Magic in the Sky

I have discovered that a great way to find out all the funnest family activities to do when you move to a new city is to follow people on InstaGram who do fun stuff with their kids. That is how I found out about the hot air balloon festival here in Boise that is held every Labor Day weekend (hey Em and Kacie...maybe next year...?).

Friday night we went to the Night Glow. I thought that the balloons would actually be launching, but it was just a light show which was underwhelming from where we had gone to watch. It would have been a cool view if the balloons had actually taken off. That night everyone was complaining, complaining, complaining and I was a bit disappointed since I had wanted to see the balloons launch since I had never seen that before. I decided I was going to get up early on Sunday morning to attend the big launch, the culmination of the entire festival. I was not expecting any of the kids to want to wake up at 6am to come and I wasn't going to force them or even encourage them to come with me after such a fiasco for the Night Glow, but much to my surprise all 6 kids wanted to go and got up! I'm so glad they did because it was so amazing!!!

  Night Glow

When we arrived at the park on the morning of the big launch I was surprised to see that all of the balloons were flat on the ground.

The kids were still half asleep.

It was surprising how fast all the balloons went up!

I bribed them saying if they smiled for the pictures and cooperated I would buy them ice cream the next day. Can you tell how much they like ice cream? A LOT!

 They timed the launch perfectly to happen just as the sun rose. It was so amazing! And blinding.

Going...

Going...

Gone

And we even made it to our 9am church on time.

Just the stuff we want to remember

So, if you heard the soundtrack of our weekend you would have heard a pretty good dose of melt downs, arguing, tattling, talking back and you would have heard many sighs of frustration, please flush the toilet, please turn off the lights, wash your hands, go take a bath, get OUT of the bath you have been in there for an hour,  I have asked you to set the table five times, don't wipe your mouth on your shirt, don't wipe your hands on your pants, come unload the dishwasher, come load the dishwasher, do your jobs, do your homework, etc... So lest these pictures make it look like our life is perfectly peaceful, I can assure you that it is not. But, there are lots of good moments mixed in with the crazy ones and here are a few that I want to remember.

Boise has the coolest bike trail called the Greenbelt that is ideal for family bike rides. It is over 20 miles long and is just beautiful. Thanks to our neighbors gifting us two mountain bikes, buying a bike trailer and a few used bikes online, and Jared and I buying ourselves some bikes for our wedding present to ourselves, all 8 of us can go together. I am hoping we can get in several more family bike rides while the weather is still nice.





We stopped for a little break and the kids had so much fun playing on the "island".

Can you tell how much Trevor loves frogs?

Here are Sydney and Leah "shucking potatoes". That's what Sydney said.

Jared making some homemade rolls...they were delicious!

 I just took the Peach Crisp out of the oven and we are going to have that with some homemade vanilla ice cream. I made some peach ice cream earlier this week and it wasn't so great, but I think this batch turned out well. We have had peach everything this week, peach pie, peach smoothies, peach jam, dried peaches and fresh peaches. We have a peach tree in our back yard that produced a ton of peaches. Jared's parents even came for a few days at the beginning of the week and bottled peaches and made jam to help us out. Despite all the bottling, drying and jam making we still have a lot of peaches. So this week we will be trying to get them all processed before they get over ripe... fruit leather and more jam are on the docket.

I think all the homemade canned stuff makes for beautiful kitchen decor.

Well, I'd better sign off and work on cleaning up the mess we made in the kitchen. Happy Sunday!

Seth turns 5

Last month we celebrated Seth's birthday. Fun times were had by all and the pinata was the highlight as always!