Growing up so fast!!

School pictures have arrived...

Nicole - 6th grade
















Ashley - 3rd grade

Labor Day fun

For our annual Labor Day rendevous we took the Leachs into Hell's Canyon to play on the river. Ann had never been up the canyon and Paul is such a great guide. We were having a great trip until we decided to pull Nicole on the tube for a little ways and OOPS I didn't get the rope in fast enough when we stopped pulling her and the jet pump sucked it in and shut down one of our engines. Luckily, we have a twin engine so it only took us twice as long to get down the river. I'm always glad when Paul is driving the boat because I have such confidence in him (especially when we're coming down in the dark, oh and the fog :) ) What a sweetheart, I never once heard him get frustrated with me.




David & Ann
Adam & Eric

Brad
Nicole tubing

First Day of School!!!!!

Oh yeah... we were ready for school. I think Ashley could have gone to school all summer and was definitely excited to start 3rd grade, especially because she has Mrs. Thompson, in the BIG hall. It makes me sad to think I'll never be in the little hall of McDonald for one of my kids again :(

Nicole wasn't as excited... I think the nerves were playing a major role in her reluctance to go back to school. She had a great first day of 6th grade though and loves her teacher Mrs. Parce.

It was sooo nice to have warm weather this year. Last year the girls started the first day in winter coats.

Berlyn, Nicole and Tiffany


SOME of our cute little neighborhood kids that come to our house every morning to walk with the girls. Ashley, Jessica, Grace, Erica, McKenzie, McKenna

The puppies are growing!!!

Nicole went up to spend a weekend with Nana and was able to see the puppies while she was there. They are about a month old in these pictures.

My 20 year HS reunion

At the end of July, I went down to Layton, UT for my 20 year high school reunion. It was SOOO much fun seeing everyone after 10 or more years.



HS BFF's Kris, Staci, Me

More BFF's Tammy, Tobie, Brooke, Jill
The whole bunch of us...
Quinn, Me, Jill, Pat
Me & Tammy
Tobie, Angie, Jill, Tammy, Me

The Puppies are here!!

We headed up to Coeur d'Alene to visit with my sister and her kids who came in from Nebraska for 3 weeks. They had planned on coming down to Moscow for a week but Nicole ended up with pneumonia and was down for the count for the week. Who gets pneumonia in the summer? I guess it was God's way of slowing us down for a week. When we got up to Cd'A, we went to see Chukar's new puppies... 4 girls and 2 boys. They are 8 days old in these pics... eyes still closed and everything.

Chukar and Abbie sittin' in a tree... K I S S I N G...

In May, we had a guest puppy at our house, her name is Abbie and she was staying with us with the intention of welcoming puppies into the world within 8 weeks. The date week was successful... although very funny and informative - who knew that dogs get stuck together sometimes for almost 20-30 minutes - I sure didn't. Abbie became a quick member of our family - if only for the week and was soon cuddling with Chukar on Ashley's bed.

Nicole's birthday

Nicole decided this year to have a few friends over for a sleepover and games. Her friends, Berlyn and Tiffany and Matthew joined us for lots of fun and Ashley got to invite Grace over for the sleepover and festivities.

We borrowed a few ideas from our good friend Kecia (thanks!!) and they did a "blind-folded lipstick" game and "find the chocolate chip in the whip cream" game. We also did a scavenger hunt which was fun but WAY TOO SHORT. They could have gone on for an hour with that.

Wrapping up the evening were, make your own pizza, sundae bar and finally a "bawl fest" with the movie "Marley and Me". Paul and I unfortunately couldn't stay up late enough to see the movie.

Nicole is the first victim of the lipstick


the start of the scavenger hunt

Matthew dives into his whip cream
Nicole and Tiffany find their chocolate chip
the oh-so-fancy fruit kabobs that I saw on the food network the day before Nicole's party and decided to duplicate. I'm all for duplicating other people's good ideas, can you tell?






Bapa and Gada with the girls
Nana with the grandkids

Grampa B with the grandkids

FUN AND SUN IN HAWAII with the girls and Nana

For the first week of February, we took the girls and Paul's mom to Hawaii for a week. We stayed on Maui and it was the first time for the girls and Paul's mom. It was so fun watching the girls get comfortable in the water with their snorkels and fins and seeing the fish. I really thought once they saw the whales out in the ocean, they might think twice about swimming in it but they didn't seem to have any fear of that. We also had to spend some time shopping, what would a vacation be without it !!
Here we are getting ready for Paul's mom to take a picture of us and....

WHAM !!! big wave comes and almost knocks us over. Funny how the girls don't seem affected by it... could it be that they're already used to the temperature?



Just waking up...
whale watching off the deck of our condo.

The famous "Black Rock" where we went snorkeling.The girls and Nana head back to Idaho... gonna miss them.