Family Pictures

Nick is less than a week away for departing to the MTC and so we had to do the obligatory famiy pictures before he left. Tell us what you think. I think they turned out pretty well.

Nick is excited to be on his last leg before heading out. He has put his room into storage. Zoe has been measuring space to plan her take over. We are now into the reminders like, "This is your last Sunday in the house." I think he is pretty excited to leave.

Darbi and Jaren have started cross country running practice and are doing well. It looks like Darbi will make the varsity team so she is excited about that. She has her first race and Saturday to determine placing for the upcoming season.

Mountain Biking

In celebration of Labor Day, Jaren and I went up to Silver Mountain in Kellogg Idaho and did our first foray into downhill mountain biking. Suffice it to say that if you would have placed a large lump of coal on my bike seat, I would have produced you a diamond by the end of the day. I can't believe how crazy it was. We road the gondola up to the top of the mountain and then went to the start of the 3 trails. The "beginner trail" was just the road back down the mountain. No way we were going to take that! We went over to the expert trail and it began with a 6 foot drop off. Okay, so that was out of the question. The intermediate trail was straight down but at least there was no drop off.

We chose to go intermediate and let me tell you......diamonds in the making. I put my brakes on, (both front and back locked up) and was picking up speed as I went down! I would have been able to concentrate better but I noticed a high pitched squeeling noise coming from somewhere that was very distracting. After 5 minutes I realized it was me screaming and crying.

It took us two hours to reach the bottom of the mountain from our first run. (Mind you, this was at the speed of light) I can't say it was fun but it was thrilling. We headed back up for round two but decided to have lunch, and let my tears dry. Our waitress asked how the first run went and I broke down sobbing.

Run two was more exciting for Jaren because he went over his handle bars twice. We were the only ones on the mountain that weren't in full body armor. We did go to the back shop after to check the prices on the stuff. The salesman told us right off that it less expensive than a trip to the emergency room.

So if anyone wants to come to Spokane and experience downhill mountain biking, Nikki would be more than happy to tag along.

Marathon Training

I thought I better give you an update on my marathon training. Today was especially hard as I had to go up the stairs TWICE when I realized I hadn't brought enough mini donuts down with me the first time. My work on the treadmill is much better after I discovered a little trick. I noticed that to make the workout harder, you can set this thing at an incline and simulate hills. So I thought, "Hey, I'm going to be going downhill sometimes, I need to train for that too!" I therefore came up with a "decline" system by placing a few dictionaries under the back of the treadmill. This has been a fantastic discovery. I have been working out for a week now on a "3 dictionary" decline and am now up to going 6 minutes at well over 2.5 miles an hour. (By the way, going any slower than 2.5 causes one to fall forward and strike their head on the front of the machine)

And now on to other exciting events. Nikki's mom has been somewhat reluctant, unwilling, stubborn or just plain lazy to get started on redoing our back deck; which has been very frustrating to me because I have no place to put my new lawn lounge chair. I was able to use it the other morning in the backyard to shout instructions to her as she cleaned out the gutters. It made it easier to check up on her atop our two story house being in the reclined position as I was. In reward for doing such a great job we took her up to Silver Mountain today.

We rode the "World's Longest Gondola" ride to the top of the mountain. We had a great time and really enjoyed the views. Not only did we ride in the gondola but took two other chair lifts and then hiked a ways to make it all the way to the tippy top. And here she thought she was coming to just relax and enjoy the grandkids. It was her first time on a chair lift, on a gondola, on the top of a mountain, and hiking at 7000 feet. We all had a great time.

Loads of Fun

I was going to wait and post when I had some pictures to show but I haven't had the time to download any so you have to suffer with just words.

We started off our fun by going to visit my sister and family in Utah. We spent a week with them and had a great time. Jaren spent the week at EFY in Provo. Darbi and McKenzie did girls camp together and had fun. The rest of us shopped and played golf. (I'll let you guess who did what. Suffice it to say that I found a lovely handbag that matched an outfit of mine that is to die for and this is Mike writing in case you were wondering.)

The only disappointmet came when I wasn't invited to participate in the new CD coming out. People just don't appreciate good humming like they used to. I even offered to whistle, but no takers. Instead we were treated to an AWESOME dinner at the Roof in Salt Lake overlooking the temple. If you haven't done this, you have to.

After a week in Utah we came home and I took the priests on their high adventure on Lake Coeur d' Alene. We had a great time on the water all week and no priests were killed or seriously injured.

The week after that, Nikki and I went up to girls camp and did the canoe trip. I lucked out and drove a chase boat while Nikki had to paddle a canoe with 14 young women. It was hot and a lot of wind to deal with. There were a lot of sunburns, tired hands, aching backs and sore bodies but they all survived. They didn't even care about me though when at one point I discovered I was out of sunflower seeds and was ready to cancel the rest of the trip. Fortunetly I found another bag and we were able to continue.

This week, Nikki's mom is in town and we are planning on showing her a good time. I did let here know that a good time at our house was replacing the back deck and repairing the fence on the side of the house. She is pretty good with a hammer for a senior citizen and I'm sure she'll do just fine.

Camp Peine

We went up to an LDS camp ground on Monday and spent 4 days with our good friends the Plumbs. The weather wasn't all that it should have been but we had a good time. We spent some time boating, tubing and even took a day and went on a boat ride up to a small town called Sandpoint. We moored the boats and went shopping for awhile and then went for some lunch.

By the time lunch was over, it was raining pretty good. We drove boated back to our camp sites in the rain. By the time we returned, the rain had stopped but it was still chilly out. We had to get back to town on Thursday because Nick was going through the temple for the first time.

He did a good job even though he was suffering a killer headache. He is anxious to go through the Salt Lake City temple with everyone next week.

Zoe was not happy we forced her to ride the tube at least once.

But she later recovered from the trauma.

Summer Pictures

We just go back from a few days on the boat. I will send more pictures as I edit them for size. Darbi was the photographer for the trip and did an awesome job.

Darbi showing off the guns.

Darbi and Zoe on the right.

Cooling off with a big wave.

Nick and Jaren with Darbi's friend on the tube.

"Big Air" Nick. He loves to wakeboard.

Baseball

Nick and I went to Seattle on Friday to catch a Mariners game. He really loves the Mariners and so we decided to do this one last time before he left on his mission. The Mariners aren't doing to well this year so we were hoping they might pull one out while we were there.

Nick picked this day a few months ago because it was Felix Hernandez bobblehead night. We arrived in Seattle a few hours early and there were already people lined up to get the limited edition bobblehead. We decided we weren't into it enough to wait in line for 3 hours so we walked into downtown Seattle and did a little shopping. As luck would have it, when we went in we were still able to score a bobblehead.

The game was great and we were able to witness a grand slam and also a 3 run homer. It was a great game and we really had a fun time.

Nikki and the kids informed us they also had a fun evening of eating macoroni and cheese but they were not able to get any pictures of that to share for the blog, maybe next time.