The Joys of June!

I think June is my favorite month of the year. 

It holds the promise of summer plus I get to celebrate my birthday! 

This June has been no exception, 

we've had lots of summer fun and celebrations! 

To start off the month, the Young Women were in charge of the joint YM/YW activity and we held an Iron Chef competition. 

The secret ingredient was "lemon".

We had 45 minutes to head to our host's houses and bake up a treat.  

You can see that all the entrants had the same thought 

as in lemon muffins, cupcakes, etc.  

The "Maurels -combined Laurel and Mia Maid group, 

made these little lemon poppy seed muffins on the left.  

We didn't win, but I think we made a winner.

I think the Beehives won with their lemon poppy seed cupcakes.

The bishopric were the judges.

The youth anxiously await the judge's decision.

We had lots of fun and it was a great activity.

As a side note to this random post about June,

I finished my "Picnic" quilt.

Yes, that it what it was named and I had to make it.

It turned out so cute!

It's too cute to actually take on a picnic, 

but it definitely brightens up one of our guest bedrooms.

The Young Women from our ward are in the midst of girl's camp planning.

This year we decided to do a fund raiser so that we could do some extra fun stuff like white water rafting, Gold Fork Hot Springs, etc.,

We have 3 weeks of baking, last week we made cupcakes that we sold,

this week it is Father's day cookies,

and next week it is cinnamon rolls and homemade bread.

Lots of work, but hopefully we make lots of dough (pun intended).

We've got a great group of young women and they are fantastic bakers/decorators!

Last Friday was my birthday.

Eva was so cute to invite me to go out to lunch.

We met in downtown Boise at the Bleubird.

I had a yummy gourmet sandwich with blue cheese potato salad

and a strawberry, ginger mint drink.

The company was pretty amazing as well.

That afternoon, Tom got off work early and took me on a bikeride.

We rode our bikes from the Glenwood bridge all the way to Eagle road

on the new path along the river.

We saw a blue heron roost which you can't really see in the picture, 

but it was pretty cool to see those big birds with their nests up in the trees.

Here we are on the new bridge that crosses the Boise river.

That night after a delicious sea food dinner at Lucky Fins in downtown Boise,

we finally found a piece of birthday cake.

My favorite kind, mud pie!

Taylor joined in the celebrations on Saturday morning.

We took an early morning hike together in the Boise foothills

 and then he took me out to breakfast to Kneaders.

What a guy!

Tom surprised me with a picnic along the Payette river, Texas barbecue, and then

something I've wanted to do for a long time.

We went ZIP LINING!!!!

Do I look nervous because I was.

The Zip Line company is up in Horseshoe Bend, and for those of you who have been to Horseshoe Bend, you know that it is kind of ugly and desert-y, so we didn't have too high of expectations.

Might I just admit that this tour definitely exceeded our expectations.

It was AWESOME!

They drove us 20 minutes up above Horseshoe Bend to a beautiful valley.

See what I mean.

 

There were 6 different zip lines which got progressively more adventurous.

 This is the first zip line where we learned how to "zip".

Then we had to cross this crazy suspended bridge

to get to the next zip line.

We jumped off backwards on this one

 

 

What a view from the top of the 4th zip line.

It was about a 1/2 mile long,

we got up to speeds of 50-60 mph.

It was crazy!

Waiting to zip!

This is the group of 10 that we zipped with.

As you can see we could have been all of their parents.

I think they were a little surprised we were there.

 

 

We had so much fun! I definitely want to go again.

Maybe in some tropical location next time.

After zip lining, we drove up to Sweet and had dinner

at this old Basque restaurant.

It was good home cooking.

We got back home around 8 pm and found these cute little faces in the pool having a pool party!

Devin loves to pass Taylor the ball and see if he can catch his crazy passes.

Taylor was pretty amazing.

And Miss Eva going off the slide was pretty amazing too.

One last catch!

It was a BIG day, but so much fun!

The celebrating continued on Monday, 

my friends took me out to lunch for my birthday.

Where's my new favorite place for lunch,

ZUPA'S!

I had to get both ends of the table.

Having a birthday is pretty fun!

For FHE on Monday night we went to visit Charlie and Lucille.

What a cute father and son.

Last but not least, I hosted a bridal shower for my long-time neighbor,

Cindy Hurst.  She has been single for 20 years.

We lined her up with one of Tom's single friends,

and guess what - they're getting sealed on Saturday in the Boise Temple.

Cindy loves chocolate so I made chocolate mousse

We served chocolate dipped strawberries, fruit, and Great Harvest sugar cookies and jumbo chocolate chip cookies.

What a happy occasion

Cindy in the middle, my friend Sylvia, and me!

PS - Here's a cute 4th of July decoration we made in our Pinterest group today!

Hopefully the second half of June will be just as JOYOUS!