Picture #1 Your favorite pair of shoes (no, my favorites aren't sandals anymore)
Picture #2 Your toilet
Picture #3 Your laundry
Picture #4 Your kitchen sink
Picture #5 Your closet
Picture #6 Your favorite room (I love to cook!)
Picture #8 Your refrigerator (inside or outside???)
We started out playing Beach Ball Volleyball in the Cultural Hall while the kids arrived, and then we moved into the Primary room to make leis. I expected this activity to take 10-15 minutes tops, thinking that the kids would probably get bored quickly with stringing flowers and straws. But they worked hard at it for about a half hour and were very proud of their creations.
We had promised the kids that we would play water games, but we had some unanticipated water problems. We thought we could just attach a hose to an outdoor spigot and turn on the water. Sounds reasonable, right??? But apparently the outdoor spigot at the church requires a certain type of attachment, which we didn't have. Melissa, who was the Primary Secretary on Saturday and became the 2nd Counselor on Sunday, ran around behind the scenes getting tools and instructions so we could turn on the water for the kids. The missionaries also showed up and helped turn the water on, and then stayed to fill water balloons.
In the meantime, we were playing games with the kids: three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, relay races, basically anything we could think of to distract them from the fact that they were outside in their swimming suits but weren't getting wet yet! Luckily we were well-prepared and had more games than we actually had time for, so they stayed entertained. I think they liked blowing bubbles more than anything else.
The kids finally got their chance to get soaked: water balloons, buckets, sponges, sprinklers, the works!
Acting on a tip from a friend, I checked out the 
Before leaving the lake, I looked at a map and realized the trail was actually 10 miles long! Since I wasn’t exactly equipped to spend the night (and I had to play the organ in church the next morning anyway) I had to hike the 10 miles back. It was an easy trail, though, and didn’t feel like a 20-mile trip. I shouldn’t have looked at the map; I never would have known it wasn’t a 12-mile hike!
The trail started out as gravel, the kind of small, deep gravel that’s hard to walk on in some places. But about an hour into the trail, it was suddenly and inexplicably paved for several miles. This picture attempts to show the sudden appearance of pavement, out in the middle of nowhere. Closer to
There’s a marked swimming area with lifeguards, so several families had come out to picnic by the lake. 
It was a large enough area that it didn’t feel crowded, though. I took a bunch of pictures of people I don’t know, so hopefully none of them decides to sue me for posting their pictures on the internet.
On the way back, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large animal walking down a road in a wooded area far below me.
At first I thought it was a cow, but then as it moved through the trees I saw antlers. A big deer? Then it got closer, and it was a moose! Aaah, a moose!!! After the initial panic, I realized I was on the top of a 20-foot cliff and the moose was at the bottom. So I was feeling safe, taking pictures. The moose finally saw me and ran off the way he had come, and I continued down the trail.
About three minutes later, the moose crashed through the trees and crossed the trail not 100 feet in front of me! So much for being safe on my 20-foot cliff. I stayed where I was and made lots of noise for the next few minutes. Courtney, I did your African Clapping Dance for about a half hour after I started moving again! To my relief, the moose didn’t appear again.
So the final verdict is that the
My friends the Steens (who are kind of like my adopted family in Spokane) invited me over for a brunch and flag ceremony, and we also played some Independence Day games. We each got a partner and had to fill in the states and their capitals on a map, which was harder than I remembered it being back in elementary school! 
Luckily my partner was Dora, who’s eight and who has been studying states and capitals in school. The second quiz was even harder: LaRae had compiled various obscure facts about certain states. If you could guess the state by the first fact, you got three points; if you got the state by the second fact it was worth two points; third fact was worth one point; and after that she just gave us the answer. The facts were things like “This state is where Scott Joplin was born” or “This is where the first parking meter was installed” (and I didn’t even get that one, Wendy!). It was fun and pretty goofy. Dora and I managed to get 16 points out of a possible 30, which put us respectably in 3rd place. But Bishop Steen and McKenna got something like 25 points! (I think he was cheating.) 
So it was hot. Really hot. REALLY HOT! And crowded. They had a record number of participants this year: more than 25,000 players on 400 courts, and that’s not including the spectators, vendors, etc. This was all contained in about 16 square blocks plus Riverfront Park. I was supposed to help run the master “scoreboard,” but there weren’t actually any scores on it so it was more like a master “bracketboard.” Team captains would come to me with a sheet saying who won their game, and I would fill in the brackets. I had about 40 brackets at my station, and each bracket had about 20 teams, so it was pretty busy. I was supposed to have a partner but nobody came, which was fine because I liked being busy. When I was busy, I forgot about how hot it was!
(She took an Independent Study Statistics class from BYU about 20 years ago and had lots of fun with it!) I think I’m using the same book you did, Mom! I had to put up the money for the class initially, and my company will reimburse me upon completion (as long as I manage to get at least a C). So the sooner I finish it, the sooner I get my money back!
It was a very serendipitous weekend. Everywhere we went, we were stumbling upon festivals, celebrations, and flea markets. We also kept running into people we all knew. I never see anybody I know while out and about in 
) but we couldn’t seem to go anywhere in the greater
Here’s an example of what the whole weekend was like. We decided to go out to 
) On our way out there, we crossed the 
Of course we stopped, and as we were wandering around, we heard a booming voice yelling, “Blackfoot! Hey, Blackfoot!” James and I looked at each other with our eyebrows raised, and turned around. Our friend Dorothy and her husband Jerry were just behind us. (Jerry and I both grew up in Blackfoot,
(James kept getting questions about his shirt. For those who don’t know or have forgotten, that’s not an ancient fertility symbol or the Chinese sign for good luck. It’s the symbol of The Greatest American Hero, which went off the air in 1983. “Believe it or not, I’m walking on air…”)
Technology keeps marching on. I just bought this new gadget (used and cheap, of course, instead of new and expensive) for my trip to
I was researching chemical water purifiers (iodine and chlorine—yum!) and saw that this SteriPEN portable water purifier kept popping up on discussion boards. The idea is that you stick this thing into a bottle or glass of water, and then it zaps all the amoebas, viruses, and bacteria with ultraviolet rays for about 90 seconds, rendering their DNA useless so they’re unable to replicate. And if they can’t replicate, they can’t make you sick! Cool!
My fabulous sisters-in-law Desiree and Courtney came to visit about a week ago. (For those who know my family, Desiree is married to 
We went hiking on Saturday, since we had been planning for weeks to do some hiking while they were here. (Des loves hiking as much as I do and Courtney was willing to humor us.) When we woke up that morning, it was raining and cold (the high that day was 50 degrees) but we bravely persevered and headed up to
Later that night, Des and I went to the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre to see their production of All Shook Up, an energetic new musical based on Elvis’ songs. Des is a big Elvis fan, and this show was the main reason for their trip. I loved the show, and I’m glad that Coeur d’Alene Summer Theater has such a lively cast this year. (I haven’t seen a bad show yet at that theater.)
Sunday was Stake Conference, so while Courtney was good and went to church, Des and I opted to try hiking again instead. This time the day was beautiful: the sun was out, the rain was gone, and temperatures were in the sixties. We went to
Des and Courtney decided to throw me a birthday party on Sunday afternoon, so they planned everything with my friend Heidi L. Since it was Sunday, we had a dinner in the park for families instead of just getting the women together. Heidi L brought some leftover plastic Easter eggs, so the all kids (and there were LOTS of little kids there) got to have an Easter egg hunt in the park, which they were thrilled about. There were piles of food, including a birthday cake that my friend Emily made, which was decorated to look like some of the books that our book club has read recently. (To light the candles, a bunch of the men were trying to light matches using the zippers on their pants—I should have gotten a picture of that!)
Des and Courtney had to leave on Monday, which was sad but I imagine they were glad to get back to their families. We decided to do this again and invite my two other sisters-in-law next year!
