Back to School

This summer went by way too fast. When all of a sudden it was the middle of August I really wasn't ready for it to be over. It was great (most of the time) to have all the kids home all day and that won't happen again for a while since Luke is starting 1st grade this year. I think I was more nervous about it than he was although when it came right down to it he told me a couple of times, "I'm kind of scared." Those few days before school started I got a big lump in my throat just thinking about sending him off to school for almost 8 hours each day! It's hard for me to believe he's that old. We all went to back to school night and met his teacher, and I've heard great things about her so I think it will be a good year.


Here are the classic first day of school, new duds pictures. Doesn't he look grown up? It kills me! He was definitely nervous by the time the bus came but luckily he just kind of got swept up in the huge crowd of kids at our bus stop and got on. I'll be honest...I was fighting back the tears a little. What can I say, I'm a control freak, and I am used to being with him/in charge of him basically all day every day. It's hard to let go!

As soon as the bus pulled away Seth asked, "where's Luke?" It is going to be an adjustment for him too. Although Luke teases him a lot they have been best buddies this summer. I'll admit I was in kind of a slump for a few hours, but then I snapped out of it. I guess change is inevitable. These little guys are going to grow up whether I want them to or not. So I'll just have to enjoy these moments while I can...

Mt. Borah

I really have not been finding the time to blog this summer. At least it's because we've been busy having fun. The last few weeks have included swimming, a trip to Lagoon with friends, and the demolition derby just to name a few. Yes, Lagoon and the derby in the same week. It's hard to say which brings out the stranger, most scantily clad crowd. There I consider those things blogged, but I really do need to give a little detail about last weekend's adventure.

Boyd (Jer's dad) got the idea of climbing Mt. Borah which is the highest peak in Idaho. Jer and I have already done a few highest peaks (King's in Utah and Gannett in Wyoming--way intense), so we were both excited to do it. This was my first hard hike/climb since having kids. We headed up to Mackey, Idaho to camp with Jer's parents, TJ and Amy and fam, and our kids. We headed out early Saturday morning and Cid and Amy's sister Jamie tended all of the kids while the rest of us hit the slopes. (Yes, they are saints and I think their day was tougher than ours. At least our sweet RV park had a tepee that provided hours of entertainment for the kiddos.)


This is actually not a picture I took but this is Mt. Borah from a distance. It's 12,662 feet. I have been at a lot of trailheads but never one quite like this. It was a zoo! The parking lot was packed and there were hordes of people hoping to summit that day. I guess that's what you get when a peak this big is only a day hike, and it's a nice summer day. The round trip is only around 7 miles, but it is straight up and straight down--you gain over 5,0000 feet of elevation. Yea, that's like a vertical mile in 3.5 miles. It was a steep 'un.

Our group was varied in its preparation for this hike. Boyd had been hiking in preparation and Jer, Amy, and I have all been running or biking a lot this summer. TJ on the other hand is not a big fan of exercise and was hitting it off the couch. Ouch, but he made it.

Before going I knew of a section called "Chicken Out Ridge." It is so named because lots of people get sketched out and turn around at this point. I was prepared for that but kind of thought it would be a short segment. It turned out to be quite exposed for a long time. It is not very technical, Class III scrambling, but you look down and see only air...for a long time. We saw lots of turnarounders at that point (some who looked like they belonged at the derby not climbing a mountain), but we pressed on. It is a real knife-edge outcropping of rock that reminded me of a stegosaurus back. Once I got to a point I could get my camera out I took some pics of Jer who was right behind me followed by Amy. (Amy had never done anything like this before, and I must say she did awesome!)


Chicken Out Ridge


I thought once we got off the yellow rock of Chicken Out Ridge we would be done with the exposure, but no. You then get on some black rock and the fun just keeps on coming. The girl of a couple near us called her boyfriend a bleepity-bleep at this point and I guess they turned around because I never did see them again.

Physically I felt great but my mental state took a bit of a turn for the worse when we got almost to the downclimb in the picture below (this was actually taken on the way back across). Right as we were reaching the top of that little cliff you have to climb down we hear this lady yell, "oh no." It sounded serious, and we came up on top of the rock to see this man sliding down the snow slope pictured. He was scrapping and fighting but picking up serious speed. At one point he got turned head down the hill, and I thought for sure he was dead. He did get his feet first again just before slamming off a huge pile of rocks and continuing to slide. He stopped after about a 50o+ foot fall at about 40-50 mph (my guesstimate). It was totally freaky to say the least. He did wave his arms when he stopped and a person in his party downclimbed the 60+ degree slope to him on the rocky sides fairly quickly. It was unnerving to say the least. (It turns out he was a scout leader from Boise who made a very bad choice. Instead of going across the crossing on the top of the ridge (see pic below) where there is a footpath stamped he (against the advice of others) ran across the snow at a lower point, quickly losing his footing, and nearly sliding to his death in front of his scouts. Can you say, not smart? He ended up spending the night with a broken leg and tailbone and getting rescued by a helicopter the next day.)

After seeing that, Amy and I in particular wanted to take a look for ourselves at this snow crossing before deciding to proceed. After a jittery downclimb we decided it was okay if you stuck to the route, and we crossed without looking to either side too much!

This is a pic we took after coming back down. Near the top you can see the snow chute that guy took his fall down. If he'd gone much further he would have reached a sheer rock cliff. I guess it wasn't his day to die.

Once you get past the nerve wracking stuff you have about 900 feet of vertical scree to climb up. Joy! At this point, we all went our separate ways and paces and got to the top. There's not really much of a trail, but it's just a really steep hike. Thank goodness for trekking poles.

Here are Boyd and Amy covering the last bit of ground to the summit.

There were plenty of people at the top to take our picture...not exactly secluded but an accomplishment nonetheless. We spent quite a bit of time at the summit waiting for everyone to arrive and regroup to head back. Jer even went back down and gave TJ a little moral support for that last stretch. I was totally impressed by this group of four 50-something women who did this climb. They were pretty slow, but they made it. I never do things like this without Jer along! There were also some 10-12 year-old Scouts up there. We saw them on the way back down and they made me super nervous. My mom instincts came out big time, and I could hardly watch. In my opinion this hike is not Scout appropriate. In fact, earlier in the month a scout fell 600 feet without his troop noticing and wasn't found until 17 hours later. Really?

Here's the whole gang at the top. I did not enjoy downclimbing all the exposed sections but after that it was just a knee-jarring descent. We all ditched each other and headed down at our own pace after the climbing sections. Boyd got a wild hair and was even running at one point. It was a great day, and I'm really glad we did it. I may just check Borah off my list and be done with this one forever. I would probably let my boys do this with their dad if they were old enough, but you will not catch them going up there with their scout troops anytime soon...make that ever!

Oregon Coast

I am failing miserably with the blog this summer. I'm not even going to attempt to record the day-to-day activities around here, but I can't overlook the fun vacation we just took. We got back a week ago from a week long trip with my parents to Cannon Beach/Arch Cape on the Oregon Coast. It was so much fun. I took like a million pics and posted slightly less than that so don't feel obligated to make it through this post!

The Oregon coast is really far away...like 14ish hours by car. We divided the trip there into two days. Our first stop was Baker City, Oregon. Luke and Seth rode with my parents the whole way and according to them were great. Ian was a trooper. I've driven to both Boise and Hells Canyon before for river trips, but I must say that is such an ugly drive. No offense but I would not want to make Mountain Home my home. The place we stayed in Baker City was actually pretty nice. We swam that night and again the next morning. In fact, here we are so bright and early we had to wait while they finished cleaning the pool before we could get in.



After eating the biggest breakfast ever we headed off for day 2 of driving. We had the mini van and the back of my parents truck packed.



Day 2 of driving offered a bit more scenery. Ian developed quite a case of the runs which made for lots of stops for a while. I changed his diaper twice in like 180 degree weather in a little armpit called Arlington, OR (no offense anyone), but we eventually made it. The boys got in with us the last hour or so of driving and it was a big fest of whining, fighting, crying, and urgent calls for the bathroom, but we eventually arrived.



This is the view from the window of our modern beach house in Arch Cape. It was such a cute old house (but nicely redone) and right on the beach...awesome. Right outside was a deck and a hot tub and then you head down to the beach.

The weather in Oregon is cool which I loved. We had some nice, sunny days too but the foggy overcast ones were great.

That is castle rock in the distance. Shortly after this picture Luke and Seth were caught by a sneaker wave which Luke outran and Seth did not. It took him down to his knees and then washed up over his head. He came up sputtering and soaking wet and that was his introduction to the ocean. We'd been gone 10 minutes and he was already back at the house naked getting hosed off. In fact, he was constantly stripping down to his nothings on this trip. It took some coaxing to get him close to the ocean again.

We discovered there were two ways to get down to the beach. You could go a few houses down to the stairs or you could use the rope at our place to descend our own very steep path. Luke especially loved doing this. It was like rappelling.

When the tide was out there was tons of hard sand for riding bikes on. Jer and Luke went on several long bike rides to see starfish and other critters that were out when the tide is low. Jer also took his road bike out for some rides along the coast road. I had fun running on the beach in the cool weather so there was something for everyone.

Seth did lots of beach exploring by foot but his training wheels made biking a no go. He had to settle for looking at Luke's pictures of the bike expeditions.

My parents stayed home for an afternoon of relaxation while we took the kids to Oswald West State Park for some hiking. It was a nice easy trail through the forest that ended up on a big surfing beach.

The boys thought this bridge was pretty awesome.

After lunch and ice cream cones in Manzanita they all sacked out on the way back.

The hot tub was a huge hit, and we all enjoyed it. Luke treated it like a pool, and we had to keep making him get out and cool off when it looked like his head might explode.

My parents were great as usual, and we all loved spending time with them. We explored our beach thoroughly in both directions. This was a day we walked to the north to Hug's Point where there are lots of big rocks and caves exposed at low tide. We saw two dead seals on the beach on different days. Luke asked if we were ever going to see any living sea animals.

Checking out the anemones.

This picture doesn't do it justice but Cannon Beach is a really pretty little town with the most amazing flowers everywhere. It kind of reminds me of beachy Park City (the old downtown area).

An evening on the beach with the stomp rocket and kites.

Waiting for the fire to be ready for cooking hot dogs and making smores.

A trip to the windiest beach on earth in Cannon Beach. The kids, Jer, and grandpa had great fun burying each other.

The view from our deck on a nice sunny day. We all spent a lot of time out there reading and relaxing while the kids played in the yard and hot tub.

On our last day Jer and I got up early and went to Ecola State Park for a long trail run. It was great. It was the only day it rained and it was cool and slippery. In fact I found myself slipping off the trail and heading down a steep ravine at one point. It was Jer's chance to leave me hanging, but he gave me a hand up. Near the top it got ridiculously muddy, and we were in the middle of this thick forest with all the trees shrouded in fog. It was a little creepy (reminded me of something out of Twilight) but pretty neat. On the way home Jer and I stopped and bought bagles which were way too expensive and turned out to have mold on them. Needless to say we went in and got a refund and then found this bakery with amazing bread and cookies. If you go for a long run you can eat bread and cookies for breakfast, right? We all went back to the park later in the day to picnic and explore.

A few attempts at group shots with Haystack Rock in the background.

Ian never looks or smiles for pictures but really he is the happiest baby ever. We put his crib in the closet (it was big) in our room, and he slept like a champ the entire trip. The boys had two sets of bunks in their room so they both top bunked it for a week. We all had such a great time together and were sad to see it end so soon. Jer and I loaded the kids up at 3:30 am and hit the road the last day. We drove the whole thing in one shot, and they were actually really good. We stopped at McDonald's twice in one day which should be a crime but there weren't a lot of options. Seth got carsick and threw up in the restroom. But other than that we made it! It was a little hard to return to the routine of work for Jer and piles of laundry for me, but we're back in the swing of things now. First big road trip with three kids: check.