Idaho-ho-ho

So I blogged forever ago about my trip to Utah to see my family, but I neglected to blog about our trip to Idaho this summer.  Since I just realized this I am going to remedy that right now.  It was such a wonderful trip.  Matt flew in the night before and we drove to Arco, ID where my Mother-in Law Joy grew up.  It was her parents 60th Wedding Anniversary that we were celebrating and it was about time we went to Idaho because in our 10 years of marriage we have never before made the trip up there.  The drive was a lot of empty space.  I don't think I've ever seen so much empty space in a drive before, but it had it's beauties for sure.  Matt taught us a song about Idaho and we had great fun singing crazy songs on the drive.  When we got to Arco we went to a park where we had a picnic with general visiting with family, crafts, games, etc.  It was fun to meet some of Matt's cousins that I had never met and to re-meet some that I have known but not seen in years.

After the picnic we checked into our hotel, that was very small, but still not the only one in Arco amazingly enough because it was the smallest of small towns I have ever been to with the purpose of visiting.  We freshened up and headed over to the church to have our anniversary celebration.  The funnest part of the evening were the props they had for pictures.  We had great fun with that.

 All the Jones cousins being silly.

 A beautiful picture Joy's sister, Alane drew for her parents anniversary gift.  It was so cool.

 Grandpa Tibbitts talking about how they made it 60 years one day at a time.  He was our sealer at our wedding 10 years ago and it was really fun to spend some more time with them during this trip.

 Gideon (the Police Man) takes (the Bad Pirate) Mommy to Jail.  See how sad I am.

 Grandma and Grandpa Tibbitts with all their kids.  Wes, Blaine, Alane, Stephanie, Joy and Debra.

 After the party we went back to Grandparents for fireworks.  This was Gideon's favorite part of the trip because he got to help light a lot of fireworks with his Great Uncle Blaine and Wes's son Boone.
The next morning we went to Church in Arco and had lunch at the Tibbitts' home with the family.  Matt showed me around the house he remembered visiting so often a kid. It was very nostalgic for him.  He was especially excited to show me the red carpet in the basement.

 Rushmore and Preston were great playmates.

 After lunch we headed out of Arco to go to Red Fish Lake, which was gorgeous.  We camped there Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and headed back to Utah on Wednesday morning.  Mike and Joy came and M'Recia and Brent and Melissa also a lot of extended family came.  They have a Tibbitts family tradition of camping there together every summer, but as I said before this was our 1st time going as a family.  I really enjoyed the bike riding which we did a ton of, spending time with Matt's cousins, spending time with the kids camping, being with Mike and Joy.  It was just about the most pleasant trip ever.  The kids were really great.  They rode their bikes so well.  Larke had one spill and got to go to school with her face scratched up.  She was going down this hill too fast and no one could stop her and she flew into this tree and kind of hugged it.  I'm so glad she didn't get hurt any worse then she did.  Her short life flashed before my eyes as I could do nothing to stop her.  She was so brave to get back on her bike after that and continue riding.

 Matt with his cousin Andy.  Matt especially enjoyed reconnecting with him and getting to know his wife, Saramarie and their cute little girl.

 The scenery was just beautiful and the Lake was gorgeous.  The kids had a lot of fun playing in the water and trying to catch tadpoles.  We got to ride on Matt's Uncle Wes's boat to a place where we got to do a hike to see a pond full of lily pads and a little farther on a waterfall.  It was a very good hike for kids and they did a great job.

 The kids enjoyed their first and possibly last Twinkies courtesy of Grandma Jones.  Eden especially thought it was a little piece of Heaven and thanked Grandma for it numerous times.

 My favorite picture of the trip.  Rush and Grandma.

 Matt, Gideon, Me, M'Recia, Brent, and Grandpa Tibbitts got stranded on our hike because Uncle Wes's boat stopped working on his way back to get us.  We waited for about an hour and finally were able to get a hold of Matt's dad who was able to find out that the boat wasn't working.  It was a nice hour though because I got to visit with Grandpa Tibbitts the whole time.  I found out that he broke his back twice and that he is just an amazing man.  We were able to get a ferry ride back, which was a little pricey, but at least we made it back.  A little adventure.  Gideon was the most anxious.  I think he was afraid we were going to be stuck there forever.

One of the things I didn't get a picture of was a place that had a lot of fallen logs going every which way.  Matt took me on a short date where we rode our bikes to this spot and just talked for a while about what a nice trip it had been and how we needed to come back and not wait for 10 years to do it. It was a special half hour.  I felt special that he wanted to take just me to this spot and that he made the time to do it.  It was totally worth the 2 day drive home.  Love memories like this one.