a bit while also trying to keep track of our kids. It was really warm the week that we were there and so the kids enjoyed frequent sprinkler activities as can be seen in some of the pics below. Nathan really enjoyed Kari and Adam's boxer, Dirk, and had fun with him. We enjoyed barbecueing food and just hanging out together. It was a lot of fun. I think we kind of hi-jacked Kari and Adam's unexpected vacation, but I think that we all enjoyed a great time together. A big THANK YOU to Kari and Adam for hosting us and showing us around SLC a bit!!!!!

Sarah and Clate next to some fountains on the side of the Salt Lake LDS TempleSarah in front of the Salt Lake LDS Temple. CHEESE!
Sarah in front of the Christus statue on Temple Square in SLC

The kids playing in the water in Kari and Adam's backyard








Us with Mary's brother, Kris, at Chuck-A-Rama : * )

Visit to Nyssa

Unfortunately we don't really have any pics of the trip but this last weekend we took a trip over to Nyssa and Fruitland for a couple of days to spend time with some of my Uncles, Aunts and cousins. Two of my Mom's bro's Jim and Warren own and run the same farm that my Mom grew up on in Nyssa so we went out there on Friday and they took us out to lunch. We then got a tour of their onion packing shed. It is an amazing process to see and have it explained to you and then to see it in action. I got to see the process in January when I was in Nyssa with my parents and siblings for my cousin's funeral but I was glad that Mary got to see it as well. I think that I always pictured farming as somewhat out of date or not necessarily in touch with the technological world but their process is so cool and certainly involves a great deal of technologically advanced machinery. Anyway, if you want to see the plant in action they actually have a YouTube video on it. Just look up Fort Boise Produce and it should come up, it's pretty cool.
After our tour of the packing "shed" and once Warren and Jim had loaded our car up with about 100 lbs. of onions, Warren drove us around the farm to show us their different plots and to see some harvesting in action. It was really fun to see! We also go to see their storage sheds which are gigantic and watched them load the onions in large crates and then placed with precision by a fork lift one on top of the other all the way to the ceiling... probably 4 - 5 stories high. Warren estimated that they would produce 75 million lbs. of onions this year. Amazing!
On Saturday I went with my uncle Rick out to breakfast with Jim and Warren and about 20 others and then we went out onto their farm and did some pheasant hunting as it was opening day for that season. I just went along for the nice brisk walk and didn't get to see any pheasants shot down, but I had fun nonetheless. After the hunting there was a large gathering of probably 50 or so at Jim and Peggy's house for a lunch. Mary met me there and we had a fun time in the beautiful weather. We spent time talking to some of my other cousins and just enjoying being outside and relaxing.
While we were on the trip we stayed at Rick and Laurie's house in Fruitland. They have 10 kids (8 girls) ages 4-18 so Sarah and Nathan were well taken care of to say the least. And when they weren't being occupied with some of my cousins they were just fine playing with the bounty of toys downstairs. Although the kids didn't sleep all that great, we all had a lot of fun and Nathan woke up the morning after we returned home and was asking about one of my cousins (Claire) who had played with him a lot. It was pretty cute. We may meet up with Rick and Laurie this weekend if Joslin and the triplets High School soccer team makes state in Twin Falls. We'll see.

Family Hikes

Somewhere around this text are some pics of mine and Mary's 3rd annual sibling hike. This year we happened to go to the same area up near the Anthony Lakes area between Baker City and La Grande in Eastern Oregon. It was beautiful country though Mary and her siblings got two more days than me, my Dad and my brother Jordan did, and a lot better weather! We both had fun though! On my hike with my dad and brother it was 70 degrees on Thursday on the way in and around lunch time on Friday the temp dropped to probably the mid-20's and started snowing. We accumulated about 2-3 inches in 90 minutes and decided we should get out while we could still see some semblance of a trail. We came out a day earlier than expected because we didn't want to sit in a small tent for another 24 hours playing card and dice games. At 8,000 feet we experienced how quickly the weather can change in the fall. Needless to say, we experiencd the best weather of all three years of these sibling hikes and the worst weather within about 24 hours, it was pretty crazy but a lot of fun.

For those that don't know about this tradition Jeff (me) goes on a hike with his dad and brothers (as many as can come) and Mary goes with her siblings sometime each summer/fall. Unfortunately for Mary and her siblings, every year they have had one nursing infant with them and the other sister has been expecting and this year was no exception as Mary and I found out we were pregnant about a week before they left (surprise if this is the first you've heard about this). This might sound bad for Mary and her sister Jenny but you have to realize that this makes Kris and Mike (Mary's brothers) pack mules as they relieve their sisters of significant weight.

We look forward to continuing this tradition next year, only this time us guys are going to make sure it happens before it starts to get too cold up in the mountains to avoid the snow. And Mary will definitely have a nursing infant with her next summer when she goes so now I guess the ball is in her sisters court.