Sliverwood

Today we did Silver wood Theme Park.

Our third time 13 years of marriage. 

In truth my 2nd, Remy's 1st, Justin/Kalia/Annaliesse/Barkers 3rd time.

Holy cow was it fun!

We did have to spilt up for a lot of it, as Remy isn't quite tall enough for the all the big kid rides. 

Which was OK considering this Mom isn't a rides person, so I was fine taking her to all the little kid rides and watching. 

We also found out that our kids aren't super into Rollercoasters. 

Sorry guys, you get that from me.

It was a loooong day but the kids had a blast.

Hogg Park

We were packed up and back in Cordelane around 3pm after biking the Hiawatha. 

I had nothing planned for after the bike ride, thinking we might be pretty tired, and just hang for the rest of the day. Surprisingly we were all still gearing up to go! We were in need of some lunch and Cafe Rio hit the spot. Eating in the outside dinning area, we were a bit muddy, we hoovered a late lunch. At lunch Darcy and Lauren and us discussed what to do with the rest of the day, Hogg Park is right on the lake, with awesome cliff jumping areas, Little Rock beaches, a park, walk ways and more. We had no swimming suits, or towels but Lauren had enough swimming gear for the kids so we headed down to the lake. Grandma and Grandpa headed back to the trailer for some down time. 

Piling into the van Remy got her hand slammed in the door! It was so sad, and almost ended our day right then and there. Lucky for us her hand  was in a bit of a divot and with ice, snuggles and kisses and she was good to go. A quick stop at Bennetts AirB&B for swim suits for the kids and off we went!

The walk to the cliffs was gorgeous- ridiculously hot but gorgeous. 

We were hot before the walk, the walk just added more sweat on top of our mud. By the time we got there right into the water we went. The cliff was so fun- Kalia, Annaliesse and Barker jumped off the higher part, and then Remy and Ray jumped off the littler cliff! Barker wanted desperately to flip off the cliff into the water but this Mommy didn't want want to do the whole hit your head, or bend you neck weird and do barf or a sore neck and potentially make us head home early. Instead he had to watch Daddy and Darcy flip. Sorry buddy. 

Mommy and Daddy got in the lake right in our clothes. It was hot enough they were going to dry quickly enough and man did it feel good! Being at the lake made us wish we had a few more days here, we are just going to have to come back. Ending the afternoon of fun at a hole I the wall Ice Cream shop- where we arm wrestled, visited some more and laughed a ton. It was so great to watch Remy and Ray and Barker and Ollie have a chance to play again for the day. Since they moved away, not very far, they have sure missed each other. 

Thanks for the great Monday Bennetts!

Hiawatha Bike Trail ✔

I know I know. There are a ton of pictures in this post. But guys it was so fun and amazing, I am putting almost ALL the pictures in this post.

So Lauren and Darcy did the Hiawatha Trail last year. They had a great time with their kids and decided to do it again. So at Barker Baptism on June 01 they invited us to come do it with them. Now we had already booked Koocanusa for around that time and with some fancy maneuvering, corporation from Grandma and Grandpa, ordering headlamps for 6 that were strong enough and booking time off work we made it happen!   It also involved bringing EIGHT bikes 650km away. We tried to connive all of my family to do it in conjunction with the Chipman thing in Koocanusa- but the rest of them were not interested at all. 

It was so much freaking fun. Have you heard about the Hiawatha Trail?

We agreed to meet the Bennetts between 8:30-9:00 am at the start of trail. Our campground was an hour and a half away from the trial head and so we were up bright and early to drive. Packed to the nines- seriously we WAAAY over packed. Online it says it takes 2.5-3 hours to do the trail- we figured with kids it was going to take longer. So we packed lunch and snacks and LOTS of water. 

  We stopped for our tickets and then headed up to the trail head to meet Bennetts. 

Hiawatha is 15 miles long with 10 old train tunnels along the way. The first part of the trail is the first of many tunnels. The St. Paul Pass Tunnel that goes from Montana  into Idaho, its 1.66 miles long. Pitch Black and cold- man was it fun! 

Grandma has a hard time with tunnels so she drove around the first tunnel and met us after, which was totally fine. Grandpa had Remy behind him on his bike, the tag a long doesn't fit on Justins bike, and I knew if I had her on my bike I was going to slow everyone down. So Grandpa kindly had her on his bike- which also took some time and figuring durning the planing stage. 

Right off the bat in the tunnel we had a few problems with headlamp and some people rushing- we got split up. Which was fine and we all met up on the other side. 

Covered in mud. 

Remy's face and sweater covered in mud. 

Remy is such a trooper and if you know her personally you know this. You know that she is an easy going, happy, let's do this kinda kid. Remy said nothing in the long tunnel about getting soaked in mud- Grandpa asked if she was getting wet at one point and she said "a little" and then nothing else. By the time we took a look at the end, her face was splattered in mud yet she was smiling! Annaliesse and Barker also got rather muddy, but just on their backs. Lucky for this OVER PACKING Mommy I had put a jacket in my bag for Remy as well as the hoodie she was wearing. So we took the wet muddy hoodie off and had a nice warm clean jacket for her and away we went.

Now if we are being honest, we flew down the trail. The kids were thrilled to be on bikes, with friends, in the fresh Mountian air. We all were- and so we had a great time. We stopped a few times for breaks, but we were having too much fun to stop. By the time we reached each new tunnel the kids were, lots of times, half way though already. The views were amazing.

We concurred this trail in 2 hours and 10 minutes. 

The kids ate a few snacks and drank a bit of water but our bags were still loaded at the end. 

I highly recommend doing this with your kids.

 It was amazing. 

A highlight for 2019 for sure.

Boarder Patrol/Tonga

Sunday- travel day!

We, as in Moxley's and Grandma and Grandpa, packed up Sunday and left Oestriech camp ground and headed down to Cordelane Idaho.

First we stopped for church in Jaffery. Running into Angie and Logan and the boys on the way in! Hangout at church for two hours with friends while we quietly swap camping stories, summer news and constant jokes....  and someone to swap looks. Church was good, Sacrament was packed, where we heard 2 very different talks. The first talk, a teenager from Raymond who participated in HEFY in Tonga. Justin has never been so jealous of a teenage girl in his life- seriously. He decided there and then that our kids NEED to participate in HEFY when they are older, and he will chaperone for them in Tonga. Her talk was very good, and it sounded like she had a amazing trip, but seriously green ins't a good color on Justin. The second speaker was a Farmer from BC who talked about a lot of things, fruit labours, patriotism and Mexicans- his talk was one we won't be forgetting for a long long time.

After church we had lunch in the trailer and headed down. 

Another hilarious memory- the trailer was packed hastily- we were running late to church and things just got put in there. And then after church we all changed in the trailer and ate lunch in the church parking lot. So the inside of the trailer resembled a rubbish bin from Kindergarten on steroids. We weren't to worried, we just had to unload in a few hours. Now this wasn't a big deal until we got to the boarder. The boarder guard asked Grandpa if he had fruit. He did, in the fridge trailer. The asked him to pull over and they wanted to look in the fridge. Pretty sure Grandpa wanted to kill us all as he opened the door to this boarder patrol- he had to push stuff out of the way to let her walk the 2 steps to the fridge. He was mortified. The rest of us thought it was pretty funny- pretty sure Grandpa is never going to let us "pack up" like THAT again.

The drive down had gorgeous scenery.

The day passed easily and fast.

Random Day & Daddy/Grandpa's Birthday

What a random day.

The weather couldn't decide what to do with itself. So we ended up doing thing in an unorganized fashion, and if you know me, that bugs the crap outta me. 

The first hour started off amazing for Barker at least. Justin got in late Friday night, working all day and driving down that night. Barker was up early, or maybe he had been up early all week and I was too tired to notice. Anyway Barker and Justin headed out for an early morning walk along the river. Barker was thrilled to show Justin the "ledge", his rock throwing skills- really just enjoy the one on one attention. On their walk they came across treasure. errrr treasure to a 8 year old boy. They found a old fishing knife in the waves on the shore. It was like Christmas Morning. 

Justin being more chill then I, let him bring it back to camp and play with it. Cause why wouldn't you bring home a nasty, rusty, long fishing knife back for your son to play with?!?!?!

This knife brought him major joy for the rest of the camping trip. He carved sticks, throw it at the ground, poked it into things and generally just got in trouble with the knife. Man did he enjoy it. Ask Grandma how she felt about it.... she had mini heart attacks constantly for the next 5 days.

After our amazing day at Surveyors the day before we decided to head back over there for Justins and Grandpas Birthday. It started off well enough, we took less things, which from a Mothers perspective was lovely and with one more helper it went faster. But the weather did NOT like us. We managed to play on the paddle board and kayak for a few hours, and blow up the big floatie again, but it was just chilly.

Barker was so excited to show Justin the turtles but they were no where to be found. The girls got cold fast and made Justin bring them to shore and then Justin and Barker went out by themselves. They paddled around the entire lake, having a blast doing boy things that I didn't want to see.

We only lasted until lunch time. But determined to save the day and still have a blast for the Birthdays we headed back with a few ideas.....

My idea was to read a book. No-one else was on board for this.....

Instead Grandma let us in a few lawn games. First Volleyball with a beach ball- but have you ever actually tried that. Its hard and the ball just goes will nilly. So we played Fresher? I can't remember what that's called. 

"Fresh

This is a really difficult game to describe how to play, but once you understand and get the hang of it, it really is a great game. 

Fresh is an ideal game to play on the beach, but you could also play it on a sporting field or in a park.  

Split into two teams and draw out a rectangle playing field (about 20-30m long, 10m wide).  One team starts up one end of the rectangle, the other up the other end.  The idea is to enter the playing field (rectangle) and 'tag' someone from the other team....But, you can only tag people if you are "fresher" than them.  The longer you are in the rectangle, the less fresh you are. In other words you can only tag people who are already in the rectangle when you enter. 

Because of the length of the playing field, when you run to tag someone, someone from the other team could then run in and tag you (because they are fresher) so there ends up being a lot of back and forth.  

When you are 'tagged' you are captured by the other team and must stand up their end of the field in 'jail' with your foot on their end zone line.  When other people from your team are captured, they are also captured but can stand linking hands to make a line back into the rectangle. 

If you're quick enough, you can 'save' captured team members by running up and tagging them when they are captive, but beware because you have to entering well into enemy territory and risk getting caught/tagged yourself!"

It was very hard to explain to the kids but once we got going and got the hang of it it got fun. The kids thought it was hilarious when one of the adults would loose their footing, which happened often enough I can't remember who didn't fall.... We played for a bit but didn't last too long, as the sun came back out and decided to be HOT this time..... instead of loading all the things, we went to the little beach at the camp ground. It ALSO served as our Saturday night hair washing!  

Once we were all clean and cold it was time to celebrate the Birthday portion and go get Ice Cream from the Koocanusa Shop. If you have been there you know- the only store for miles around. The kids and I had snuck over for ice cream the day before, and it was amazing. 

The second time around was just as satisfying. Is there anything better than Ice Cream when camping?!?!

Mark and Lindsay headed out after Ice Cream and a quick Pic. It is hard camping with children who don't sleep well- even when they are exhausted. We had dinner and headed to the dock at the campground to fish with Uncle Miles. Justin took all the kids out on Koocanusa in the adult kayaks, giving them a turn to show him how good they were getting. It was Kalia's turn to fish with Miles so she fished. I read, Laura read and Barker and Annaliesse did their best to get into trouble.

We ended our Random Day of events at the Fire pit over looking the Ledge.  

Our kids love camping!