Recently bought myself a new cookbook - Pioneer Woman Cooks - and had to try these potato skins.  They are one of our favorite things to order whenever we go out for a meal.  Sometimes when David comes to have lunch with me when I am working and we go out to eat they’re the only thing we eat.

Anyways these were SO good!  We don’t have to order them out any more!  I’m going to have to come up with a few variations just to make life interesting but for now, we’ll stick with these.  We even got John to eat a whole one!  He didn’t have sour cream on his, but ranch dressing.  That’s fine.  I’m always happy when he’ll try something new!

We passed over the Hoover Dam, the slowest traffic of the whole journey.  We saw the huge new bridge they are in the process of building.  Talk about road works.  It went on for miles!

We saw beautiful mountains and ribbon roads that snaked off into the distance.  Every turn brought more of God’s awesome creation!

We heard quite a bit of snoring coming from the backseat.  When he wasn’t watching one of his films or munching on fruit snacks, John was sleeping.

We even got in a bit of geocaching, or looking for treasure, as John calls it.

But the best part of our trip was what was waiting for us IN Arizona!

Maria, Lyla, Harlow and Greg!!  I hadn’t seen the twins in person since they were born and David and John had not met them in person at all!  We had such a great time getting to know them, seeing them in their everyday environment, playing with them, just spending time with them.  They are as cute as they can be.  They both have the most expressive eyes and faces ever!  These are just a few of the 500 pictures we took of them!

Harlow - look at those beautiful baby browns.

Reading is one of their favorite activities!

John loved playing with his two nieces.  One of his questions was - when they grow up are they going to be sisters?  He just couldn’t fathom the idea that there were two girls who look alike and are the exact same age.  And of course, Lyla and Harlow liked the fact that John was close to their size.  They spent a lot of time just looking at each other!

Lyla is sporting a trendy black eye - neither twin is willing or able to tell us how she got it!

Lyla looked at us with the BIGGEST brown eyes, just staring.  WHO are you and what are you doing in MY house?  After a bit she would break into a smile.  Both babies are so smiley and happy, very vocal, and they love to play with each other, of course.  Built in best friends!

All too soon it was time to head back up to Idaho and freezing weather.  It was a very toasty 85 degrees in AZ.  No wonder so many people like to winter there!

oh my I do love this picture of two of my favorite people in the whole wide world.  John LOVES his big sister and Michelle LOVES her little brother!!  I love them both madly.

This little lady turned 1 1/2 today.  Eden smiles so much of the time.  Just recently has she starting closing her eyes when she grins like this.  Her hair is getting long and curly and she looks JUST like Michelle did when she was a baby although Michelle had very dark hair.  I love this one like crazy too.

This little girl turned one last week.  Guess she had fun with her birthday cake.  Apparently she managed to get some of it into her mouth.  Anna’s momma, Carrie, tells me that Anna crawls VERY fast and climbs up their stairs in lightning speed, especially when she hears her bath water being run.  I love this baby from a distance.  We are planning a trip back to MI next summer so I will get my fill of her for quite a few days.  I can’t wait.

The twins, you ask?  I’m waiting for current pictures of those two, who, by the way, turn one in a week and a half.  I’m loving them from a distance too!  One of these days, we’re gonna have to plan a HUGE family reunion!

We went to Roman Nose Lake in northern Idaho in Boundary County.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Rafi and John sat on a big slab near the water, threw stones and watched the fish jumping to catch bugs.  It was so peaceful.  The water was crystal clear.  We watched some guys scaling the mountains behind the lake.  We found wild huckleberries growing everywhere!  We started on a hike to another lake but realized the two young ones would not make it, but we had a great time just sitting by the water.

And  we did not see a single bear, let alone any deer OR moose.

We had such a good visit with David’s sister Andrea (Andy) and her son Rafi.  We had Michelle take some fun pics of the bunch of us and here are a few of my favorites!  They look like brother and sister, don’t they?

John was SO amused by Rafi, this grin says it all.  Rafi was energetic from the time he got up to the time he went to bed!  John loved having a live-in playmate for the week they were here.

“Smile, Rafi!”  This is what you got.  How funny is that?  This was Michelle’s version of his smile.

The Oakes Families - all smiling and looking pretty - a photo miracle in itself!

This three-shot group was shot from 100 yards in light wind with a .308 Savage rifle, topped with a 4-9x scope.  For the technical,  the rounds were Winchester brass, with BR2 primers, 37.1 grains of Varget powder, topped with a Hornady 165 grain bullet.

(And yes, I set the sights exactly 2″ high at 100 yards to give me a good 400 yards range without adjusting for bullet drop.)

It’s a pity my cow calling isn’t as good…

This is our Border Collie, Wookie, all grown up.  John picked his name, just in case you are wondering.  He has been a wonderful addition to our family and is a great companion for our black lab-border collie mix Maggie, and also a great playmate for John.  He is as gentle as he can be.  And beautiful.  Even though he has access to the yard 24/7, his fur is so smooth and silky - I’ve nicknamed him my ’silky boy’.  He has rich brown expressive eyes, deep black fur with his white chest and feet, tip of tail, all clean and sparkly…except when he decides to go on a digging spree.

We have SO many holes in our backyard, thanks to him!  You can see from his feet and his chest that some of his holes get pretty BIG!  We’ve caught him with his whole head and front half of his body entrenched!  We’ve tried filling the holes with rocks and soil, but he is determined.  We’re lucky we don’t have much of a lawn out back, so he can keep up with his hobby without annoying us.

It’s ok, Wookie, we love you, you can keep digging away!

David’s sister Andrea (Andy) and her son Rafi arrived late last night from Britain.  Rafi is a very active two and a half year old and so far he and John are getting along splendidly.  John thinks it is great fun to have his cousin here to play with 24/7.  I’ve looked in on them in  John’s room and his toys are  strewn from one end to the other.  They are having such fun together.

Today is a brand new day and we are all up and in great form.  We look forward to showing Andy the great state of Idaho, and exploring things that even David and I haven’t seen yet!

John, Jayden and Jameson

For John’s birthday celebration we took him and two of his little friends from daycare to the races.  Turns out that Jameson’s dad was racing that evening.   We brought hearing protection for the boys as the cars can get pretty loud.  David took them to get some supper at McDonald’s - they all got happy meals and amazingly enough, the toy in the meal was a race car.  We had a good time even though the boys got a bit tired watching the time trials that took place before the actual racing began.

We bought an ice cream cake for John’s birthday cake and celebrated with Tim and Michelle Sunday after our trip to the fair.

One of John’s favorite gifts was a ‘Johnson’ figurine from Halo.  Another favorite is a Star Wars shirt that John’s birth mom sent him.  The interesting thing about this shirt is that when John wears it, whenever he MOVES, a little light on Yoda’s light saber lights up.  John just thinks that is the coolest thing ever.  I can just imagine how hard it is going to be for me to get this shirt off his body and into the washer every once in a while!  He certainly did have a wonderful birthday celebration.  He is SO excited to now be 5!!  He is one special little man!

We know when we wake up in the morning and it’s only 40 degrees that fall is right around the corner.  A couple weeks ago, David went with some friends to get our first load of wood.  They went to the Inland Empire Paper Company site just above Spirit Lake.  The loggers leave smaller logs in huge piles by the side of the roadway.  These are perfect for our wood stove as David won’t have to split them.  Unlike the big rounds leftover from last year that David just finished splitting with the maul.

John climbed up into the trailer and we thought he would be able to toss the logs down to us, but he decided that he wanted to help stack.  The job didn’t take too long.  Next cool day, David is off to get more.  He estimates that we need 4 full cords to get us through the winter!  That’s a LOT of chopping.