Apples

Who remembers this classic Callister treat? Angie and I have a zillion apples and we've been getting pretty creative and liberal with them. Mona loves 'em too, but they give her gas, so we have to monitor her apple intake pretty carefully :)

Crawdad

I thought it would be a good Sunday activity to take Mona to the park and help her work on fetching. She's come along ways, but she still struggles sometimes with remembering to bring the ball back with her. While we were there we went to investigate the creek and found a pretty good sized crawdad. Mona didn't really want much to do with him, but I brought him home in my hat and we had us a reg'lar ol' crayfish boil in butter, garlic, salt and lemon juice. There was enough meat for each of us to have a nibble. Angie and I thought it was actually really delicious, but Mona thought it was more appetizing to sniff at, than to ingest. To each their own.

The Vegetable of Our Labors

Angie and I tried to raise a garden this year. It was a bit of work, but Angie had a nice little harvest of leafy greens every couple of weeks, and we had some radishes that were borderline county fair-ish. We were really disappointed that none of our tomatoes took off and we had only one solitary carrot. We babied that carrot all summer as if our very lives depended on its prosperity. Well I decided it was about harvest time for our carrot the other day. It was pretty unimpressive once I removed it from the ground, but Mona sure loved it! It gave her something to chew on besides our furniture.

Mona LuLu

I figured we'd better post something about Mona. To her, life is just a game and she just just loves playing! She loves to nose her way under blankets or pillows or pads or anything that she can get under. She particularly enjoys a game that we play together that I call "Blanket Wars" (see video)

Oh Canada!

Wheew... We're back!
Angie and I just came home from 9 magical days in Canada. I could talk your ears off about each and every one of those days, but I will try to instead make this our shortest blog post ever and just tell the juicier details in person to those we'll be seeing soon. In a nutshell:

-Drove 2004 miles
-Visited 5 Canadian National Parks
-We took 685 pictures!
-Celebrated Canada Day
-Picked our jaws up off the floor multiple times daily
-Saw deer, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, coyote, fox, black bear, grizzly bear and more
-Hikes, Hot Springs, Ice Fields, Gondola, Canoeing, Glacial Lakes
-Sunshine, wind, rain
-Saw so many new and wonderful places!

It was an amazing trip and we'll never forget it. Anyone who has not visited the Canadian Rockies needs to do so ASAP! Unbelievable!!!

Pop Quiz

If I could be 15% of the artist each of these 6 guys are, I would rock 50% more than I do! But this isn't a math quiz, it's a "who am I?" quiz. These are the 6 most influential musicians in my life, see if you can name them! (without looking at others' comments)

Mom & Dad!

We were fortunate enough to have mom and dad come and visit us this weekend. They drove up all day Wednesday and stayed until this morning (Monday) before heading back home. It’s been about 8 months since we’ve had visitors so we were really excited to have them come. We kept them pretty busy while they were here. We’d made a huge list of things to do and places to go and see and we got through almost the entire list! Some highlights were the White Pine Scenic Byway up to Coeur d’Alene where we took a beautiful hike overlooking the lake, we also went to lots of thrift stores (of course) and visited Spokane where the river was so full and fast that it was crashing around and sending spray that soaked us pretty good. It is very green and pretty here right now and all of our drives were so beautiful! Dad and I hit up the driving range, played tennis and took a 20-mile bike ride and Angie and Mom enjoyed the farmer’s market, buying and preparing lots of raw foods dishes and doing lots of chatting. It was a great weekend and it was sad to say good-bye, but they’ve got lots of kids and grandkids to see this summer and are on their way this week to southern Utah to spend time with the Ures. Thanks mom and dad for the visit, we love you!