Labor Day!!!

I have some really great friends in my neighborhood. My friend Amy asked all of us if we would like to join her at her parents cabin in Island Park, ID over Labor day. We couldn't pass up an offer like that, so we drove up Friday(9/2/2011) afternoon, and got to the cabin about 9 pm. We ended up stopping and grabbing a few things I knew we had missed packing. Spencer got off early, so we left a lot earlier, and I ended up packing really fast. There was five different families that ended up going, 25 people in all.
Here is an inside picture of the loft in the cabin. This is where our family slept.

Saturday we all woke up and we were in charge of breakfast. We made waffles with Strawberries and whip cream or syrup for the non-fruit eaters, and then bacon(our bribe tool.)
We all got ready after and headed to Cliff Lake. It was a beautiful blue lake....amazing blues for being a lake.

The kids loved going out on this little paddle boat.

They were just as excited to sit on the little dock.


We had a picnic lunch on the shore.


Trevor went off his first rope swing. I didn't get a picture either :( We walked along the edge of the mountain to a spot that had a wire hanging down. It was steep, and you fell into the water about 15 ft from swing to water. Trevor didn't even hesitate to go. There were all these teenagers going and some were really scared, but Trev got on and went so fast all I could do was panic. He did awesome and loved it! Dilan wanted to go too, but we didn't have his ear plugs (I was secretly happy) Here is a shot of one of the husbands going.


This is a group of all the "friends." These girls are so awesome!

After the lake we went home and got everybody ready to go to West Yellowstone. It was only about 15 minutes away, so we decided to have an eat out night. We went to a little cafe type place that only had one server, one busser, and I am guessing one chef, because things were moving pretty slow! It was all good though, we had a lot of fun and laughs with everybody.
Sunday morning we decided to go to Upper Mesa Falls. These falls are huge and beautiful! We even caught a rainbow on them.

Here are some of our kids with Kate. Poor Kate only had boys to play with, she is such a cutie.

Kairi's new word was wow! She said this the moment she saw the falls, I managed to get her mouth open :)

Our kids wouldn't hold still for a picture of all of them, but I did get a blurry one!

Then we headed to a spot on the Warm River that you can't fish in. There are soooo many huge fish in this section, and if you throw bread in, they will come up to eat it. It was awesome, because some of these fish (I think were rainbow trout) are HUGE!
We all had fun seeing if we could get the really big ones to come up, especially the boys.

Then we headed back to the cabin for some lunch. After lunch a lot of people took naps, I read on the deck for a little bit. Then Spencer and I decided to head outside to shoot an air soft pellet gun. Trev had gotten the gun for Christmas, and we hadn't had a chance to use it. It was fun! Trev went first, and he was the only kid strong enough to actually cock it.

Dilan had this funny way to shoot, he likes to think he is a secret spy, so it was fitting.

Tyler was cute trying to shoot, he could careless if he hit something.

I am not sure what happened to my picture of Bryson shooting, but he had an amazing aim, and always hit a target. We let any other kids shoot that were awake or there, because some were packing up to leave, and some were with some family. We had a fire Sunday night too, but I didn't bring my camera out, but we got to roast marshmallows while we listened to coyotes howl (it was awesome!)
Monday morning we woke up and cleaned the cabin. It was pretty easy, then we all packed up our cars and headed for Yellowstone. We didn't have a lot of time here, so we went to see Old Faithful.

We packed Kairi around, because it was crowded. Spencer held both Tyler and Kairi, so I could get my picture....he is so awesome!

Then we ate a picnic lunch. We were down to three families, and 16 people by this point, but a table full of kids still :) Look at all those boys!

Kairi was so cute playing in these trees.

Then we headed to the painted pots. We let Kairi walk this one, because we were trying to wear her out for our drive home.

Here is a group shot of all of us Sunday morning.

All the kids actually got along and played together a lot. We as adults every night would get the kids in bed and go downstairs to hang out. There was a pool table, ping pong table, foosball table, air hockey table, big screen tv, and games to play. It was so much fun at night to just play around with a group of adult friends. These are times in my life I will never forget, it was a really great weekend, and we are so blessed to have such awesome friends in our lives.