Editing/proofreading

So.... I didn't proof read ANY of my posts from yesterday. Sorry to make your eyes bleed. I will get around to correcting the posts later.

Love me

Horsey Fun

O LOVED riding Aunt Tabithas horse. It was a highlight of her trip. Two of her cousins were there with her. I promise I did her hair before we left the house. She had to take out her pony tails to get the helmet on.

O all ready for her ride.

I got to ride too.

 O sharing the saddle with her cousins P and S.

Aunt Tab and the cousins.

I'm sad I didn't get a photo of O and her aunt and her cousin B. 

Odds and ends.

O and her buddy Rocky.

The first night in Sun Valley, all of the family ate dinner at my dads place. O quickly made a sign that said, "Open Restaurant"

Temple Tour and churchy stuff

While we were out west, I wanted to introduce O to as many temples as I could. We hit up the Idaho Falls Temple, Twin Falls Temple, Brigham City Temple, Oquirrh Hills Temple,  Jordan River Temple and the Salt Lake Temple. It was fun showing her where mommy and daddy were married.

O's foot and the Idaho Falls Temple. Do you like her artistic creativity?

Twin Falls Temple on the way home from Sun Valley. She is trying to shove her father out of her way in this pic.

O at the fountain at the Brigham City Temple. She was being a real stinker for these shots.

 Here is the Brigham City Temple up close.

O in Brigham City with the old Tabernacle behind her.

Oquirrh Hills with daddy.

"Look O, this is where mom and dad were married." Jordan River Temple.

Okay, EVERY kid HAS to play in the fountain at the JR temple. Do you like how LT isn't doing anything to prevent it? 

You need to click on this picture to fully appreciate the magnificent beauty of this temple. Wow. Getting married to LT is the best decision I've ever made.

Okay, so this isn't a temple in the functional sense of the word, but wow, the canyons in the Salt Lake Valley are sacred to me. If you look very closely, you can see Mickey Mouse rock in the background.

Here we are on our way to see Grandma at the church office building. Of course we had to stop and pose while waiting to cross the street. Doesn't EVERYONE do that? (Conference center in the background.)

The beautiful Salt Lake Temple. An iconic image of mormonism.

Posing with Grandma in her office. 

Posing at the Christus statue. O was totally into posing that day. (Is that a little irreverent?)

Family Sun Valley Time

LT joined us in Sun Valley the middle of our second we there. It was really nice to have a "vacation" with him. Unfortunately he came down with a yucky cold but hey, he was with us, AND he wasn't studying. 

We had a good time climbing as a family. I really enjoyed seeing O on the rope. I come she comes to love climbing like I do. We were really impressed with her bravery. We did push her a little bit to go higher and she did when we promised her ice cream.

Me. I really miss the rock. You just can't compare it to pulling plastic.

LT getting in on the action.

O on her way down from the super high climb. I love her outfit.

On the long drive from Sun Valley to Pocatello, we decided to make a few stops to keep in interesting. I've seen the sign for the Shoshone Ice Cave for years and never visited it. Hooray for spontaneity. It was probably in the 80's outside, but in the cave it was just above freezing.

R took a family picture for us in the cave. See, isn't that a pretty cave? Ya, it was really dark in there. The guide turned out the lights for a moment so we could experience the darkness. So what I learned was this cave was a natural ice maker. Cool.

By the time we made it to the gorge in Twin Falls, O was done being a tourist. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact she hadn't slept much for two weeks because she was having so much fun with her cousins.

Family picture at the gorge. Yep, O is totally into it.

 THE GORGE!!!

Here is O with my brothers kids.

O and her Uncle M and Aunt M.

Time to catch up.

Wow, I can't believe how much time has passed since I told you I would post about our summer. Oops. Well, I'm motivated today because we started sending our Christmas cards out with our blog address. We couldn't decide what to put in our Christmas so we just told people to go to our blog. Now, I want to let you know, I did write a Christmas letter and it was awful. LT even said it was too dry. He rarely ever criticizes my work.  Oh well, I can't be funny ALL of the time.

On to the summer recap.

In July, we went to Sun Valley to spend 2 weeks with my Dad and other family. It really has been years since I've spent time with a lot of my Murphy cousins. Boy had I been missing out. What a fun group of people. There is something so nice and reassuring about being with family that has known you since you were a baby. AND, they are just honest to goodness nice people. I'm at the tail end of the grandchildren so my cousins children are the cousins I spend most of my time with. One such cousin is Emily. She has 3 little spitfire girls and O had the time of her life playing with them. Here is my sweet daughter holding hands with M while walking to the Salmon fish hatchery. My dad is in front and my rock star nephew is in back.

After the informative/educational and smelly food fish hatchery. We made our way to Red Fish Lake. -Sigh- Red Fish holds a special place in my heart. Not only is the water stunningly clear and the surroundings blissfully beautiful, there is a peace that lives there. In all of my travels, I have seen many wonders and beautiful places, but my Idaho mountains will always be home. The smell of the trees and dirt, the clear water and the peace.

Of course we had to take out canoes and paddle boats. One can not be at Red Fish and NOT go out on the lake. Here is O and M with my cousins B and A.

Time for paddle boats.

My cousin received her endowment in the Twin Falls temple. She is now serving a mission in the Philippines. I've been to the temple many, many times, but it was a completely different experience being there with so much of my family. It was awesome.

My dad had us come out for the Sun Valley Summer Symphony. One week during the summer they have a special music camp and my nephew R got to participate. He performed in several concerts and this picture is of my dad, sitting next to his sister W and her daughter V. And, we also have O doing her usual, "I'm not smiling for this picture" face. Wow, we have tons of these pictures. Anyway, we were waiting outside for a concert to start.

Now, if you give O a chance to be sneaky or mischievous she will light up. Bunny ears are good for a 5 year olds soul.

Rock Star Rowan playing that bad boy clarinet.

One fun "tradition" the Hynes family has is floating down the river. Granted you only float for 40 feet, but still, it is their tradition. R and I joined them for a dip. That water was FREEZING cold. Seriously, I'd forgotten how cold a mountain stream can be.

One really fun part of being in Sun Valley was being with R. I haven't had the chance to spend much time with him. I really enjoyed talking with him and getting to know him better. O and I had a lot of fun teasing him. We shared a condo and we told him we were going to have a girls night with him and paint nails and do hair. Yep, he was TOTALLY into that. (not really). Speaking of teasing, here is a sequence of pictures where O tries to dunk him. He is really good with her and lets her tease him.

Okay, so after my first time floating the river, I brought LT and O to do it with me and I wore a wet suit. I thought the suit would make a big difference, but nope, it was still 34 degrees. ( I swear, it was cold.)

A huge highlight of our trip was the paragliding trip I had with R. Originally LT was going to come, but he started coming down with a cold and since we'd already paid for it, we had R go in his place. Man, I am an adrenaline junkie. I can't wait to do it again. A cool connection I had with my pilot was his niece was in O's preschool class. I'm friends with brother and sister-in-law. I accidentally kept calling him by his brothers name. Oops, but in my defense, they could be twins.

See what I mean about smiling? We kind of got a smile out of R after the adventure. Now, while we were in Sun Valley, there were 2 major forest fires nearby and the air was smokey. Next time I get up there, I hope the air is clear. I can imagine it would make for an even more spectacular ride.

It's only hair

I surprised my husband several weeks ago when I told him I wanted to cut my hair short, or even shave it. He asked why I wanted to shave it,  I told him all of my various reasons and he said, "Why is it, that in 12 years of marriage I never knew you always wanted to shave your head?"

Truth be told, since high school, I have had this crazy desire to shave my head. I don't know why but there is an "I'm okay with who I am and others don't need to tell me how to look"message. But I was always too chicken to do it. However, when I know or hear of someone I know who has done it, it reminds me that I've always wanted to do it too. 

In high school, I remember one of my friends had seizures and would have to have brain surgery over the summer. I told her I would shave my head so she wouldn't be the only one with no hair. I thought of it once again when my friend MB lost all of her hair during chemo treatments for the cancer that eventually claimed her life. Last year a friend of mine shaved his head to show support for his nephew fighting cancer. And most recently, one of my friends in UT shaved her head, long story with that.

While I was waiting in a very long line with some friends a couple of weeks ago, we started talking about hair. I said I was toying with the idea of going really short of just shaving my head. One of my friends said she'd shaved her head and it was the most liberating thing ever. It took me a good long time to really settle in to my decision, and when I told LT when I wanted to do it, he said, "Well, I want to be the one to do it."I love that he's knows me well enough to respond the way he did.

So, last night was the night I'd picked a week ago to do it. We used an 8 guard on the razor so it's not bald, but it is short. Now, I realize that if you've never wanted to do it, you'll never understand. But I've found friends who totally get it. And now that I've done it, I get why it is so cool and liberating. 

Okay, I can take this off my bucket list. 

Partial tour of our yard

My mum has been hounding me for pictures of our property and I finally got out of the house and took some. I love everything about our place and I couldn't be happier here. When we tell people we live on a wooded lot they usually don't really get it until they visit. It is shaded a good part of the day and I love that I feel like I'm on a hike when I go to get the mail.

Enjoy

Alright, here is our property from the street. It is kind of hard to find because our driveway sneaks up on you and it's hidden by all of the trees and vines.

Here we are looking at the top of our driveway.

Now we are heading down our driveway.

This is what I see when I look right. Our property extends quite a distance in that direction.

I'm continuing down our driveway and getting closer to our house.

 You can actually see it through the trees.

Ah ha! Here is our front lawn, and more driveway.

 I am still on the driveway looking right toward the house.

This view is from the very same spot as the previous picture and I am looking up our driveway towards the street.

Now I'm at the bottom of the driveway looking up toward the street.

I am in the same spot but turned toward the garage.

To the left of the garage is the goat pen.

I am looking at the end of our property which stops a few feet before the fence in the background. Here are our curious boys begging for my attention and food. The white ribbons are the electric fence that keeps most of them in. Rocky is so little he just come out when he feels like it. Fortunately goats are herd animals and Rocky won't stray too far from the others.

 I've stepped over the white ribbons. To the left of me is an area that used to look like the wooded picture from the driveway. We've done a lot of clearing out and the goats have been doing their job of eating the green stuff. 

This view is in the opposite direction of the last picture. You can see the bottom of the driveway and some of our sheds. You can even see the blue tarps at the goat pen.

Here is an area in the back of our property near the fence.