QUALITY FAMILY TIME

We spent a few days with our daughter Natasha and her family in Spokane.

 

 



 

Hubby Jim with Paige and Lucy.  These two dogs LOVE to play together and fetch a ball.  Actually Lucy fetches while Paige races her to see who gets to the ball first.  It's a given that Lucy get the ball.

 

 Matthew loves to play cards and games as much as I do so we were often found playing highly competitive games of  Rummy.

 

 

 

 

 

Grandpa Jim and Spencer spent quite a bit of time throwing a baseball and riding bikes.

 

 



 

 

Next we were off to Nampa, Idaho to spend a few days with Maria and her family.

 

 We got to hang out with this cute boy, what a ham he is.

 

 

 

 This is one of their dogs, Soley.  She is getting to be an old timer at 13 years old.

 

 

 

 Skipper is their other fur baby.  He is quite the sweet little guy, always happy to see us come.

 

 

 I thought this picture was funny, Landon is holding the binoculars upside down.

 

 

 

 

Granddaughter Addison took quite a few pictures trying to get a good shot of this butterfly.  It joined our little gathering in the front yard flying around for about 20 minutes.

 

 

 

 

Logan (top left), Addison and Landon (top right), Addison (bottom left) and the cute little creek we stopped at to have dinner of Dutch oven potatoes and bacon along with some hotdogs for the kids.

 

We took a drive up into the Ohywee (sp.?) mountains of southwestern Idaho.  Although it was a dusty and bumpy ride we did make it to a tiny little town (that is putting it mildly) called Silver City.  It looks like a town from the 1800's.  I kick myself for not taking pictures of the old buildings.

 

I did get this picture from up high in the mountains looking north east in southern Idaho.  This picture just doesn't do justice to the view from where we were.

 

 

Of course what is a little getaway without some excitement?  In Spokane we had a doozy of a thunder and lightening storm with advisories for flash floods.  Once we got to Idaho we had to deal with a couple of wildfires.  I am afraid this year is going to be remembered for all of the wildfires here in the west.

 

 This particular fire was about 12-15 miles from our daughter's house.  We drove to see it, luckily it was across the Snake River.  The smoke was awful and you could really feel the heat from the fire, such an eerie feeling.  This fire started on Saturday, June 6th but was put out by the next day, thank goodness.

 

 

 

 

This was the second fire we witnessed in the five days we were there.  It was about 10 miles away and across the Snake River also. 

 



 

Beautiful farmland surrounds the area Maria lives in, it would be a shame if the fires were to reach them. 

 

 

Our final night was spent at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner.  These three put together couldn't even finish one slice of Oreo Cookie cheesecake, it was SO rich.