Sunday visitors

 

Our first visitor was my neighbour who came over and shared her raspberry jam she made with us. They have a ton of raspberries and so she got cracking and made a whole bunch and shared two tubs with us. So nice. The jam was perfect as well.

Then our next visitors were another mother and her baby. Super cute.

Love our visitors.

Family time up at Bogus

 So Dru and the kids get Bogus ski passes so they can snowboard every winter. If you wait to purchase the passes till February, they're half price AND they give you the full season the next winter season. 

So the snow this past winter wasn't looking that great, so we decided to wait and purchase the passes in Feb. The family got a few runs snowboarding, but then Covid hit and they closed down the ski area. 

But in return they gave you free summer passes up there. During the summer they have fun things to do, including mtb. 

So this July 4th weekend holiday Dru and I were thinking about whether to go somewhere or stick around Boise. My vote was to stick around Boise and do a staycation. Dru's vote was to leave. I convinced him that we should stay and do fun things here. So he obliged. 

So on the Saturday we packed up and headed up to Bogus to have some fun.

Here's Takeshi getting on the slide.

Here's Yuki and Emiko on the slide.

While they were having fun on the slide, we would go up and do some mtbing down the trails. It was super fun.

Jobecka was up there with her family and so they took Emiko with them on some rides. Here's Emiko having fun on the other slide they have up there. We had to wear masks on the rides but not mtbing thank goodness. 

Here's Yuki having a turn.

Her first run down the mtb trail she crashed in a mud pile. She wasn't impressed at all. We told her to get back on her bike. She wasn't impressed with that either. But she chose to get back on, in the end and had some fun. I'm proud of her.

Here's what the slide looks like.

Here's Emiko on the slide with Jobecka's sister. Super fun. Masaru took her too a few times and she was telling him to go faster hahahaha. Little dare devil. Masaru said it's pretty sketch but super fun.

Then me and Emiko went up the lift to the top where the beautiful wild flowers were.

The flowers up there were wonderful.

Here's the wild flowers up the top. So cool right?

I loved the trails up there and had a blast riding my bike up there. It was so fun. I'd consider getting a pass up there once they get all the trails figured out. There were a few that were closed which was a bummer. Takeshi did a hard trail that I was too scared to even look at, but I totally need to next time and get over my fear.

It was a great day together and I, at least, had a ton of fun.

I'm glad we went up.

Herron in our back yard, Masaru's piano progress and more........

 So we've been getting our irrigation in our backyard for the summer and it brings ducks usually. But this irrigation day it brought a huge herron. We couldn't believe it. It was just chilling back there and we were so amazed. So the kids snuck out there and captured some pic's of it.

I love our yard.

Pretty cool right?

Then here's Masaru practicing his piano. He's been working hard on this song. This was a couple of months ago and he's way more through the song today and is sounding amazing. Super proud of him.

Here's his new bike that he's been riding a lot as well. He loves it and I'm happy he does. It's too expensive to not love hahahaha

Here's me and Jobecka. We'd just finished a ride. The reason I took a pic is because this was my longest ride with the most vert I've done in a single ride. She always pushes me and I'm super grateful for that. I like my adventures with her.

I think it was around 27 miles and almost 3000 vert. Pretty good for me.

It was a great day and I enjoyed myself. I didn't bring enough snacks but Jo did, so it all worked out. 

Then here's a cute thing to finish off with. Takeshi and his buddy decided they wanted to back brownies and then drop them off to mates around the neighbourhood. My mate send me her doorbell ringer video of them doing it. Super cute right?

Love that they did this. Takeshi might have an angry streak in him but his soft streak is just as fierce and I love that about him. He's a lot like me. 

I'm glad he has such great mates. I really like this friend he has. His name is Dayton and they get along really well. Good friends are everything.

Helping our mates with their back yard.

 

So our long time mates, the Jares, were doing their backyard and we told them we'd help. So we settled on a date and came over for a day and put their porch together. I didn't know we could get it all done, but we totally did. It was hard work but we managed to get it done and not screw up the pattern while doing it. 

This is us almost finished. It started with basically nothing done.

Masaru being the king of the dirt pile.

And not really being a big help while doing it hahahaha

Here's Bo and Dru being super dangerous. Shannon and I were watching and thinking that's why women live longer. "Here I'll just hold this while you take a concrete hand saw to it. Nothing will go wrong" And they were right, nothing went wrong.

Here we all are after some pizza and drinks. Job well done. I love these guys.

Isn't it so beautiful?

I'm so glad we came over and helped them out.

Dru has called on Bo, numerous times to help him with plumbing things for the shop and for our house. Even helping him with this, I feel as if we owe him so much more. They're a great family and I'm really glad they're in our lives. We love them.

Boat issues

 So we got to use the boat this summer and we took it out to see how it was. But it turns out that it’s not working properly and so we’re totally bummed. 

DRU’s been fixing every single thing he can think of and taking it out again and again and trying to see if he can figure it out. But nothing has come of it and this boat motor has almost all brand new parts in it. It’s a little disheartening and we are unsure where to go from here. DRU has a couple more things up his sleeve  but he’s left it because I think he is a little disheartened.

We managed to have a little bit of fun though and trying to stay positive in hopes to be able to, one day, have a working boat during the summer as a family.

So here is the little bit of fun that we managed to have with our sick boat.

The cool dude, Takeshi. 

There's Masaru in the background after a pull.

Here are some video's of the kids. 

Here's us just taking her out.

Here's Takeshi doing a 180.

Masaru driving the boat. Dru's been teaching him and he's pretty good at it. That's another thing that isn't happening, Masaru being able to learn how to drive the boat better.

Here's what the boat is doing and how it sounds. Pretty sick right?

Masaru trying to jump the wake. Pretty close.

Yuki giving it a go.

Masaru again.

Emiko wanted to be on the tubes. She had fun.

Then we did some cliff jumping.

Hopefully we can get it figured out. Meanwhile we all have to be patient to Dru since he’s the only one who can fix it.  It makes me sad, cause we've never actually had a good summer with the boat. Something has always gone wrong. All Takeshi's wanted for his bday is to have a party with the boat and it hasn't happened yet. Sometimes I wonder what the point of having a boat is if our family never gets to use it. We dump all this money into it for nothing really. I kinda get tired. The problem is, is it's totally out of my hands and we're all at the whim of Dru and his brother to try and figure out how to fix it. Plus we share it with Dru's brother, which is fine, but it seems like the year that it's ours, it's not working. I'm super, super frustrated at this point and it's taking all of my self control not to simply throw a tantrum like a baby hahahahaha 

So that's that then.....

Masaru gets his licence

We took Masaru in for his final exam.
He said he passed by the skin of his teeth and was sweating bullets. But a pass is a pass and now it's all official.
Masaru has his drivers licence.
For the next six months he can't drive at night and he can only have one friend in the car with him.
I think that's a good rule.
I trust him. He's a great driver and we told him if he crashes or gets a ticket, he's paying the difference in his insurance that goes up because of it.
He's a safer driver than me in some ways.

He was upset that they got his height and weight wrong. He's 6 feet now and 170 pounds. I guess he'll have to chance that in 3 years when it's up for renewal.

We took him out for breakfast at a place with MASSIVE rolls. He loved it and ate the whole thing. Dru and I shared one and Masaru finished that one off too hahahaha
Ahhhh 15 years old boy bodies..............a gift from above.



Love this guy and am way pumped that he's got his licence. Makes our lives easier and gives him a little freedom.