After school let out, we had a little more than a week at home before we started our busy summer travel season. First up was a trip to Idaho to visit Grandma, Grandpa, and get all the cousins together. Our flights worked out such that we got into Salt Lake City (the nearest large city airport - 3 hours away from our final destination) early in the morning. Since the kids had been touring college campuses with Tanja and I hadn't been back to my alma mater in many years, we took advantage of the extra time for the long drive to make a detour to visit Utah State University in Logan on the way to Idaho. I bribed the kids with some Aggie ice cream if they cooperated and we just walked around campus. Much has changed there since I attended, but it is still a beautiful campus set up against the mountains and we enjoyed the walk (and the ice cream).
We went to the fourth floor of Old Main (the tower building below) where I spent much time in class and visiting with professors since that is where my program was run. I got a little lost wandering through the building, but the kids thought it was funny and interesting to see where Daddy learned in college.
We made the long drive to Idaho and got to Grandma and Grandpa's. Once there, one of the first orders of business was to go see the kids' new cousin, Lillian Bell.
Lydia especially had been very excited to see the new baby (who turned three months old during our visit).
Derek decided the toys at the Bell's house were more interesting than a baby after a few minutes. The girls were impressed with Lillian's strong grip.
That afternoon, when the Montana cousins (Russ, Courtney, and Max) came, we took the side-by-side ATV out to the desert to go to a cave that I hadn't been to since I moved to Maryland. It was a very windy day, so I didn't get any pictures of us riding and bumping along, but Derek especially liked the adventure. Here is the group at the mouth of the cave.
Grandpa told the kids that people had found old arrowheads in the desert, so they were excited to see if they could find any treasures while the wind was blowing everything around. We didn't find any arrowheads, but when people started shouting for Derek to come over to where they were, he knew something was up. Grandma had found a dead bull (also known as a gopher) snake and our budding herpetologist was very interested to see it.
I sent Tanja these pictures while failing to say in my initial text that it was a dead snake. She wrote back that it looked terrifying and asking if her baby was ok. The kids (including Derek) all laughed hysterically that Derek was still Mommy's baby.
Lydia wanted to go fishing with Grandpa, so we went to a local fishing pond to try our luck.
Lydia is very intense and focused when fishing.
Unfortunately, we got skunked and we just couldn't get any bites. One moment of excitement came when the fish and game office came with a tanker truck, backed up to the pond, and let loose a lot of fish from the hatchery to stock the pond. The fish were just pumped out of the truck through a pipe/hose right into the pond and seemed very confused about their new surroundings. Lydia had to slap one that flopped onto the bank back into the water. We hoped that all these fish dumped into the pond would be hungry and we would catch a lot, but it seemed they were not sure about how to eat for themselves (in the hatchery, they just eat food pellets that are dumped into the water for them) because we couldn't get them to bite our worms or other bait.
The fish may not have been hungry, but Lillian was, and Lydia was more than happy to feed her.
Lillian obviously has everyone wrapped around her finger (and I imagine will grow up somewhat spoiled because of it). She is quite charming though, and her charms worked on me as well.
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